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Are Big Media Companies Driving Off A Cliff?

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Friday October 12, 2012 @ 4:25pm PDTTags: Big Media, Cable Prices, Pay TV Channels

That’s the critically important question that’s being debated  across the industry and — finally! — head-on by two of the Street’s savviest analysts: Bernstein Research’s Todd Juenger and Craig Moffett. Juenger kicked things off in a note last week, and Moffett delivered his response today. The core issue is whether millions of consumers will cut the pay TV cord rather than accept ongoing price hikes driven by network owners including Time Warner, Viacom, News Corp, Disney, NBCUniversal, CBS, and Discovery. For competitive reasons, they want to pack more original shows and high-priced sports on to their schedules — and pass the rising costs along to cable and satellite providers. But the pay TV distributors say that they’d need to pass their higher costs on to consumers, and too many are so cash-strapped that they’ll simply cut the cord and watch shows from over-the-air broadcasts or low-priced Internet services such as Netflix. If things continue, the argument goes, then Big Media will have to abandon the lucrative and ubiquitous basic cable bundle that requires customers to pay for lots of channels that they never watch. If that happens, and channels are offered a la carte, no more than 10 would be profitable enough to survive, Needham & Co analyst Laura Martin estimates.

Here’s a synopsis of the arguments Junger makes in defense of programmers — and Moffett’s explanation why he thinks they’re headed off a cliff: READ MORE »

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Disney Has Most To Lose, And CBS Most To Gain, If Pay TV Goes A La Carte: Analyst

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Monday July 30, 2012 @ 7:43am PDTTags: Cable Prices, CBS, Disney, Pay TV Channels

Cable A La CarteThe conclusions are part of an intriguing study out this morning from Lazard Capital Markets analyst Barton Crocket. Like many Wall Street analysts, he’s eager to know which programmers have the most to gain, and lose, if the current pay TV ecosystem — which requires consumers to pay for channels that they don’t watch — collapses. And Disney is most at risk, Crockett figures based on the results an online survey of 2,240 consumers in May. The study sought to determine how loyal consumers are to different channels. As you might expect, the Big Four broadcasters, ESPN, Discovery Channel, History, USA Network, and TNT have the most dedicated followings. (At the bottom of the list: OWN, Fox Soccer Channel, CNBC, Oxygen, and CMT.) The problem for Disney is that its channels aren’t popular enough to continue to justify the nearly $8.4B a year they currently generate from program fees — about 26% of pay TV’s total programming outlays. Crockett figures Disney’s take could drop 65.2% to $2.9B a year. Other potential losers include Time Warner (not including HBO) which could see yearly Read More »

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Analyst Warns: Pay TV Will Fade As Young Viewers Look For Cheaper Alternatives

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Monday November 28, 2011 @ 8:05am PSTTags: Cable Prices, Cable TV, Pay TV Channels, Subscription Video

It’s a big deal when an analyst as respected as Credit Suisse’s Stefan Anninger slashes his  pay TV subscription forecast for 2012 to a 200,000 loss from a 250,000 gain, which is what he did this morning. But the … Read More »

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Survey: Free TV Use Up For The First Time In Years As Consumers Cut Pay TV Cord

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Monday June 6, 2011 @ 1:28pm PDTTags: Cable Prices, FCC

Cable cord-cutting may be a real phenomenon after all. For the first time in four years there’s been an increase in the number of homes that just rely on antennas to receive programs from local broadcast stations according to … Read More »

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“Why Hollywood Should Care About The Comcast/NBCU Deal”

By NIKKI FINKE, Editor in Chief | Tuesday June 22, 2010 @ 12:36pm PDTTags: Cable Prices, Cable TV, Comcast-NBCU Merger, FCC, Hollywood, Jay Schwartzman, Media Access Project, Regulation

I asked Andrew Jay Schwartzman, the SVP and Policy Director of the Media Access Project in Washington DC (http://www.mediaaccess.org) to write up his thoughts on the proposed merger:

Why Hollywood Should Care About  the Comcast/NBCU Deal

By Andrew Jay Schwartzman

ComcastNBCComcast’s proposed acquisition of

… Read More »

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