THE TOP 15 MARKETS in the U.S. saw cable subscribers drop by as much as 8% on an annual basis, balanced by “strong” growth in telco TV and “mixed” results for satellite TV , according to new data from SNL Kagan.
The data examined cable, satellite (referred to as Direct Broadcast Satellite or DBS), and telco video subscribers for the first quarter of 2011 by operator and by market. Altogether, the top 15 markets serve more than 38 million subscribers, with New York and Los Angeles far and away the largest multichannel markets. Chicago and Philadelphia are similarly sized in terms of numbers of video subscribers – Philadelphia is the nation’s third-largest cable TV market, followed by Chicago and then Boston, the seventh-largest multichannel market.
Cable subscriber losses were the greatest in Dallas and Atlanta, markets where telco video customers increased 7.8% and 29%, respectively. Year-over-year DBS subscribers dropped 5.1% from the first quarter of 2010 in Atlanta, but grew nearly 4% in Washington, D.C., and Houston, while telco video subscribers increased by nearly 51% in Los Angeles.
Following the relatively strong gains in Washington, Houston and Tampa-St. Petersburg, DBS subscribers in major markets showed a 0.1% gain for the year versus the 1.8% gain for the industry, showing that DBS is gaining more subscribers in mid-sized to smaller markets. Telco TV subs gained 24% in the top 15 markets, finishing with nearly 4.4 million subscribers versus more than 3.5 million as of the year-ago quarter.
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