Comcast: Embracing Cord Cutting

Comcast Xfinity Flex

If you look at the numbers in a vacuum, Comcast is losing over 2,586 Pay TV subscribers every single day. At that pace, about a million subs will vanish in the next 12 months. Or will they?

Our friends in Philadelphia also picked up 379,000 high-speed internet customers during the period, driving a 9.3% increase in broadband revenue to $4.72 billion. Broadband is a very profitable business. On Thursday’s earnings call, Comcast CFO Michael Cavanagh called broadband “the foundation of our customer relationships.” The trend is clear, but think about this…

Everyone who can configure a streaming server has an over-the-top (OTT), direct-to-consumer (DTC) play. Everyone. And that’s the point. Comcast is going to do just fine. Broadband customers are very profitable.

As for the networks and content providers who rely on affiliate revenue from MVPDs? That’s a different story. While losing a million pay TV customers won’t hurt Comcast’s bottom line, Comcast is going to use this fact of modern life to torture the cable networks that charge them per subscriber fees for their content.

 

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Author’s note: This is not a sponsored post. I am the author of this article and it expresses my own opinions. I am not, nor is my company, receiving compensation for it.

About Shelly Palmer

Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named LinkedIn’s “Top Voice in Technology,” he covers tech and business for Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular daily business blog. He's a bestselling author, and the creator of the popular, free online course, Generative AI for Execs. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.

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