Charter Readying New Portal to Access Streaming Partner Disney+, Max, More
Spectrum TV customers get access to more than $80 in free streamers, and the company wants to make it easier to use them.
Charter Communications wants its customers to know that better access to free entertainment is coming. Charter operates the Spectrum TV cable business, and in the last 14 months has made deals with Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery and other programmers that allow it to offer its cable customers free access to their various streaming services, including Disney+, Max, Paramount+ and Peacock. The rollout of those free subscriptions to customers is still ongoing, but according to Charter CEO Chris Winfrey, the process of signing up for free partner streamers from Spectrum will soon be simplified, and include more choices.
Key Details:
- Winfrey says the next step in the process is getting viewers the ability to upgrade to ad-free streaming plans.
- Once that step is accomplished, Charter can roll out a “video portal” to make it easier to manage subscriptions.
- The company sees these partnerships as a way to improve the value for video customers, but is hesitant to forecast big growth.
Speaking to Wall Street analysts during Charter’s conference call to discuss its third-quarter earnings report, Winfrey said that crafting deals with big-name media companies to allow Spectrum TV viewers to sign up for their on-demand streaming services for free was just the first step in a four-tiered process.
Making those apps available to customers was step two, and now the company is at work on part three, making it possible for Spectrum viewers to upgrade to ad-free plans of those streaming services if they want to. After that, the company wants to launch an all-in-one app where viewers can manage those various bundled subscriptions all in one place.
“The final piece is really to put it all inside of what I would call a video portal, which allows you to manage all of your video subscription with us, including all of the programmer apps, when it’s included as part of your offer, when it’s upgraded to the ad free version, we have economics as well,” Winfrey said. “And the ability to sell these programmer apps to our broadband customers or to our skinny package video customers, all in the same place where you can manage your subscriptions.”
Winfrey also said he expects that portal to be ready sometime in the first half of 2025, and that he hopes it will have a significant impact on the retention of customers, as well as potentially the acquisition of new ones. But he was hesitant to state outright that the plan would lead to significant growth of Charter’s cable customers.
“I want to be careful not forecasting video growth. We’re simply saying that it’s a way to add utility into our seamless connectivity relationships in a way that hasn’t existed,” he hedged.
Charter has made agreements to offer AMC+, BET+, discovery+, Disney+, ESPN+, Max, Paramount+, Peacock and ViX at no cost to customers, which adds up to more than $80 per month in value. It may be a little frustrating to try to find and sign up for those subscriptions now, but according to Winfrey’s words, it’s going to get easier in the next few months.
Disney+
Disney+ is a video streaming service with over 13,000 series and films from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, The Muppets, and more. It is available in 61 countries and 21 languages. It is notable for its popular original series like “The Mandalorian,” “Ms. Marvel,” “Loki,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” and “Andor.”