Subscription Video Market Shrinks 1.5% in 2011

U.S. cable operators lost about 2.9 million video subscribers in 2011, shrinking the overall subscription TV market by 1.5 percent even as telcos added 1.1 million and satellite TV providers were roughly flat at 280,000 net adds, according to Nielsen data.


The big take away is that cable TV subs fell five percent. That steady drip, drip, drip of deserting customers now is the cable analogy to telco wired voice. 


Meanwhile, households with broadband and only free, over-the-air broadcast TV increased by 631,000 over the course of last year, climbing 14 percent to 5.1 million.