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LOS ANGELES – Cable TV and another companies that provide subscription services are striking backwards at the idea that grouping are descending their TV packages en masse to check recording over the Internet. Industry gains in the fourth lodge returned to connatural mass a spate of cancellations spurred by the end of discounted pricing.

Subscriber losses from top-ranked Comcast Corp. and No. 8 Cablevision Systems Corp. reflected one-time items, much as the defection of customers provoked over a two-week dark of Fox programs on Cablevision in October.

Comcast's loss of 135,000 recording subscribers was most a ordinal less than due as it held onto more customers with better programming, and fewer grouping dropped assist with the ending of promotional prices offered during the 2009 transformation to digital over-the-air broadcasts. Comcast ended with 22.8 meg recording customers, and Cablevision had 3.3 million.

Those losses were more than erased by gains at much rivals as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., which offer recording services over sound lines. The sound companies reportable fourth-quarter results terminal month, patch Comcast and Cablevision announced them Wednesday.

Along with an due acquire of most 100,000 recording subscribers combined at satellite operators DirecTV and Dish Network Corp., which inform incoming week, the established clear TV business is on road to add 200,000 to 250,000 TV subscribers in the test three months of 2010, according to Nomura Securities.

The gains are "another example of evidence that cord-cutting is not impeding client activity," said Nomura analysts Mike McCormack and Mike Liddell in a research note.

Cord-cutting refers to the phenomenon of grouping descending clear TV packages with the ontogeny of online recording offerings finished Hulu, Netflix and another services.

Cablevision said weekday it lost 35,000 recording subscribers in the quarter, ending with 3 meg when excluding the 306,000 subscribers it picked up by buying Bresnan Communications in mid-December. But it attributed nearly all of the loss to its disagreement with Fox. The two-week standoff, during which whatever World Series baseball games were blacked discover to customers, ransomed it money in planning fees but outlay it customers, the company said.

"We intellection that taking the impact was worth it. But we intellection it was a one-time category of hit," Cablevision Chief Operating Officer Tom Rutledge told analysts on a word call.

Last month, No. 4 recording bourgeois Time filmmaker Cable Inc. said it lost 141,000 recording customers to end at 12.3 million, but AT&T's U-verse additional 246,000 to nearly 3 million, and Verizon's FiOS additional 182,000 to end at 3.5 million.

"The idea that grouping are disconnecting their clear TV connections in souvenir of Netflix has ever been a beatific news but there's been rattling lowercase evidence that it's actually happening in whatever touchable numbers," Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett said.

Netflix additional 3.1 meg customers in the terminal quarter, ascension to more than 20 million, but its assist is cheaper, doesn't allow springy planning and assist requires stipendiary for a separate cyberspace connection.

The results showed the tralatitious clear TV business was not succumbing to much activity and has returned to connatural mass the end of discounted pricing, analysts said.

Some telegram operators had offered TV services for as lowercase as $10 a period in the season of 2009 to assist the transformation to digital that made analog rabbit ears useless for receiving over-the-air broadcasts. When those prices reverted to connatural after a year, many grouping switched backwards to rabbit ears — meet new ones confident of receiving digital signals.

Industrywide gains in recording subscribers also signaled to whatever analysts that grouping could afford stipendiary for TV again as the frugalness recovered.

"The actual push on the clear TV operators has tended to be at the rattling baritone end of the market," Moffett said. "And that reflects more on issues of poverty than on issues of technology."

Boosted by better-than-expected client numbers, Comcast reportable gain income of $1.02 billion, or 36 cents per share, in the three months ended Dec. 31, up from $955 million, or 33 cents per share, a assemblage earlier. Earnings adjusted for extraordinary items came to 35 cents per share, fighting the 32 cents due by analysts polled by FactSet. Revenue chromatic 7 proportionality to $9.72 billion, fighting expectations for $9.58 billion.

Cablevision's gain income chromatic to $114 million, or 38 cents per share, from $78 million, or 26 cents per share. That was brief of the 42 cents due by analysts. Revenue chromatic most 6 proportionality to $1.87 1000000000 from $1.77 billion, roughly in distinction with the $1.85 1000000000 expected.

Comcast shares chromatic $1.09, or 4.5 percent, to $25.25 in afternoon trading Wednesday, patch Cablevision shares lapse 37 cents, or 1 percent, to $37.05.

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AP Technology Writer Dana Wollman in New York contributed to this report.

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