Renowned media conglomerates, including Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, are facing major subscriber losses in the cable TV business.
According to a report by The Hollywood Reporter, Cable TV providers had suffered big losses of subscribers in the third quarter of 2022, with a drop of 7,85,000 net video subscribers in the US.
This is more than the 6,50,000 subscriber drop experienced in the third quarter of 2021.
With their nascent streaming operations not yet able to offset the loss of cable television subscribers, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have been dealt a numbing blow.
Disney's streaming service, Disney+, drew an additional 12.1 million subscribers from the last quarter, taking its total subscriber count to 164.2 million. However, it also suffered its biggest financial loss from the same streaming platform, valued at 1.47 billion USD, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
Disney CEO Bob Chapek has assured that the company is still on track to approach profitability by fiscal year 2024.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. Discovery saw a decrease in linear revenue in its most recent quarter. It suffered losses of 8 per cent and 37 per cent in advertising revenue and content revenue respectively.
However, not all is gloom and doom for the David Zaslav-led media giant as both its streaming services, HBO Max and Discovery+, showed a growth up to 92.1 million subscribers in this quarter.
Zaslav has planned to merge the two into a singular service by spring 2023, with a possible ad-supported tier.
Till then, however, Discovery has to manage both its linear drop and the costs incurred in combining the two companies.
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