OTTAWA – Canada’s publicly traded television service providers combined lost almost six times more TV subscribers in the first half of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014, and almost double what they lost in all of 2014, according to new research released Wednesday.
Ottawa-based research and consulting firm Boon Dog Professional Services also found that BCE, Rogers, Shaw/Shaw Direct, Vidéotron, Cogeco, Telus, and MTS (IPTV subscribers only) combined lost approximately 113,700 TV subscribers in their respective fiscal 2015 first and second quarters, up significantly from the 19,200 lost in the same quarters in 2014, and almost double the 65,000 lost in their entire 2014 fiscal years.
“The ongoing trend of the cable companies losing customers to the IPTV companies continued in the first half of 2015,” said Boon Dog partner Mario Mota, in the news release. “And since IPTV subscriber growth is slowing and the satellite TV companies continue to experience significant subscriber declines, we are seeing overall TV subscriber losses accelerate.”
According to the research:
– Canada’s biggest four cable companies (Rogers, Shaw, Vidéotron, and Cogeco) combined lost 182,800 TV subscribers in the first two quarters of fiscal 2015;
– BCE gained 44,180 net TV subscribers in Q1 and Q2 this year, while Shaw Direct lost 11,074;
– Telus gained 38,000 net TV subscribers in the same period, while MTS lost 2,011 (IPTV only).
Mota notes, however, that TV subscriber losses in the first half of 2015 included the impact of the CRTC’s decision prohibiting TV service providers from requiring customers to provide a minimum 30 days’ notice to cancel their service, which effectively resulted in an extra month of customer deactivations being counted in Q1 2015 compared to previous quarters. Even with record subscriber losses, given that roughly 11.6 million households subscribed to a traditional TV service at the end of the first half of 2015 (June 30), the 113,700 customers lost so far this year represents just 1% of the total market.
A full analysis of the latest TV subscriber metrics and subscriber forecasts will be published in the next report in Boon Dog’s Canadian Digital TV Market Monitor research series.
