In a year where ad dollars and audiences continued to shift towards streaming platform, our coverage of streaming media continued to be among the most popular items on the TV Tech website.

Regulatory issues, blackouts on streaming platforms like YouTube TV, the ongoing rise in popularity of short form video and the decline of pay TV as consumers spent more time and money on streaming services, were among this year’s top 10 articles and topics.

Here are the top 10:

1. Carr Weighs in on Disney, YouTube Dispute

“People should have the right to watch the programming they paid for — including football” the FCC chair said in a X post.

2. Parks: Social Video Now Accounts for 20% of TV Viewing

Viewers watch more social video weekly than pay TV and broadcast according to Parks Associates.

3. NFL Viewers Embrace Interactive Shopping and Social Experiences on Game Day

New survey indicates that about half have shopped for NFL merchandise while watching games.

4. Point/Counterpoint: 5G Broadcast vs. NextGen TV

Industry veterans Preston Padden and Mark Aitken share their views on which standard should drive the future of U.S. television.

5. Middle-Aged Viewers Power YouTube Long-Form Content

35-to-64-year-olds emerge as YouTube’s long-form ‘content super-consumers,’ according to Ampere Analysis.

6. Peacock to Stream ‘Sunday Night Football’ in Dolby Atmos

Season kicks off with streaming coverage of Eagles-Cowboys in immersive audio.

7. Fubo to Launch 'Fubo Sports' Skinny Bundle for $56 Per Month

Fubo Sports will launch Sept. 2 with 20+ sports and broadcast networks featuring national and local pro and college team coverage.

8. YouTube TV to Drop Fox Channels If Agreement Is Not Reached

With the start of another football season, a new carriage dispute has arisen.

9. New NBCUniversal, YouTube TV Deal Includes the Return of NBC Sports Network

Google and NBCU reach long-term agreement across YouTube TV, Peacock, YouTube, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment and NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution.

10. S&P: Pay-TV Subscriptions Decline for Ninth Straight Year

No sign of relief for an industry that saw subscriber loss of 7.1% in 2024.

PHILADELPHIA—Comcast's Xfinity operating brand has announced the launch of new national video plans with all-in pricing that the operator said will provide customers with better value and transparency.

Available to new and existing customers, all packages come with an included X1 4K TV box and voice remote, and features like like Multiview, Enhanced 4K, Fan View and StreamStore.

The changes are part of a push to simplify pricing and offerings. Earlier this year, Xfinity launched all-in pricing and a five-year price guarantee for its Internet packages, all of which now include unlimited data and an advanced Xfinity WiFi gateway at no extra cost.

As previously reported, it has also launched Xfinity StreamSaver, a streaming bundle of Netflix, Apple TV+ and Peacock, that can save customers over 40% on some of the most popular streaming services, Comcast said.

When the new video plans are combined with Xfinity’s recently launched national internet plans, Comcast said, it can offer customers savings of over $70 per month for a year when compared to AT&T and Verizon.

“Like we did with Xfinity Internet, we’ve simplified and reimagined our video packages, making it easy and hassle-free for our customers to enjoy great content on the best and most innovative entertainment experience,” said Steve Croney, chief operating officer and incoming CEO, Connectivity & Platforms, Comcast. “When combined with Internet and mobile, our new video packages offer unmatched value, plus there’s even more opportunity for savings with bundles like Xfinity StreamSaver.”

Comcast said that each plan offers one simple, all-in price with major fees included and no contracts or commitments required. Customers can save $10 every month when they bundle their video package with Xfinity Internet. The most popular video plans now include 300 hours of DVR storage. With the Xfinity Stream app, customers can watch their channels at home or on-the-go via supported third party platforms like Apple TV, Fire TV, iOS, Android, Roku, Xumo TV, and more.

Monthly pricing for the new plans is as follows:

A new survey from cordcutting.com concludes that the majority of cable and satellite TV customers think they’re wasting their money on their subscriptions, based on the paltry number of channels they view. 

The survey, the website’s first since 2019, showed that these pay-TV subscribers have access to 190 channels but regularly only watch 15 of them. As expected broadcast networks and ESPN came out on top of the popularity poll. It also showed that the average cable TV monthly bill is grown from $96 to $147 since 2019, an increase of 52%. 

That rise has likely been driven by the continued increase in cordcutting, prompting pay-TV operators to increase prices in response; as well as increases in broadcast and sports rights costs. 

The survey also showed that the share of Americans watching cable or satellite TV has plunged by more than 20 percentage points from 2015 to 2021, with another 4.7 million households cutting the cord in 2021 alone. Meanwhile, streaming has become more popular—despite Netflix’s recent woes, the industry is up as a whole with spending on streaming growing 20 percent in 2021.

But when it comes to pay-TV subscriptions, the survey showed that nearly two out of every three subscribers think they’re not getting a good deal and 45% of cable TV subscribers saying that they would cancel their television packages if they weren't tied to their internet service provider.

In terms of the number of channels watched, the survey showed that out of the average lineup of 190 channels overall, subscribers watch only 15. By paying $147 per month to watch only 15 channels, the survey concluded that that averages out to $9.57 per channel watched, which rivals the average fee for an OTT streaming service. This results in an annual average of  more than $1,600 “wasted” on subscription fees, up from $1,088 in 2019 according to cordcutting.com.

The cost is even higher for the many viewers who watch fewer stations—less than 50%percent of pay-TV subscribers regularly watch more than 10 channels, and less than a quarter regularly watched 20 or more channels in their subscription.

Cordcutting.com said that many pay-TV subscribers continue their subscriptions out of habit and the lack of knowledge over their viewing options. 

“For less than half of the price of the average cable or satellite subscription, customers could obtain basic subscriptions to most major streaming services (and for a few dollars more, they can access ad-free versions),” said Stephen Lovely, cordcutting.com managing editor in a blog post. “Some viewers resist completely cutting the cord out of unfounded fear that they'll lose live television access. In reality, the major broadcast channels are free with a digital antenna, Paramount+ (CBS) and Peacock (NBC) carry live network streams, and other platforms (Apple TV+, Prime Video) are already adding live sports to compete with ESPN.

"With streaming options providing nearly all the services as cable TV at more affordable prices, it’s hard to understand why anyone stays with cable or satellite packages," Lovely added. "Perhaps that’s why industry experts expect the number of cable TV subscribers to soon drop to 50 million unless rising streaming prices drive a resurgence.

ENGLEWOOD, Colo.—Dish says it lost 273,000 subscribers to its Sling TV vMPVD service in the latest quarter, ending Dec. 31, 2021, compared to a drop of 133,000 in the same quarter a year earlier. 

The company closed the quarter with 10.71 million pay-TV subscribers, including 8.22 million DISH TV subscribers, a reduction of 200,000 and 2.49 million Sling TV subscribers. Net income for Dish was down to $552 million, or 87 cents a share, from $733 million, or $1.24 a share, a year ago and revenue dropped 2% to $4.45 billion.

In a call with analysts, Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen attributed the drop in to several “headwinds” including the loss of Tegna viewers during the NFL season. That standoff was resolved when the two reached agreement earlier this month. Also during the quarter, Dish raised the subscription fee to Sling TV by $5 per month.

Despite the drop in subscriptions, Ergen was optimistic during a call with analysts this week. 

“Sling is a profitable business that will grow,” he said. “It's going to require a little patience, but with the platform overhaul last year, we're now positioned to be able to innovate and enhance the customer experience with new features and differentiated offerings.”

Dish, which is increasing its focus on wireless services, reported that its retail wireless net subscribers decreased by approximately 245,000 in the fourth quarter, compared to a net decrease of 363,000 in the year-ago quarter. The company closed the quarter with 8.55 million retail wireless subscribers.

DALLAS—The gap between the popularity of OTT services and pay TV services in broadband homes continues to grow, with 82% of US broadband households subscribing to at least one OTT service, a six point bounce in one year, while 58% subscribe to a traditional pay-TV service, a decline of four points in the last year, according to new data from Parks Associates. 

The research firm also reports that some of the gap between streaming and pay TV services has been taken up by vMVPDs like Sling TV. About 25% of US broadband households now subscribe to a TV service offering a bundle of live channels via an online provider, including 13% who have both traditional and online pay-TV services. 

Adoption of vMVPDs, online pay-TV services that offer bundles of live channels accessible via third-party connected devices, increased four percentage points to 18% in Q1 2021. As Cord-Cutters or Cord-Nevers look for a more live/linear video viewing experience online, vMVPD service uptake has picked up, Parks reported. 

"The steady rise in online pay-TV adoption has made up for some of the significant drops in traditional pay TV," said Steve Nason, research director, Parks Associates. "Video consumers are looking to online pay-TV services, either from a traditional provider or vMVPD, to offer a similar viewing experience and content offering to traditional pay TV but at a lower price point. However, online pay-TV providers, who don't typically generate content on their own, have had trouble stabilizing subscriber costs as content fees continue to rise."

Nason added that “moving forward, consumer preferences will continue to shift online as video viewers perceive these services to be less costly, more convenient, and more aligned with how they want to consume video programming."

DURHAM, N.H.—The largest pay-TV operators in the U.S. continued to lose video subscribers in the first quarter of this year, with MVPDs representing about 95% of the market reporting net sub losses around 1,895,000 video subscribers in Q1 2021, according to the Leichtman Research Group Inc.

The losses were similar to declines seen in early 2020, when pay-TV operators  lost 1,955,000 subs in Q1 2020. 

With the losses, the largest U.S. pay-TV video subscribers now have about 78.7 million subs. This includes the top seven cable companies with 43.1 million video subscribers, other traditional pay-TV services like Dish, Verizon and AT&T with 28.9 million subscribers, and the top publicly reporting internet-delivered (vMVPD) pay-TV services like Hulu and Sling with 6.7 million subscribers. 

“Pay-TV net losses of about 1.9 million in Q1 2021 were similar to the net losses in Q1 2020,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group (LRG).  “Over the past year, top pay-TV providers had a net loss of about 4,790,000 subscribers, compared to a loss of about 5,125,000 over the prior year.”

Among the different sectors, cable video customer declines accelerated slightly to a net loss of about 775,000 video subscribers in Q1 2021, up from about 595,000 subscribers in Q1 2020. The Q1 2021 losses among the top cable operators were more than any previous quarter, LRG reported. 

Virtual MVPDs also continued to struggle, with a net loss of 255,000 subs in Q1 2021, up slightly from 210,000 a year ago. 

AT&T Premium TV, which includes DirecTV, U-verse and AT&T TV, once again saw the largest losses of any operator, with a drop of 620,000 video subs in the quarter, followed by Comcast, with 491,000 fewer subs in Q1 2020. 

LONDON—The trend of subscriber losses is not expected to change for the pay-TV industry in the U.S. anytime soon. According to a new projection from Digital TV Research, between 2020 and 2026, the U.S. will have a net loss of 16 million pay-TV subscribers, resulting in 63.9 million subscribers by 2026.

Of the 42 countries that are estimated to suffer a net loss over that period, the U.S. is expected to take the biggest hit. However, the overall global pay-TV market will increase from 2020-2026 by 15 million, per Digital TV Research, with 92 countries projected to see a growth of pay-TV subscribers.

With the additional 15 million subscribers, global pay-TV subscriptions will reach 1.02 billion in 2026. China will lead the way with 317.5 million, even though it is one of the countries that will lose subscribers between 2020 and 2026, with OTT platforms helping to push 10 million away from pay-TV subscriptions. 

India is expected to be the largest growing country, adding around 21 million subscribers for a total of 180.7 million in 2026.

The 1.02 billion subscribers in 2026 will consist of 378 million IPTV subscribers (up 63 million from 2020), 412 million cable TV subscribers (down 46 million), 203 million satellite TV subscribers (down 8 million) and 25 million pay DTT subscribers (up 6 million).

For more information, visit www.digitaltvresearch.com.  

LONDON—While pay-TV has been experiencing historic lows in the U.S., the global pay-TV market shows that it’s not all doom and gloom. According to a new report from Ampere Analysis on the second quarter of 2020, bellwether pay-TV companies throughout the world added more than 3.1 million subscribers.

Ampere reported on more than 70 companies for the study. This bellwether group of companies accounts for more than half of the world’s 1.1 billion pay-TV subscribers.

Of the bellwether companies that reported to Ampere, 44% saw growth in Q2 2020, adding nearly 7 million subscribers. The remaining 56% saw a loss of 3.9 million subscribers, which brought the quarter to a net growth of 3.1 million subscribers. 

The U.S. market led losses, with 1.4 million dropping their subscriptions across the bellwether companies, despite slight growths from Charter and Dish. China, on the other hand, saw the most net additions among its bellwether companies with a net gain of 3.1 million. The rest of the world’s bellwether pay-TV operators lost around 1.1 million net subscribers.

In comparison to the first quarter of 2020, Q2 total pay-TV subscriber totals were 0.5% higher, this despite the loss of premium content like live sports and other increased economic pressures due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, if you were to remove the three most populous nations from Ampere’s report—China, India and the U.S.—that growth would only be 0.1%.

The losses in the U.S. have been an ongoing trend, with Ampere reporting that U.S. bellwether companies have lost 6.3 million net subscribers in the last four quarters.

Some other country notes shared by Ampere show that Canada experienced its second largest combined quarterly pay-TV subscriber loss in Q2 2020. This was offset by growths in France and Spain, which had their largest bellwether net additions in more than a year.

Proportionally, Ampere says that Australia was hit the hardest in Q2 2020, followed by Denmark, the U.S., Canada, Brazil and New Zealand all having posted losses. Spain had the largest percentage growth in Q2 2020, followed by Russia, Romania, India, China and France.

“While some countries are seeing pay-TV subscriptions suffer due to the COVID pandemic, particularly caused by the transient loss of sport, there is still growth in the market, driven partly by bundling of services and by emerging markets,” said Toby Holleran, senior analyst at Ampere. “Cord-cutters in a number of developed territories like Canada—whose pay-TV market continues to mirror its North American neighbor—are being replaced by newer TV customers in emerging markets, leaving the markets as a whole stable. But there is a little growth left even in some developed nations such as France and Spain, which are bucking the trend of stagnation in Western territories.”

For more information, visit www.ampereanalysis.com.  

ENGLEWOOD, Colo.—Dish Networks lost a total of 96,000 pay-TV subscribers in the second quarter of 2020, which includes customers of both Dish TV and Sling TV.

Dish TV net subscribers decreased by 40,000 in Q2, as well as 56,000 Sling TV subscribers, for a total of 96,000. However, those numbers are better than the amount of subscribers that left in Q2 2019, which was a combined 127,000.

An interesting element to Dish’s subscribers for Q2 was the return of thousands of commercial accounts. Because of the disruption COVID-19 had on businesses, Dish paused or provided temporary rate relief for 250,000 commercial accounts, removing them from its pay-TV subscriber numbers at the end of Q1 2020. In Q2, 45,000 of these account were reactivated and added back to the overall subscriber count (but were not counted as new subscribers), which gave Dish an overall subscriber count increase of 5,000 at the end of Q2 compared to Q1.

The official pay-TV subscriber numbers for Dish are 11.27 million subscribers—9.02 million for Dish TV and 2.25 million for Sling TV.

As far as overall revenue for Q2, Dish reported it brought in $3.19 billion, down from $3.21 billion year-over-year. The total yearly revenue for Dish at the end of Q2 was $6.4 billion, up from $6.39 billion for the half-way point of 2019.

For more information, visit ir.dish.com. 

LOS ANGELES—Fewer consumers feel the need to have both a virtual MVPD service and a traditional pay-TV subscription than they did just a couple of years ago, as a new report from TDG, a division of Screen Engine/ASI, shows that 23% of households subscribe to both types of services.

2018 was the peak of dual-service use, as TDG says that 37% of vMVPD subscribers also subscribed to a traditional cable, satellite or telco pay-TV service. This was because vMVPD platforms, like Sling TV, did not carry live programming from the major national broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC). As a result, consumers felt that the two services were necessary to satisfy household needs.

Today, services like Hulu Live TV and YouTube TV, both of which include the major four networks, have become market leaders. This has led to a decreased need for two separate services.

PLUS: Pay-TV to Experience Global Market Shift by 2025

However, of the 23% of vMVPD subscribers who do have a legacy pay-TV subscription as well, they say that the programming requirements of their home require it, and that they often use the second service when they are away from home. Also, 71% of dual-subscribers see their legacy service as their primary service.

In 2018, TDG predicted that the 37% of dual-subscribers would decline to 10% by 2022, and believe that the latest data still supports that trajectory.

“Most OTT pay-TV services now provide a full complement of both broadcast and cable channels, meaning they are more capable of competing head-to-head with ‘fat’ legacy offerings,” said Michael Greeson, co-founder and president of TDG.

Greeson also makes the case that simply combining the data for traditional pay-TV and vMVPD subscribers for a cumulative pay-TV subscription tally is invalid and that the overlap should be recognized.

TDG will discuss the data from this report and other insights during its “Stream TV’s Summer Research Summit” on June 29.

For more information, visit www.tdgresearch.com.  

LONDON—The status of the global pay-TV market over the next few years depends on where operators currently stand, according to a new report from Digital TV Research. Those among the top global operators are expected to see negative or flat growth, while those outside the top 50 are projected to gain subscribers and increase revenue.

According to Digital TV Research, of the 502 operators across 135 countries that make up the Global Pay-TV Operator Forecast, two-thirds will gain subscribers between 2019 and 2025, while 59% are expected to increase their revenue over the same period.

At the end of 2019, Digital TV Research says that the top 50 pay-TV operators accounted for 46% of the world’s pay-TV subscribers. But over the next five years, the forecast has the top 10 operators losing subscribers and the other 40 in the top 50 remaining flat, while those outside those top spots are expected to gain subscribers.

For those outside the top 50, Digital TV Research projects eight will add at least 1 million subscribers by 2025; leading operators will be China Unicorn (19.96 million projected new subscribers) and China Telecom (18.52 million). The report also forecasts eight operators will lose 1 million or more subscribers—the largest is expected to be China Radio and TV (37 million subscribers lost), but the next five are all companies from the U.S.

PLUS: U.S. Pay TV Revenue Projected to Drop 35% to $57.4B by 2025

While there will be wide ranging swings of losses and gains, Digital TV Research sees growth for the global pay-TV market. “By end-2019, 13 operators had more than 10 million paying subscribers,” said Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research. “This will reach 14 operators by 2025.”

For more information, visit www.digitaltvresearch.com.  

ENGLEWOOD, Colo.—Dish Network reported that during the first quarter of 2020 it lost 413,000 pay-TV subscriptions. While the company cites the COVID-19 outbreak as impacting its numbers in various ways, the net decrease of subscribers represents a year-over-year increase from the 259,000 it lost in Q1 2019.

Among the lost subscribers were commercial customers who had Dish services paused or provided temporary rate relief as customers were no longer utilizing the Dish services. This represented 250,000 subscribers that Dish removed from its pay-TV subscriber count as of March 31. If commercial accounts are reactivated in the future, Dish says it will not count them as gross new subscriber additions.

However, for the first time, according to TVT’s sister publication Next|TV, Sling TV subscriber loss outpaced that of the satellite TV division. Sling TV lost 281,000 subscribers in Q1, compared to satellite’s 132,000

The total number of pay-TV subscribers for Dish at the end of Q1 2020 was 11.32 million—9.01 million for Dish TV and 2.31 million for Sling TV.

Overall, net earnings for Dish fell to $73 million in Q1 2020 from $340 million over the same period last year.

For more information, visit ir.dish.com. 

DURHAM, N.H.—Pay-TV providers may like to forget 2019 as soon as possible, as a report from Leichtman Research Group found that among the largest pay-TV providers in the U.S.—which make up about 95% of the market—there was a loss of about 4,915,000 net video subscribers. That is up from the 1,585,000 subscribers lost in 2018.

Currently, the top pay-TV providers account for 86.2 million subscribers. The top seven cable companies account for 45.8 million of that number; satellite 25.4 million; telephone companies 8.3 million; and the top three publicly reporting vMVPD pay-TV services have 6.7 million subscribers.

The group of top seven cable companies is made up of Comcast, Charter, Cox, Altice, Mediacom, Cable One and Atlantic Broadband. Combined, they lost about 1.56 million video subscribers last year, representing 3.3% of video subscribers; it was 920,000 in 2018 (1.9%). Comcast saw the most losses, 732,000, but remains the top cable company by more than 5 million subscribers (21.25 million at end of 2019).

DirecTV and Dish were the satellite companies tabulated by LRG, which combined lost around 3.7 million subscribers, up from 2.36 million in 2018. DirecTV saw the majority of those losses, with a reported 3.19 million subscribers leaving the satellite company.

Telephone companies, which include Verizon Fios, AT&T U-Verse and Frontier, lost about 665,000 video subscribers, again up from 2018 (245,000).

The only group that saw an overall growth was vMVPDs, represented in LRG’s report by Hulu + Live TV, Sling TV and AT&T TV Now. Combined, the three groups added just over a million subscribers in 2019. However, that number was down from 1.94 million net adds in 2018, which represented a 50% increase at that time; 2019’s addition represented an 18% increase. AT&T TV Now was the only vMVPD to lose subscribers and is the only one that came in under a million (926,000) at the end of 2019.

Overall, 2019 saw AT&T suffer a net loss of about 4.12 million subscribers across its pay-TV services (DirecTV, AT&T U-Verse and AT&T TV Now), representing 84% of pay-TV net losses in the year. The company just launched its new AT&T TV service, however.

“The significant increase in pay-TV net losses in 2019 was both a function of consumers having more video options, and the decisions by AT&T and other providers to increasingly focus on long-term profitability in acquiring and retaining subscribers,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG.

The full Leichtman Research Group report can be found online.  

DALLAS—The trend of major broadcasters and cable providers losing subscribers continued for AT&T in the third quarter of 2019, with the company announcing it lost more than 1.35 million subscribers between its premium TV and AT&T Now services.

Per AT&T’s Q3 2019 financial report, the company currently has 20.4 million premium TV subscribers, a net loss of 1.163 million. AT&T Now, meanwhile, has 1.1 million subscribers, a net loss of 195,000. AT&T said that its video subs were impacted by the company’s focus on long-term value customer base and carriage disputes.

AT&T has been involved in multiple carriage disputes in 2019 that led to blackouts of certain channels for its subscribers. A dispute with Nexstar led to a blackout of two months over the summer, while one with CBS lasted three weeks. At a conference in September, AT&T CFO John Stephens said he believed that these blackouts could contribute to 300,000 to 350,000 subscribers leaving their services.

Despite the drop in subscribers, AT&T reported that its entertainment group saw growth in many areas. It reported that its operating income grew 4.8% from the same time last year; that it saw broadband ARPU gains; there was a 2.3% year-to-year EBITDA growth; and its IP broadband revenue grew 3.5%.

WarnerMedia, which is a subsidiary of AT&T, reported a stable quarter, with HBO earning increased revenues of 10.6% on higher content sales and stable subscription revenues, while Turner revenues overall remained stable.

The company is bullish of its upcoming HBOMax streaming service, which will be one of the stars of WarnerMedia Day on Oct. 29, where it is expected to have its price and release date announced. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson claims that HBOMax has a domestic subscriber forecast of 50 million by 2025.

As part of AT&T’s financial report, it also shared its three-year outlook. The full report can be read here.

LONDON—While pay-TV services in the U.S. are in the middle of a battle for subscribers against the established and emerging streaming platforms, the global pay-TV industry continues to grow overall and has recently crossed a milestone. According to Digital TV Research, with the number of added subscribers throughout the world in 2018, the total number of pay-TV subscribers has surpassed 1 billion.

Estimates show that the total number of pay-TV subscribers increased by 26 million across 138 countries from 2017 to 2018. IPTV subscribers saw the biggest growth of 42 million, and the service now makes up a quarter of all pay-TV subscribers; it also surpassed satellite TV in total subscribers. Satellite TV still did see a growth of 2 million, as did DTT, which added 1 million subscribers.

Cable, however, suffered a net loss in 2018. Digital cable TV added 7 million subscribers, but analog loss 16 million. Cable still accounts for half of pay-TV subscribers, but that is down from its three-quarters share in 2010.

After peaking at $205 billion in 2016, global revenues fell to $199 billion in 2018, according to the report.

The full Pay-TV Databook is available here.