The largest pay TV providers lost about 1.925 million video subscribers during the second quarter of 2022 compared to the year-ago quarter, according to the Leichtman Research Group. And the earlier quarter was not a great one either: The sector lost 1.235 million subscribers during the second quarter of 2021.
The firm says that its assessment covers about 92% of the market. The category now has 72.2 million subscribers. It is led by cable companies (39.5 million video subscriber), followed by other traditional pay TV service providers (25.5 million subscribers) and the top publicly reported Internet-delivered pay TV service providers, or vMVPDs (about 7.2 million subscribers).
Highlights from the report:
- Top cable providers had a net loss of about 950,000 video subscribers in the second quarter of 2022 – compared to a loss of about 590,000 subscribers in 2Q 2021
- Other traditional pay-TV services had a net loss of about 710,000 subscribers in the second quarter of 2022 – compared to a loss of about 700,000 subscribers in the second quarter of 2021
- Top publicly reporting vMVPDs had a net loss of about 265,000 subscribers in the second quarter of 2Q 2022 – compared to a gain of about 55,000 subscribers in the second quarter of 2021
Among the cable companies, Comcast (520,000 subscribers lost), Charter (226,000 subscribers lost), Cox (80,000 subscribers lost), Altice (84,500 subscribers lost), Mediacom (15,000 subscribers lost), Breezeline (6,709 subscribers lost) and Cable One (17,000 subscribers lost) all had bad quarters. In all, the category lost 949,209 subscribers.
Results were no better among what Leichtman calls “other traditional services:” DIRECTV (400,000 subscribers lost), DISH TV (202,000 subscribers lost), Verizon Fios (87,000 subscribers lost) and Frontier (20,000 subscribers lost). In all, the category lost 709,000 subscribers.
In total, the top providers lost 1,922,719 subscribers.
“The second quarter of 2022 marked the second consecutive quarter with over 1.9 million net pay-TV losses,” Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, said in a press release. “Over the past year, top pay-TV providers had a net loss of about 5,425,000 subscribers, compared to a net loss of about 4,550,000 over the prior year.”