The pay TV business has been in secular decline for years, with multichannel video packages from cable and satellite companies (MVPDs) seeing consistent erosion.
But even amid the subscriber churn in pay TV, the streaming-focused virtual multichannel video providers (vMVPD) — think YouTube TV and Hulu’s live TV tier — have kept increasing market share, with the two leading players in the space seemingly breaking away from the pack.
On July 12, YouTube made public new data showing that the major vMVPDs now have a combined 12.4 million subscribers, just shy of 20 percent of the active pay TV universe, and are well-positioned to be the one area where pay TV could see growth, thanks to their slick user interfaces, easy mobility between devices, and seamless sign-up and cancellation processes.
Even though vMVPDs carry many of the same channels as traditional MVPDs…
