Kagan Predicts 10.8 Million Fewer Cable TV Viewers By 2021 TV cord cutting is already occurring at the fastest rate on record, and Wall Street research firm Kagan predicts that the the cable industry will lose another 10.8 million more subscribers by 2021. That will still leave the traditional cable industry with 82.3 million subscribers, but that would be a massive 20% reduction from the industry's peak. In contrast, the firm predicts that streaming options like Sling TV and Playstation Vue will quickly begin to go "mainstream," and have 11 million users collectively by 2021.

"Changing viewing habits point to mounting losses for traditional video services, and challengers are lining up to capitalize," the firm notes. "However, the operators are not without significant fortifications enabling expectations for preserving a majority share in the five-year outlook." One of those "fortifications" against the rising cord cutting tide would be to actually seriously compete on price, something major cable operators love to pay lip service to, but still have struggled to adopt. Charter, for example, has been raising cable TV rates upwards of 40% in the wake of its acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. As a result, Charter lost another 100,000 traditional pay TV customers last quarter. Analysts estimate that the pay TV sector lost a record 762,000 pay-TV subscribers last quarter -- roughly five times more than the total number of lost subscribers during the same quarter the year before. Dish Network lost 143,000 subscribers, even when the company's Sling TV additions were figured in. AT&T lost 266,000 subscribers during the same period, again not offset by additions to its DirecTV Now streaming service. Analysts predict cord cutting will set another record this quarter, with most predicting subscriber losses of more than 1 million. Analysts predict cord cutting will set another record this quarter, with most predicting subscriber losses of more than 1 million.







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Most recommended from 12 comments



maartena

Elmo

Premium Member

join:2002-05-10

Orange, CA 3 recommendations maartena Premium Member No surprise.... Production companies are more and more engaged with streaming services as opposed to channels. Netflix is only one that hires production companies directly to produce television, Amazon Prime has a good set of original productions, and Hulu is also starting to get active on the original production side.



This way, at least 1 "middle man" is being cut out, and that saves a lot of money. Instead of the cable companies paying for channels, who in turn pay the production companies or the content owners, the streaming services deal with them directly. And cutting out the cable company and channel owners and replacing them with a streaming service not only saves money on the actual content, it also saves money on the monthly equipment leases, the "broadcast surcharge" (caused by channels), the "sports surcharge" (caused by sports channels) and on not being forced to have bundles of channels.



You will also be a lot more flexible. Now that FUBOTV is getting established, you can get the majority of local sports teams (but still only your teams appropriate for your zipcode) for $35 a month, and that includes a buckload of sports channels AND regular channels.... so you don't have to give up sports if you want to give up cable. And the beauty of going with streaming is that you get a choice. Only like hockey? Fine, cut FUBOTV in March after the playoffs, and save money all summer long while still keeping other streaming services. You can cancel/re-sub streaming services when you want/need them, you can 100% choose your own equipment to use and not pay monthly for the lease of it, you are not just bound to your home but can watch from anywhere you have the internet.



You are so much more flexible, and although not everyone is ready for something like that, more and more people are seeing that it will save them a LOT of money, possibly well over a thousand a year when they don't watch sports, and even with sports you are still poised to save $500 or more a year. That is a lot of money.



The cable industry is losing customers at a rate of 1 million per year, and I think last year was close to like 1.2 million so the trend is upwards. 10.8 million viewers less means at least 2.7 million viewers a year..... And since 2016 and 2017 really saw the birth of several channel based streaming services such as DirecTV Now, Youtube TV, HuluTV and FuboTV, the choices are becoming more and more widespread and the possibilities of saving a lot of money by sticking it to the cable company is real.



Personally, I would not be surprised that by 2020 the first obscure channels that no one watches anyways are starting to fold, and that by 2030 there will only be about 50 channels left, with all other programming on on-demand streaming services.

Anon5bcbf

@qwest.net 2 recommendations Anon5bcbf Anon I wish cable companies would just die out already The only people that are not cutting cords are the baby boomers that are used to watching cable TV and the people that don't know how to stream sports online. "Triple play" bundles are a scam that cable companies use to increase prices for providing internet, kind of like how wireless providers structure their data plans. This is the only way for them to make money besides coming up with new fees to charge customers.



If you ask young people about cable, they really couldn't care less. All they need is internet, and some people only need their cell phone with an "unlimited" data plan.