The “cord cutting” trend cable execs spent a decade claiming was a fad just broke another round of new records. According to Leichtman Research, major cable TV providers lost another 1.7 million subscribers last quarter, as users flock to streaming, over the air TV, TikTok, or, you know, books. Roughly 17,700 customers cut the cord every single day during the second quarter of 2023.

Over the last year (Q2 ’22 to Q2 ’23) the traditional cable TV sector lost a whopping 5,360,000 customers, compared to 4,235,000 customer defections the year earlier. The current number of U.S. households that has a cable connection sits somewhere around 46 percent, down from 73% at the end of 2017.

Historically, a big cable company like Comcast or Charter wasn’t too hurt by “cord cutting” because it could just jack up the cost of monopolized broadband access. And while that’s still generally true; here too cable giants are seeing increased competition from community broadband (co-ops, utilities, municipalities), 5G home wireless, and phone companies belatedly upgrading to fiber.

Interestingly though, streaming TV providers also wound up losing subscribers, albeit at a much slower rate:

  • Baron Von J@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    They must be going crazy hard on sports. Between ESPN+ (bundled with Disney+ and Hulu for $15 or $20 a month), PeacockTV ($6 a month), and Paramount+ ($6 a month) I get quite a bit of live sports thrown in with all that non-sports content for under $40 a month). You may say, but Fox Sports network! Well you can open an incognito window, go over to https://foxsports.com/live, and get an hour for free and you can [Google] Cast (I assume Airplay works but have no Apple devices) it to your TV. Just close the incognito window (all incognito windows for Chromium, not just the tab) and open a new one, your 1 hour starts over!

    • phillaholic@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      ESPN+ doesn’t have their cable channels. Peacock and Paramount just stream what you can get free with an antenna.