The story of “cord-cutting” by U.S. consumers tired of paying hefty monthly bills to receive a plethora of cable television channels along with their valued local broadcast stations is well-stated, with research continuously pointing to a continued dip in households with traditional MVPD services.
Now, Madison & Wall’s Brian Wieser reports household penetration for cable TV in the fourth quarter has reached a dangerously fresh low for an industry that needs a “FAST” solution to digital encroachment.
For the respected media advertising trends analyst, “Pay TV Singularity Is Here,” which he titles his latest investor note on the subject.
The big takeaway? U.S. pay TV subscriptions have fallen below 50% household penetration in the fourth quarter of 2025. That data is based on estimates that include traditional MVPDs and the two direct broadcast satellite players (Dish and DirecTV), along with vMVPDs such as Sling, Fubo and the YouTube Live platform.
Total it up, and they represented slightly more than 50% of U.S. households last quarter.
“We estimate that there are 66.7 million subscribing households out of nearly 133 million total, based upon the most recent publication of the total by the US Census Bureau from earlier this year,” Wieser says. “With penetration share losses in the tenths of percentage points continuing, during the fourth quarter the penetration rate in 4Q25 should be right at 50%.”
That’s a swift slide from the first quarter of 2018, when penetration hovered close to 80%. It’s been on a slide ever since. It’s a milestone driven by — you guessed it — continued subscriber erosion.
Total pay TV households declined by 6% year-over-year in the third quarter.
Wieser’s conclusion? “While not a hard inflection point, pay TV falling below 50% underscores why advertisers — long anchored to linear TV — are finding it harder to justify historical spending patterns, which were rooted in a world where almost every household accessed linear TV through “rabbit ears” and then through pay TV services … the fall below 50% is still a stark marker of the change that has taken root which favors CTV and new buying processes (including the use of related tools, such as DSPs) going forward.”
