Charter’s Cable Combo + Fox, ESPN, CNN Streamers = Media Showdown
The annual previous week of TV is supposed to be devoted to the construction of TV industry. Instead, managers have revealed new and ambitious plans that will eventually break down the entire sector.
Three of the best known names in TV have announced their intention this week to open new stores for the traditional screen. Disney’s ESPN will, after much chatter, place all its sports coverage and studio programming on a new direct-to-consumer streaming app that managers hope will encourage a company that is more dependent on outdoor stations of broadband videos such as Hulu and Disney+. CNN, one of the pillars of the Old-School Cable Bundle, is planning to make two different digital shingles debut, a bound to the news about the news and another linked to news about the weather. And Fox Corporation, perhaps the avid defender in recent years of staying bound to Cable, said that it would also place all his TV offer -including the coveted Sunday NFL broadcasts -on a new streaming service that the Fox One calls.
At the end of the week, The Pushback: Charter Communications, one of the largest cable and broad band distributors in the nation, said it was planning to get bigger, with a takeover of private Cox Communications, the oldest operator in the sector. Despite their growing interest in streaming, the aforementioned media conglomerates still need the money that alliances generate with charter, and charter CEO Chris Winfrey has not been shy in the past when it comes to indicating how direct streaming services of streaming the traditional cable activities degrade.
You would be under pressure this week to hear a hard word from both sides. During a phone call with investors on Friday, Charter’s Winfrey said that the company was ready to help TV programmers to put itself on the market better and would not try to wage war every time a carriage deal came for innovation. And the TV companies also sounded a reconciling note and pains to say that their new apps were aimed at so-called ‘Cord Nevers’, not the crowd that is still subscribed to cable.
“We focus on the service entirely on the wireless community, the wireless market that is there,” said Lachlan Murdoch, CEO of Fox Corp. “It would be a failure of us if we attract more connected subscribers or we don’t want to lose a traditional cable subscriber to Fox One.” Top leaders at ESPN and CNN offered similar thoughts and noted that cable subscribers could get the interactive and personalization functions offered by the new streaming services, as long as they went to mobile apps and proved their cable alliance.
The funny thing about cord cutters is that their number is growing – and the size of this group is of course fed by people who cut their tires with cable. The launch of three services that make “Sports Center” and Fox’s Sunday Football Games available via streaming can only serve to speed up the trend.
In April, Charter revealed that it had lost 60,000 internet customers in the first quarter of the year, as well as 181,000 video factories. Rival Comcast revealed that it lost 199,000 broadband customers, more than analysts expected, while she also said goodbye to 427,000 video subscribers.
The TV networks know this. And they know that their future income from cable will only shrink. ESPN and ESPN2 subscribers, two of the most expensive networks for distributors, will fall by the end of 2026 to 57.9 million and 57.8 million, according to projections by Kagan, a research agency that is part of S&P Global Market Intelligence. From the end of 2024, those figures would represent a tumbling of approximately 11% in the subscriber base of each network.
Warner’s CNN is not better off. The news output is seen that almost 9% of his cable subscriber base between the end of 2024 and the end of 2026 colander, according to Kagan, where traditional customers fall by the end of the period to 60.4 million.
And Fox, who has resisted to place most of his sports and news offers on broadband at the same time that it runs on linear, cannot avoid current trends either. The subscriber base for FOX Sports 1 is expected to fall nearly 9% to 57.2 million in the end of 2026, according to Kagan, compared to 62.8 million in 2024. The loyal subscret base of FOX News -Canal is also expected to decrease approximately 8.8% to 58.9 million, according to 58.9 million. in 2024.
The signs are clear: the future audience for the new streaming services comes from the subscriber base of the Old-School TV networks, or the parties on both sides of the comparison, whether or not to admit it. As soon as a cable subscriber decides to give up the scheme, they become part of that “wireless” audience that the media companies see as their natural market.
The media giants have other reasons for strengthening streaming. After several fertile years, part of the glitter rubs the medium.
An advertiser who wants to run a commercial on the “Stranger Things” of Netflix or Peacock’s “Poker Face” can do this when they want, as long as the show stays on the service. That is a very different proposition that is offered than those who existed when a bankpotato could only see their favorite episodes on the linear schedule once or twice a year.
And that dynamic influences the sale of advertisements with streaming sales points. Last year, on the annual “in advance” market, When TV networks try to sell most of their commercial time in advance, the rates for streaming the inventory with double digit percentages, a huge “rollback” with which TV networks have been having it hated. In early Upfront interviews this year, advertisers print on similar decline in rates, according to managers who are familiar with the current negotiations, while the media companies are urging increases instead.
More sports and news programming help those deals to live up to. Scripted comedies and dramas can be viewed when a viewer likes, but news and sports programs are still considered perishable. Bret Baier’s interview with a head of state has its biggest impact when it is broadcast, just like any match-up between teams of the NFL, NBA or MLB.
When such things can be streamed, leaves less oomph for cable. Charter’s Winfrey sounded Sanguine on Friday, but not so long ago he was ready to fight and accused Disney in 2023 of humiliating cable networks such as Freeform and Disney XD while placing new and attractive premium series on his own streaming outlets.
This week, managers have already portrayed their new companies as smart movements that help keep peace in the present. Make no mistake: networking and distributors will fight all of this in the not too distant future.
