Major cable companies are still thriving despite massive collapse. Here’s how

Once the undisputed king of home entertainment, the cable empire has quietly crumbled — undone by changing viewing habits and a decade of subscriber losses.

In just over a decade, about a million Massachusetts households “cut the cord ” — in which traditional cable packages have been replaced by streaming giants like Netflix, Hulu , Disney+ , and YouTube.

State data shows cable subscriptions in Massachusetts have fallen almost 45% from their peak dropping from 2.19 million in 2013 to fewer than 1.2 million as of December 2024 — far lower than in 2000 when state data began.

A town-by-town Massachusetts map shows that some cities have lost 60% to 70% of their cable subscribers since 2015.

But big cable providers — the biggest of them being Comcast — are shrugging off these losse