Old-School TV’s Woes Deepen

The old-fashioned TV business is slowly but surely sliding into the ocean. Yes, folks, while we’ve been obsessing about the money TV companies are losing on streaming, the older businesses have been falling apart. Rates of cord cutting from cable and satellite worsened in the first quarter. Today’s report from Dish Network, a satellite TV operator, showed that it had more TV subscriber defections in the period than in any quarter since 2018, based on data from MoffettNathanson. Dish finished March with 7.09 million TV subscribers, half what it had a decade ago. 

Meanwhile, the ad downturn is walloping the companies that own the TV networks. Warner Bros. Discovery, owner of TNT and CNN, reported on Friday morning—when few companies report earnings, so many people perhaps weren’t paying attention—that its TV ad revenues fell a whopping 15% in the quarter compared with a year earlier. On Thursday last week, CBS owner Paramount Global reported that its TV ad revenue fell 11%. In comparison, the worst performer on the digital side was Snap, whose revenues fell 7%, while firms like Pinterest and Meta Platforms showed growth. The Hollywood writers’ strike, if not resolved quickly, could make things worse for the networks. With less new programming to schedule, advertisers might hold back on fall season commitments. YouTube, which as we wrote last week is increasingly dominant in TV, might gain even more share.