Residential Multichannel Video Subscribers Drop to 90 Million

In their recent Multichannel Subscriber Report by Kagan, they found that traditional multichannel video subscribers – cable, Telco, and DBS – fell 0.8% during Q1 2018 compared to Q4 2017.

Subscriptions fell to 93.2 million, 90.3 million of which were residential accounts. The decline fell at a slower rate than the same period in 2017.

Other takeaways include:

• Quarterly losses are cut in half when DIRECT NOW and Sling TV subscribers are included in the figures.
• Cable operators logged their largest Q1 video subscriber decline on record, Comcast and Carter accounting for 59% of the decline.
• Telco video regained some of its footing as AT&T’s U-verse stabilizes; losses fell below 100K for the first time since Q3 2015.
• DBS losses ramped up in Q1, bringing the sector’s total down to 31.1 million.
• Kagan projects that by 2022, more than 37 million households will rely on broadband for video.