If you follow the pay TV space, you’ve probably read a slew of stories by now about the number of subscribers individual U.S. service providers shed in Q1 2017. The generally woeful numbers raised some eyebrows, especially since the first quarter is a traditionally solid one for pay TV additions. So now all the quarterly reports are in, how did the sector do overall, and which specific kinds of providers – cable, satellite, and telcos – fared the worst?
Kagan, a group within S&P Global Market Intelligence, offered up its analysis on those topics this week saying that traditional multichannel subscriber losses totaled 802,000 overall, which is reportedly a 0.8 percent drop for the sector. “The impact of new streaming options suggests an important component of the loss comes from a shift in platforms within the familiar subscription construct rather than outright cord cutting,” Kagan notes.
The company estimates total traditional multichannel subscriptions fell to 97 million in the first quarter. Adding estimated subscribers from virtual services including Sling TV, DirecTV Now, and Playstation Vue, brings up the combined total subscriptions to a package of live linear channels and on-demand content to 99.2 million.
Where did most of the sub losses come from? Cable operators shed 188,000 total video customers, according to Kagan’s first quarter U.S. multichannel subscriber report, but it was a smaller loss than posted by direct broadcast satellite (DBS) and telco competitors. However, Kagan notes it was cable’s worst first-quarter performance since 2013.
As for DBS, the two providers − which both have launched virtual service provider (VSP) alternatives − lost a combined 291,000 subscribers in the quarter. Kagan also says the telcos sluffed off 324,000 video subs in the first three months of the year.
The combined residential subscriptions for cable, DBS, and telco services reportedly accounted for 76.7 percent of the potential residential universe, using figures compiled from U.S. Census reports.
Related articles around this topic are available here and here.
