With another 6 million lost subscribers in 2019 alone, it is clear that customers are still fleeing traditional cable and satellite TV in droves.
According to Yahoo, the cable and satellite industry suffered a seven percent decline over the loss from 2018. In just the last quarter of 2019, pay-TV distributors lost 1.5 million subscribers, according to Wall Street analyst firm MoffettNathanson.
AT&T lost the most with 1.4 million fewer subscribers during the 4th quarter of 2019. In addition, Comcast lost 149,000 and Charter saw a decline of 101,000.
Analysts now feel that cord-cutting is accelerating out of control for the traditional pay-TV industry, and incentives and cost cutting are no longer stemming the tide.
“As video distributors change their pricing and marketing strategies, the media industry is finally facing that long-feared moment of accelerating cord-cutting,” analysts Moffett and Nathanson wrote in a recent report.
Pay-TV has been declining since reaching a high of 87.8 percent of American households in 2009.
TV customers are canceling cable and satellite TV subscriptions in droves as they migrate to Internet-based streaming services. Younger consumers, in particular, have come to prefer Netflix and YouTube over traditional TV. And the emergence of the mega-steamers, including Disney+, Amazon Prime, Hulu, CBS All Access, HBO Max, among others are giving Americans more options outside of cable than they’ve ever had before.
Breitbart previously reported that the number of households who canceled cable or satellite television packages doubled to nearly three million, from 1.5 million cancellations in 2017.
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