The top television service providers in the United States lost another two million subscribers in the first quarter of 2022. That is about the same number as they lost in the first quarter of the two previous years. Meanwhile, there were over a million net additions for broadband subscribers in the United States in the first quarter, slightly less than in the same period the previous year.
The leading service providers, representing over 90% of the market, have around 74 million television subscribers between them. That includes three leading online multichannel services, which have a tenth of the total.
All the leading service providers lost subscribers in the first quarter of 2022, across cable, satellite, telco, and the leading online multichannel services.
“Pay-TV net losses of about 1.95 million in 1Q 2022 were similar to the net losses in the first quarters of 2021 and 2020,” said Bruce Leichtman, the president and principal analyst of Leichtman Research. “Over the past year, top pay-TV providers had a net loss of 4,735,000 subscribers, similar to a loss of about 4,820,000 over the prior year.”
Comcast had the highest subscriber losses, with a loss of 512,000 in the first quarter of 2022, although it still has 17.66 million television subscribers.
Leichtman Research estimates that DIRECTV lost around 300,000 subscribers across DIRECTV, U-verse and DIRECTV Stream. Since being spun out of AT&T, the company no longer reports subscriber numbers, which are now estimated to total around 14.30 million.
DISH Network lost 228,000 subscribers in the quarter, taking its satellite total to 7.99 million.
Charter lost 112,000 subscribers, taking its total to 15.72 million. Cox, which does not report numbers, is estimated to have lost 80,000, down to an assumed 3.31 million. Altice is estimated to have lost 74,000 subscribers.
Verizon Fios lost 78,000 telco television subscribers, reducing its total to 3.56 million.
Leading online multichannel services lost over half a million subscribers between them. Hulu+ Live TV lost 200,000, taking its total to 4.10 million. Sling TV lost 234,000, reducing its number to 2.25 million, while fuboTV lost 74,000, falling to 1.06 million.
The total number of broadband subscribers increased by over a million in the first quarter of 2022. The leading broadband providers, representing 96% of the market, now account for about 109 million subscribers.
Comcast and Charter have 32.16 million and 30.27 million cable broadband subscribers respectively.
AT&T and Verizon have 15.53 million and 7.40 million fixed broadband subscribers respectively.
Between them, these four companies have 89.37 million fixed broadband subscribers, or about 80% of the market.