The nation’s six biggest names in the business (which Leichtman Research says accounts for about 95% of the market) collectively lost a little over 1.1 million customers during the three-month stretch ending in June, slowing down Q1’s cord-cutting pace of more than 1.5 million, but continuing the bigger-picture cord-cutting cadence that’s been a problem for the industry since 2014. Fool.com reports: AT&T led the way with its loss of 443,000 subscribers as its flagship platform DirecTV undergoes the major disruption of changing ownership hands, although the satellite-based service was bleeding customers well before the sale of DirecTV was even considered. No outfit gained subscribers, though, even including the better-established cable television brands like Comcast’s Xfinity and Charter Communications’ Spectrum. […] Market research company eMarketer estimates the number of conventional cable customers in the U.S. will continue to slide at least through 2024 when the number of non-pay-TV households is likely to eclipse the number of pay-TV households.
As was noted, though, people aren’t spending less time in front of their television sets. They’re just watching in a different way. Streaming is quickly becoming the preferred way of consuming video. […] Last quarter, streaming services of all ilks added on the order of 44.7 million active users/subscribers. Take that number with a grain of salt for a couple of reasons, the biggest of which is it’s a worldwide number and not just a U.S. figure. The other reason to not read too much into this number is it requires multiple streaming services to fully replace a canceled cable package. Recent data from Parks Associates indicates around half the U.S. households that have cut the cord now pay for four or more streaming options. Still, in that the United States remains the key market for most of these streaming brands — like Disney+, Discovery+, Pluto TV, and HBO Max — it’s difficult to not connect the clear demise of conventional cable television with popularization of streaming alternatives.
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