Time Warner Cable Reports Record Quarterly Loss of TV Subscribers

Time Warner Cable reported the steepest quarterly loss of television subscribers in its history, which it attributed at least in part to the month-long battle it had with the CBS Corporation in August 2013.

The CBS blackout ended in early September 2013. Still, when the third quarter wrapped up at the end of that month, Time Warner Cable had shed 306,000 of its 11.7 million TV subscribers. It convinced other subscribers not to cancel by offering credits for the downtime, particularly for Showtime, the premium cable channel owned by CBS that was also blacked out in August. Time Warner Cable disclosed that it dispensed about $15 million in such credits. For the last few years, Time Warner Cable and other cable companies have lost small numbers of TV subscribers each quarter, but they have more than compensated by gaining broadband and phone subscribers. But for the Wall Street analysts who track Time Warner Cable, or TWC for short, the TV subscriber losses were the clear headline. Adam Ilkowitz of Nomura Securities called the subscriber losses “shocking.”