To quote Ernest Hemmingway, the U.S. pay TV business seems to be going broke gradually, then suddenly, with Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global taking $9.1 billion and $6 billion Q2 write-downs on their vastly devalued cable networks, and revenue declining more than 10% for EchoStar’s combined pay TV business, just to name a few ghastly metrics.
But the business received somewhat of a reprieve in the second quarter, with only two of the eight major platforms reporting metrics losing more subscribers from April through June than they did in the same period of 2023.
