DirecTV is generally assumed to be America's third largest pay TV operator, but insight into its subscriber churn has been almost completely obscured since 2021, when the company was spun off from publicly traded AT&T and placed in control of private equity firm TPG Capital. 

Using proprietary methods, Leichtman Research Group provides a quarterly estimate of DirecTV's customer comings and goings (OK, they're all "goings" at this point). And according to the research company, the operator lost 1.8 million customers last year across DirecTV satellite TV, DirecTV Stream and AT&T U-verse.

In its latest U.S. pay TV customer tally for the largest operators, LRG also makes an informed estimate for YouTube TV, following Google's disclosure in early February that the virtual MVPD has surpassed 8 million users. The research company estimates that the platform added 1.9 million users last year -- entirely plausible, given that Google declared a count of around 5 million users in July 2022. 

Beyond that, LRG's tally of pay TV subscriber counts is fairly straight-forward, including numbers included in the most recent quarterly earnings reports. Here's a snapshot of where the top pay TV operators stood at the end of last year:

The top cable operators lost more high-speed internet users than they gained in 2023, the first time that's ever happened, Leichtman Research Group confirmed to Next TV. 

The top cable operators collectively lost more than 63,000 wireline broadband users last year (vs. a collective addition of 530,000 customers in 2022), LRG said, while fast-emerging fixed wireless access operators T-Mobile and Verizon jointly added 3.666 million FWA customers (vs. 3.185 million in 2022). 

FWA accounted for all the growth in the home broadband business in 2023, with total customer ranks expanding by more than 3.522 million users (vs. 3.506 million in 2022). 

“Top broadband providers added about 3.5 million subscribers in 2023, similar to the number of broadband adds in 2022,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc., in a statement.  “Over the past four years, top providers added about 15.9 million broadband subscribers, compared to about 10.2 million net broadband adds in the prior four (pre-pandemic) years.”

The top seven U.S. cable companies collectively lost nearly 981,674  pay TV customers in the third quarter, according to estimates and tallies collected by Leichtman Research Group (LRG).

Overall, these same seven MSOs lost nearly 8% of their combined video customer base from Oct. 1, 2021 - Sept. 30, 2022, led by Comcast, which shed Xfinity TV subs at a 10.6% clip over that span (our math, not LRG's).

However, the heavy linear pay TV losses in Q3 were offset by the biggest growth quarter for virtual MVPDs in two years, with Hulu Plus Live TV, Sling TV and fuboTV combining to add 898,265 customers from July - September.

Google doesn't often break out customer growth for market leader YouTube TV, and LRG doesn't hazard estimates for the platform in its quarterly report on the state of pay TV cord-cutting. But assuming YouTube TV grew like the rest of the market did, the vMVPD sector just had its best quarter since Q3 of the pandemic 2020 frame.

Officially, LRG said it was the third biggest growth quarter for vMVPDs ever, trailing only the third quarters of 2020 and 2019. Hulu + Live TV, Sling TV and fuboTV -- the vMVPDs that LRG does count -- have collectively grown their customer bases by around 7% over the last 12 months. Going back two years, however, the growth rate for these three companies comes in at just under 4% (again, our math).

Meanwhile, in U.S. pay TV, linear losses remained steep beyond cable.

Dish Network lost another 184,000 satellite TV customers. And LRG once again estimated that DirecTV lost 400,000 customers across DirecTV satellite, DirecTV Stream and U-verse TV. (Note that LRG has been estimating quarterly losses of 400,000 for DirecTV since it was spun off from AT&T last year and disappeared from public view.)

Collectively, the top 13 U.S. pay TV companies -- minus Google -- represent 92% of the market and lost a combined 784,409 customers in the third quarter, vs. 653,616 in the third quarter of last year.

Yes, the latest report from Leichtman Research Group, "Pay-TV in the U.S. 2022," suggests fewer consumers are using linear pay TV services. 

The U.S. base is down to 66% of TV households, LRG said, vs. 79% five years ago … and 88% a decade ago.

What we find interesting is the number of consumers, mostly younger adult ones, who have never had pay TV service ... and who likely never will. That's 34% of non-subscribers. Among that group who've never subscribed, 52% are between the ages of 18-34. 

Further, while 73% of adults 45 and older have pay TV, only 57% of folks between the ages of 18-44 do. 

Among the total base of U.S. TV households, 11.5% of homes have never had pay TV service.

So as U.S. society ages, folks aren't so much cutting the cord anymore en masse as they are losing consciousness of its very existence. That is how consumer habits die. 

“The decline in pay-TV subscribers is not solely a function of those disconnecting services, but is also related to a slowdown in those entering or reentering the category,” Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, said. “Overall, about 10.5% of TV households last subscribed to a pay-TV service in the past three years, 12% last subscribed over three years ago, and 11.5% never subscribed.” ▪️

Last week, the video business marveled over an infographic released by Nielsen, which samples living room TV consumption, showing that in July, U.S. viewing of streaming services outpaced watching of cable channels for the first time. 

Our reaction was a little skeptical — did this benchmark really just happen now?

The latest data from Leichtman Research Group supports our tire-kicking. In its newest annual “Emerging Video Services” report, LRG said that 59% of the 1,900 adult U.S. consumers it surveyed in June and July report daily video usage on "non-TV  devices" — mainly smartphones, tablets and computers. 

This audience share has risen steadily over the last decade — the response rate was 55% in 2020, 43% in 2017 and 18% in 2012.

Half of adults (50%) watch video on a mobile phone daily on smartphones — up from 44% in 2020, and 33% in 2017.

Fifty-one percent of adults watch YouTube on a non-TV device daily, followed by news clips at 35%

Our point: With so much “TV” watching occurring on mobile devices, streaming probably left linear broadcast and “cable” in the dust several years ago. 

Not surprisingly, younger individuals are most comfortable with mobile video usage. Among those 18-34, 83% said they watch video daily on a non-TV device. The response rate was 64% for ages 35-54 and 35% for ages 55 and above. 

“While non-TV devices provide the ability to watch video anywhere, the most common location for watching video on non-TV devices continues to be in the home,“ LRG principal Bruce Leichtman said. “Eighty-two percent of those who watch video on a mobile phone, and 85% of those who watch video on a tablet or eReader, do so at home.”

LRG also found that 83% of households now have a subscription video on-demand (SVOD) service from Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and/or Hulu,  compared to 78% in 2020, and 64% in 2017.

Overall, 64% of U.S. households now have more than one SVOD service, compared to 55% in 2020 and 33% in 2017. ▪️

The video business has increasingly come under the control of tech giants like Apple, Amazon and Google, which bury customer data and other key metrics in diffuse reports to the SEC. 

Other key operators, like DirecTV -- which was, not that long ago, the biggest pay TV company of them all -- have been recently spun off into private concerns from their publicly traded parent corporations, and are no longer beholden to any such quarterly scrutiny. (The OTT joint venture recently established by Comcast and Charter also falls into this spinoff bucket.)

Thus, when navel gazing over issues like cord cutting, estimates from third-party research companies -- hopefully well-founded! -- are all we have to go on. Amid that backdrop, Leichtman Research Group estimates that DirecTV lost around 400,000 customers across its DirecTV satellite, DirecTV virtual and U-verse TV platforms in the second quarter. 

LRG postulates that DirecTV, jointly owned by AT&T and private equity company TPG Capital, has around 13.9 million remaining subscribers. This is around 12 million fewer than existed between DirecTV satellite and U-verse back in May 2014, when AT&T agreed to pay $49 billion to buy DirecTV and -- briefly -- usurped Comcast to become the nation's No. 1 pay TV operator.

Pay TV's long secular slide started around the time of that purchase, dropping from just over 100 million American homes to around 72.2 million at the end of June, according to LRG. (The total is actually higher -- LRG's count doesn't include the 8% of the market served by vMVPD leader YouTube TV, as well as several hundred smaller regional cable companies.)

But we can say that, with its total pay TV subscriber base eroding by 46% over the last eight years, AT&T has at least managed to beat the market on something. 

By LRG's tally, every publicly effacing pay TV service once again lost ground in the second quarter, just as they did in Q1. The top 13 pay TV companies, accounting for 92% of U.S. customers, lost 1.950 million users from April - June vs. a pro forma loss of 1.235 million subscribers in the same period of 2021. 

Comcast was the biggest loser, bleeding 520,000 linear video customers. 

Notably, LRG doesn't yet feel it has the insight to properly gauge YouTube TV, for which Alphabet/Google recently touted 5 million customers. That makes Google the fourth largest pay TV operator, but the company doesn't disclose YouTube TV subscriber growth or retraction in quarterly earnings reports. 

The top seven U.S. cable companies experienced a first from April to June — they lost broadband customers in a quarter, 60,239 of them, according to Leichtman Research Group's quarterly tally of the U.S. wireline internet business. 

No. 1 MSO Comcast was flat in high-speed internet growth in Q2, while No. 2 company Charter Communications bled 21,000 customers and No. 3 company Altice USA lost 39,600 of them. 

According to LRG principal Bruce Leichtman, the lowest customer growth figure for wireline broadband that he can remember occurring in the last 20 years of tracking this business was the second quarter of 2009, the height of the Great Recession, when the leading MSOs only added 250,000 subs. 

For the first time that Next TV can recall, cable operators lost market share in the U.S. wireline business, slipping from 68.7% at the end of June compared to 69.6% after the second quarter of 2021. 

The new LRG tally highlights an abrupt braking for the U.S. cable industry, which grew customers by a record 1.4 million in Q2 2020, with quarantined customers outfitting their homes with broadband service en masse. Cable operators added over 843,000 HSI subscribers in the second quarter of 2021. (Note, LRG's tally is pro forma, given the changes to the individual companies in the consolidating telecom industry.)

What's changed?

Not so much the proliferation of fiber wireline by the telcos — they lost nearly 85,000 broadband users in Q2

Certainly, the emergence of fixed wireless access factored in -- T-Mobile and Verizon are seeing steady gains for their FWA services, which together picked up 816,000 subs in Q2. 

“Over the past year, there were about 3,260,000 net broadband adds, with fixed wireless services accounting for 56% of them," Leichtman said.

Perhaps more than anything, saturation in wireline broadband is occurring, with fixed services reaching as far as they feasibly can into rural regions. 

Overall fixed broadband services from the leading companies covering more than 95% of the U.S. market added around 670,000 customers in Q2 vs. over 890,000 in the same period last year. In 2020, the Q2 figure was 1.24 million added customers, with telco losses offsetting some of cable's massive gains. ▪️

The quarantine portion of the pandemic had a profound impact on the consumption habits of consumers, TV/video being among the most affected.

No surprise there. But what's striking is how quickly the phenomena matured the U.S. market in terms of video streaming.

According to the latest report from Leichtman Research Group (LRG), 87% of U.S. households now have a connected-TV device of some kind — for example, a Roku, an Amazon Fire TV player, a smart TV or even a connected Blu-ray player.

Also: Streaming Penetration Rises to 80% as Smaller Services Grow: Analyst

That penetration rate stood at just 80% two years ago and 69% as recently as 2017. It was just 38% in 2012.

Notably, LRG also found that smart-TV penetration has reached 71% of U.S. homes, up from 58% in 2020.

Across all U.S. households, the research company added, there is a mean of 3.9 devices per TV household, compared to 3.2 in 2020, and 2.4 in 2017.

Overall, 46% of adults in U.S. TV households watch video on a TV via a connected device daily, compared to 40% in 2020, 25% in 2017, and 4% in 2012.

The upshot of all of this: As more and more U.S. homes adopt the streaming habit, there are simply fewer new adopters available for companies like Netflix and Roku to assimilate, at least domestically.

LRG polled 1,902 U.S. consumers for its Connected TVs 2022 survey. ■

We've heard leading cable executives say over and over again the last few years that the wireless industry simply doesn't have the network capacity to compete for U.S. home broadband marketshare in a 5G world that's soon going to be usurped by cable's "10G" technology push.

But based on Leichtman Research Group's latest quarterly home broadband customer growth tracker, which factored in fixed wireless access (FWA) from wireless companies Verizon and T-Mobile for the first time, MSOs should probably be concerned. 

As LRG reveals, the two wireless companies added a combined 532,000 customers in Q1 for their new, largely 5G-enabled FWA home broadband services. The eight largest U.S. cable companies, meanwhile, added just 482,830 customers. That's 454,153 less than they added in the first quarter of 2021. 

Overall, LRG said the 14 biggest U.S. providers of high-speed internet service added around 1.065 million subscribers in Q1, up slightly over the 1.02 million tacked on by the biggest ISPs during the first three months of 2020. So, the overall narrow acceleration of growth can be directly tied to the pro forma addition of the two FWA services. Leave them out and we're having a very different discussion about how the U.S. home broadband business is saturated, and growth is slowing way, way down.

Share of the U.S. broadband market has steadily grown to around 70% for U.S. cable operators in recent years, with their "DOCSIS 3.0"-enabled download speeds vastly superior to what could be delivered by legacy DSL services provided by AT&T and Verizon. Consumers, who began to stream HD and 4K video en masse over the past half decade, switched over to cable ISPs in droves. 

But now the "telcos," who've made major investments in fiber-to-the-home infrastructure, are growing their high-speed internet customer bases again. And the addition of FWA is further tacking onto that customer growth. Verizon, for example, just reported its biggest customer-growth quarter for broadband in a decade, adding 229,000 combined bill-paying souls. 

Of course, we've yet to see what kind of performance Verizon and T-Mobile can deliver with fixed 5G in a world where there's more mass-scale adoption. The cable folks might be right about a network capacity shortfall at some point. But for a lot of consumers in the inflationary here and now, the speed just might be enough to Netflix and chill, especially considering the highly competitive $50-a-month pricing for FWA service. 

The DirecTV-branded pay TV platforms spun off by AT&T into a joint venture with private equity firm TPG in August lost a combined 412,000 subscribers in the third quarter, Leichtman Research Group estimates. 

Starting with its own third quarter earnings report, AT&T no longer reports subscriber metrics for DirecTV satellite TV, DirecTV Stream (formerly AT&T TV) and AT&T U-verse TV (which is no longer sold to new customers). 

Overall, the top U.S. pay TV operators lost a combined 650,000 customers in Q3, with Comcast, which bled 407,000 subscribers, experiencing the second most heaviest losses. 

The virtual MVPD category actually saw solid growth in the third quarter, with Hulu + Live TV adding 300,000 customers, and Sling TV (+117,000) and fuboTV (+262,884) up, as well. Leichtman didn't render an estimate for category leader YouTube TV.

LRG president and principal analyst Bruce Leichtman told Next TV that while YouTube TV parent only sporadically releases vMVPD customer metrics, AT&T's copious data on DirecTV and AT&T TV in the run-up to the spinoff provided a sound foundation to render an estimate. 

The cable sector, however, experienced accelerated losses of over 700,000 customers, compared to 380,000 in Q3 2020, when the cable business was still bundling TV with all the new broadband subscriptions it was selling amid the pandemic quarantine. 

Overall, the top operators representing 93% of the market have 77 million remaining linear video customers.

Now here, look at this chart:

The top U.S. providers of wireline high-speed internet service collectively reported additions of just 630,000 customers in the third quarter, down significantly from the pandemic-fueled third quarter of 2020, when the business explosively grew by 1.525 million subscribers, according to the latest Leichtman Research Group figures. 

Third-quarter growth still exceeded expansion in Q3 of 2019 (615,000 customers) and Q3 of 2018 (600,000).

Of the 107.9 million wireline broadband customers in the U.S. as of Sept. 30, cable companies accounted for 70% of them. 

“Broadband additions returned to pre-pandemic levels in the third quarter of 2021,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc.  “The top broadband providers added significantly fewer subscribers than in last year’s third quarter, but had a similar number of net adds as in 3Q 2019 and 3Q 2018.”

LRG figures account for the top operators representing 96% of the market. Not included in the data is insight on the nascent fixed wireless business, which could challenge the cable industry's dominance of wireline broadband in the coming years. 

The three biggest subscription video-on-demand services, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, have been adopted by 78% of U.S. households, a percentage that is flat with a comparable 2020 survey, according to Leichtman Research Group (LRG). 

Only 41% of U.S. households report streaming one of these Big 3 services daily compared to 40% last year. 

Polling 2,000 adult U.S. consumers earlier this summer for its latest Emerging Video Services 2021 report, LRG did find that respondents who said they had more than one of the legacy Big 3 SVODs did shoot up from 55% in 2020 to 58% this year. 

But the huge annual adoption leaps previously taken by these top three subscription streaming services--household penetration in 2016 was only 59%, for example--appear, for now, to be done. (Notable was Netflix's disclosure that it actually lost 400,000 U.S. subscribers in the second quarter.)

So what gives? Is the rapid proliferation of the video streaming habit petering out? Are new competitors taking some of the wind out of the sails of legacy operators? 

In an email exchange, LRG principal analyst Bruce Leichtman noted that the addition of Disney Plus (which ranks just behind Hulu in U.S. subscriber stature with around 38 million customers), along with HBO Max, incrementally increases overall U.S. SVOD adoption by just 2% to 80%. (Yes, there aren't many subscribers to these newer services who also don't take one of the legacy Big 3 subscription streaming services.)

Adding the nine SVOD services that rank below Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Disney Plus and HBO Max only increased total adoption by another 2% to 82%, Leichtman noted.

U.S. SVOD households report supporting more services than ever--53% currently pay for three more more.

But this notion that the emergence of Apple TV Plus, Disney Plus, HBO Max, Peacock, Discovery Plus, Paramount Plus et. al. is massively increasing the overall SVOD pie is perhaps overstated. 

“The percent of households with a top SVOD service held steady in 2021, and those using any of these services daily also levelled off after being pulled forward last year due to the coronavirus pandemic,” Leichtman said in a statement.  “While the breadth of households with a major SVOD service is similar to last year, those with multiple top SVOD services continued to expand. And, including eleven additional streaming video services, 27% of households now report having five or more SVOD or DTC services.”

The top 13 U.S. pay TV operators, accounting for around 95% of the market, lost 1.23 million subscribers in the second quarter, an 18% improvement over the 1.5 million bled out in the same period of 2020, according to Leichtman Research Group (LRG).

AT&T, which recently spun off its pay TV operation in a joint venture with private equity firm TPG, once again drove the market, nearly halving its losses year over year to 473,000--the factor perhaps most responsible for the overall industry's improved metrics. 

But save for the surprising Q2 performance by Dish virtual MVPD Sling TV (up 65,000 customers) and the deficit-fueled growth of fellow virtual service fuboTV (up 91,291 subscribers), every other major service was down in the quarter. 

And save for AT&T, there were no major improvements. 

Top cable operator Comcast, for example, reported the loss of 399,000 video customers in the second quarter, an improvement over the 478,000 shed in Q2 of 2020. But No. 2 cable operator Charter Communications lost 50,000 TV customers after gaining 94,000 in the second quarter of last year--a strange dynamic the company attributed to customers frantically adding broadband as they entered quarantine, many of them tacking on linear pay TV service, sold on promotion, in the process. 

And satellite TV got a little worse, too. DirecTV's figures are buried within AT&T's bundled "premium TV" reporting, a monolith that also includes AT&T TV and U-verse TV. But Dish Network lost 132,000 customers in Q2, vs. just 40,000 in the year-ago quarter. 

And despite Sling TV and fuboTV getting into the green in Q2, the vMVPD business barely grew, as well, with market leader Hulu + Live TV shedding 100,000 customers in the quarter. (Notably, LRG doesn't include YouTube TV, but parent company Google/Alphabet didn't say anything about the OTT service growing customers in its second quarter earnings report last month.)

On Monday, fuboTV CEO David Gandler made the bold prediction during a CNBC appearance that his service, which is integrating sports betting features, will add 5 million subscribers by the end of 2026.

But there are plenty of skeptics out there. German research company Statista, for example, predicts that the overall pay TV business will decline to around 60 million subscribers by 2025, which would be around 60% of the base it enjoyed just a decade prior. 

The U.S. wireline broadband business has slowed from the explosive growth it experienced during the outset of the COVID-19 quarantine, but not by much. 

According to Q2 figures published by Leichtman Research Group (LRG), the top 16 wirelines broadband providers, accounting for 96% of the U.S. market, added 890,000 customers in the second quarter vs. 1.260 million in the second quarter of 2020, as citizens worldwide adjusted their home internet service to account for sheltering-in-place activities. 

But discounting that Q2 2020 anomaly, it was still the U.S. wireline broadband business' biggest growth quarter in a decade. 

Cable operators continued their torrid growth pace, with top U.S. MSO Comcast adding 354,000 high-speed internet customers in Q2, while No. 2 cable company Charter Communications tacked on 400,000.

Overall, the nine biggest U.S. cable operators added 842,447 HSI customers in Q2 and are now within half a percentage point of controlling 70% of the U.S. wireline broadband market. 

Within LRG's figures for "wireline phone companies, it's unclear how much growth the nascent wireless home internet businesses currently being set up by wireless operators like Verizon and T-Mobile are providing.

Certainly, these newer 5G-fueled operations don't seem to be slowing the uptake of cable broadband at the moment. 

In terms of phone company wireline, AT&T (up 46,000 customers in Q2) and Verizon (up 70,000) continue to add fiber-to-the-home customers, but others including CenturyLink and Frontier remain in decline. Overall, the wireline phone provider segment added only 49,078 customers during the three-month period ending June 30. 

The sharp pandemic-fueled growth in broadband customers appears to be ebbing, just a little, for the top U.S. cable operators. 

The eight biggest MSOs collectively added nearly 937,000 broadband customers in the first quarter. It was the first time the U.S. cable industry didn’t reach the 1 million mark in high-speed internet customer growth since the pre-pandemic fourth quarter of 2019, according to data compiled by Leichtman Research Group (LRG). 

Comcast added 460,000 HSI customers in Q1, down 3.5% from the 477,000 it added in the first quarter of 2020. No. 2 operator Charter Communications saw a sharper decline in first quarter growth, decelerating by 39% to 355,000, LRG said. 

Adding the top eight wireline phone companies to the mix, the top 16 U.S. broadband providers collectively added 1,020,907 users to their ranks, with both AT&T (51,000) and Verizon (64,000) growing in Q1. That's about 87% of the growth in Q1 of 2020 (1.17 million), LRG said.

“This marked the fourth time in the past five quarters that there were more than one million net broadband additions in the U.S.,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. “Over the past year, there were about 4,665,000 net broadband adds, compared to about 2,760,000 net broadband adds over the prior year.”

Further punctuating what has become the disastrous aftermath of AT&T’s $49 billion purchase of DirecTV in 2015, the platform lost 3.033 million customers last year, according to Leichtman Research Group (LRG) estimates. 

LRG’s quarterly U.S. pay TV customer tally now covers 16 cable, satellite, telco and virtuL MVPD platforms, covering 95% of the U.S. market. Leaving out only a few vMVPDs that don’t report data—notably, YouTube TV and Philo—LRG said the U.S pay TV market lost about 5.12 million net video subscribers in 2020, compared to a pro forma net loss of about 4.795 million in 2019.

It was, as has already been reported, cord cutting’s worst year. Ever. 

And AT&T made it a whole lot worse. 

AT&T combines reporting for DirecTV, legacy service U-verse TV and recently launched IP-based platform AT&T TV into one line item it calls “premium TV.” With AT&T now prioritizing AT&T TV, bundling it with wireline fiber broadband for instance, LRG suggests that the new platform’s growth narrowly offset the decline of U-verse, which is no longe being sold. 

AT&T recently combined its AT&T TV Now virtual MVPD service with AT&T TV, but the vMVPD’s customer performance was broken out for all of 2020, producing a somewhat significant loss of 270,000 customers for the year. AT&T ceased steep discounts for its skinny bundle back in late 2018, when it was nearly at 2 million customers, and it’s been bleeding out ever since then. 

LRG, meanwhile, attempts to break off DirecTV entirely, estimating that the satellite TV unit accounts for most of AT&T’s staggering video customer losses. 

Of the 16 pay TV platforms surveyed in LRG’s 2020 tally, 11 reported losses for the year, totaling 6.249 million customers. DirecTV’s 3.033 million lost customers accounted for 49% of that total. Combined, AT&T’s total pay TV losses across DirecTV and AT&T TV Now total more than 3.3 million customers and account for nearly 53% of total pay customer losses. 

AT&T and its DirecTV operation accounted for even a greater share of pay TV’s losses in 2019, 62%, with the telecom’s four pay TV platforms combining to lose nearly 4.1 million customers.

AT&T is currently in the process of spinning off its entire pay TV operation, valuing it at around $16.25 billion and selling a minority stake to private equity company TPG. It’s quite a notable distraction of wealth and consumer good will. 

What would happen if the broader U.S. pay TV industry were to spin off AT&T’s pay TV assets, too?

Not factoring in AT&T platforms, the remaining services in LRG’s survey yielded a net loss of around 1.857 million customers for 2020. If you also factor AT&T’s huge losses out of 2019’s LRG equation, total cord cutting came in only at around 796,000 that year. So customers losses effectively more than doubled for the rest of the linear bundled video business last year, but the aggregate numbers don’t appear quite so staggering. 

Due to corporate mergers, as well as changes to counting methods and companies being included in its tally, LRG’s principal, Bruce Leichtman, understandably discourages we data science wannabes from going too crazy with year-over-year comparisons of his quarterly reports. 

But with AT&T out of the way, we can more clearly make some inferences as to what’s happening to a mature business that’s eroding more quickly these days. 

Leichtman tallied the same seven cable companies in his year-end 2019 and 2020 reports, and cable TV customer losses accelerated 23% to 1.916 million last year. Since the bigger cable companies on the list haven’t forsaken video the way smaller operators have, the TV losses are probably more significant across the broader cable industry. It’s notable that Comcast, which is still pouring plenty of water on its X1 platform, lost more than 1.4 million linear pay TV customers in 2020. 

Charter Communications gained 56,000 Spectrum TV customers last year, with many of the additions coming along with a pandemic-fueled record 2.215 million broadband customer adds. Charter signed up so many high-speed internet customers last year that having just a marginal percentage of them also choose to take traditional linear video on two-year promotion put the company in the black on video customer growth. 

The result might have been different had Charter been able to offer those customers a product like Xfinity Flex, the OTT device Comcast hands out for free to broadband-only customers. Speaking to investors earlier this week at a Morgan Stanley event, Charter Chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge acknowledged that the company’s priorities are shifting to inexpensive products that better ease the sale of connectivity services. 

Also notable: Dish Network’s satellite losses stabilized— the the unit lost 408,000 customers in 2020 after bleeding out 511,000 in 2019. And vMVPD growth flattened, with market leader Hulu gaining only 800,000 customers vs. 1.5 million in 2019. 

Did the U.S. pay TV business just break even—or actually grow—in the third quarter?

More precisely, did the impressive third-quarter customer expansion of virtual MVPDs, which collectively added more than 1 million subscribers in the three-month period ending Sept. 30, completely offset the sustained losses of linear pay video services?

After observing Leichtman Research Group’s third-quarter pay TV report, which tallied the performances of the top 16 platforms covering about 95% of the market, it looks very possible. Even likely. 

According to LRG, the seven biggest cable operators, the two major satellite TV companies, and the three largest telco outfits collectively shed just over 1.15 million linear pay TV subscribers in the third quarter. 

But virtual pay TV services had a big growth quarter, with Disney-controlled Hulu Plus Live TV (added 700,000 customers in Q3), Sling TV (up 203,000) and fubo TV (added 169,000) offsetting AT&T TV Now’s narrow losses of 37,000 customers, collectively tacking on 1.035 million paid users.

By LRG’s total quarterly count, the U.S. pay TV business’s top 16 services shed around 120,000 subscribers. 

But there are a few very, very strongly legal “absentee ballots” still left to tally.

Since Google doesn’t reveal the quarterly subscriber performance of YouTube TV, the second biggest vMVPD service this side of Hulu Plus Live TV, LRG doesn’t include the platform in its quarterly reports. 

However, Google did reveal that YouTube TV surpassed 3 million users in Q3, and that it has added 1 million subscribers, all told, in 2020. Is it safe to assume that YouTube TV grew by more than 120,000 paid users in the third quarter?

Yeah, probably pretty safe.

“YouTube TV likely had similar net adds to Hulu in the quarter, possibly 500,000-750,000, but we don’t know for sure because they don’t release quarterly numbers,” LRG principal analyst Bruce Leichtman said in an email exchange this morning.

There are many small cable operators out there still in the video business, occupying much of the 5% of the market not covered by LRG’s report. And it’s probably safe to assume that most of them lost TV customers in Q3. 

“But YouTube gains would far more than make up for those losses and make it a positive quarter overall,” Leichtman added.

And there are other vMVPDs not counted in the LRG tally, as well, including startup Philo, which said it grew past the 800,000 customer marker recently. (Philo also doesn’t release quarterly growth metrics.)

Of course, these raw customer metrics don’t fully describe the aggregate economic health of the traditional, bundled video channel business we call pay TV, with profit margins on virtual services only a fraction of linear. 

But it might portend a future in which the traditional channel bundle survives longer than expected?

AT&T TV Growing … Narrowly?

AT&T reported a net loss of 590,000 subscribers in Q3 across its “premium” video brands, a grouping that includes satellite platform DirecTV, sunsetting legacy service U-verse TV and the new IP-delivered AT&T TV. 

Also read: AT&T Pay TV Losses ‘Slow’ to 627K in Q3

AT&T didn’t break out the individual performances of the premium pay TV portfolio, but Leichtman included some interesting estimates in his report. 

Notably, LRG estimated that DirecTV shed around 690,000 customers in Q3.

AT&T has stopped taking new signups for U-verse TV. Factoring in that legacy platform's Q3 losses and the new AT&T TV platform's gains, LRG estimates additions of around 100,000 between the two. 

The portion of U.S. homes equipped with at least one smart TV, standalone streaming device or connected gaming system has reached 80%, according to Leichtman Research Group (LRG).

That figure is up from 74% in 2018, 57% in 2015 and 24% in 2010. 

Overall, 40% of U.S. TV homes watch connected TV video on a daily basis, vs. 29% in 2018, 12% in 2015 and 1% in 2010.

Among adults 55 and older, 18% watch connected TV daily, vs. 48% for adults 35-54, and 55% for adults 18-34.  

Among connected device households, 64% have three more more OTT devices, and 58% have  a connected smart GV—vs. 47% in 2018, 22% in 2015 and 8% in 2010. 

Drilling down further, 56% of TV homes have at least one standalone streaming device—Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, etc.—vs. 46% in 2018, 23% in 2015 and 3% in 2011.

LRG’s survey is based on 2,000 U.S. TV homes. 

“The data in this study indicate that there are now nearly 400 million connected TV devices in U.S. TV households. This is an increase from about 250 million connected TV devices in 2016.  And these totals do not even include pay-TV set-top boxes that can be used to access content from the Internet,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG, in a statement. “Along with this increase in the number of devices, the percent of adults in the U.S. using these connected devices to watch video on a TV each day has more than doubled—growing from nineteen to forty percent—in just the past four years."

The top eight U.S. cable companies added just over 1.23 million high-speed internet customers in the first quarter, led by Charter Communications (582,000 additional customers) and Comcast (up 477,000 users).

For the cable business, it was the best customer performance since Q1 2007.

The data comes from a quarterly report published by Leichtman Research Group (LRG). 

Overall, the top cable operators have around 69.2 million broadband subscribers in the U.S., which accounts for about two-thirds of the wireline broadband market. 

Cable operators continue to hemorrhage video users—a fact that will be once again driven home Thursday, when LRG publishes its quarterly look at the telecom-based pay TV business. 

But the calculus for the cable business has clearly changed. For instance, Comcast’s top cable TV executive, Dave Watson, told investors this week that the company’s Flex OTT device—which is given out for free to Comcast broadband-only users as an enticement—has now reached 1 million deployments. 

Video is decidedly a secondary business for cable. And for now, with fixed wireless 5G encroachment on cable’s turf still just a discussion and not a reality, the demise of traditional linear pay TV should not be conflated with a narrative of cable’s business. 

Overall, LRG said the top 16 telecom companies controlling 96% of the U.S. wireline internet business added 1.165 million customers in Q1, with “telco” operators like AT&T continuing to shed legacy DSL customers. 

It was the best cumulative performance for the wireline broadband industry in five years. 

As the product category evolves, and operators get better at the science of live-streaming video over the open internet, users of virtual pay TV platforms are becoming happier with their service.

An online survey of 6,462 U.S. households conducted by Leichtman Research Group found that 76% of respondents are very satisfied with their vMVPD service compared to 69% in 2018.

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Only 14% are inclined to switch to another virtual pay TV service in the next six months compared to 27% in 2018, the last time LRG conducted its Internet Delivered Pay-TV Services study.

The vMVPD category includes Hulu Plus Live TV, Sling TV, YouTube TV, AT&T TV Now, fuboTV, Philo and Vidgo.

The 2020 version of LRG’s report suggests the category still isn’t all that accretive to the overall pay TV business. Only 12% of vMVPD subscribers were most recently non-subscribers to any type of pay TV service.

The biggest share of users, 44%, arrived from traditional cable, satellite or telco platforms, while 26% have kept their traditional service and 18% switched from another vMVPD.

Overall, 18% of adults ages 18-44 have a vMVPD service, with that age group accounting for 65% of U.S. vMVPD subscribers.

LRG found that 79% of all households have at least one SVOD or direct-to-consumer streaming video service, and 44% have three or more of these services.

“More than ever, consumers are exploring the trade-offs between traditional and vMVPD pay-TV services—along with an increasing number of streaming options—to find the combination of content and cost that best meets their needs,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. “Younger adults and those with more people and TVs in the household have thus far proven to be most attracted to the lower-cost and lower-channel vMVPD options.”

As the product category evolves, and operators get better at the science of live-streaming video over the open internet, users of virtual pay TV platforms are becoming happier with their service. 

An online survey of 6,462 U.S. households conducted by Leichtman Research Group found that 76% of respondents are very satisfied with their vMVPD service compared to use 69% in 2018. 

Only 14% are inclined to switch to another virtual pay TV service in the next six months compared to 27% in 2018, the last time LRG conducted its Internet Delivered Pay-TV Services study. 

The vMVPD category includes Hulu Plus Live TV, Sling TV, YouTube TV, AT&T TV Now, fuboTV, Philo and Vidgo. 

The 2020 version of LRG’s report suggests the category still isn’t all that accretive to the overall pay TV business. Only 12% of vMVPD subscribers were most recently non-subscribers to any type of pay-TV service.

The biggest share of users, 44%, arrived from traditional cable, satellite or telco platforms, while 26% have kept their traditional service and 18% switched from another vMVPD. 

Overally, 18% of adults ages 18-44 have a vMVPD service, with that age group accounting for 65% of U.S. vMVPD subscribers.

LRG found that 79% of all households have at least one SVOD or direct-to-consumer streaming video service, and 44% have three or more of these services.

“More than ever, consumers are exploring the trade-offs between traditional and vMVPD pay-TV services—along with an increasing number of streaming options—to find the combination of content and cost that best meets their needs,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc.  “Younger adults and those with more people and TVs in the household have thus far proven to be most attracted to the lower-cost and lower-channel vMVPD options.”

The top U.S. cable operators added more than 3.1 million broadband subscribers in 2019 and now control 67% of the U.S. ISP market, according to Leichtman Research Group.

Led by Comcast and Charter Communications, which both added just over 1.4 million high-speed internet users last year, cable operators haven’t controlled this much of the market since the business of internet service provision by telecommunications companies was a new thing, all the way back in the third quarter of 2001. Comcast had its best broadband growth numbers since 2007.

“The top broadband providers added 28.4 million net broadband subscribers over the past decade, with cable companies accounting for 97% of the net broadband additions in the 2010s,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, in a statement.

That was, of course, just before DSL took hold. The leading U.S. telco’s that foisted that technology lost another 619,605 HSI customers in 2019, LRG said, led by AT&T’s shedding of 312,000 wireline internet customers. Never before has the U.S. telco sector lost so many wireline internet subscribers.

Overall, the top U.S. broadband providers representing about 96% of the wireline internet market acquired about 2.5 million net additional broadband internet subscribers in 2019, compared to a pro forma gain of about 2.5 million users in 2018.

The total U.S. wireline internet market now stands at just over 101.2 million subscribers. 

The top U.S. cable operators added more than 3.1 million broadband subscribers in 2019 and now control 67% of the U.S. ISP market, according to Leichtman Research Group. 

Led by Comcast and Charter Communications, which both added just over 1.4 million high-speed internet users last year, cable operators haven’t controlled this much of the market since the business of internet service provision by telecommunications companies was a relatively new thing, all the way back in the third quarter of 2001. In fact, Comcast had its best broadband growth numbers since 2007. 

“The top broadband providers added 28.4 million net broadband subscribers over the past decade, with cable companies accounting for 97% of the net broadband additions in the 2010s,” “said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, in a statement. 

That was, of course, just before DSL took hold. The leading U.S. telco’s that foisted that technology lost another 619,605 HSI customers in 2019, LRG said, led by AT&T’s shedding of 312,000 wireline internet customers. Never before has the U.S. telco sector lost so many wireline internet subscribers. 

Overall, the top U.S. broadband providers representing about 96% of the wireline internet market acquired about 2.5 million net additional broadband internet subscribers in 2019, compared to a pro forma gain of about 2.5 million users in 2018. 

The total U.S. wireline internet market now stands at just over 101.2 million subscribers. 

The fear that the cable business had reached a saturation point in terms of new broadband customers seems to have been unfounded, at least to this point.

The top eight cable operators added 831,917 customers in the third quarter, up 14% over the third quarter of 2018, according to quarterly data provided by Leichtman Research Group. Overall, the top 16 U.S. wireline broadband suppliers, covering 96% of the market, now reach 100,553,426 customers.

Cable’s market share of the U.S. high-speed internet market has surpassed the two-thirds mark, with telco providers losing another 226,257 customers in Q3, according to LRG. The telco sector’s wireline losses were its biggest since the second quarter of 2016.

The heaviest losses were incurred by AT&T, which lost 123,000 HSI users, and Frontier, which was down 71,000.

On the cable side, Charter Communications added 380,000 broadband customers in the third quarter, up from 308,000 in the third quarter of 2018. Comcast added 379,000 HSI customers vs. 363,000 in the year-ago quarter. 

The percentage of U.S. homes that subscribe to a pay TV service has dipped to 75%, down from 84% in 2014 and 87% in 2009, according to Leichtman Research Group (LRG).

With the rate of cord-cutting reaching an all-time high of -3.8% in the third quarter, erosion of the pay TV ecosystem is hardly unexpected. But the aggregate impact is somewhat interesting, nonetheless.

Related: Cord-Cutting Will Reach -3.8% in Q3, Analyst Says

LRG noted the steadily increasing price of pay TV service: The mean subscription bill is now $109.60, an increase of 6% since 2016.

The findings come from LRG’s latest annual report, Pay TV in the U.S. 2019, which is based on a telephone survey of 1,115 households.

As expected, much of the news for cable, satellite and telco video operators is bad.

> 60% of U.S. pay TV subscribers bundle TV with other telco services, down from 67% in 2014.

> 83% of adults 45 or older subscribe to a pay TV services, compared to 64% of those ages 18-44.

> For the first time since 2010, less than half (47%) of U.S. TV sets are connected to a pay TV set-top.

> 27% of TV homes have an over-the-air antenna; the figure is 57% for non-pay TV homes.

> 54% of TV households have both pay TV and SVOD service.

“Three-quarters of households that use a TV currently subscribe to a pay-TV service. This is similar to the total receiving an SVOD service,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. “With more options for watching live and on-Demand video, consumers are increasingly choosing to cobble together the services that meet the viewing and economic needs of their household.” 

The percentage of U.S. homes that subscribe to a pay TV service has dipped to 75%, down from 84% in 2014 and 87% in 2009, according to Leichtman Research Group (LRG).

With the rate of cord-cutting reaching an all-time high of -3.8% in the third quarter, erosion of the pay TV ecosystem is hardly unexpected. But the aggregate impact is somewhat interesting, nonetheless.

Related: Cord-Cutting Will Reach -3.8% in Q3, Analyst Says

LRG noted the steadily increasing price of pay TV service: The mean subscription bill is now $109.60, an increase of 6% since 2016.

The findings come from LRG’s latest annual report, Pay TV in the U.S. 2019, which is based on a telephone survey of 1,115 households.

As expected, much of the news for cable, satellite and telco video operators is bad.

> 60% of U.S. pay TV subscribers bundle TV with other telco services, down from 67% in 2014.

> 83% of adults 45 or older subscribe to a pay TV services, compared to 64% of those ages 18-44.

> For the first time since 2010, less than half (47%) of U.S. TV sets are connected to a pay TV set-top.

> 27% of TV homes have an over-the-air antenna; the figure is 57% for non-pay TV homes.

> 54% of TV households have both pay TV and SVOD service.

“Three-quarters of households that use a TV currently subscribe to a pay-TV service. This is similar to the total receiving an SVOD service,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. “With more options for watching live and on-Demand video, consumers are increasingly choosing to cobble together the services that meet the viewing and economic needs of their household.” 

Disproving perhaps once and for all the notion that virtual pay TV services are niche products targeted to broadband-only users, Leichtman Research Group says 43% of vMVPD users switched directly over from traditional cable, satellite or telco services.

LRG found that 17% switched to their current vMVPD platform from another virtual service, while 25% also have a linear platform. Only 15% of current live-streamed pay TV services were previously non-subscribers of any pay-TV product.

LRG based its “Internet-Delivered Pay-TV 2019” report based on online surveys with 6,715 U.S. households.

The research company also found that 71% of U.S. vMVPD consumers are in the 18-44 demographic. Overall, 16% of U.S. adults ages 18-44 subscribe to a live-streamed service like Sling TV, DirecTV Now, Hulu+ Live TV, YouTube TV or Sony PlayStation Vue. Only 6% of U.S. consumers 45 or older subscribe to a vMVPD.

Around 42% of vMVPD users are ages 18-34 vs. 26% for linear pay TV, LRG said.

Among all U.S. vMVPD customers, 73% describe themselves as very satisfied wi their service.

Around 93% of with vMVPD service also subscribe to one of the major SVOD platforms, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and/or Hulu, compared to just 71% for traditional pay TV homes.

Notably, vMVPD users tend to be more mobile centric than customers of major SVOD platforms.

According to LRG, vMVPD users watch their service in their home 78% of the time, compared to 82% for HBO Now and 88% for Netflix.

“vMVPD services were first introduced about four years ago, and the market for these lower-cost/lower-channel pay-TV services is still growing and evolving,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. “Consumers continue to experiment with the various vMVPD services, along with other traditional and streaming options, to find the best combinations of video content and cost.”

The top seven cable operators collectively added 728,423 broadband customers in the third quarter, up 35% year over year, according to Leichtman Research Group.

No. 1 operator Comcast reported growth of 363,000 users during Q3, up from 213,000 in the third quarter of 2017. No. 2 cable company Charter Communications added 308,000 high speed internet users during the period, up from 285,000 a year ago.

The top seven pperators classed by LRG as “phone companies,” led by AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink, collectively los 149,474 users during Q3—somewhat flat with the 155,793 lost in Q3 2017.

Overall, wireline broadband customers increased by 578,949 in the third quarter, LRG said, up from 382,445 a year ago. 

Some 12% of consumers 18 to 34 years old, a group that accounts for 53% of U.S. adults, subscribe to an internet-delivered pay TV service such as Sling TV and DirecTV Now, according to new data from Leichtman Research Group.  

Overall, about 11% of adults 18-44 currently have an OTT TV service, compared to 3% among those who are 45 years or older, LRG found in an online survey of 6,947 U.S. homes that were part of its broader Internet-Delivered Pay-TV Services study. This marks LRG’s inaugural study on the topic.  

OTT TV services tend to complement other ways consumers are fulfilling their video needs. For example, LRG found that among those with an OTT TV service, 93% also subscribe to an SVOD service from the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime and/or Hulu.  

Some 49% of those OTT TV subs have a TV antenna to view over-the-air broadcast TV, and 35% also have a pay TV service from a traditional MVPD.  

Among other findings, 12% of adults that moved in the past year have an internet-delivered pay TV service, versus 6% of non-movers, and 69% of current OTT TV subs said they are very satisfied with their service, yet 27% are likely to switch from an internet-delivered pay TV service in the next six months.  

Additionally, 24% of those without an OTT TV service are very interested in getting one, LRG said.  

Representing a challenge to any OTT TV service focused on skinny bundles, the study also found that 76% of adults agreed that there are specific networks or programming genres that are “must haves” for the home’s TV service.  

“There is clearly a growing niche market for lower-cost/lower-channel live streaming pay-TV services – particularly among younger, more mobile renters, and those living in households with more people,” Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG, said in a statement. “Currently, these Internet-delivered pay-TV services are augmenting other sources of video in home, and consumers are experimenting with the various streaming pay-TV services to discover what combinations of video offerings work best for their household.”  

U.S. cable operators again dominated the broadband landscape in Q1 2016 as the top MSOs added nearly 1.1 million high-speed Internet subs in the period, accounting for 99% of the net broadband adds when compared to the nation’s largest telcos.

That’s according to a new market tally of the nation’s largest MSOs and telcos, representing 95% of the U.S. market, issued Monday by Leichtman Research Group (LRG).

Those top broadband providers now account for over 91.5 million subscribers – with top cable MSOs having 56.3 million of them, versus 35.2 million among the top telcos.

Overall, Q1 broadband adds were 92% of those in the year-ago quarter. The top cable ops added 1.06 million broadband subs in Q1 2016, compared to 10,000 for the nation’s largest telcos, down from a year-ago gain of 160,000, LRG said.

Broken down further, AT&T and Verizon added 300,000 subs via U-verse and Fios in Q1 alongside a net loss of 324,000 DSL subs.

Over the past year, the nation’s largest cable and telco ISPs added 3.03 million net broadband subs, about the same (3 million) added during the prior 12-month period.

“Cable companies had another strong quarter for broadband in 1Q 2016, adding over one million subscribers. This marks the third time in the past five quarters that cable companies have added over a million net broadband subscribers,” Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG, said in a statement. “Broadband in the US continues to grow, with cable providers accounting for 111% of the three million net broadband additions over the past year.”

The seventeen largest cable MSOs and telcos in the U.S., representing 94% of the market, tacked on 645,000 net additional broadband subs in the third quarter of 2015, an 8% dip versus the year-ago quarter, Leichtman Research Group noted in its latest crunch of the numbers.

Cable, once again, took the lion’s share. The top MSOs added 790,000 high-speed Internet subs in the period, a 134% boost versus the net additions from the year-ago quarter.

The telcos in the study shed 140,000 broadband subs, versus a net gain of 110,000. Boiled down further, AT&T and Verizon added 305,000 subs via U-verse and FiOS in Q3 alongside a net loss of 432,000 DSL subs, LRG said.

With both sides factored in, those top ISPs ended Q3 with 89.5 million subs, with cable accounting for about 54.3 million of them.

Through the first nine months of 2015, the top MSOs added 2.3 million broadband subs, whiel the telcos lost about 130,000, according to LRG.

 “While major providers now account for nearly 90 million broadband subscribers in the US, top cable providers added subscribers at a faster pace over the past year than they did over the prior year,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG, in a statement. “Over the past year, cable companies accounted for 103% of the 2.93 million net broadband additions.”

The third quarter of the 2015 offered another mix of good news and bad news for the U.S. pay TV industry. Most major MVPDs are still losing video subs, but, taken as a whole, they’re losing them at a much slower rate.

Amid the small but growing cord-cutting trend, the top 13 pay TV providers in the U.S., representing about 95% of the market, lost 190,000 net video subs in Q3, versus a loss of about 155,000 subs in the year-ago period, Leichtman Research Group said in a  report issued Monday.

The top nine cable MSOs Major cable operators posted their best Q3 result in the category since 2006, but still shed 145,000 in the period, well below the 440,000 they lost in Q3 2014, and the 600,000 they lost in Q3 2013, LRG noted.

DirecTV (now part of AT&T) and  Dish Network (including Sling TV) added 3,000 subs combined, versus a loss of 40,000 in the year-ago period.

The top telcos lost 49,000 video subs in Q3, compared to a net gain of 323,000  a year earlier, and was the worst performance in any quarter for the group since they started offering video services in 2006, LRG said.

The top MVPDs account for 94 million subs, with major MSOs accounting for 48.8 million, versus 33.5 million for Dish Network and DirecTV, and 11.7 million among the top telcos.

“Overall, net losses among major pay-TV providers (including DISH’s Sling TV) in 3Q 2015 were similar to a year ago, but the quarter also displayed share shifting continuing to readjust within the category,” Bruce Leichtman, LRG’s president and principal analyst, said in a statement. “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.  Conversely, top cable providers cumulatively had their best third quarter since 2006 – the year when Telcos began offering video services.”

Amplifying evidence that U.S. cable broadband service providers cleaned up in the second quarter of 2015, the top MSOs combined to add about 510,000 subs in the period, or 138% of net additions, Leichtman Research Group reported Tuesday.

The top telcos, meanwhile, lost a combined 150,000 high-speed Internet subs in the quarter, LRG said, noting that the group has been hit by broadband sub losses in four of the past six second quarters. While DSL losses are the primary culprit, AT&T U-verse and Verizon FiOS broadband subs now account for 56% of telco broadband customers, versus 42% two years ago.

The 17 largest U.S. cable operators and telcos, representing about 94% of the market, added 360,000 net additional high-speed Internet subs in Q2, LRG said.  Combined, those ISPs account for nearly 88.9 million subs. Of that, 53.5 million get broadband from a cable operator, per LRG. 

LRG said overall broadband adds in the quarter were 97% of those from the year-ago quarter.

“Over the past year, cable has accounted for 95% of the approximately 3,000,000 broadband additions,” LRG president and principal analyst Bruce Leichtman said, in a statement. 

Shedding more light on the pay TV industry's recent rough patch, Leichtman Research Group said that the 13 largest pay TV providers in the U.S., representing about 95% of the market, lost about 470,000 net video subs in the second quarter of 2015, widened from a loss of about 305,000 video subs in the year-ago quarter.

It marked the biggest loss in the category for the period ever, LRG said. SNL Kagan, by the way, announced last week that a sharp rise in cord-cutting during the period paved the way for losses of 625,000 subs in Q2. MoffettNathanson, meanwhile, pinned the Q2 pay TV loss at about 566,000 subs. 

Despite that, the top nine cable MSOs showed a huge improvement, losing 260,000 video subs in Q2, versus a loss of 510,000 in the year-ago quarter. That marked the fewest losses in any Q2, a quarter generally plagued by “seasonality” (as students and snowbirds make their moves for the summer), by cable since 2008.

Satellite TV providers (Dish Network and DirecTV, now part of AT&T) lost 214,000, widened from a loss of 78,000 in the year-ago quarter.

The top telcos added 4,000 video subs, versus 284,000 net adds in Q2 2014.

Over the past year, the top pay TV providers, including Dish’s Sling TV OTT service, lost about 370,000 subs, compared to a loss of about 5,000 subs over the prior year.

Those top pay TV providers now have about 94.9 million subs, with the top nine cable MSOs accounting for 49 million, satellite 34.2 million, and top telcos 11.7 million.

 “The top pay-TV providers lost about 470,000 subscribers in the traditionally weak second quarter, with net losses in 2Q 2015 exceeding the previous low-water mark of about 360,000 losses in 2Q 2013,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. 

“Cumulatively, Telcos and DBS providers both had their weakest quarter ever for net video additions, leaving the door open for cable providers to have their fewest cumulative losses in a second quarter in seven years,” Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG, said in a statement. 

The top 13 pay-TV providers in the U.S., representing 95% of the market, lost about 125,000 net video subs in 2014, Leichtman Research Group (LRG) said in a new report.

That compares to about 95,000 net sub losses in 2013 among the nation’s top pay-TV service providers, according to LRG.

The top nine cable MSOs lost 1.19 million video subs in 2014, narrowed from losses of about 1.69 million in 2013, marking the fewest losses over a year's span since 2008, LRG said. 

The top telcos added 1.05 million video subs in 2014, down from 1.43 million net adds in 2013, while the U.S. satellite TV providers added 20,000 video subs in 2014, well off 170,000 net additions in the year prior.

At the end of 2014, the top 13 pay-TV providers accounted for 95.2 million subs, with the top nine cable MSOs serving 49.3 millio, followed by Dish Network and DirecTV (34.3 million combined), and Verizon Communications and AT&T (11.6 million combined).  

“2014 marked the second consecutive year for pay-TV industry net losses, but the losses remained modest again this year,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG, in a statement. “Despite a relatively saturated market, and increasing alternatives for consumers to watch video, the top pay-TV providers have only lost about 0.2% of all subscribers over the past two years.”

The top 17 U.S. cable operators and telcos, representing 94% of the market, acquired more than 700,000 net new broadband subs in the third quarter, despite a market that would appear to be on the verge of saturation, Leichtman Research Group found in its latest report on the category. 

Total broadband adds in the third quarter amounted to 135% from those in the year-ago quarter, extending the total sub count in the category beyond 86.6 million.

Cable took the lion’s share, adding about 581,000 broadband in the third quarter, or 83% of the net adds in the quarter, versus the top telcos, which added almost 121,000 broadband subs in the quarter, up from 80,000 in the year-ago period.

The top cable MSOs ended the quarter with 51.2 million broadband subs, compared to 35.4 million among the biggest telcos.

LRG said top U.S. ISPs added about 2.93 million broadband subs over the past year, outpacing the 2.54 million added during the prior year, and just a smidge above 2.925 million added two years ago.

“Despite there being 86.6 million broadband subscribers in the US via major cable and Telco providers, the industry has added subscribers at a faster pace over the past year than it did over the prior year,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG, in a statement. “Over the past year, cable companies accounted for 86% of the 2.9 million net broadband adds.”

Thanks to the growth of LTE and WiFi broadband trends point toward wireless and mobility, but the vast majority of U.S. consumers take a broadband service at home, a new study shows.

Leichtman Research Group said 79% of U.S. homes now get a broadband Internet service that is delivered to the home, up from just 20% in 2004.

Broadband also accounts for 95% of all households with Internet service at home, up from 94% in 2013, 89% in 2009, and 33% in 2004.

The mean reported time spent online at home per day has also risen – to 2.8 hours among all individuals online at home, up from 2.2 hours per day in 2009, LRG found in its 12th study on the topic.

And usage skews younger – those ages 18-34 spend, on average, 3.3 hours per day online at home, versus 2.8 hours per day among those ages 35-54, and 2.1 hours per day among ages 55 and above.

LRG found that for the first time ever in this study, the 18-34 age group overall reports spending more time per day online at home than time spent watching TV.

“The percentage of US households with a computer, and the percentage of households that get an online service at home, have leveled off over the past few years, while broadband continues to grow at a modest pace,” said Bruce Leichtman, LRG’s president and principal analyst, in a statement. “Along with more people accessing a broadband Internet service at home than ever before, more time is also being spent online at home.”

LRG’s study also discovered that 63% of U.S. adults access the Internet on a smartphone, up from 44% in 2012, and 59% get Internet service at home and on a smartphone, up from 42% in 2012.

Among other findings:

-2% of households paid to subscribe to Internet service at home in the past year, do not currently subscribe, and do not plan to subscribe again in the next six months

-41% of households with annual incomes <$30,000 do not use a laptop or desktop computer at home – compared to 9% with incomes >$30,000.

-2% of all households have an iPad or tablet, but do not use a desktop or laptop computer.

LRG’s latest study – part of the firm’s Broadband Internet Access & Services in the Home 2014 report -- was based on a telephone survey of 1,261 households.

The top 17 U.S. cable operators and telcos, representing about 93% of the market, signed on nearly 385,000 net new high-speed broadband subs in the second quarter of 2014, amounting to 130% of those added in the year-ago quarter, according to a new report from Leichtman Research Group.

Those top providers now have more than 85.9 million broadband subs, with cable accounting for 50.7 million and the top telcos accounting for over 35.2 million.

Of note: LRG found that for the top incumbent cable operators, excluding competitive overbuilder WideOpenWest,  the number of broadband subs (49.915 million) inched by the number of cable TV subscribers (49.910 million) for the first time.

Expect that trend to continue and to stretch across the landscape of cable operators of all sizes. In a report issued last month, debt ratings agency Moody’s Investor’s Service predicted that high-speed data subs, which represent higher margin subscriptions to ISPs, are in position to surpass video subs for cable companies by 2015, noting that both categories were already about even.

While the top U.S. cable operators continued to cede ground on the video front to telcos and satellite TV providers in the second quarter, they remained strong with broadband, with a 59% share of the market.

According to LRG, the top cable MSOs added about 380,000 broadband subs in the second quarter, accounting for 99% of the net broadband ads for the period versus the top telcos. AT&T and Verizon Communications added 627,000 subs through their respective U-verse and FiOS platforms in the second quarter, but shed a net 636,000 DSL subs, LRG noted.

“With the addition of more than 30 million broadband subscribers over the past decade, cable providers have clearly expanded well beyond their roots in cable TV service,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG, said in a statement. “As of the end of 2Q 2014, the top cable providers now have more broadband subscribers than cable TV subscribers.”