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AT&T Businesses Television The Almighty Buck United States

AT&T Loses Nearly 1 Million TV Customers After Raising DirecTV Prices (arstechnica.com) 75

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T lost 946,000 TV subscribers in Q2 2019, a loss that the company attributed to price increases, competition, and other factors. AT&T reported a net loss of 778,000 subscribers in the "Premium TV" category, which includes its DirecTV satellite and U-verse wireline TV services. AT&T attributed this loss to "an increase in customers rolling off promotional discounts, competition, and lower gross adds due to a focus on the long-term value customer base." AT&T also lost 168,000 subscribers of DirecTV Now, an online service with linear channels that's similar to traditional satellite and cable TV. AT&T said the DirecTV Now customer loss was "due to higher prices and less promotional activity," meaning that customers have balked at price increases and a refusal to extend discounts.

The Premium TV loss brought AT&T down to 21.6 million customers in that category, while the DirecTV Now loss brought that service down to 1.3 million customers. Including both, AT&T's total number of video subscribers dropped from 25.4 million in Q2 2108 to 22.9 million in Q2 2019. The loss of 946,000 TV subscribers easily outstripped last quarter's AT&T net loss of 627,000 subscribers. "AT&T said it expects a similar level of video losses to continue in the current quarter," according to Reuters.

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AT&T Loses Nearly 1 Million TV Customers After Raising DirecTV Prices

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  • by Rockoon ( 1252108 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @07:12PM (#58987900)
    They will shed customers until the only people left are too lazy to unsubscribe, and who will be milked until they die.
    • by atheos ( 192468 )
      it worked for AOL.
  • Good (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25, 2019 @07:19PM (#58987932)

    And here I thought Slashdot wasn't a feelgood site

    • It is traditional here to throw a little bit of fanservice in between the clickbait and the flamebait.

  • by gantzm ( 212617 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @07:19PM (#58987934)

    Didn't they basically announce the end of DirecTV by saying they would launch no more satellites? That pretty much puts a limit on how long they can even provide DirecTV service, when the last satellite dies it's all over.

    • This. Their cost of service is going to keep rising as they let their infrastructure age out and go away, so they'll keep raising the price for anyone who's willing to pay through the nose to shut the party down.

      They're just cleaning up that last bit of the tail.

      • the guy running the show at at@t it just straight up greedy and he does not even try and deny it. he even gone as far as telling people if you have low profit packages that he does not want them.
        • by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Friday July 26, 2019 @09:50AM (#58991016)

          the guy running the show at at@t it just straight up greedy and he does not even try and deny it.

          That's been the case for ages. I met Ed Whitacre [wikipedia.org] back when he was CEO of AT&T (circa 2003) and he pretty plainly had nothing but contempt for his customers. He was outspoken against net neutrality. (In 2006, Whitacre he said companies like Google, Yahoo! or Vonage should not be able to “use the pipes for free.”) I think a lot of this is cultural holdover from the fact that the phone companies have always been de-facto monopolies and thus never really had to give a shit if their customers didn't like this or that policy. As long as they kept the regulators happy they could do whatever they wanted.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      The CEO of AT&T didn't even know they were in the process of getting another satellite ready to launch when he made that statement. That should tell you everything you need to know about how qualified he is as a CEO.

      Directv's current satellite fleet will last over a decade, they can keep providing satellite TV for a long time. It may diminish but people in rural areas and businesses won't be customers for streaming for a long long time.

      • Directv's current satellite fleet will last over a decade, they can keep providing satellite TV for a long time. It may diminish but people in rural areas and businesses won't be customers for streaming for a long long time.

        Or 2020 (Musk Time)(2021 more likely), when Starlink comes online.

        If you thought DirecTV's losses were big before, just wait until rural customers can not only get streaming Internet video but also all the rest of the Internet at high speeds, for no more than they're paying for DirecTV. If AT&T has more than 1 million left in 5 years I'll be astonished.

        I do wonder exactly how fast uptake for Starlink will be. People are notoriously slow to change utilities, even when their current utility is treating

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25, 2019 @07:24PM (#58987952)

    At some point, services will need to deliver a product people value. Prices are going up, and services become less and less usable. The market is fragmenting, ads are going up, and viewers are learning how their viewing habits are being sold to marketers.

    I wouldn't pay a dime for that experience. Many others feel the same.

    • Netflix did that then the content holders greed kicked in.
      • The content owners are subject to the same market forces as netflix is. It is the carriers that hold all the cards, and those come in two flavors: wired and wireless.

        The wireless market is always in a slow but real flux. They have to bid on spectrum to improve their service, and its not always the same winners and losers.
        The wired market on the other hand is very stable because people dont know who the real villain is (its your local government) and pretend that its a federal issue. They can upgrade as n
  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @07:26PM (#58987968)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • you hit the nail on the head. there also greedy and said they dont want people who are not turning them big profits so unless you on there top package with all the premium channels they dont want you.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25, 2019 @07:27PM (#58987976)

    They only wanted it for the IP and distribution rights. Once the satellites start to fail that will be the end of the service.
    https://spacenews.com/directv-... [spacenews.com]
    They also sold off lots of their U-Verse wireline to Frontier.

    AT&T only wants to be in to cellular and any streaming will be based around cellular distribution. DirectTV DBS is dead man walking.

  • by quenda ( 644621 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @07:37PM (#58988034)

    The wikipedia page is unclear.
    For the $50-$70/month do you get ad-free content?
    Like Netflix, but scheduled, not on-demand? Good for rural people without broadband internet?

    Australia has an expensive satellite service Foxtel (yes, *that* Fox), and the only reason I can see to subscribe to that is if you are a sports fan, as they have monopoly deals on live sport.

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You know that Goat.se guy?

      It's like that. But wider.

  • by guacamole ( 24270 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @07:48PM (#58988086)

    Intermittent internet connection disconnects, packet loss, poor DNS performance, etc. Gotta be some kind of hardware/wire problem along the line. The unfriendliest built-in Wi-Fi router. The tech's never figured it out. Every time I tell them about packet loss, they immediately offered to fix the problem by upgrading 45Mbps pipe to 100Mbps or so. It was useless, so I quit, and disconnected cable TV as well.

    • offered to fix the problem by upgrading 45Mbps pipe to 100Mbps or so

      You didnt want to more than double your packet losses? Whats wrong with you!

    • The retention guy was flabbergasted when he asked why I was leaving, and I replied, "Your DVRs suck."

      I had not been a DirecTV user who used a tivo;I had direct as the way of feeding my tivo . . . when they replaced my failed tiros with their own, it was just too piano.

      I got cable and a Romio (?), but tit turns out that the tivo interface is now a weak version of its former self, with extra pushes needed to do what was once simple, apparently so they can try to sell you streams or purchases in the process .

  • by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @08:01PM (#58988136)

    We need more channel choice not tiers.

    In the UK, NZ, AUS. (canadian tv with pick and play plans) sports is not forced on to you.

    In usa you pay like
    $10-12/mo for ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN News, ESPNU. (in most basic plans)
    $0.50? /mo golf channel (in higher basic tears)
    $0.50-$1 /mo (in market rate each) ACC Network, Longhorn Network, SEC Network, BIG 10, PAC 12 (in most basic plans for the in market one)(some are in basic for all on some systems)
    $1.50-$2 /mo FS1 and FS2 (in most basic plans)
    $0.50? /mo NBC SPORTS NETWORK (in most basic plans)
    $2-3 /mo for all MLB NETWORK, NBA-TV, NHL Network, Tennis Channel, NFL network (in higher basic tears)
    $3-$6 /mo each local in market RSN (some areas have 2-5 that are market) (in most basic plans)

    • by Strider- ( 39683 )

      If I'm paying for the content, then stop shoving advertising down my throat.

      • by tepples ( 727027 )

        Then I presume you'd be happy to pay HBO-like prices for every single channel. This is what would probably have to happen if all channels that currently use a mix of subscriber revenue and advertisement revenue were to switch to only subscriber revenue.

    • by c-A-d ( 77980 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @11:27PM (#58988962)

      Canada is really bad too, quite frankly. The "basic cable" package is $25/mo for 25 channels. You can add channels after that if you want. But still, you start at $25/mo. Oh, did I say $25/mo? I forgot equipment rentals, which you can purchase if you want. And taxes. And levies. And fees.... no thanks. Not worth it at all.

      Last year, the CRTC forced the cable companies to create a "basic lite" option. The cable companies gamed the system so bad there is no demand for it. It was a complete joke. The CRTC looked like absolute idiots over it.

      I'm proud to say I have not had cable since 2010, and that was a 3 month experiment after not having had cable for 6 years prior. Nobody used it during that 3 months. I think I watched it once and turned it off because it was so bad.

  • by p51d007 ( 656414 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @08:22PM (#58988250)
    They will continue to shed subscribers to their overpriced crap! Over the air is "good enough" for most of us, and I can usually "find" anything else online. Considering the (lack of) quality of programming, most of it isn't worth a plug nickel anyway.
    • I'd rather just watch cute Koreans eating on youtube, or people gardening, than most of what is available as "television" or whatever they call these "shows" now that they're streamed.

  • by shoor ( 33382 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @08:23PM (#58988254)

    As I recall from Econ 101 (something I took before a man walked on the Moon), there's this notion of price elasticity. If you charge more, you sell less, but you make more per unit sold so you may or may not make more profit depending on where you are on some price demand curve. I think what AT&T are saying with that 'long term value customer' expression, is that they hope that the customers who stay, and fork over more money to stay, will keep their profits up. I admit it sounds fishy, but maybe that's their spin on it.

    • by Aighearach ( 97333 ) on Friday July 26, 2019 @02:03AM (#58989346)

      Well done, yes, that is exactly what they were explicitly saying using terms of art from their industry. They lowered prices towards the bottom of the curve ("promotions") to get a big crop of new customers and then they raised them to a higher part of the curve to get rid of the cheapskates and retain the more valuable customers who are willing to pay more. They also anticipate continuing that move up the price curve.

  • by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Thursday July 25, 2019 @08:40PM (#58988320)

    If you want folks to come back to DirecTv all of the following conditions need to be met:

    1) Drop the price. At least in half. ( or see # 3 ) It is definitely not worth the price they demand today.
    2) Group the commercials. Show them all either prior to the show ( like the theaters do ) or at the end. No interruptions every eight minutes.
    3) Pick your own channels at X cost per channel vs a costly bundle of sh*t no one wants to see.

    Yes, this means most of the channels will go away once they're no longer subsidized by bundle packaging.
    Few will miss the Jesus Channels, Shopping Channels, Infomercials and programming in a language we don't even speak.

    The choice is easy: You either make it financially attractive and worth my time to watch, or you watch it slowly die as folks find better alternatives.

    • by Aighearach ( 97333 ) on Friday July 26, 2019 @02:06AM (#58989358)

      If you want folks to come back to DirecTv

      It says right in the summary that they don't want that.

      "a focus on the long-term value customer base."

      It might help if you understant that the word "value" attaches to "long-term" and not "customer." It isn't a value customer. It is a customer who has long-term value to the company. That is business speak for people willing to pay more. They don't want people unwilling to pay more to come back.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Nooooo...I'd miss the Jesus channels, especially "Camp Meeting". They have a rotating cast of Preachers, some claim to be Doctors of Something or Other. They all have a common theme, that thou shalt give unto them a "seed" which usually is about $1000. They have appeals where they ask G-d to send them 1000 people who will give their "seeds". The idea is that G-d will reward you if you do this. They are very good about claiming G-d does not yield favors for money, which is convenient seeing as G-d isn't coll

  • as a stand alone, single purpose device is about to go the way of the Fax Machine. Phone Booths, land lines and Rotary phones.

    Just my 2 cents ;)
  • starlink will be able to kill directtv and hughesnet and dishtv if it works as advertised. high bandwidth low latency internet = big pipe to rural households that are the bread and butter of directtv. i've been a subscriber for more than a decade because i live in a rural area with no broadband coverage at all from anyone but satellite and honestly the directtv tv package is pretty good. but if I had a choice to move to a pure internet big pipe I'd leap at it, even if it cost me 300% more than my current
  • Why no mention of "freedom" or "choice". Of course the relevant questions are "What options exist where ATT is losing customers?" and "Where ATT is NOT losing customers what options should be made available?"

    Of course ATT's idea of a "solution" is to buy up any competitors or boost the cost for access to competing content or both.

    Suggested solution approaches available upon polite request. Whoops. Forgot this is Slashdot. Phuck solutions or politeness. ROFLMAO at the very idea.

  • in addition to the house in Hawaii, DirecTV is on the list of things I want.

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