Cord cutting took top pay TV providers for 1.2M subs in Q2

The largest pay TV providers in the U.S.—representing about 95% of the market—lost roughly 1,230,000 net video subscribers during the second quarter.

The latest figures from Leichtman Research Group put total losses at about 275,000 fewer than the 1,505,000 subscribers lost in the same quarter of 2020. Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG, said that over the past year, top pay TV providers had a net loss of about 4,520,000 subscribers, compared to a loss of about 5,460,000 over the year prior.

The top cable providers combined for a net loss of about 590,000 video subscribers during the second quarter, compared to a loss of about 505,000 one year ago. Comcast accounted for nearly 400,000 of that total while Charter and Cox combined to lose 110,000 subscribers.

RELATED: U.S. pay TV providers lost 1.9M subs in Q1: Leichtman

Other traditional pay TV services—including satellite and telecom operators—lost a net 700,000 subscribers during the quarter, compared to a loss of about 1,045,000 subscribers one year ago. Once again, it was AT&T’s premium TV segment—which includes DirecTV, U-verse and AT&T TV—that led the way with 473,000 subscribers lost, but it was better than the 887,000 video subscribers AT&T lost one year ago.

Leichtman also highlighted the top publicly reporting virtual MVPDs—Hulu + Live TV, Sling TV and fuboTV—which the group said added about 55,000 subscribers the second quarter, compared to 45,000 one year ago.

Overall, the top pay TV providers now account for about 77.6 million subscribers: the top seven cable companies have 42.6 million video subscribers, other traditional pay TV services have about 28.2 million subscribers, and the top publicly reporting vMVPDs have about 6.8 million subscribers.