Today we learned that Dish, Spectrum, Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon have lost over 1.1 million TV subscribers in just 3 months. Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T have reported their first quarter 2019 numbers with over 900,000 people canceled their pay-TV service. AT&T also announced that DIRECTV NOW lost 83,000 subscribers in the 1st quarter of 2019. This is compared to the 4th quarters of 2018 when DIRECTV NOW lost 267,000 subscribers.
Now Dish Network has also reported a loss of 259,000 TV customers in the 1st quarter of 2019. (That includes a slight increase in Sling TV subscribers.) The good news for Dish is that losses have slowed slightly compared to 334,000 lost TV subscribers in the 4th quarter of 2018.
AT&T is seeing the biggest drop in subscribers as 554,000 TV subscribers canceled DIRECTV, U-verse, and DIRECTV NOW in the 1st quarter of 2019. Overall with just Dish, Spectrum, Comcast, and AT&T reporting over 1.1 million Americans have canceled cable TV. That number includes DIRECTV NOW and Sling TV subscribers. This means most new cord cutters are not coming back to streaming services offered by Dish and AT&T.
This is just the start of the 1st quarter earnings reports. There are still many major cable TV companies out there that have yet to report. This likely means that cord cutting will have a record-setting 1st quarter.
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