Charter CFO ‘Really Happy’ With New Disney Carriage Deal, Which Should Be Good for Both Sides
Now that the carriage dispute that caused 19 Disney-owned channels to be blacked out for Spectrum’s 14.7 million American cable customers is resolved, executives at both companies are all smiles. That’s especially true of Charter CFO Jessica Fischer, who spoke with Wall Street analysts at the 2023 Bank of America Media, Communications and Entertainment Conference.
Fischer spoke of her company’s satisfaction with the deal, particularly because it addresses one of Charter’s biggest concerns: content exclusivity. Charter operates the Spectrum TV service and was quite concerned with the devaluing of Disney cable channels thanks to the amount of premium content being funneled to its flagship streamer Disney+.
“I think we’re really happy with the deal,” Fischer said. We met all of our objectives. So when you think about what we were trying to do, first, it was about taking the valuable content that had been leaking out of the system and putting it back in our packages. And we did that. The second thing that we did was that we maintained the flexibility that we were looking for to be able to continue to offer a variety of packages, including the skinny packages that we offer today, and to have flexibility going forward to be able to offer a variety of packages to consumers.”
As part of the new agreement, Spectrum will begin offering a new channel package called Spectrum TV Select Plus, which will be more sports-forward and will include free access to ESPN+. All Spectrum TV Select customers will get login credentials to ad-supported Disney+ as well, which will boost Disney’s distribution and ad revenues and ensure Spectrum customers aren’t paying for the same content twice.
That’s why the new deal is a win-win-win in Fischer’s eyes. “I see a lot of, like, well, who won? I really think everybody wins in this deal. I think it was a win for us. I think it’s a win for Disney. I think it’s really a win for consumers,” she said.
Fischer didn’t say whether she thought this model would be used in future negotiations with other legacy media companies, but she did express confidence that the Disney deal would help Charter “moderate” growth in content costs for users; in other words, it should help the company avoid future price increases, at least in the short-term. She also said that while Spectrum saw some cancelation during the carriage dispute, the losses were “much less” than anticipated.
Disney executives are certainly happy to have the dispute resolved, but the company had to give ground on points that it did not want to move on. It also won’t be collecting carriage fees for eight channels that have been dropped permanently by Spectrum, though at least it will gain ad revenues from users who now have access to Disney+ Basic with their Spectrum subscriptions.
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.”