Yesterday Altice USA, the 4th largest cable TV company in the United States, reported their earnings that included 77,600 fewer cable TV subscribers. Now, the CEO, Dennis Mathew, opened up about cable TV and how the model is broken.
During the earnings call when asked about the Spectrum deal with Disney, Dennis Mathew said, “The model is broken. I just have to say, for the last ten years, the consumers have made it clear that there is a significant shift from linear to streaming, and yet the costs for linear have continued to rise. And we as distributors need to find a way to work with our programming partners to put the customer at the center. We need to give them great value,”
These comments are very similar to what Spectrum said during its fight with Disney when the second largest cable TV company said the current model of cable TV is broken.
Not only will it seem that cable TV is broken, but maybe also cable internet. Altice USA joined Comcast in losing internet customers, with 31,000 fewer internet customers in the 3rd quarter of 2023. This comes as increasingly cord cutting 2.0 is seeing Americans ditch not just cable TV but cable internet also.
This comes as the two largest cable TV companies reported their earnings, giving us an idea of how fast cord cutting is growing. According to the most recent numbers, both Comcast and Spectrum have lost over 2.4 million cable TV customers so far in 2023.
If this trend continues, the two largest cable TV companies could easily lose over 3 million cable TV customers before the end of 2023. With major TV providers still to report 3rd quarter 2023 earnings, including DISH, the number of new cord cutters could skyrocket.
According to the Leichtman Research Group in 2022, all Major Pay-TV providers lost about 5.9 million subscribers. With just Comcast and Spectrum possibly losing 3 million on their own that number may go up in 2023.
The question now is how long can cable TV keep going with numbers like these.