Cable and satellite TV companies released their earnings reports for the latest quarter. Here is a summary of earnings reports for selected companies and what they reveal about the industry's prospects.
— Oct. 18: Verizon Communications Inc. added 119,000 FiOS video customers in the third quarter to end with 4.6 million.
— Oct. 24: AT&T Inc. says it added 198,000 U-verse TV subscribers to reach 4.3 million.
— Oct. 26: Comcast Corp. says it lost 117,000 video subscribers in the quarter, leaving it with about 22 million. Video subscriber losses have slowed for eight quarters in a row, which the company said was due to better customer service and fewer in-person service calls. Analysts were expecting an average decline of 123,000.
— Monday: Time Warner Cable Inc. lost 140,000 residential video subscribers to end with 12.2 million. The number of business video subscribers was unchanged at 185,000.
— Tuesday: DirecTV Group Inc. says it added 67,000 U.S. subscribers in the quarter, but that was well below the 327,000 it added in the same quarter last year. The company blamed a fee dispute. For a while, Viacom channels disappeared from DirecTV as the companies argued over fees. DirecTV ended the quarter with 19.98 million U.S. subscribers, making it the second-largest provider of pay-TV signals in the country, after Comcast.
Dish Network Corp. says it lost 19,000 subscribers in the quarter, less than the 111,000 drop in the same quarter last year, despite a four-month blackout of AMC channels due to a fee dispute. The dispute ended with a settlement in late October. The quarter ended with 14 million subscribers.
Cablevision Systems Corp. says it lost 10,000 TV subscribers in the quarter. That was fewer than the 19,000 it lost in the same quarter last year. Cablevision ended the third quarter with 3.25 million TV customers.
Charter Communications Inc. says it lost 72,000 TV customers in the quarter.