Streaming video hurts cable, but it’s killing AT&T

7 February 2020 by Steve Blum
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Elmer fudd

The traditional, linear subscription TV business is in a nose dive. In the fourth quarter of 2019, AT&T shed 945,000 subscribers, mostly from DirecTv but also from its legacy Uverse service and its new AT&T TV platform. Add in the 219,000 subscribers who dumped its AT&T TV Now streaming service, and more than million customers walked away from AT&T’s video products.

Comcast and Charter lost TV subscribers, too. But for both companies, they each lost fewer subs over the 12 months of 2019 than AT&T lost in the last three. And both gained broadband subscribers and market share, as consumers move to higher speed service that better meets their needs than slow, DSL-based offerings from AT&T and Frontier Communications.

Like the need to watch streaming video.

Google figured out how to solve the linear TV problem. They’re not going to offer the service any more…

Google Fiber will no longer offer a linear TV product to new customers. For our current TV customers, we know you have come to rely on Google Fiber TV and we will continue to provide you with traditional TV service. And we’ll be happy to help everyone explore other options to get their favorite programming the way TV is watched now — over the Internet, with the virtually unlimited choice and control online viewing provides.

AT&T is pinning its hopes on the new HBO Max streaming service it plans to launch in May, for $15 per month. It’s beginning to look like a product that will make or break the company. With AT&T’s spending on video assets, like Time Warner, climbing and its video revenue in a nose dive, it’s betting its future on its ability to produce the same kind of instant success that Disney had with its new streaming service launch last year.