Cord Cutting has been hitting cable TV companies hard in 2023. Now that earnings season is coming to a close, we now know that the top 5 cable TV and satellite companies that report numbers have lost over 1,163,000 subscribers in just three months. This works out to be over 12,780 people canceling cable TV every single day.
These companies losing subscribers include Comcast losing 543,000, Spectrum losing 189,000, DISH 294,000, Verizon 69,000, and Altice USA 68,300. The total of this is 1,163,300 lost subscribers in just three months for the five largest cable TV companies.
If these numbers continue over the next year, cable TV could lose over 4.665 million subscribers. That would mean the majority of Americans would now be cord cutters.
Comcast has been hit hardest recently by cord cutting, with 12.6% of its subscribers canceling cable TV. This is followed by DISH losing 10.8%, and Verizon losing 9.2% of its subscribers.
There is one noticeable company that no longer reports subscriber numbers, and that is DIRECTV. Since AT&T made DIRECTV private and spun it offer into its own company, they stopped reporting numbers. It is very likely that the growth of cord cutting is far larger than we would expect as DIRECTV’s numbers are not being reported here.
It is also being reported that YouTube TV is now larger than many cable TV companies. Sadly Google does not release official numbers but according to LightShed Partners, it now has 6.6 million subscribers. This makes Google the 5th largest live TV provider in the United States, and it may soon be the 4th largest.
According to a report by LightShed Partners, YouTube TV is expected to add 2 to 3 million new subscribers thanks to the addition of the NFL Sunday Ticket. This would make YouTube TV the 4th largest live TV provider in the united states, just behind DIRECTV, Spectrum, and Comcast.
For now, we will have to wait and see what happens with the growth of cord cutting. For now it looks like cord cutting shows not sign of slowing down.