According to a new report from Rider Research, the number of U.S. pay-TV subscribers grew by 362,000 in the fourth quarter of 2008. These numbers show a flight by traditional cable subscribers to new fiber offerings from Verizon FiOS and AT&T.
From the release:
As a group, the telephone companies won in net adds with 567,000, compared to the satellite companies’ 199,000 (thanks solely to DirecTV’s 301,000 increase), while the reporting cable TV companies lost 404,000. The telcos’ numbers do not include the subscriptions they sold for the satellite TV services.
The three big winners were Verizon, which added 303,000, DirecTV with 301,000, and AT&T with 264,000.
The three big losers were Comcast, which lost 233,000 subscribers, Time Warner Cable with a loss of 197,000 and Dish Network with a 102,000 drop.
As more choices for Pay TV reach more households consumers are abandoning traditional carriers ( as a former Time Warner subscriber I can speak firsthand about the poor experience I received) to services offering additional features and more HD content (though depending on the actual bandwidth of the IP connection into the home this may or may not actually be the case).
For consumers these new choices are good news, increaed competition should lower prices and force pay-tv providers to provide better service. For traditional cable providers, it’s bad news, old monopolies are dissolving and they will need to offer more for less in order to stay relevant.