Posted on 03/06/2019 9:00:16 AM PST by EdnaMode
The top 11 U.S. pay TV operators lost 2.87 million customers in 2018, nearly double the 1.5 million the domestic ecosystem shed in 2017.
These are the latest quarterly findings by Leichtman Research Group (LRG), which measures the leading operators covering 95% of the U.S. market.
The big negative drivers were the two satellite TV companies, DirecTV and Dish Network, which lost a ton of customers on the linear side, but this time couldn’t make up for it with gains by their low-margin virtual pay TV services.
The two satellite carriers lost a combined 2.36 million linear customers in 2018, about 7.5% of their collective base, compared to 1.55 million in 2017.
Meanwhile, vMVPDs Sling TV from Dish and DirecTV Now from AT&T added only 641,000 subscribers last year, compared to growth of around 1.6 million in 2017.
The downer satellite news masked improvements by telecom services Verizon Fios and AT&T U-verse. Telecom video services lost about 245,000 subscribers last year compared to 885,000 in 2017, according to LRG.
Meanwhile, video cord cutting among the top six cable TV companies was up, albeit slightly—910,000 compared to 680,000 in 2017. The big factor her was Comcast, which lost 371,000 pay TV users in 2018 vs. 151,000 in 2017.
Overall, the top pay-TV providers lost 3.1% of subscribers in 2018 compared to a loss of 1.6% in 2017,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, in a statement. “Since the industry’s peak in 1Q 2012, pay-TV subscribers for the top providers have declined by about 6,000,000. This reflects a decline of about 10,000,000 subscribers for traditional services, offset by the addition of about 4,000,000 subscribers for the publicly reporting vMVPD services.”
7 years
When Comcast loses freedom loving Americans win.
Not everything is about Trump.
100 bucks a month savings by streaming.
Cable TV is the socialist’s ideal
1. 90% of what is on cable TV are channels that you would never watch yet are forced to subsidize (RE: many are Spanish which are interesting and enriching BUT DON’T FORCE ME TO PAY FOR THEM)
2.Taxes and fees are ridiculously high and a huge part of the bill so that others can have theirs for free.
3. The advertisements are unruly. Cable TV should be close to free because of the paid adverts.
4. Definitely not free market where customers can pick and chose.
Cable TV is a terrible value.
And these so called industry experts have yet to figure that out.
We gave up on DirectTV and switched to HuluLive. I like it.
Anyone using anything else?
You dont even have to use Direct TV Now. There is Yahoo TV, Sony Vue, Sling, Philo, Hulu Live, Watch TV, FuboTV.
But not as user friendly for older non techy types. I’d go to DTV Now, but the viewing process i.e. turning on the equipment, navigating Roku, using their crappy limited remote and DTV’s poor virtual DVR does not work for Mrs. Redangus. So we stay with regular DTV and their very simple DVR box that works seamlessly with our other equipment and universal remote.
$120 for me.
Plus there’s that annoying cell phone latency. It’s easier to have a smooth conversation on a landline because you’re hearing each other in real time. That’s about the only reason I keep my landline. Maybe also have a plan B in case of a cellular outage for some reason. Even so, I’m thinking of getting rid of my landline.
Sling is $30 per mo and Philo, which has similar stations, is $16 per mo.
The free market at work... until the government decides to jump in and “regulate it.”
YouTube TV may be the best. Especially if you like sports.
Apple TV does a good job of integrating all of the services. We have two Apple TV boxes and they work really well. DVR function works fairly well on some services. However we found that we never used it (when we had it in our set top box and paid extra for it on Sling). Waste of money for us but I can see how some people might use it exclusively.
Oh and YouTube has gotten a lot better these days. Might be Apple TV’s presentation of you tube. We enjoy it and it is free.
We gave up TV back in 1997 and only did DVD’s an BlueRays until, about 18 months ago, we discovered that Amazon Prime Video was a free part of Amazon Prime. And we already had a smart TV, so we were good to go. :)
One thing I hated about TV was that sense of immediacy. The ole’ “What’s on right now?” thing. Now, if I feel like watching something, I just do a search, be it for a documentary on music or WWII, or an action movie, or even the old Twilight Zone TV show. It’s right there. i.e. I watch EXACTLY what I want to watch and the selection of free stuff is simply mind boggling.
Thank you. I never heard of philo.
DirecTV is saving a ton of money by not sending me new offers in the mail every week.
I really liked them, until I decided to cancel service, and then after 13 years of loyal payments to them they screwed me over big time.
Not a chance in hell I’m going back to them.
That’s a good question. I know we bought it for at Walmart and it was between 15 + $17. That I remember because the in-store price was $2 higher than the online price and they gave me the $2. If you go to walmart.com and search indoor TV antennas you will get a number of them under $20 or so. I would imagine that any of the ones that are like what I described are going to do pretty much the same thing. The other hand if you buy it in the store you can take it home and try it and it’s easy to return.
It’s just a little black sheet, maybe 11 by 11 inches and a couple of small rabbit ears that come out of it. Keep in mind she is in a major metropolitan area but we live about 35-40 miles away in a rural area and were able to get about six or seven channels consistently.
Sling looks pretty good too. Not a huge sports fan but the basic plan for $30 tracks the college and pro teams pretty well; football, basketball.
I don’t use it so I am probably not an expert. Just that I have to flip through the stations to get to the movies.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.