Cable TV audience dropping

Washington Post -  The number of cable subscribers, dropping for years, just took a record-breaking plunge. Sooner or later, it will hurt news channels’ bottom line. . . .After a week of promotion and controversy, CNN staged a live town hall telecast with Donald Trump this month that was studded with the former president’s insults and falsehoods. It drew thunderous criticism — but strikingly few eyeballs. The 70-minute broadcast attracted an audience of just 3.3 million viewers, about a third less than the number of people watching an episode of “Celebrity Wheel of Fortune” on ABC the same night.

The tepid response may reflect Trump’s waning drawing power, or the fact that the town hall aired eight months before primary voting begins. But it also tells an ominous tale about cable news’s declining influence and troubled business model. As recently as 2016, when Trump was narrowly elected president, just over 70 percent of all households with a TV had cable or satellite TV subscriptions. Today the figure is just under 40 percent, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, a research firm. And it’s dropping fast.