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Jessica Fischer said the industry should expect more streaming content to be included in the traditional cable bundle and less popular linear TV channels to be dropped.
By Etan Vlessing
Canada Bureau Chief
After Charter Communications and Disney created a new industry template for traditional pay TV with their new Spectrum carriage deal, expect more streaming content to be included in the traditional cable bundle and less popular linear TV channels to be dropped.
“We’re not willing to make our customers pay twice for content,” Jessica Fischer, CFO at Charter Communications, told the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference during a session that was webcast on Tuesday. For Charter, the recent Spectrum carriage deal struck with Disney included Disney+ landing in its base pay TV tier, which expands on the company’s vision for live TV and streaming entertainment apps to live side by side.
And the landmark agreement had Disney agreeing to drop Freeform, Nat Geo Wild, FXX, Disney Junior, Disney XD and other channels from Charter Spectrum lineups. The goal, Fischer argued, was adding streaming services to the cable bundle and reshaping the linear TV business to put a focus on popular content.
“By pushing value back into the bundle, including the SVOD service, you create value, which helps you from a consumer perception standpoint. And creating a skinnier bundle, where customers get the content that they want for a price that they’re capable of paying, creates value,” she told the investors conference.
Charter is also tamping down on the ability of content producers to double dip by getting paid by Charter for channels and charging cable subscribers directly for the same entertainment content.
“If there’s a programmer who is making their content available in a direct-to-consumer service, and our customers are paying for that content in a linear service, our expectation is that direct-to-consumer service would be a part of our bundle,” Fischer insisted.
To also recover lost market share to streamers, Charter and fellow cable giant Comcast recently unveiled their Xumo product. The Xumo interface, which is built on Comcast’s Entertainment OS platform, integrates pay TV into its platform, seamlessly integrating the live TV into the offering.
But it also puts apps front and center, populating the home page depending on what services users subscribe to. Fischer underlined how Xumo provides access to platforms consumers are on, including traditional cable and streaming platforms.
“So whether they want to access content through video or direct to consumer, they’ll be able to do that in a way that allows them to access content easily across both of those platforms in a single space,” Fischer told the UBS conference.
She also warned in the wake of the Disney carriage dispute and recent rate increases that Charter was likely to lose additional broadband subscribers in the fourth quarter. “November has been similarly soft. So I can certainly see that it’s likely that we could end up with negative internet net adds inside of Q4. But I want to be really clear that we think that’s short term challenges,” Fischer reported.
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