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TV Stocks Tumble after AT&T Cord-Cutting Disclosure

posted by martyb on Saturday October 14 2017, @02:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the cut-it-out! dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

A day after DirecTV parent AT&T said it would lose subscribers because people are ditching their satellite and cable television services — a phenomenon known as cord-cutting — shares of companies heavily invested in the TV industry tumbled.

Shares of AT&T, the culprit in Thursday's sell-off, dropped 6 percent, dragging shares of its presumed merger partner, Time Warner, down 2 percent in the process.

AT&T said in a regulatory filing that in the recently ended quarter it would report gaining 300,000 subscribers to its over-the-top digital service while losing 390,000 traditional TV subscribers, for a net loss of 90,000 subs.

While it cited several causes — including hurricanes and changing its credit standards for new customers — it was this line in the filing that Wall Street keyed on: "The video net losses were driven by heightened competition in traditional pay TV markets and OTT services ..."

Bet somebody at AT&T got fired today...

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday October 14 2017, @11:39PM (1 child)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday October 14 2017, @11:39PM (#582438) Homepage

    The ESPN problem is going to solve itself very quickly since they stopped being a sports reporting network and started being a social justice advocacy network.

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  • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday October 15 2017, @04:00AM

    by jmorris (4844) on Sunday October 15 2017, @04:00AM (#582515)

    Not as long as the House of Mouse can still demand every cable operator pay them about $10 per subscriber for ESPN if they want the rest of the Mouse's wares. Keep that revenue coming in and ESPN will hurt from loss of advertisers eventually but still have a lot of cash to keep being stupid and dominant enough the NFL won't be allowed to put a stop to the protests. That is the evil part of the bundle, the cable companies are stuck with it as much as their customers. And it would of course be illegal for all of the cable operators to collude against the content providers to all demand unbundling at once. Wonder if it would be legal if they all agitated to break the bundle if they could say it was because POTUS was "bullying" them to do it instead of them "colluding" among themselves?