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...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @12:09AM
Crap like that should never be in the same sentence as tv/entertainment/etc. That tells more about the problems we are having than many things can.