More than 400,000 American homes drop their pay-TV service since the start of the year.
DirecTV Group, the No.1 U.S. satellite TV provider, revealed its first ever quarterly customer losses on Thursday, with some 52,000 homes dropping the service in the second quarter. That was more than analysts expected from a company long seen as the best run video provider in the industry.
Also on Thursday, Time Warner Cable Inc, the No.2 cable provider said it lost more subscribers than analysts expected with 169,000 customers leaving the service. The biggest U.S. TV distributor, Comcast Corp, lost 176,000 video subscribers.
The idea of cord-cutting has gathered steam as several major technology companies have held talks with program makers about putting together TV packages that will be delivered via the Internet. The idea would be to use cheaper, smaller TV packages to attract customers to buy or use their services. So far Google Inc, Intel Corp and Amazon are among those known to have held talks.
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