The largest traditional cable providers collectively lost over 1.8 million customers in the first quarter of 2023 – an overall loss of 2.9% of customers. To put the quarter’s loss into perspective, the big cable providers lost almost 20,000 cable customers per day throughout the quarter.

The numbers below come from Leichtman Research Group which compiles these numbers from reports made to investors, except for Cox and Mediacom, which is estimated. The numbers reported are for the largest cable providers, and LRG estimates that these companies represent 95% of all cable customers in the country.

Following is a comparison of the first quarter subscriber numbers compared to the end of the 2022:

Some observations about the numbers:

• The big overall loser is now Comcast, which lost a net of 614,000 traditional video customers in the quarter.
• The big percentage losers continued to be Frontier which lost 5.9% of its cable customers, and cable ONE that lost 8% of customers.
• Charter lost the lowest percentage of customers at 1.6% of its customer base, but that still totaled to be 241,000 customers.

To put these losses into perspective, these same companies had over 85 million cable customers at the end of 2018 – a loss since then of 25 million customers (29%).

The biggest online programming providers are also losing customers, and collectively lost 2.8% of customers for the quarter, the same as the cable companies. It’s clear that a lot of homes are cleanly cutting the cord and replacing traditional channel lineups with something else.

A few folks have asked me why I continue to track cable subscriptions. First, while cable is getting slaughtered in the market, half of all U.S. homes continue to use some form of traditional cable. Second, these big losses for the big cable companies are part of what is driving them to continue to raise broadband rates, even as they’ve stopped adding broadband customers. I think this is still relevant as long as the majority of cable customers are served by the largest ISPs. But ultimately, it’s hard to stop watching a slow motion train wreck while it’s happening.

Leichtman Research Group recently released the cable customer counts for the largest providers of traditional cable service at the end of the first quarter of 2022. LRG compiles most of these numbers from the statistics provided to stockholders, except for Cox, which is privately held and estimated. Leichtman says this group of companies represents 96% of all traditional U.S. cable customers.

The industry continues to bleed customers, losing over 1.4 million customers in the fourth quarter, up from 1.3 million customers the previous quarter. Overall, the traditional cable providers lost almost 15,900 customers every day during the quarter.

It doesn’t look like people are replacing traditional cable with an online alternative like Hulu and Sling TV – which are also losing customers. A few major online alternatives like YouTube TV aren’t on the list, but the loss in traditional cable far surpasses any net gain for the online cable alternatives.

Charter is still losing customers at a slower rate than everybody else in the industry and has for the past several years. Charter CEO Tom Rutledge explains this by Charter’s willingness to move cable subscribers to less expensive tiers, such as the $44.99 Spectrum TV Select product. He says that Charter actively points out to customers that the online alternatives cost more. The rest of the industry seems resigned to letting cable customers go.

This drops the overall penetration rate of traditional TV to just above 51% of households. The industry has lost over fifteen million customers since the end of 2017 when traditional cable was in over 73% of homes.

One of the consequences of the rapid drop in cable customers is that cable companies are losing the power of the bundle. The traditional cable industry has lost almost one-third of all cable customers since 2017, greatly reducing opportunities to retain customers with bundling discounts.

Leichtman Research Group recently released the cable customer counts for the largest providers of traditional cable service at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021. LRG compiles most of these numbers from the statistics provided to stockholders other than for Cox, which is privately held and estimated. Leichtman says this group of companies represents 96% of all U.S. cable customers.

The industry continues to bleed customers, losing over 1.3 million customers in the fourth quarter. This follows similar losses in the second and third quarters and a drop of over 1.6 million customers in the first quarter of 2021. Overall, the traditional cable providers list almost 5.6 million customers for the year or a loss of 15,300 customers every day during the year.

It doesn’t look like people are replacing traditional cable with an online alternative like Hulu and Sling TV. A few major online alternatives like YouTube TV aren’t on the list, but the loss in traditional cable far surpasses the net gain for the online cable alternatives.

Charter is losing customers at a far slower rate than everybody else in the industry and has for the past several years. Charter CEO Tom Rutledge explains this by Charter’s willingness to move cable subscribers to less expensive tiers, such as the $44.99 Spectrum TV Select product. He says that Charter actively points out to customers that the online alternatives cost more. The rest of the industry seems resigned to letting cable customers go.