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Two of the largest U.S. television companies have admitted that their cable channels are worth $15 billion less than they thought, highlighting the accelerating collapse of what was once one of the most lucrative businesses in media history.

Paramount on Thursday wrote down $6 billion in value from its cable channels – including MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central. This came just 24 hours after Warner Bros Discovery wrote down $9 billion in value from its cable channels, including CNN, HGTV and Food Network.

The write-downs offered a stark glimpse into the struggles of traditional entertainment companies to navigate the decline of cable TV, more than 15 years after streaming services first prompted users to “unsubscribe from cable.” For decades, cable TV provided healthy advertising revenues and generous carriage fees that the companies used to fund acquisitions and investments in movies, theme parks and other ventures.

But linear cable networks have now become “anchor points around the neck of traditional media companies,” wrote Rich Greenfield, an analyst at LightShed Partners, in a note to clients on Thursday.

“It’s fair to say that just two years ago, market valuations and prevailing conditions for traditional media companies were very different than they are today,” WBD CEO David Zaslav said Wednesday as he answered questions about the future of the owner of HBO and the Warner Bros studio.

Analysts at MoffettNathanson estimate that 2.4 million U.S. pay-TV subscribers canceled their subscriptions in the first three months of this year, making this quarter the worst ever.

“There was a time when we were confident … that there was a floor to cable cancellation,” analyst Craig Moffett wrote in June, pointing to a “vicious loop” in which media companies shifted their best programming from television to their streaming platforms – thus accelerating the collapse.

“Today it is far less clear whether there is a lower limit … It increasingly looks like you can’t or won’t get the genie back in the bottle,” Moffett said, predicting that there will be only 50 million pay-TV subscribers in the U.S. in 2028, compared to nearly 73 million in 2023.

Both Paramount and WBD showed signs of improvement in their streaming services last quarter, and Disney announced this week that its streaming business – which includes Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu – was profitable for the first time.

However, these platforms make a meager profit at best and therefore cannot make up for the hole created by the disappearance of the television channels. The result is a financial burden for the entire sector. Paramount announced on Thursday that it would cut 15 percent of its staff.

Sports programming continues to hold a strong position among cable TV viewers, as Disney’s figures showed on Wednesday. Sports network ESPN reported a four percent increase in operating profit, while the other linear TV channels reported declines.

The loss of valuable sports rights was one of the “triggering events” that led Warner Bros. to take a $9 billion write-down. In July, the National Basketball Association refused to renew a valuable rights deal with Warner’s TNT network – ending a lucrative business relationship that had lasted more than 35 years.

Paramount’s write-down, on the other hand, was due to the complex deal agreed last month that would transfer control of the company to Skydance Media, led by billionaire David Ellison.

Paramount Chief Financial Officer Naveen Chopra said Thursday that the Skydance deal had triggered a reassessment of the value of the group’s cable channels.

“Obviously, linear (TV) declines are part of the analysis here,” he said. “But the other part that really determines the amount of goodwill impairment is the value implied by the Skydance transaction.”

WBD shares fell 9 percent on Thursday, while Paramount lost 2 percent before gaining in after-hours trading.