AT&T's DirecTV Leads Another Quarter of Heavy Cord-Cutting. Here's How Bad Things Are.
The U.S's cord-cutting movement marches on. During the fourth quarter, the six biggest cable television services (which account for more than 90% of the U.S. cable industry) collectively lost nearly 1.2 million customers. That's an acceleration from the third quarter's attrition of 986,000, though it's still the lowest dropout pace since the first quarter of 2019. For perspective, these providers ended the quarter in question with a total of just under 68.2 million paying subscribers.
It comes as no surprise that AT&T (NYSE: T) led the charge, losing 616,000 "premium TV" customers (mostly DirecTV subscribers). The company has discontinued lower-priced plans and raised the price of remaining ones in recent months, seemingly unconcerned about preserving the satellite cable company's value in front of a frequently rumored sale of the service. No provider added customers on a net basis, though.
If you were thinking cable cancellations were going to level off, think again. The only thing even partially curbing cord-cutting is the fact that there are fewer cable television customers to cancel their service.
Image source: Getty Images.
The United States' cable TV industry has been losing customers steadily since 2014, when the business peaked at 100.5 million households, according to eMarketer. Partially prompted by the pandemic, the media and technology research outfit estimates there are only going to be 73.7 million traditional cable customers left by the end of this year, en route to only 63.4 million by 2024.
This downtrend jibes with the attrition data we're seeing just from the six biggest names in the business, which have lost customers in each of the past 12 quarters. AT&T has lost the most during this time, although Comcast's (NASDAQ: CMCSA) Xfinity -- by virtue of being second-biggest three years back -- has lost a few million of its own. Charter (NASDAQ: CHTR) has arguably lost the fewest cable customers, yet it's still lost them, and it continues to do so. The graphic below tells the story in no uncertain terms.
Source Fool.com
