KEY POINTS
- Disney and Charter are currently negotiating a new carriage renewal deal, which has a deadline in early August.
- Talks that used to revolve around how much programming fees should rise now also revolve around how the introduction of direct-to-consumer services impact the value of linear networks.
- Charter and Disney are talking about what type of flexibility Disney will have with taking certain events from ESPN and also placing them on ESPN+.
Charter wants guarantees that what they pay for will be exclusive to cable and will not be offered direct to the consumer through ESPN+. In their eyes, offering ESPN or SECN or ACCN for $5.95 undermines their cable bundle - and they are apparently demanding guarantees in the contract that won't happen.
Obviously, this affects the ACC Network since Charter is in negotiations for it right now. Two things going in the ACC's favor:
The Disney-Charter negotiations probably won’t get too contentious because more than any other programmer, Disney wants to protect the pay-TV ecosystem and it’s also possible cable operators that also offer broadband internet might not care enough about their traditional video business to even care that much about TV carriage fees. Instead, they may just accept the higher fees and pass the costs to consumers’ cable bills. If customers cancel because of the higher price, then so be it. Since broadband has a higher gross margin than video, for every customer that cuts the cord on TV but keeps buying home internet, margins rise.
Bottom Line: Charter will try to negotiate the lowest carriage fees they can get, but even if Charter/Spectrum becomes too expensive, they may not care as long as customers still subscribe for internet service (and if they get their TV through Vue or Sling or whatever - why should they care?)
Link
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/12/dis...fect-price-of-cable-in-the-streaming-era.html
https://accfootballrx.blogspot.com/2019/07/charter-and-disney-in-negotiations-now.html