Dish this morning reported that it added a net of approximately 39,000 video subscribers in the fourth quarter, including 75,000 reactivations in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands following last year’s hurricanes.
The company also disclosed that its satellite TV service finished the year with 11.030 million subscribers while its live streaming service, Sling TV, had 2.212 million paying customers. The combined total for the company was 13.242 million.
Dish says Sling TV subscribers increased by 47 percent from the end of the fourth quarter of 2016 to the end of the fourth quarter of 2017.
This marks the first time that Dish has separately broken out its satellite TV and Sling TV subscriber numbers.
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With more than two million subscribers, Sling TV is the clear leader in the live streaming category, based on the number of customers.
AT&T has said DIRECTV Now finished 2017 with nearly 1.2 million subscribers.
With Dish now reporting, the top four pay TV operators added a net of 218,000 video subscribers in the fourth quarter despite analyst and journalist predictions of pending doom for the pay TV sector.
The largest operator, AT&T, which owns DIRECTV, U-verse and DIRECTV Now, added a net of 161,000 video customers in the fourth quarter. Charter, the third largest, added a net of 15,000 (including its business subscribers) while Comcast, the second largest, lost a net of 33,000.
— Phillip Swann
Has Directv replaced networks chiller channel and many channels that were discontinued or cancelled. For instance EPIX replacing a subscription that Directv dropped UNIVERSAL NETWORK, that NBC stopped production, but DIRECTV DID not replace but still raising rate fees?
Dish lost 1.1 million satellite TV customers last year. Is that a record?