Charter Communications CEO Chris Winfrey says the Spectrum pay-TV and broadband parent is “fighting for video,” in collaboration with frenemies like Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav.Speaking at the UBS Media and Communications Conference, Winfrey took stock of the path the company has taken since a high-profile September 2023 showdown with Disney. After that bruising carriage fight, which ended in a novel agreement after a 10-day blackout, Charter has gone on to integrate streaming services worth roughly $80 a month at retail for customers of some Spectrum tiers. The latest outlet on that list is Max, under a distribution renewal reached in September by Warner Bros. Discovery and Charter.The “complicated process” of executing the streaming strategy will culminate in the first half of 2025 with the creation of “what I would call a ‘video store,'” Winfrey said. The “easy to find/easy to use” destination will be where customers can manage all of their subscriptions, he added.Charter, which is the No. 1 pay-TV provider in the U.S., threatened multiple times during the Disney clash to withdraw from video altogether. Top-tier providers are finding the cost and risk-reward proposition of broadband and wireless to be more enticing than traditional pay-TV, given how many people cut the cord every year. More than a year after the effort began, Winfrey said the result has been a hybrid pay-TV/streaming offering with substantial upside potential.“One of the things that’s been really fun about the process that we’ve been in over the past year is I think the programming community understands that we are fighting for video in a way that almost nobody else is,” he said. “We have an interest in a product that needs to be profitable for everybody in the ecosystem and that we’re incentivized to go drive it so that we can help our broadband acquisition and retention. As a result, I think the programmers are really behind us, realizing that our incentives are in the right place and we’re trying to create value for customers, which is ultimately better for them in the long term.”The experience has yielded “an a-ha moment,” Winfrey continued. Distributors and programmers, who are often at odds with each other, are “finding a way to work together to evolve the product in a way that makes sense for customers and evolves the product but also preserves the economics of this ecosystem.”One such partner, Winfrey added, is Warner Bros. Discovery. The companies’ carriage deal has earned applause from Wall Street given Warner Bros. Discovery’s recent loss of NBA rights.“David Zaslav was the one who really leaned into that the most and said we’re going to make Max, including HBO, available to all of your Select customers,” Winfrey said of the oft-knocked Warner Bros. Discovery CEO. As part of the carriage pact, Winfrey said, “what they really wanted to see us do was to use our sales and distribution capabilities toward broadband. We have 25,000 in-house sales associates, across all of our channels. So we have a very deep sales capability.”Those resources give the companies “mutual incentives” to push more adoption of Max regardless of the extent of the overall relationship between the customer and Charter-Spectrum, Winfrey said.
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