Cord-cutting of pay TV may continue to intensify

Mike Snider | USA TODAY

The troubling news keeps coming for pay-TV providers.

Industry observers had already deemed the second quarter of 2015 -- April to June -- as the worst three-month period ever for lost subscribers.

Now, new estimates from research firm IHS suggest the losses were even larger than originally expected -- and customer defections may continue into the fall.

Pay TV companies lost 658,450 subscribers in the second quarter, IHS said. And it marked the first time that satellite and telecom-delivered Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) providers had lost video subscribers. IHS' figures are higher even than the about 625,000 subscriber losses reported last month by another research firm SNL Kagan.

Cable TV companies lost the most subscribers collectively, at 346,500, but saw gains in high-speed Internet subscribers. Satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network lost more than 214,000 subscribers -- when you factor in subscribers to Dish's Sling TV Net video subscription service, IHS said.

AT&T U-verse had its first loss of 22,000 but the total IPTV category lost less than 1% of subscribers, IHS said.

And even though historically the third quarter (July-September) is better for pay-TV companies, IHS principal television media analyst Erik Brannon expects another quarterly decline. "I don’t think Q3 will be as bad as Q2," he said, "but I do think it will show more video subscriber loss than prior Q3’s."

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