Video Trends in Charter's Favor in Disney Fight: MoffettNathanson
In the struggle between video content and distribution, leverage seems to be swinging back toward distribution in the Disney/Charter Communications carriage fight (see 2309010013), MoffettNathanson wrote investors Friday. That's due to fears that sports content like ESPN will increasingly be…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
available through alternative means like direct-to-consumer streaming, undermining its uniqueness, it said. Comcast has been reducing support for linear video, and direct broadcast satellite is "in free fall" and virtual MVPDs are shrinking, it said. If Charter permanently dropped Disney programming, content companies would have one growing distributor in Google, it said. Charter "is surely emboldened" by the fact Cable One, which de-emphasized video, has a much lower percentage of residential customers taking video than Charter has, but its margins are higher, it said.