2016 is quickly becoming the year of the cord cutter. Pay-TV providers may still have a huge subscriber base but it is shrinking quickly. For the first time in just one month 621,000 subscribers canceled or downgraded their pay-TV service.
We get these numbers from Nielsen and really focus on ESPN, which has long been considered the channel that prevents people from cutting the cord. Now it seems that no longer is ESPN a reason to keep your pay-TV provider as 621,000 pay-TV subscribers canceled their service or downgraded to a package without ESPN.
So what does that mean for ESPN? That means ESPN gets $52 million less every month in subscriber numbers; however, the number is likely larger than that. On average ESPN has been losing 300,000 subscribers every month for the last few years. Now as their audience shrinks and “Monday Night Football” ratings fall 24% over last year, they can no longer charge the same for their ads.
ESPN issued the following statement on these numbers:
“The Nielsen numbers represent a dramatic, unexplainable variation over prior months’ reporting, affecting all cable networks. We have raised this issue with Nielsen in light of their demonstrated failures over the years to accurately provide subscriber data. The data does not track our internal analysis nor does it take into account new DMVPD entrants into the market.”
You can see why providers, such as Dish and DirecTV, are scrambling to offer a cord cutting service. It also makes it clear why Time Warner sold to AT&T.
Pay-TV won’t go away anytime soon but its death grip on content is weakening by the day.
Source: Awful Announcing
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