Like a deadbeat confronted by one of Tony Soprano's enforcers, pay cable networks are getting badly beaten up and are bleeding subscribers. The worst numbers are being posted by the smaller pay networks, with Showtime and Starz! losing 9% of their cable and DBS subscribers last year. Even the venerated HBO saw its overall growth nearly halt in 2003 as it started losing subscribers. Sanford Bernstein & Co. media analyst Tom Wolzien gazed at pay-channel prime time audience levels for December and was startled to find declines of 14%-28%. "All you have to do," he said, "is look at their ratings to see the premium business has problems." One source of their woes is Comcast. All pay networks got crunched when the cable giant acquired AT&T's systems and ended their deep discounts on premium services.
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