On Wednesday (February 9), The Walt Disney Co. revealed that Hulu Plus Live TV added 100,000 customers in the fourth quarter, giving the virtual MVPD 200,000 total customer additions for the year.
That marked a narrow growth decline, compared to the live streaming service's 300,000 customer additions the year before.
With that, the five biggest U.S. pay TV operators still publicly reporting subscriber counts reported customer losses of 3.913 million in 2022, a 60% uptick over 2021, when these companies lost 2.320 customers.
Comcast, still the largest operator with just over 19.4 million video subscribers, lost 11.2% of its pay TV customers in 2022, 2.034 million in all.
No. 2 operator Charter Communications saw TV customer losses expand from 367,000 in 2021 to 687,000 last year.
No. 3 operator DirecTV hasn't publicly disclosed its customer numbers since AT&T spun it off in a partnership with private-equity company TPG 19 months ago.
But No. 4 company Dish Network lost 805,000 satellite TV customers last year vs. 595,000 a year prior. It lost nearly 10% of its satellite TV base last year. Those customer ranks stand at only around 8.6 million.
Meanwhile, Dish's vMVPD, Sling TV, lost 146,000 customers in 2022 vs. a narrow gain of 12,000 in 2021.
Yes, pubs like us have been reporting these same stories, with the same stock photos of scissors and cords, for over a decade now.
But the attrition is now real. This is another linear business on the precipice. ■
