• by P.J. Bednarski  @pjbtweet, October 1, 2018

As any slogan-spewing athlete can tell you, “Winners never quit and quitters never win.”

AT&T’s DirecTV is kind of adding an asterisk to that.

In a new commercial from BBDO’s  Los Angeles office and its Hearts and Science media agency breaking this week, a football coach is rallying his football team in the locker room.

“Champions don’t back down,” the coach lectures, and then he takes an odd turn: “They don’t settle and they don’t quit —  except for cable.”

It’s an inspiring message that might have made even Vince Lombardi turn in his cable set-top box.

The 30-second commercial, “Locker Room,” was directed by Taiki Waititi, the New Zealand director who recently directed “Thor Ragnarok,” the last installment of the Thor Marvel comic series.

Another new commercial, this one hyping DirecTV’s customer satisfaction, will debut later in October.

The “Locker Room” spot debuting now comes on the first day of the fourth quarter — the financial kind — that begins today.

AT&T reports its third quarter results later in October. But for the first two quarters of 2018, DirecTV has lost subscribers as its DirecTV Now streaming service has gained.

In Q2, DirecTV Now gained 342,000 subscribers, while DirecTV lost 286,000 net subscribers. In Q1, it was much the same story. DirecTV lost 188,000 customers and upstart DirecTV Now added 312,000. But DirecTV Now is far cheaper than the older satellite service from which it takes part of its name.

In Q2,  that income disparity meant AT&T’s Entertainment Group’s operating income fell 11.6% to $1.5 billion for that quarter. In Q1, operating income for AT&T’s Entertainment Group fell 16%, to $1.33 billion.

DirecTV and Dish, the two main satellite TV services, are duking it out on the streaming side, too. Dish owns Sling, the first and basically the cheapest streaming TV service, that coincidentally today is launching two new commercials starring Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally as “Slingers.”

Sling has more customers -- about 2.3 million compared to DirecTV Now’s 1.8 million.

In its Q2, Sling gained 41,000 customers but it lost 192,000 Dish subscribers. In the first quarter, Dish lost 94,000 customers and Sling gained 91,000.

Even though Sling is older and less expensive, part of DirecTV Now’s appeal may be that in many markets in addition to NBC, ABC and Fox, it also offers local CBS stations. Dish doesn’t provide CBS stations anywhere, and those other familiar old-line broadcast networks only come with more expensive packages.