While the rate of cord cutting predictably continued to accelerate for most operators, Charter became the top dog … and Google seriously started to take over the linear bundling business.
Pay-TV and cable providers continued to bleed subscribers during the second quarter of 2023 as cord-cutting among consumers continued to accelerate. The largest pay-TV providers in the U.S. – who represent about 96% of the market – lost about 1.73 million net subscribers in the second quarter of 2023, compared to a pro forma net loss of about 1.725 million during the same period a year ago, according to Leichtman Research Group.
Cord cutting is taking a chunk out of Big Shield. As recently reported, NFL Network has a current distribution of 51.1 million homes. That’s a steep drop from its all-time high of 72.5 million in October 2013. It’s not specific to NFL Network. More and more people are dumping cable, and more and more people are relying on streaming services. It explains the recent effort to push audiences to NFL+, the league’s in-house non-linear product.
Have you cut the cord and don’t really want a live TV streaming service but want access to a ton of news networks? Recently a new news streaming service called Level News has launched, offering 10 live news channels for just $5.99. With Level News, you get access to CSPAN, CSPAN2, CSPAN 3, NewsNation, Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg Quicktake, NHK World Japan, France 24, Euro News and Law & Crime Trial Network.
Despite cord-cutting eroding the number of pay TV subscribers, station revenue from retransmission and carriage fees from distributors rose 3% to $14.46 billion in 2022, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. S&P sees rate hikes in deals renewed in 2023 slightly outpacing the cord-cutting trend, resulting in a 3% gain in gross retransmission and subscriber fee revenues to $14.83 billion.