Cord Cutting? Analyst Predicts Slower Pay-TV Losses

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Cord cutting has the TV industry on edge, but a new report predicts that pay-TV losses will slow for the rest of the year.

After the big 593,000 drop in subscribers in the second quarter, investment company Evercore ISI expects subscribers to be down 363,000 in the third quarter, followed by a tiny 40,000 dip in the fourth quarter.

That would leave total multichannel subscribers down 1.03 million for the year, up from 193,000 in 2014.

“We think that the 2Q15 industry loss of about 600,000 subscribers was not a cord-cutting inflection point, but rather was caused by varying individual company strategic efforts, as a few transformative transactions had companies distracted,” according to a new report from Evercore ISI analyst Vijay Jayant.

Jon Lafayette
Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.