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COWEN: 33% OF CABLE TV SUBS ARE ON PROMOTIONAL DEALS
MCN’S MOST VIEWED Top stories on multichannel.com, Feb. 22-March 3
CORD-CUTTING FOR bundled pay TV services in the U.S. is now a widely accepted fact, with cable operators largely emphasizing broadband connectivity and media companies having mostly moved on to prioritizing direct-toconsumer streaming. But the pace of change has to be concerning. With Dish Network’s reporting of fourth-quarter earnings Monday, we can tally the trajectory of the four biggest U.S. pay TV providers and say decisively that the velocity of the erosion is increasing. The rate is slightly down from 2019’s record pace, but it’s still more than double the 2018 rate. While Charter’s Spectrum TV service actually gained 56,000 subscribers in 2020 amid a massive expansion of the cable company’s high-speed internet customer base, Comcast, AT&T and Dish Network each experienced accelerated pay TV customer losses. Combined, the Big Four operators — publicly traded
(Video subscriptions in thousands)
26,000
3. C ord-Cutting Still Nearly Double For the Big Four U.S. Pay TV Providers Over 2018
19,500
4. H ouse Dems Pressure Distributors to Justify Carrying Fox News, Others
13,000
5. O rby TV Shuts Down, Directs Customers to Dish
For more stories like this, go to nexttv.com.
‘Big Four’ Pay TV Providers
1. Ergen: ‘We Stumbled’ With Sling TV 2. I s Comcast Getting Ready to Expand Xfinity Flex Out of Footprint?
companies with video subscriber counts exceeding 10,000 — lost 5.625 million customers in 2019. In 2020, they lost 5.139 million subscribers. Including its DirecTV satellite platform, its sunsetting U-verse TV, its IP-based AT&T TV product and its discontinued AT&T TV Now virtual MVPD, AT&T lost 3.261 million pay TV customers in 2020. That’s only slightly better than the nearly 4.1 million video customers lost in 2019. Sure, AT&T’s massive pay TV losses in 2019 and 2020 skew the picture. But Comcast saw its rate of attrition nearly double from 732,000 in 2019 to 1.408 million in 2020. And Dish Network lost a combined 526,000 subscribers across its satellite and Sling TV vMVPD platforms last year. In fact, Sling TV lost 118,00 customers in 2020. — Daniel Frankel
2019
2018
2020
6,500
To read these stories, go to multichannel.com.
COMCAST
AT&T
CHARTER
DISH NETWORK
SOURCE: Next TV
STICKIEST SHOWS Top 10 cable programs ranked by viewer engagement
*
Ratings Rank
Telecast (Week Ending February 21)
Network
Stickiness Index*
1
44
The Curse of Oak Island
History
145
2
150
Chronicle Mysteries: Helped to Death
Hallmark Movies
145
3
49
Mix Up in the Mediterranean
Hallmark Channel
144
4
149
Tyler Perry's Sistas
BET
143
5
45
90-Day Fiancé
TLC
142
6
43
When Calls the Heart
Hallmark Channel
141
7
860
La Rosa de Guadalupe
Galavisión
138
8
100
WWE Monday Night Raw
USA Network
136
9
246
Married at First Sight
Lifetime
135
10
173
The Long Island Serial Killer: A Mother's Hunt for Justice
Lifetime
135
The Long Island Serial Killer: A Mother's Hunt for Justice: Lifetime; Comcast
Stickiness Rank
28 Multichannel.com
The Stickiness Index looks at viewer engagement based on several factors. A higher number indicates more of the audience is tuned in for the duration of the telecast. * TV Engagement ratings powered by Comscore’s TV Essentials. (Sorted by social media activity.)