TV Subscription Losses Almost Double Broadband-Subscription Gains in Q1

pcmag.com:

Cord cutting carved another gouge in the legacy TV business in the first quarter of 2022, with 1.95 million people heading for the exits among the top providers. Many of those same companies kept adding broadband subscribers, with 1.065 million signing on in Q1. 

These findings come from the two latest quarterly surveys from Leichtman Research Group, a Durham, N.H., consultancy that tracks subscriber totals among the largest publicly traded and privately held firms in those fields. It announced(Opens in a new window) the TV numbers on Tuesday and posted(Opens in a new window) the broadband figures today.

Leichtman’s TV-subscription data shows Comcast, the largest provider, once again losing the most customers, with 512,000 cutting the cord in Q1 to leave it with 17.664 million total. The two satellite-TV services, DirecTV and Dish Network, saw the most subscriber losses after that; the former lost an estimated 300,000 subs to end the quarter with 14.3 million, while the latter’s loss of 228,000 subs left it with 7.993 million.

(Leichtman computes its own estimates for privately held firms like DirecTV while starting with numbers in quarterly earnings filings for publicly traded companies.)

Unlike in Leichtman’s full-year 2021 report, streaming video services did not see offsetting gains. Hulu + Live TV lost 200,000 subscribers to fall to 4.1 million total (its late-2021 rate increase could not have helped) and Sling TV lost 234,000 to end the quarter at 2.252 million. Leichtman did not, however, attempt to estimate subscriber numbers for YouTube TV or Philo, saying in a footnote that “neither regularly report results.” 

Among broadband providers, Comcast was the biggest winner, adding 262,000 to reach 32.163 million,