Variety: DirecTV Says Disney Blackout Has No Easy Resolution, Even With NFL Season Starting

Story from Variety:

Don’t count on next week’s debut of a new season of ESPN‘s “Monday Night Football” to force a quick end to the current carriage dispute between DirecTV and Walt Disney Co.

DirecTV CFO Ray Carpenter told investors Tuesday that the satellite distributor is prepared to stand firm against Disney’s current stance in a blackout that started over the weekend that will keep ESPN, Disney Channel and other Disney properties off the company’s service for the foreseeable future. “We don’t have any dates drawn in the sand,” Carpenter said, noting that DirecTV is “not playing a short-term game.”

Disney finds itself facing off against another major distributor eager to create new models as more consumers leave traditional services like the one it operates and moves over to streaming hubs, many of them operated by Disney and its traditional media rivals. Last year at about this time, Disney was involved in a similar dispute with the large cable distributor Charter Communications that resulted in an agreement that removed Disney outlets such as Freeform to be taken off of Charter’s service.

DirecTV, like other distributors, believes the rise of streaming services such as Disney+ and Hulu has degraded cable, forcing customers to pay for channels that have less premium content, or for networks they may not regularly use, then spurring them to pay in a second arrangement for a streaming alternative.

A new model could be tough to devise. “While we’re open to offering DirecTV flexibility and terms which we’ve extended to other distributors, we will not enter into an agreement that undervalues our portfolio of television channels and programs. We invest significantly to deliver the No. 1 brands in entertainment, news and sports because that’s what our viewers expect and deserve,” Disney said in a statement over the weekend. “We urge DirecTV to do what’s in the best interest of their customers and finalize a deal that would immediately restore our programming.”

At the heart of the dispute, says Carpenter, is a desire by DirecTV to sell “skinnied down” packages of programming tailored to various subscriber interests, rather than forcing customers to take channels they may not want or watch very often. The company believes such a model would help retain subscribers, even if they were paying less. There is also interest in helping customers find other content, even if it’s not sold directly on the service, Carpenter says.

“We hope we can bring them to the table, but this is not a run of the mill dispute,” says Carpenter. “This is about changing the model.”

More to come…