THB #394: Who Won The Charter/Disney Skirmish?

I have been sitting on this story over the weekend, expecting a resolution today, in time for Aaron Rodgers debut for the New York Jets on ESPN. It was the most obvious bet of the sports weekend since the “blackout” started, though some will present it as a scoop. (Curb your self-hype… scoop it a through it in a proper receptacle.) It’s not.

If you aren’t one of the 14 million or so customers of Charter/Spectrum in New York or L.A. (most of their reach) - or don’t care about sports or ABC network reruns - you may have been unaware of the 10 days of all Disney programming being blacked out on this cable system. The fights over how much cable companies will overpay for the rights to ad-driven channels and pass that overpayment on to you, the cable customer (still about 50% of Americans), are not rare. But this one was special.

Why?

Because what Charter was looking for was some kind of protection from Disney, essentially, cutting their cord themselves.

One of the ongoing threats to cable/satellite is that in the streaming world, ABC (Disney), NBC (Comcast), and CBS (Paramount) are already duplicating the broadcast network experience on their streamers, usually on a 1-day delay. For $15 a month or so extra, you can watch all those “Linear” programs without any commercials, 1 day late.

Time is not what it was.