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U.S. cable and satellite companies hit an industry-wide peak in early 2012 with 95.5 million subscribers. Since then, nearly 9 million customers have ditched their service — and more than 55% of those losses have piled up since Q2 2018, according to data shared by Leichtman Research Group.

The graph below shows the rapid increase in cord-cutting since this time last year.

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U.S. cable and satellite subscribers have declined from a record-high of 95.5 million in early 2012 to 86.6 million by the end of Q2 2019. About 5 million of those customers have ditched their service within the last year.

Much of these losses have been felt in recent years by the “big four” cable and satellite companies: Comcast, Charter, DirecTV and Dish Network. Those four have seen a combined 10% drop-off from 72.7 million accounts three years ago to 65.4 million accounts during the second quarter of 2019.

Some of these old-school TV providers have looked to keep their customers around by offering their own streaming TV services, such as DirecTV Now and Dish’s Sling TV for a cheaper price. (Sling TV starts as low as $15 per month, whereas DirecTV Now costs $50-70 per month.) But even those streaming customers haven’t offset the cord-cutting losses — and the numbers are trending in the wrong direction. Those two services combined for 4.1 million customers at this time last year; now they’ve slipped to 3.8 million total subscribers.

It’s easy to see pay-TV’s fade has come at the same time streaming powerhouses like Netflix have enjoyed a meteoric rise. Netflix had 23.4 million U.S. subscribers when pay-TV hit its high-mark in early 2012; now it has more than 60 million American customers.

Simply pointing to cord-cutting would miss half the point, though, according to Leichtman Research President and principal analyst Bruce Leichtman.

“For the pay-TV industry over the past couple years, net losses were as much related to a decline in the acquisition of new subscribers, as they were to an acceleration in disconnects,” Leichtman said.

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For years, traditional cable and satellite customers failed to offer affordable packages that would attract budget-minded customers. Now, these companies are paying big bucks to win back customers that have been turned off by their bloated, expensive services. This is “particularly true for [satellite] services, where the subscriber acquisition cost is about $800-$1,000,” Leichtman added.