Amazing numbers keep getting posted on the massive switch from traditional TV providers such as satellite and cable. DirecTV estimates included in Leitchman Research Group’s tally of nearly 2 million more lost pay TV subscribers. This is a direct ( no pun intended) result of higher costs and ala carte options with streaming TV devices and televisions
DirecTV, jointly owned by AT&T and private equity company TPG Capital, has around 13.9 million remaining subscribers. This is around 12 million fewer than existed between DirecTV satellite and U-verse back in May 2014, when AT&T agreed to pay $49 billion to buy DirecTV and — briefly — usurped Comcast to become the nation’s No. 1 pay TV operator.
Pay TV’s long secular slide started around the time of that purchase, dropping from just over 100 million American homes to around 72.2 million at the end of June, according to LRG. (The total is actually higher — LRG’s count doesn’t include the 8% of the market served by vMVPD leader YouTube TV, as well as several hundred smaller regional cable companies.)
But we can say that, with its total pay TV subscriber base eroding by 46% over the last eight years, AT&T has at least managed to beat the market on something.
Every publicly effacing pay TV service once again lost ground in the second quarter, just as they did in Q1. The top 13 pay TV companies, accounting for 92% of U.S. customers, lost 1.950 million users from April – June vs. a pro forma loss of 1.235 million subscribers in the same period of 2021.
Comcast was the biggest loser, bleeding 520,000 linear video customers.
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