Dish’s Sling TV attracts new customers, but not enough to boost the company’s overall subscriber count during the third quarter of 2015.
Even with its launch into a new way to watch TV this year, Dish Network that its total pay-TV subscribers dropped during the third quarter, compared to a year earlier.
The Douglas County satellite TV service provider ended September with 13.909 million pay-TV subscribers. A year ago, it had 14.041 million.
Dish pay-TV subscribers continues to drop in its 3rd quarter 2015, just like most traditional pay-TV companies.
The number includes new customers from Sling TV, the live-TV streaming service Dish launched earlier this year. The novel service strips away the old rules of pay TV by charging a standard $20 a month with a simple sign up, no long-term contract and no cancellation fees.
Sling won’t say how many subscribers it has but in March, just two months after launching, Sling had , according to Dish.
The company did make more money during the third quarter. It reported net income of $146 million on revenues of $3.73 billion. Last third quarter, net income was $146 million on revenues of $3.68 billion.
Dish also said that the number of gross new subscribers is up — 751,000 compared to last year’s 691,000. But if you subtract customers who left the company, the net pay TV subscribers declined 23,000, compared to a decline of 12,000 a year ago. Pay TV customers this quarter did pay about $2 more per monthly bill, with the average revenue per user at $86.33, compared to last year’s $84.39.
For the first nine months of 2015, Dish reported net income of $872 million on revenues of $11.29 billion. A year earlier, net income was $535 million on revenues of $10.96 billion.
Dish will host a webcast of its earnings at 10 a.m. Details are .
