OTTAWA – Canada’s publicly traded television service providers combined lost 22% fewer TV subscribers in the first half of 2017 compared to the same period in 2016, bucking the recent trend of accelerating TV cord-cutting in, according to new research released Monday.
Ottawa-based research and consulting firm Boon Dog Professional Services also found that BCE, Rogers, Shaw/Shaw Direct, Vidéotron, Cogeco, and Telus combined lost approximately 100,931 TV subscribers in their respective fiscal 2017 first and second quarters, down from the 129,000 lost in the same quarters in 2016.
“The significant turnaround in TV subscriber performance at Shaw Cable as a result of the launch of its BlueSky TV service based on Comcast’s X1 TV platform is almost entirely behind the improved cord-cutting numbers for the first half of 2017,” said Boon Dog partner Mario Mota, in the news release. “Should Shaw continue its momentum and other cable companies benefit from similar planned TV service improvements (this bodes well for Rogers, as it is launching the X1 platform in 2018), TV cord-cutting could slow in 2017 for the first time in years.”
According to the research:
– Rogers, Vidéotron, and Cogeco combined lost 94,354 TV subscribers in the first two quarters of fiscal 2017;
– Shaw gained 1,364 customers and Shaw Direct added 1,952 net TV subscribers;
– BCE lost 20,893 net TV subscribers in Q1 and Q2 this year, while Telus gained 11,000 in the same period (note: the wholesale satellite TV subscribers sold by BCE to Telus are included in Telus’ reported TV subscriber number and excluded from the reported BCE TV number to avoid double counting).
TV subscriber losses are just part of the picture that is the traditional TV subscription market in Canada, Mota continued. With about 200,000 housing starts reported in Canada, the traditional TV service providers are losing pace with household growth in the country and therefore TV subscription penetration is declining at a greater level than simply the cord-cutting numbers suggest.
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.
