AT&T Loses Record Number of Traditional TV Subscribers In Q2, Drops 156,000 DirecTV Satellite Customers (variety.com)

According to Variety, AT&T's pay-TV business has lost a record 351,000 traditional video customers in the second quarter, with the internet-delivered DirecTV Now service failing to fully offset the losses. From the report: In Q2, historically a seasonally weak period for the pay-TV business, DirecTV's U.S. satellite division lost 156,000 customers sequentially, dropping to 20.86 million, compared with a gain of 342,000 in the year-earlier quarter. AT&T's U-verse lost 195,000 subs in the quarter, which was actually an improvement over the 391,000 it lost in Q2 of 2016. AT&T touted that it gained 152,000 DirecTV Now customers in Q2, after adding just 72,000 in the first quarter of 2017. Overall, it had signed up 491,000 DirecTV Now subs as of the end of June, after the OTT service launched seven months ago.

Comments

Cord-cutting!

[TigerPlish]

I'm about to do the same to Comcast.. I'll just keep their internet.

Honestly, the only things I watch on "TV" (and these are DVR'd, due to this and that are.. The Amazing World of Gumball, Mighty Magiswords, Formula One racing, the odd thing on Science, and CNN's The "insert decade here"...

I'm *this* close to doing it.. to cutting the cord. Why haven't I done so yet? Dunno.. inertia? Nostalgia? Certainly nothing *rational* that I can think of..

Sorry, network / cable guys.. TV lost. It has become irrelevant.

Quick!

[Billly Gates]

Get rid of net neutrality ASAP so Netflix can be throttled out of existence so expensive tiers I don't want can be forced upon me!!

Anything else is Communism and Obama had something to do with it. We don't want to end up like Venezuela so let's give up some rights to the big corporations now before it's too late who have our best interests at heart

Re:Quick!

[Espectr0]

Venezuelan here. I know you are joking but there are still some of you that actually think Obama or anyone in the democratic party is a communist. You couldn't know the difference, and frankly "communist Obama" would be a godsend in a communist / socialist country such as mine.

Want my business? Give me ad-free a-la-cart shows

[toejam13]

I dropped DirectTV years ago when I used to look at my channel guide on Saturday morning and see page after page of infomercials. And that was after setting up my favorites list which was maybe a third of the channels I was paying for.

Even when a program I liked was playing, the commercial breaks seemed to get longer and longer, and the commercials scummier and scummier. Boner pills. Restless leg syndrome. Reversible mortgages. Snake oil, junk food, and scams.

People are sick and tired of traditional cable systems. They don't want to pay for channels they don't watch. They're tired of the commercials. And they're increasingly spoiled with on-demand programming.

Your business model is dying. The sooner you become an IPTV on-demand gateway for content distributors, the better. Otherwise, the Roku boxes of the world will do it for you.

I tried DirecTV for a short time

[FudRucker]

and i quit after the first month, what DirecTV dont tell you is over half the channels are spam channels nothing but home shopping channels trying to sell you crap you dont need, i dont want to wade through that crap to find something to watch, and DirecTV tried to get me to pay for a whole year and i called my credit card company and told them my credit card got stolen and to cancel that card and send me a new card with a new number cutting DirecTV off i refuse to pay for a whole year of shitty service from a bunch of spammers disguised as a satellite TV company, Fuck DirecTV i hope they go bankrupt and out of business