According to Fortune, citing an S&P Global report, the U.S. cable network industry has formally entered the “decline stage of its life cycle.” The defining moment is the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery, where Netflix wants just its film and streaming assets, while Paramount Skydance aims for the whole company. Financially, cable ad revenue fell 5.9% to $20.2 billion in 2024, its lowest since 2007, and average network subscribers dropped 7.1% to 31.4 million homes. S&P analyst Scott Robson says 2025 marks a turning point, with companies like Comcast spinning off cable networks into a new entity called “Versant” on January 2, 2026. However, the outlook is for a long, slow decline, not a sudden collapse, with some signs the subscriber free-fall slowed slightly in 2025.
The Great Unbundling
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just about people canceling cable. It’s about the industry’s architects now actively dismantling it. The Netflix bid for WBD is the perfect metaphor. They don’t want the cable channels at all. They just want the content factory to feed the streaming machine. It’s like buying a farm for the livestock but leaving the barn to rot. And Comcast’s move to spin off its networks? That’s a financial and strategic quarantine. They’re isolating the declining asset to protect the parent company’s balance sheet. Basically, the very companies that built the cable bundle are now conducting a controlled demolition.
Sports Isn’t the Life Raft Anymore
For years, the industry mantra was “sports will save us.” Live games were the one thing you had to watch as they happened, the last bastion of must-have linear TV. But S&P’s data throws cold water on that. Their survey found that 90% of households that did drop pay TV last year were sports fans, and most watched over five hours a week. Think about that. The most dedicated fans are now comfortable getting their sports elsewhere—through streaming services, digital antennas, or social media highlights. So when Comcast relaunches NBCSN on YouTube TV, it feels less like a strategy and more like rearranging deck chairs. The moat has been drained.
What This Means for Everyone Else
For viewers, the friction is only going to increase. We saw the blackouts on YouTube TV in 2025, and that’s the new normal. As cable networks become less valuable but still demand high fees, distributors will fight back harder. Your favorite niche channel? It’ll probably get shoved into a more expensive tier, or just vanish. The estate sale is on, and the valuable stuff—hit movies, premium series, major sports rights—is all moving to the streaming apartment. What’s left in the old cable mansion is getting picked over. And for the broader media market, it solidifies streaming as the only game that matters. Every decision, every dollar, is now judged by how it serves the DTC (direct-to-consumer) strategy. The pivot is complete.
A Slow Bleed Is Still a Bleed
Don’t let the “slow decline” language fool you. A long tail of decay has its own consequences. It means years of cost-cutting, reduced original programming on cable, and more reliance on cheap reruns. It means the FAST channel world (those free, ad-supported streams) becomes the retirement home for old cable shows. There’s no dramatic crash, but a relentless erosion. So, is cable TV dead? Not tomorrow. But it’s been diagnosed with a terminal illness. The report from S&P isn’t a prediction of the future anymore. It’s the obituary for an era, and they’re just reading it out loud, slowly.
