Report: U.S. Pay-TV Market Loses 612,000 Subscribers in Q1 2017

PARIS—The U.S. pay-TV market didn’t have the best of starts to 2017 according to a new report from Dataxis. In a look at the first quarter of the year, Dataxis found that the total number of pay-TV subscribers in the U.S. fell to 100.3 million, a dip of 612,000 (0.61 percent) compared to Q4 2016.

Cable remained relatively stable, losing 0.17 percent of its subscribers capping its total at 58.4 million subscribers. DTH, however, lost 1.32 percent of its subscribers and now has 33.2 million subscribers. IPTV’s current total of 6.3 million subscribers is a decline of 3.1 percent from Q4 2016. In Q1 2017, the only service that was growing was OTT pay-TV services, with a new base of 2.4 million subscribers for a growth of 6 percent. OTT has doubled its share of the market since last year, now making up 2 percent of the market.

As far as what companies are leading the pay-TV market, Dataxis found that AT&T topped the market in Q1 2017 with a 25.3 percent share; Comcast followed at 22.7 percent and Charter placing in third with 17.1 percent.