US Pay-TV Industry Posts Its First Q1 Net Subscriber Losses, Says Report

The top U.S. pay-TV providers lost roughly 410,000 net video subscribers in Q1, compared with a 10,000 subscriber gain in the year-ago quarter, Leichtman Research Group reported Thursday. It's the first time the industry posted net subscriber losses in a Q1, said principal Bruce Leichtman, who said declines shouldn’t be interpreted as driven solely by increased cord-cutting. It's "also a function of a decrease in new connects, partially due to some providers less aggressively pursuing lower value customers than in the past,” he said. While most cable companies saw a drop in subscribers, Comcast had 41,000 net adds for an industry-leading 22.5 million subscribers, said the report. Together, the top six cable companies lost about 115,000 video subscribers in Q1 vs. a 50,000 subscriber gain in the year-ago quarter, said Leichtman. DirecTV had no net gains vs. a gain of 328,000 a year earlier, while Dish Network lost 318,000 net subscribers, according to Leichtman estimates for Dish, which doesn't break out subscribers for direct broadcast satellite and internet-delivered services. AT&T U-Verse lost 233,000, FiOS lost 13,000 and Frontier lost 80,000 net subscribers, said the researcher. Internet-delivered services SlingTV and DirecTV Now each added 175,000 subscribers in Q1, Leichtman estimated. At the end of the quarter, the U.S. had 48.6 million cable subscribers, 33.2 million satellite subscribers, 9.8 million phone company video subscribers and 1.7 million customers with internet-delivered video, Leichtman said.