It's the economy, stupid, I: In-Stat says money, not cord cutting, leads to cable subs decline

A stagnant economy (yeah, right, the recession is over!) led 167,000 satellite and cable subscribers to stray from the fold in the second quarter, not the urge to cut the cord, according to new information developed by In-Stat.

"While growing availability of over-the-top Internet video is spurring talk of mass 'cord cutting,' this decline is not about cancelling pay TV in favor of Internet video. The main driver of these subscriber declines is the struggling U.S. economy and high unemployment," said In-Stat principal analyst Mike Paxton in a news release.

Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett, in an unrelated story, agreed that cord cutting is neither rampant nor the reason for subscriber declines. In Moffett's view, as expressed to Broadcasting & Cable, "anemic income growth threatens to make pay TV unaffordable" and that "real-world evidence of cord cutting remains scant."

For more:
- see this news release
- and this story

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