Cord cutting has continued it slow, steady growth in 2023. According to the city of Baltimore’s budget director Laura Larsen, the city has fewer than 60,000 cable TV subscribers. That is a 44% drop from the 106,000 subscribers it had back in 2020, according to The Baltimore Banner.
The United States Census, in 2022, showed there were about 247,000 households in Baltimore, which means just over 24% of households are paying for cable TV.
This drop has resulted in the city projecting a $1.3 million deficit in the first quarter from the 5% franchise fee cable subscribers pay to the city. This is on top of the 10% decline in the franchise fee because of cord cutting they saw at the end of June 2023.
The number of Americans cutting cable TV and becoming cord cutters keeps slowly growing. Comcast, one of the main cable TV companies in the city, has recently been hit hard by cord cutters canceling cable TV.
In Comcast’s third quarter earnings report, they reported 490,000 video customer losses. That works out to almost 5,300 subscribers every day. The company also lost 18,000 broadband customers for the quarter. Comcast now has 32 million total broadband customers. Revenue from domestic broadband was up 3.8% to $6.4 billion in the third quarter.
Baltimore is not the only municipality being hit hard by cord cutting, leaving many to investigate ways they can replace this lost revenue.
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