Calculating Cable TV’s Future

These are dark days for big TV companies. Paramount Global, owner of CBS, began laying off 15% of its staff this week. The share price of Warner Bros. Discovery has fallen so far down the toilet that a plumber would have trouble spotting it. Disney stock has lost most of the ground it gained during an activist fight for board seats this past winter.

What’s dragging all these companies down is the acceleration of cord cutting, which is eroding their biggest cash cow: cable. And investors are flailing because they can’t reliably calculate the future rate of decline, which creates the kind of uncertainty Wall Street loathes.