Cord-cutting continues to get worse, with the linear video industry suffering its biggest quarterly losses since COVID-19 knocked out live sports and scripted programming, according to new figures from MoffettNathanson.

Traditional pay TV distributors lost 9% of their subscribers year over year in the first quarter of 2022. The 9% rate of decline compared to 8.9% in the fourth quarter of 2021 and ties the worst level ever, set in Q1 2021.

Virtual MVPDs aren’t picking up lapsed pay TV subscribers the way they used to either, contributing to a worsening picture for the traditional pay-TV bundle. In the first quarter, the conversion rate fell to 32.8% from 35.6% in the fourth quarter. 

When looking at traditional and virtual pay TV distributors combined, subscribers were down 5.1% year over year, close to the all-time worst of 5.5% set in the second quarter of 2020, when COVID knocked out new scripted shows and most live sports.

In all, the linear video industry lost 2.1 million subscribers in the first quarter, the worst since Q1 2020.

Looking at company reports, MoffetNathanson said the biggest losers of subscribers in the first quarter were Comcast, down 511,00 and DirecTV down 496,000. DirecTV, spun off from AT&T last year, reported its latest subscriber numbers to bondholders and debt analysts.

Including estimates for some outfits that don’t publicly report numbers, MoffettNathanson said the Q1 performance left the linear TV business with 81.048 million subscribers.

Cable had 41.661 million subscribers, down 6.9%, satellite had 18.5 million subscribers, down 12%  and the telcos had 5.829 million subscribers, down 13.5%. 

Total traditional subscribers were 66.118 million, down 9% and the virtual MVPDs had 14.930 million subscribers, up 16.7%.

Separately, YouTube TV reported on Tuesday that it now has more than 5 million subscribers.

“The rate of decline of the linear business is not something that ‘just happens,’ “ noted the research firm’s principals, Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson. “Many of the media companies have made conscious decisions to strip-mine their cable networks, shifting their best content to their streaming platforms. 

“At the same time, they have raised prices relentlessly to offset declining viewership. Both strategies have alienated distributors, who are now more ambivalent than ever about trying to retain video subscribers who are themselves increasingly ambivalent about lower and lower quality video services for which they are asked to pay higher and higher prices,” Moffett and Nathanson said.

Several sports leagues have started to put games on streaming platforms, a trend that may accelerate, further hurting the linear TV business, which was expected to be supported by live programming, including news as well as sports.

“Including vMVPDs, the rate of decline for linear video is hovering near its all-time worst levels,“ Moffett and Nathanson wrote. “And the rate of decline for traditional distributors is the worst it has ever been. That’s not what one would expect if we were gliding towards a stable sports-and-news floor.”  ■

For the media industry, 2020 was the worst year ever for cord cutting, according to a new report from analyst Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson.

Traditional distributors lost 6 million subscribers, a drop of 7.3%. Penetration was down to a level not seen in nearly 30 years, Moffett noted.

Streaming virtual multichannel video programming distributors “were, by and large, a disappointment,” he said, picking up only about a third of the households that dropped traditional pay TV. 

Different distributors had different outcomes, with Charter trending up, while Comcast pointed down, and DirecTV slowing its losses while Dish got worse. The vMVPDs had a weaker fourth quarter compared to the third quarter, but “YouTube TV did well, Hulu Live did worse, Sling TV faded and AT&T more or less walked off the playing field,” Moffett observed. 

Despite the erosion for the pay-TV ecosystem, media stock advanced.

“Because, well, because no one really cares that much anymore about the traditional bundle,” Moffett said. “It has already been written off for dead; what’s left is only a judgment as to whether each individual media company’s SVOD/AVOD strategy does or doesn’t have legs.”

Moffett estimates that there are now just under 12 million vMVPD subscribers. The vMVPDs added just 500,000 subscribers in the fourth quarter, which doesn’t look good compared to the 1.5 million added in the third quarter. Hulu lost subscribers. 

Why are the vMVPDs not doing well. Moffett has some ideas.

“What has become increasingly clear is that SVOD and AVOD are simply better mousetraps for a very large number of customers, particularly those who aren’t sports fans .The problem they are trying to solve is not means of distribution – frankly who cares whether the bundle is delivered encoded in MPEG or IP? – but instead one of price,” he said. 

For most customers, the answer is not to replace the existing bundle of networks at a somewhat lower price, but instead to blow up the bundle entirely and replace it with SVOD and AVOD subscriptions that are by almost any measure a better solution,” he added. 

“Price increases for the vMVPDs haven’t helped,” he concluded. “Hulu Live’s price jumped to $65 per month in December, matching the price increase that YouTube TV took at the end of June. YouTube’s and Hulu’s prices are now fully 86% higher than when they launched two-and-a-half years ago. AT&T’s price increases have been even more aggressive. These pricing actions fly in the face of what consumers actually desire: fewer channels at lower prices.”

fuboTV, the sports-focused OTT TV service, said it is introducing a new home page with new discovery features ahead of World Cup 2018, the global soccer tourney that kicks off this Thursday (June 14) when ost Russia takes on Saudi Arabia in group action.

RELATED: Comcast Brings World Cup Content Hub to X1

The new discovery capability is designed to highlight tournament fixtures as well as other sporting events piped in from channels on fuboTV’s lineup, including CBS, Fox, NBC and The CW, alongside entertainment and news programming.

RELATED: U.S., Latin American Networks Tap CenturyLink for Live World Cup Feeds

The updated home page will include “blended” content that spans those different programming areas, rather than just sports content.

A new “Featured” section provides a fuboTV-curated view based on popularity among sports, series and movies, While Recommendations will be tallied based on viewing history. That personalization element will be offered to each user profile within a subscription (fuboTV’s baseline service offers two simultaneous streams and the ability to purchase an additional stream) in the “coming months,” the service noted.

Hulu has initiated a “strategic reorganization” that, it said, aims to help the OTT video service provider scale its sub base, add more content and boost its premium ad offerings.

The reorg will also shake up a portion of Hulu's leadership ranks, as the company is adding two key execs and seeing the departure of three others.  

The reorg comes about eight months after Randy Freer, the former COO of Fox Networks Group, was named CEO of Hulu, succeeding Mike Hopkins, who left to become chairman of Sony Pictures Television.

Hulu said the new structure will be aligned around three areas – technology and products; content and advertising; and “Subscriber Journey,” a component that includes subscriber acquisition, engagement and retention.

Tied in, Hulu has hired a new chief technology officer, former TiVo COO Dan Phillips; and has appointed its first chief data officer, Jaya Kolhatkar, an exec late of Walmart.

Hulu said Phillips will oversee a newly unified Technology & Product organization that spans engineering, data center ops, network and broadcast operations center, IT, program management, user experience and product development. Phillips, who starts June 4 and will be based in Santa Monica, is also late of Uniscape and Crossworlds Software and co-founded enterprise software company Metasystems. 

Kokhatkar will start July 2 and be based at Hulu’s Santa Monica headquarters and report to  Freer. She formerly was SVP of global data and analytics platform at Walmart, and was co-founder and chief analytics officer of Inkiru, and previously was with PayPal, eBay and Amazon. 

Some key execs will also be departing Hulu, which recently confirmed that it has surpassed 800,000 live TV subs and a total sub base (including SVOD customers) that exceeds 20 million. 

RELATED: Hulu Surpasses 800K Live TV Subscribers

Ben Smith, SVP of experience, will be retiring in July, a move that comes as chief marketing officer Kelly Campbell expands the company’s marketing organization to include the Subscriber Journey element for Hulu’s SVOD and live TV offerings.  

Campbell's organization will also oversee Hulu’s subscriber partnership, including its current deals with Spotify and Sprint. 

RELATED: Hulu Brings New UI to More Devices, Sparks New Spotify Bundle

With respect the content-facing parts of the reorg, Hulu is combining its live TV and SVOD content licensing, acquisition and business functions into a single group called Content Partnerships, noting that the “lines between live and on-demand viewing” have become “increasingly blurred for consumers.”

Hulu’s original programming and its relationships with creators and studios will still be managed the company’s originals team, but is not operating as a dedicated business function led by SVP of content Craig Erwich, who reports to Freer.

Hulu noted that its content teams will now be comprised of two groups focused around acquiring on-demand and live content partners, and the creative community for Hulu originals. The content group will also explore more premium add-ons and “innovative new formats,” Hulu said.   

Amid those changes and updated structure, Hulu said SVP of partnerships and distribution Tim Connolly and chief content officer Joel Stillerman have decided to leave the company. Hulu said it is conducting a search for a head of the new Content Partnerships group and is eliminating the chief content officer role.

Hulu’s Advertising Sales group will continue reporting to Peter Naylor, SVP of Ad Sales, as it moves ahead on its Upfront and looks toward new ad products and starts to sell dynamically inserted ads in Hulu’s live TV service. 

“As one of today’s top direct-to-consumer entertainment brands, led by technology, innovation and data, Hulu has an enormous opportunity to lead the media and advertising industries into the future,” Freer said in a statement. “By adding new expertise and capabilities to our executive ranks and creating greater alignment around our customers, we are positioning Hulu to grow more rapidly, innovate more quickly and connect consumers even more deeply with the content they love.”

He added: “Ben, Tim and Joel have all played a significant role in getting Hulu to the strong position it is in today. They will forever be a part of Hulu’s success story, and we wish them the very best in their next endeavors."

AT&T said sub gains for DirecTV Now, its OTT TV service, were more than enough to offset losses from its “linear” video service category, comprised of its DirecTV satellite TV service and U-verse video, its managed IPTV offering.  

During Q1, AT&T added 312,000 DirecTV Now subs, extending that total to 1.46 million.  

On the linear/traditional side of the pay TV ledger, AT&T lost 187,000 subs (188,000 DirecTV satellite sub losses, and 1,000 U-verse video sub gains).  

AT&T ended the quarter with 25.36 million total video connections, made up of 20.27 DirecTV satellite subs, 3.63 million U-verse video subs, and almost 1.5 million subs for DirecTV Now, the national OTT service that was launched in November 2016.  

Though DirecTV Now adds more than offset traditional pay TV losses, those lower-margin, no-contract customers are on less expensive, skinner video packages. With that as the backdrop, AT&T’s linear video ARPU for Q1 was $113.43 (or $114.91 using the company’s historical video ARPU model), well down from linear video ARPU of $121.16 in the year-ago period.  

AT&T added a net 82,000 broadband subs in Q1 via the addition of 154,000 IP broadband subs alongside a loss of 72,000 DSL customers. AT&T ended the period with 14.43 million total broadband subs (13.61 million IP, and 816,000 DSL), and more than 8 million customer locations passed with fiber. 

AT&T also ended Q1 with 9.64 million wired voice connections, down from 11 million in the year ago period.  

It also notched 3.2 million total wireless net adds – 2.6 million in the U.S., and 543,000 in Mexico.  

The company posted Q1 earnings of 85 cents per share on revenues of $38.04 billion, off from Wall Street expectations of 87 cents and $39.31 billion. AT&T shares were down  

AT&T shares were down $1.59 (4.52%) to $33.61 each in after-hours trading Wednesday.  

Cheddar, the business and tech news service focused on affluent millennials, has landed carriage on YouTube TV and launched a new network, Cheddar Big News.

Available first on YouTube TV, the OTT TV service launched last year, Cheddar Big News is focused on headlines and top stories in the U.S. and internationally. Cheddar Big News will be coming to two other virtual MVPD services, Sling TV and Philo, in Q2 2018.

RELATED: Philo Unleashes Entertainment-Focused OTT TV Service

Cheddar said the Coca-Cola Company is the first integrated sponsor for Cheddar Big News, which will emphasize “nothing-but-the-facts” reporting, and span areas such as politics, entertainment, travel, food, health, science, sports and weather, delivered live from Cheddar studios in New York and Los Angeles.

Content partners for Cheddar Big News include AccuWeather and three tied to sports coverage -- Stadium, VSiN and FanSided.

The launch of the new network arrives on the heels of Cheddar’s $22 million Series D round that will be used in part to fund domestic and international expansion.

“We cover the big political stories of the day but don’t torture viewers with circular panels of supposed ‘expert political analysts’,” Jon Steinberg, founder and CEO of Cheddar, said in a statement. “We move on to ‘moose on the loose’, human interest stories, weather, science, sports, and the topics of the day. It’s apolitical. It’s the cable news product that young people want. We now have the full suite news offering with a news network and a business news network.”

Cheddar’s distribution on YouTube TV will include both the Cheddar and Cheddar Big News live feeds and VOD content. That also complements Cheddar’s YouTube channel, which focuses on original news, mini-doc videos and highlights from network broadcasts.

The agreement adds another distribution outlet for Cheddar, which is also offered on

Sling TV, Layer3 TV (now part of T-Mobile), Comcast (for its X1 platform), Amazon, Facebook, Spotify, Twitter, and Twitch, among others.

RELATED: More Channels Tune in Twitch

The number of pay TV households continues to fall, according to an analysis of the latest Nielsen data by Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group.

Wieser said Nielsen estimates of the pay TV universe for June show a decline of 2.9%, a dip that comes despite a 1.7% increase in total TV households. That total includes only traditional cable, satellite and telco subscribers.

Related: TV Screen Dominates Adult Viewing in Q4, Nielsen says

The cable universe numbers are studied for clues about the health of the pay TV business, which has been under pressure from cord-cutters looking to save money by dropping their subscribers and younger cord-never consumers.

Data on virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs) such as Hulu and DirecTV Now are only starting to come in. Wieser said that for June a broader Nielsen measure called “Total Cable Plus” adds about 1.3 million homes to the total.

“VMVPDs would reduce the decline, although probably not by much more than a percentage point or so,” Wieser said in a report Tuesday (May 30).

Related: Pay TV's Day of Reckoning Arrives

Among the companies that own cable networks, Discovery, Disney, Comcast-NBCU, Scripps Networks, Time Warner and Viacom were all down abou 3%. Fox was down less than 2%, while AMC Networks was up 9.9%, Wieser said.

The networks taking the biggest lumps included Boomerang and CMT, each down 9.6%. Other secondary networks, including Destination America, Science and DIY, also showed declines of more than 7%.

Disney’s closely watched ESPN and ESPN2 were down 3.8% and 3.7%, respectively.

Wieser said that data from the virtual MVPDs suggest the companies with the biggest network portfolios, NBCUniversal and Viacom, have lower penetration on the new distributors. NBC’s media network is picking up only 0.5 million subscribers, and Viacom is adding only 0.3 million.

Viacom has been excluded from a number of vMVPD packages, including Hulu and YouTube TV.

“Despite the gloomy story generally conveyed by this data, we think an underappreciated positive story lies in the data not explicitly included in Nielsen’s Universe Estimates," Wieser wrote. "Broadcast networks’ growth in penetration effectively matches the rise in TV households, meaning that if we were to look at ABC, CBS, The CW, Fox and NBC we would see gains of around +1.7% year over year. This growth in penetration provides support to viewing levels at those networks, at least to the extent that viewing arrives there by default when broadcast-only homes choose to watch linear TV.”

Sony PlayStation Vue has added another streaming platform to its lineup as it followed through with anticipated support for Google’s Chromecast streaming adapter.

Sony said PlayStation Vue, its over-the-top multichannel pay TV service, is initially offering support for Chromecast via compatible iOS devices.

Sony announced planned support for the Chromecast in November as it extended support for PS Vue on the Amazon Fire TV box and Fire TV Stick. PS Vue is also offered on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 consoles and via an app for iPads and iPhones.

Sony, which recently struck an important carriage deal with Disney-ESPN, has not released subscriber figures, but said that PS Vue’s daily average viewership currently exceeds five hours.

A Sony official also noted that 75% of PS Vue subs are 18-34 years old, and that the average time spent “per play” (selection of content) on PS Vue is now 45 minutes, a figure that plays on the platform’s personalization and discovery features.

Sony PS Vue currently offers multichannel pay TV packages (with a cloud DVR)  in Dallas-Fort Worth; Miami-Fort Lauderdale; Chicago; Philadelphia; Los Angeles;  New York City; and San Francisco.

PS Vue’s three multichannel packages are: Access ($49.99 per month); Core ($54.99 per month), and Elite ($64.99). Sony has recently reduced the price on its Core and Elite packages by $5 per month, according to the service’s Web site.

PS Vue also offers select a la carte programming on a national basis, including Showtime’s OTT service, Fox Soccer Plus, and a new premium TV channel from Machinima. Epix Hits, a new channel that is paired with a VOD library, is also available on PS Vue as a premium pack with Showtime for $13.99 per month (or $11.49 for PlayStation Plus members), and in the PS Vue Elite tier, or as an add-on to the service's Access and Core packages.

Apple believes the future of TV is apps, but it’s increasingly apparent that it will be awhile before a pay TV app from Apple becomes a significant part of that future.

Apple’s plan to create a slimmed-down pay TV package with nation-wide access has been rumored to be delayed time and time again, but a Bloomberg report splashes a new coat of paint on those strained efforts with word that Apple has put the plan on the backburner again because of continued difficulties coming to terms with programmers, which want more than what Apple’s currently willing to pay.

Apple, which is said to want to offer a small package of channels for $30 to $40 per month, “is instead focusing on being a platform for media companies to sell directly to customers through its App Store,” Bloomberg said, citing an unnamed person with knowledge of the situation.

That strategy would seemingly come into play on the heels of the new Apple TV, a streaming device outfitted with a new operating system that will enable the platform to support multitudes of apps, including those from TV programmers and TV distributors. Apple will need to develop this plan amid heated competition from Roku, which has had some success building partnerships with MVPDs, and Amazon, which has begun to bundle subscription video services with Prime, a move that makes the online retailer start to take on MVPD-like attributes.

While Apple’s over-the-top pay TV plan has long been the subject of rumors, CBS CEO Les Moonves added some significant weight to what the CE giant had in mind on Tuesday when he made comments at a Business Insider Ignition conference in New York that the initiative is in a holding pattern.

“They’ve had conversations on it and I think they pressed the hold button,” Moonves said, according to Bloomberg. “They were looking for a service.”

Moonves, though, was upbeat about the prospects of skinny bundles and offered some thoughts on what Apple wants to accomplish. “This will happen,” the CBS exec said. “It has four major networks and 10 cable networks, let’s say, and the price point will be in the $30s, $30 to $35, $40 maybe. People will not be spending money on channels they don’t want to watch."

Bloomberg’s report is just another chapter in Apple’s long-stalled pay TV efforts. Reports surfaced earlier that Apple pushed any launch plans to sometime in 2016 due to ongoing snags in its talks with programmers. Industry sources have confirmed earlier reports that Apple and Comcast had been talking for years about a deal that would enable an Apple-powered device to offer a mix of live TV and other subscription video services in partnership with the MSO over managed IP connections that did not intermingle with capacity set aside for high-speed broadband service. But those talks never got very far, and Comcast has instead pushed forward with its own next-gen platform, X1.