WHILE CABLE COMPANIES LOSE SUBSCRIBERS, DIRECTV GAINS THEM

While several of the largest cable-TV providers, including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Cablevision, have reported significant subscriber losses during the last quarter, home satellite operator DirecTV indicated on Thursday that they may be picking up at least some of them. It said that it has added 174,000 subscribers over the past quarter versus 136,000 in the comparable quarter of 2009, a 31-percent jump. Average revenue per subscriber rose 4.3 percent, producing third-quarter profit of $479 million on revenue of $6.02 billion, beating analysts’ forecasts. The company also reported solid growth in Latin America, where it added 206,000 new subscribers during the quarter, up from 162,000 last year. “Latin America is a big growth opportunity,” Marci Ryvicker, an analyst at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in New York, said in an email to Bloomberg News “It is not unreasonable [to expect Latin American] pay-TV subscribers to double within the next five years.”