Kagan: Cable Subs Down, Cord Cutting Minimal

Cable operators suffered their greatest three-month decline in TV subscribers in 30 years, according to one research firm. Still, there is no widespread evidence of cord-cuttng across the industry -- as both telcos and satellite operators picked up enough subscribers to mitigate an overall drop in those willing to pay for TV service.

SNL Kagan estimates that cable operators lost 741,000 basic video customers in the July-September quarter, compared to the April-June period this year, the largest drop for a quarter since Kagan began tracking the figures in 1980. And of the approximately 100 million homes that pay for service, cable's aggregated share continued to decline, falling from 62.9% in the third quarter of 2009, to 60.3% this year for the period. But as the cable slide occurred, the combination of telcos AT&T and Verizon, and DBS operators Dish Network and DirecTV, posted an increase in subscribers. So overall -- on the critical gauge on potential cord-cutting -- there was an industry-wide drop of 119,000 subscribers, according to Kagan.