Less than half of television services in the Multiscreen Index reported subscriber gains in the first quarter of 2018.
The informitv Multiscreen Index reported an apparent loss of just over 5 million subscribers or 1.14% in the first quarter of 2018. This was attributed to a loss of subscribers in the Asia Pacific region, following the merger of Dish TV and Videocon d2h in India.
Dish TV and Videocon had previously reported a total 29.51 million subscribers between them. After merging in March, the enlarged Dish TV had 6.90 million more subscribers than it had the previous quarter, although overall there appeared to be an apparent loss of 6.51 million from the previous combined total.
Excluding Dish TV and Videocon d2h, the index rose by just 1.49 million subscribers, or 0.36%, which is the lowest quarterly increase informitv has seen. The average quarterly gain over the previous three years has been around 4.5 million, or 1.15%.
“Traditional television subscriber numbers are flat or falling for some services and tracking them through mergers and acquisitions, together with changes in reporting methodologies is increasingly complex,” observed Dr William Cooper, the editor of the informitv Multiscreen Index. “Only 48 of the 100 services in the index reported subscriber gains in the first quarter. That does not include some services that only report figures once or twice a year.”
Subscriber numbers in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region rose by just 0.19 million in the first quarter, with the top 10 losing 112,000 between them, despite gains from Sky, Rostelcom and Cyfrowy Polsat. Sky has 22.90 million customers across Europe, which is an increase of 38,000. The largest loss was for Canal+ International, which shed 212,000 subscribers in the quarter.
Satellite services in the United States continued to see subscriber losses, with DIRECTV losing 188,000, and DISH Network losing 185,000. The top 10 services in the United States lost 212,000 subscribers in the quarter, with only three of them reporting gains. The largest of these was from the online service DIRECTV NOW, which added 336,000 subscribers, taking its total to 1.42 million. Sling TV from DISH Network added 91,000, for a total of 2.30 million.
With Sling TV and DIRECTV NOW regularly reporting subscriber numbers, the Multiscreen Index now accounts for online distribution as a separate category, in addition to cable, satellite and telco networks. With a total of 3.71 million online subscribers in the index it is far smaller than satellite, which still leads with 182.12 million subscribers.
The online category does not include other multichannel services like YouTube TV, for which figures are not available. It does not include numbers for online services like NOW TV in the United Kingdom, which is currently aggregated under satellite, as Sky does not break out separate figures.