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Late last week, Charter Communications hammered outa new distribution dealwith Warner Bros. Or, put another way: Buy cable, get (a whole lot of) streaming free.
But thats simplistic on many levels.
This arrangement mirrors what has been common practice in the cable business for a half-century.
Having those subs locked in means there will be significantly less churn, shesaid.
This disruption is a real challenge, but its providing real opportunities, Zaslav said.
But the great unbundling of television has failed to live up to the hype for everyone not named Netflix.
Consider, for example, the strategy Comcast execs laid out in the early days of Peacock.
For whatever reason, though, that didnt happen.
It followed rivals Disney, Warner Bros.
Discovery, and Paramount Global right over the direct-to-consumer cliff, incurring massive losses in the process.
But the fact is Peacocks 2020 philosophy was right.
The past five years have seen programming budgets slashed at Disney, WBD, and Paramount cable networks.
Thats why the Disney and WBD framework with Charter makes sense.
Why shouldnt they be able to give it to their customers?
Instead, legacy companies made cord-cutting more attractive than ever and hastened the speed of the bundles inevitable decline.
Obviously, its still early days in this new era of cable-streaming bundles.
Thats a bit better than rival Comcast but still not great.
And for all its flaws, the pay-TV bundle remains the single most profitable model of television ever invented.
Right now, the cable business is bleeding out, the industry vet says.
At this point, theres very little left to lose.
