Charter Communications on Friday said the company continues to see declines in its pay television business, even though the company has re-worked many of its packages to include more-flexible options with included streaming perks and lower prices.
Charter lost 167,000 Spectrum TV subscribers during the three-month period that ended in March (Q1), though its rate of churn was 57 percent lower compared to the 392,000 video customers the company shed during Q1 2024. When including business customers, Spectrum TV lost 181,000 video customers during Q1, better than the 405,000 video customers who canceled their service during the same period in 2024. Charter ended Q1 with 12.7 million video customers.
For two years, Charter has promoted its new Spectrum TV packages as ones that offer greater flexibility in the channel bundles customer pay for, with access to network-owned streaming services like Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, Peacock, AMC Plus and Max included in many of them. Charter says the collective price of its streaming perks results in a significant savings to customers, compared to the individual price they’d pay for each service if they bought them outside a Charter bundle.
Still, the company has come up short in marketing those benefits to cost-conscious consumers — something Charter is working to address. Charter is in the process of developing a new digital hub that helps customers learn about the streaming perks available to them, and manage their subscriptions accordingly. In March, The Desk was first to report that Charter had hired Scott Barton, a former executive with MyBundle, to help execute on its digital marketplace strategy.
It isn’t just pay TV where Charter has faced increased pressure from competitors: The company’s broadband Internet products continue to lose customers to fixed-wireless services offered by T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T, and new broadband products like Starlink.
Around 51,000 residential broadband customers disconnected their Spectrum Internet service during Q1, and another 9,000 customers were lost due to the Southern California wildfires in January, Charter said. Spectrum is the main land-based video and broadband provider to the greater Los Angeles area, including the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods most-affected by the fires.
While the disconnects were steep, that also marked an improvement from the 72,000 customers that disconnected from Spectrum Internet during Q1.
One area where Charter is flourishing: The company added 495,000 new residential mobile lines during Q1, up from the 473,000 that joined during the same period in 2024. Charter CEO Chris Winfrey cautioned that the mobile business could be impacted by tariffs that drive up the cost of smartphones for consumers, but Charter has not experienced any business impacts from a looming trade war just yet.
“I don’t have a crystal ball on the economy, but I think we’re pretty well positioned for potential headwinds in a recessionary environment, if that’s what’s coming. I’m not predicting that, I’m just saying that we’re in a pretty good spot,” Winfrey said.
