Pay TV Lost About 345,000 Subscribers Last Quarter

Cable industry executive hearts are all a flutter. Why? Well the cable industry lost fewer subscribers last quarter than it usually does, driving many stories about how cord cutting as a phenomenon was "overblown." Driving that claim was the fact that Comcast lost "just" 48,000 subscribers last quarter, while Charter (thanks to people checking out their upgraded set top GUI) added 11,000. Of course this optimism was before Dish announced it had lost 178,000 subscribers last quarter.

But according to the latest analysis by Leichtman Research , pay TV still lost a net 190,000 subscribers last quarter, up from the 155,000 subscribers lost during the third quarter of 2014.

And it's true that things have been slightly better for cable companies specifically. The top nine cable companies lost roughly 145,000 video subscribers during the third quarter, compared to a loss of about 440,000 subscribers in the third quarter of 2014, and a loss of nearly 600,000 subscribers in the third quarter of 2013.

But many of these gains for cable have come at the cost of telcoTV and satellite companies. Telco TV providers lost roughly 49,000 video subscribers in the third quarter, compared to a gain of 323,000 net additions during the third quarter of last year.

And while Leichtman claims that satellite TV providers added 3,000 subscribers during the third quarter, he's intentionally including Dish's Sling TV Internet video subscribers, which Dish tacked on to its earnings reports to mask the loss of traditional satellite TV customers (it claimed it lost 23,000 users but actually lost 178k). Factor that in, and satellite lost 158,000 subs and pay TV overall lost 345,000 customers on the quarter.

"With AT&T adjusting focus from its U-verse TV service to its newly acquired DirecTV satellite service, Telcos reported their worst quarter ever in 3Q 2015," notes Bruce Leichtman about the quarter. "Conversely, top cable providers cumulatively had their best third quarter since 2006 -- the year when Telcos began offering video services."

Still, make no mistake: when you incorporate "cord nevers," cord trimming (cutting down on packages), cord cutting, and dropping ratings together the pay TV industry's still facing a very clear and obvious (if slow) downward trajectory.