Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

DirecTV Now sheds more than 250,000 subscribers in a single quarter

By

What a difference three months makes. At the end of 2017, DirecTV Now — the streaming subscription offering from AT&T aimed at staunching the flow of cord-cutters leaving the company’s satellite service — had more than 1 million subscribers and was rapidly adding new sign-ups. It reached a zenith of 1.86 million at the end of 2018’s second quarter. That frenzied expansion has come to an end it seems, as the latest numbers painfully illustrate: Over the course of the fourth quarter of 2018, the service lost 267,000 paying customers. Its current subscriber count sits at around 1.6 million.

Why the sharp decline? AT&T attributes it to the people who signed up under the company’s promotional price plan, then decided to leave once that discounted rate ceased. The quarterly report notes that there are no longer any customers on the discounted promotional offer and that the number of people on its more expensive plans has remained stable.

Recommended Videos

To many, this turn of events signifies just how difficult it can be to turn a profit in the live streaming TV landscape, where consumers are more or less free to jump from one service to another as easily as they can buy something from Amazon. With no contracts and no specialized hardware like set-top boxes or satellite dishes, the barrier to entry (and exit) is extremely low.

But it’s not just the ease with which customers can switch that’s likely driving churn at DirecTV Now. The price of the service and what if offers for that money is likely under intense scrutiny by subscribers as they get used to the new streaming landscape and start comparing DirecTV Now to providers like Hulu, SlingTV, YouTube TV, and several other competitors.

DirecTV Now’s prices have risen in recent months, and are expected to rise again, while AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson said the company is attempting to “thin the content out.” Google’s YouTube TV may end up acquiring a significant share of DirecTV Now’s customers. The live TV service recently announced that it had expanded its coverage area to 98 percent of U.S. households, just in time for this year’s Super Bowl. It also announced that it had added key local broadcasters in many of its markets, which has always been one of DirecTV Now’s greatest strengths when it comes to competing for cord-cutters who might be anxious about losing local news and weather.

It’s still too early to say that the fourth quarter losses are an indicator that DirecTV Now can’t compete, but we suspect it has learned an important lesson about the prices people are willing to pay for a satellite or cable alternative.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Simon Cohen
Simon Cohen
Contributing Editor, A/V
Simon Cohen covers a variety of consumer technologies, but has a special interest in audio and video products, like spatial…
You have until June 9 to save $500 off an 85-inch Samsung The Frame TV
A painting being displayed on a Samsung The Frame QLED.

Looking for great TV deals? You still have time to save $500 on the Samsung 85-inch The Frame QLED TV when you head over to Samsung. It usually costs $4,300, but right now the popular and stylish TV is down to $3,800, making it more affordable than before. If you’re keen to invest in a large TV but love to save money too, this is a good opportunity. Here’s what you need to know about the TV before you decide to buy.

Why you should buy the Samsung 85-inch The Frame QLED TV
One of the best QLED TVs around, the Samsung 85-inch The Frame QLED TV is a delight in so many ways. At its core, it’s a fantastic QLED TV with 100% Color Volume with Quantum Dot technology saturating the screen with a billion colors. QLED adds a layer of quantum dots to a TV’s LED backlight with these dots, once exposed to light, emitting their own light with a high level of efficiency to provide great picture quality.

Read more
It’s your last chance to get up to $1,900 off a Samsung OLED TV
The Samsung S90C in a living room environment.

There’s still a little time left to snap up one of the best TV deals available today, with Samsung still selling the 83-inch S90C OLED TV for $3,500 instead of $5,400. The $1,900 discount is a pretty vast one and one that you certainly don’t want to skip. If you’re looking for a great new TV for your large living space, you’re going to love this deal. Let’s take a look at how great the Samsung S90C OLED TV is.

Why you should buy the Samsung 83-inch S90C OLED TV
Samsung makes some of the best TVs around and we’re huge fans of the Samsung 83-inch S90C OLED TV. It has an OLED panel so you get self-lit pixels which can light up independently of each other. That means that you can enjoy the deepest blacks and the brightest colors all on the same scene, ensuring you never miss a detail. The Samsung 83-inch S90C OLED TV uses a Neural Quantum Processor with 4K upscaling so its AI-powered processor can transform whatever you’re watching. There’s also HDR OLED which uses AI deep learning to analyze each scene, detecting areas that need to brighter, darker, or simply richer in color.

Read more
This Sonos Bluetooth speaker has a discount in time for beach weather
Sonos Roam SL in black on a rainy rock outdoors.

A day out at the beach. Cooking outside using a discounted grill or smoker. Pool party madness. What do they all three have in common? A lot of fun, but also a great chance to get any sound equipment ruined by a sudden downpour or a splash of inevitable water. That's why there are models of waterproof Bluetooth speakers, of which the Sonos Roam SL is one. And the good news is that you can get yours at a discounted rate before summer officially gets here. Right now, the Sonos Roam SL is just $127, which is $33 down from its typical price of $160. To get yours, all you need to do is tap the button below. Consider also reading below, as we examine the speaker and see why it is considered an easy pick up.

Why you should buy the Sonos Roam SL
The Sonos Roam SL is an easy-to-use, compact speaker for wherever you roam. Connect to it easily over Wi-Fi at home or Bluetooth on the go, giving you easy options to control the sound in a way that makes sense for you and your location. If you're at home and connected to your Wi-Fi system and have other Sonos speakers, you can even get the Sonos multi-room experience, which syncs everything in a nice way. So, you can keep the Sonos Roam SL out on the patio (where it might get rained upon) and keep the best Sonos speakers indoors and have a really cool, worry-free party experience that not many others will be able to replicate.

Read more