Cable TV Companies Lost Nearly 5 Million Subscribers in 2021

Remember when the cable and broadcast industry insisted that “cord cutting” (ditching traditional cable TV subscriptions) wasn’t actually a real trend? Or how, once they finally acknowledged it was a real thing, insisted that it was just a temporary fad that would abate once Millennials started having babies?

Years later and amazingly enough the very real trend shows absolutely no sign of slowing down. According to the latest data from Leichtman Research Group, major U.S. pay TV providers lost 4,700,000 subscribers in 2021. Just slightly less than the 4,870,000 subscribers they lost in 2020.

As has been consistently true in recent years, the losses have been much worse for satellite TV providers (Dish Network, DirecTV) that generally aren’t bundled with broadband in the way cable TV often is:

Top cable providers had a net loss of about 2,695,000 video subscribers in 2021 – compared to a loss of about 1,940,000 subscribers in 2020.

Other traditional pay-TV services had a net loss of about 2,890,000 subscribers in 2021 – compared to a loss of about 3,845,000 subscribers in 2020.

Cable broadband continues to be financially shielded by the fact that the dominant cable TV companies (Charter/Spectrum, Comcast) enjoy a growing monopoly over fixed-line broadband access, with 83 million Americans still living under a broadband monopoly. Said monopoly means they can simply extract any lost TV revenues through things like sneaky fees or bullshit broadband usage caps.

The 7 biggest U.S. cable TV providers now “only” have a grand total of around 41.3 million video subscribers. Consider, for context, that Netflix now has about 37 million in the U.S. alone. And the trend the cable industry spent years trying to deny (in a bid to justify high prices and inflexible cable bundles) continues on with only a very tiny slowdown.