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Comcast Excited To Have Lost 4,000 TV Subscribers This Spring (consumerist.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Consumerist: Comcast has released their second quarter results and they are happy to announce that they lost 4,000 TV subscribers in the last three months. Why are they so happy to announce such a loss? Because, compared to the same time last year where they lost 69,000 TV subscribers, the loss this year is much better for them. Comcast said in a statement to investors that "video customers net losses improved to 4,000, the best second quarter result in over 10 years." That Consumerist reports: "That means that for the most than a decade, the best Comcast can do in April to June of every year is to lose only 4,000 TV subscribers. At this time last year, Comcast reported 22.3 million TV subscribers, and at the same time this year, they report roughly 22.3 million TV subscribers. The major driver of increased subscriptions comes, as you'd guess, from broadband. Comcast reports an increase of 220,000 broadband customers in the second quarter which, in the overall growth of the company, entirely offsets a lost of 4,000 TV viewers."
A high-flying stock missed the quarterly earnings by a penny per share and the share price plunged 50% in after market trading.
Translation: Stock analysts are dicks.
They pretty much force the TV subscription on you these days. They pretty much forced a TV subscription on me even though I'm an Internet-only user since it's actually cheaper to have the cable package than the Internet package alone. I haven't even opened the cable box they sent me.
"Is that dad? Either that or Batman's really let himself go."
Seriously, in other "news", Amazon sees a huge decline in revenue in Q1 every year ...
Yes, Comcast, and just about every other related company (cable, IPTV, or satellite), loses subs every year in Q2, or at best sees fewer gains. People tend to move out of their houses in the spring, so that they can sell during the peak buying summer season, since families with children prefer not to move during the school year. And college students cancel their subscriptions when school ends in May or June (Q2) for the summer (even broadband, if they are living off campus). Typically, they gain the majority (or perhaps more, some years) of those subs back in Q3 or Q4; as evidenced by the "flat" year-over-year numbers.
Yes, losing 4,000 subs in Q2 is something for Comcast to celebrate, because if history is any indication, that means that they are actually going to see positive growth for the year. But it's not all good news. It's entirely possible that history isn't an indication, and that the reason that fewer subs were lost in Q2 this year was because there are fewer students subscribing in the first place. And that means that these subs won't reappear in the fall, if that's the case. I can't tell for certain, but it's a possibility.