Leichtman Research Group recently released the cable customer counts for the largest providers of traditional cable service in the second quarter of 2023. LRG compiles most of these numbers from the statistics provided to stockholders, except for Cox and Mediacom – they now combine an estimate for both companies. Leichtman says this group of companies represents 96% of all traditional U.S. cable customers.
The traditional cable providers continue to lose customers at a torrid pace, losing over 1.6 million customers in the second quarter, slightly fewer losses than the second quarter of 2022. Overall, the traditional cable providers lost over 17,700 customers every day during the quarter. The overall penetration of traditional cable TV is now around 46% of all households, down from 73% at the end of 2017.
| 2Q 2022 | Change | Change | |
| Comcast | 14,985,000 | (543,000) | -3.5% |
| Charter | 14,706,000 | (200,000) | -1.3% |
| DirecTV | 12,350,000 | (400,000) | -3.1% |
| Dish Network | 6,901,000 | (197,000) | -2.8% |
| Cox & Mediacom | 3,340,000 | (100,000) | -2.9% |
| Verizon | 3,155,000 | (70,000) | -2.2% |
| Altice | 2,405,900 | (69,900) | -2.8% |
| Breezeline | 296,952 | (3,732) | -1.2% |
| Frontier | 267,000 | (21,000) | -7.3% |
| Cable ONE | 158,100 | (8,900) | -5.3% |
| Total | 58,564,952 | (1,613,532) | -2.7% |
| YouTube | 5,900,000 | 200,000 | 3.5% |
| Hulu Live | 4,300,000 | (100,000) | -2.3% |
| Sling TV | 2,003,000 | (97,000) | -4.6% |
| FuboTV | 1,167,000 | (118,000) | -9.2% |
| Total Cable Company | 35,733,852 | (916,632) | -2.5% |
| Total Telco / Satellite | 22,673,000 | (688,000) | -2.9% |
| Total vMvPD | 13,370,000 | (115,000) | -0.9% |
It doesn’t look like people are replacing traditional cable with an online alternative like YouTube and Hulu Live – which collectively lost 115,000 customers in the quarter.
Charter is still losing customers at a slower rate than other traditional cable companies. At current trends, Charter ought to have the most cable customers soon – something that could not have been imagined only three or four years ago.
The biggest news is that Comcast is one of the biggest percentage losers, and the biggest overall loser, down 543,000 cable customers in the quarter. The biggest percentage losers continue to be Frontier and Cable ONE.
So are people just disconnecting from video altogether, if they are not going to some streaming platform?
is there a similar set of numbers for their broadband? or does this include that? or is it just the “TV” portion
This blog is just cable TV. Broadband customers was on this blog:
https://potsandpansbyccg.com/2023/08/25/broadband-customers-2q-2023/
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