Telecom companies are winning a big piece of the pay-TV market these days.
A new TeleGeography report shows that over the past 12 months, telcos won 24 percent of net new pay-TV subscribers worldwide. However, they had less of an impact in certain parts of the world. For example, telcos saw only modest customer uptake in Asia Pacific and Eastern Europe. In Latin America, North America and Western Europe, though, telcos added more than a third of net new subscribers.
Pay TV has thrived amid the global economic recession. The in-home entertainment costs far less per month than one dinner and a movie out.
To be sure, the pay-TV model could falter somewhat, for telcos and cable operators, now that NetFlix will stream first-run films at the same time they’ll be available on pay TV. On Tuesday, DVD rental company NetFlix said it had struck a deal with Relativity Media, the production company behind movies such as “Dear John” and “MacGruber.” But Matthew Blank, chairman and CEO of Showtime since 1995, recently downplayed such fears.
"We used to get the question of viability as more basic cable channels became available in more places, but the past couple of years proved the point," Blank told Reuters in a recent interview. "When the economy went south and ad-supported networks were challenged, we had tremendous growth. The subscription model seems to be rejuvenated."
