Cable profits rise
Two cable giants, Comcast and Cablevision, reported positive fourth-quarter results yesterday even though a large number of customers turned off the firms’ respective pay-TV services.
At Cablevision, COO Tom Rutledge told analysts the Long Island cable operator lost 35,000, or 1 percent, of its basic video customers.
The executive said the decline was almost entirely “attributable to our decision to contest a retransmission consent demand.” As reported, Cablevision battled with Fox over a new contract negotiation that ended up blacking out the Fox network for two weeks.
Fox, like The Post, is owned by News Corp.
Cablevision, run by CEO James Dolan, closed its Bresnan Communications acquisition in the quarter and reported a 45 percent gain in profit to $113.9 million — but shares fell 1.8 percent in part because Wall Street expected better customer results. In the second quarter, Cablevision lost 24,000 subscribers.
At the same time, Comcast shares jumped 4 percent as its video-subscriber loss was less than Wall Street feared. The 135,000 decline was better than the 275,000 subscriber loss in the third quarter and the 265,000 decline in the second quarter.
Net income was up 6.8 percent in the quarter to $1.02 billion.
The latest number might suggest that the rate at which consumers are fleeing cable is declining. Time Warner Cable also showed slowing subscriber declines in the fourth quarter.
Cable companies have dismissed talk of so-called “cord-cutting” and argue that the declines are the result of tough economic conditions that are driving customers to cut household expenses. Even so, customers are spending more time watching video on the Web, surveys show.
A Nielsen report released last week shows that online video usage is growing exponentially. In January the time spent watching video online grew 44.5 percent.
Comcast saw its broadband customers increase by 292,000.
Even while cable companies are doing better on the broadband front, the loss of TV customers is still concerning. Time Warner Cable, Cablevision and Comcast, lost a combined 311,000 customers in the quarter.
Meanwhile rivals, like telecom firms AT&T and Verizon and satellite-TV provider DirecTV continued to siphon customers during the period.
AT&T added 246,000 TV customers in the fourth quarter, while Verizon added 182,000 and DirecTV added 218,000, according to data from Nomura.
