• by Wayne Friedman , April 25, 2025

Although cord-cutting continues for big legacy pay TV/video company Charter Communications, things might be improving to some extent.

Craig Moffett, media analyst and cofounder of MoffettNathanson Research, says Charter quarterly declines in video subscribers are easing.

For the better part of a year now, Charter made a big push to combine TV-video packages that includes linear TV networks and top streaming apps.

Moffett says this may be working. The most recent sequential quarter-to-quarter subscriber loss for the company was 181,000 -- compared to a year ago, when it was 405,000.

MoffettNathanson estimates while there were 9.5% declines in each of the second and third quarters of 2024, these eased to 8.7% in the fourth quarter and now have dropped to 7.3% in the first quarter.

“Don’t look now, but Charter’s "linear plus streaming" video strategy might just be working,” says Moffett. “Video subscriber trends are getting, wait for it, better!”

Year-over-year, Charter Communications witnessed a 7.3% drop in total video consumers in the first quarter year-over-year (to 12.7 million). 

For the first quarter, Charter’s video revenue dropped 8.4% to $3.6 billion. But its bigger broadband business was up 1.8% to $5.9 billion. Overall company revenue inched up 0.4% to $13.7 billion.

Broadband (Internet) business slipped 1.6% from the year-ago period to 30 million, a drop of 60,000 subscribers. Of that total, 9,000 were due to the fires in California during the period.

Advertising revenues on Charter’s cable/digital TV systems were down 13% to $340 million -- mostly due to political advertising declines vs. the previous-year Presidential election period. Leaving out political Charter’s core-advertising business, revenue was down 5%.

On the more positive side, Charter added 514,000 mobile subscribers -- beating analysts' expectations by around 60,000. Charter now has 10.4 million mobile customers -- up 26% from the year-earlier period.

Charter stock was up 11% to $370.44 in mid-day Friday trading.