Dish Falls as Record Customer Loss Renews Cord-Cutting Fear
- Second-quarter results mark worst-ever quarter for user losses
- Revenue of $3.84 billion missed analysts’ projections
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Dish Network Corp. lost a record number of TV subscribers in the second quarter as programming blackouts and price increases drove customers to seek cheaper online alternatives, reviving industrywide concerns about “cord-cutting.”
Dish shed 281,000 pay-TV customers in the quarter, compared with a loss of 81,000 a year earlier, according to a statement from the Englewood, Colorado-based company Thursday. That marks the biggest loss of TV subscribers in any quarter. The rate of monthly customer defections, or churn, rose to 1.96 percent from 1.71 percent a year earlier, Dish said in a separate filing.