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CTOnews.com May 14 news, the U.S. cable TV industry suffered the worst quarter in history, the number of pay TV subscribers (including YouTube TV and Hulu and other Internet services) fell to the lowest level since 1992, only 75.5 million, accounting for 58.5% of U.S. households, down nearly 7% year-on-year. That's an estimate from SVB moffett nathanson analyst craig moffett, who wrote in a report based on data for the first quarter of 2023:"we're witnessing the sunset of the pay-tv industry. "

With the rise of streaming video, cable, satellite and Internet TV providers in the United States lost a total of 2.3 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2023, the worst subscriber loss to date. Cable operators saw subscriber declines of-9.9%, while satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network saw subscriber declines of-13.4%. Even so-called "virtual multichannel video program distributors," such as YouTube TV and Hulu, lost 264,000 subscribers in the first quarter, one of the sector's worst quarters to date.

CTOnews.com notes that Comcast, the largest pay-TV provider in the U.S., lost 614,000 video subscribers in the first quarter, the most of any company. Google-owned YouTube TV was the only provider tracked by Moffett to add users in the first quarter, with the platform adding about 300,000 users (to 6.3 million) during that period and a net gain of 1.4 million users over the past year. Hulu, meanwhile, has seen little growth over the past three years (and lost about 100,000 live TV subscribers in the first quarter), Moffett noted, while FuboTV lost 160,000 subscribers in North America in the first quarter, its worst quarterly record ever.

The pay-TV industry is suffering from what Moffett calls a "cycle of impoverishment," in which rising sports broadcast costs lead to higher retail prices, exacerbating the phenomenon of cable cut-offs and forcing distributors to raise prices to make up for losses. Even ESPN, once strong in the traditional ecosystem, acknowledges that on-demand streaming will one day be a viable option.

Is pay-tv bottoming out? Moffett once thought the pay-TV industry's "bottom line" was 50 million to 60 million U.S. households. But, Moffett wrote in his latest report,"As things stand, we expect the cable cut-off to get worse and the long-term theoretical 'bottom line' to be breached. "

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