Dish, DirecTV Among Hardest Hit in Q1 Pay-TV Decline

LONDON-Despite reports that traditional TV viewership has increased during the coronavirus pandemic, the pay-TV market is still declining throughout most of the world, according to a new study by Ampere Analysis. In the U.S, among the top pay-TV providers, Dish and DirecTV are the hardest hit.

Calculating data from the first quarter of 2020, Ampere's study found that DirecTV had a 5% loss of subscribers and Dish saw a 4% decline. Other major U.S. providers like Verizon and Comcast also took a hit (just about a 2% decline for each), but Ampere says they have been less impacted by cord-cutting than the satellite-based Dish and DirecTV.

Of the bellwether pay-TV operators we're tracking, U.S. groups represent more than half of those firms suffering net subscriber declines, said Toby Holleran, senior analyst for Ampere. But losses aren't evenly distributed even here-IPTV and cable firms have shown more resilience as a consequence of their ability to better bundle communications and pay-TV together, insulating themselves against the worst effects of cord-cutting.

The decline in pay-TV subscribers is consistent throughout most of the world, save for China. If China is included in Q1 data, TV subscriber totals were 0.3% higher in Q1 2020 than in Q4 2019. Remove China, however, and there was a net decline of 0.7%, more than the 0.5% decline in Q4 2019.

In actual number of subscribers, Ampere says that outside of China there was a loss of 1.7 million subscribers; with China, the net growth was just under 2 million.

The Ampere Analysis study recorded data from 70 companies that account for roughly half of the world's 1 billion pay-TV subscribers.

For more information, visit www.ampereanalysis.com.

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