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Leichtman: Pay-TV Lost 5.9 Million Subs as Broadband Customer Growth Cooled in 2022
March 6, 2023
U.S. pay-TV operators continue to hemorrhage subscribers as high-speed internet service subscribers also dropped, failing to fill the gap.
New data from Leichtman Research Group found that 5.9 million pay-TV subscribers discontinued service in 2022, up from 4.7 million discontinuing subs in 2021. At the same time, the number of new high-speed (or broadband) subscribers declined to 3.5 million, compared with 3.75 million new subs in 2021.
Comcast Cable led all operators with 2 million pay-TV sub losses, while Charter Communications (Spectrum) added the most broadband subs at 350,000.
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The top pay-TV providers now account for about 70.2 million subscribers — with the top seven cable companies having about 37.8 million video subscribers, other legacy pay-TV services having 24.1 million subs, and online TV services accounting for about 8.3 million combined subs.
“Fixed wireless services accounted for 90% of the net broadband additions in 2022, compared to 20% of the net adds in 2021,” analyst Brice Leichtman said in a statement. “Total broadband net adds in 2022 were slightly lower than the previous year, and down from about 5 million in 2020, but were more than in any year from 2012-2019.”
| Comcast | 16.1 million total subs end of 2022 | (2,034,000) decline |
| Charter | 15.1 million | (686,000) |
| Cox | 3 million | (340,000) |
| Altice | 2.4 million | (293,300) |
| Mediacom | 510,000 | (62,000) |
| Breezeline | 309,627 | (37,102) |
| Cable One | 181,500 | (79,500) |
| Comcast | 32.15 million total broadband subscribers | 250,000 additions |
| Charter | 30.43 million | 344,000 |
| Cox | 5.56 million | 30,000 |
| Altice | 4.28 million | (103,300) decline |
| Mediacom | 1.46 million | 5,000 |
| Cable One | 1.06 million | 14,400 |
| Breezeline | 693,781 | (22,997) |