Paramount Bob Bakish acknowledges Wall Street's gloomy view on Charter-Disney battle, but touts efforts to 'modernize' pay-TV relationship to fit the streaming era
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September 6, 2023 4:20 p.m.
Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish says the Disney-Charter transportation dispute has had a "significant" financial impact on many people. pay-TV players, but he touted his efforts to "modernize" the company's distribution relationships for the streaming era.
Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Tech conference, Bakish said last Friday was “ obviously a remarkable day for the industry." It was the first trading day after 18 Disney cable networks and eight ABC stations shut down on Charter's Spectrum TV service. This resulted in a collective loss of $15 billion. dollars on the market value of a number of programmers and operators, Bakish said, as the transportation standoff "has been interpreted as negative" by investors. Nonetheless, he continued, "all companies are not on the same page" when it comes to coordinating their efforts in linear television, streaming and other business areas.
Although there has been considerable angst over whether Charter, the second cable operator American, Will Really Follow Despite his threat to "move on" from the video business, Bakish said his focus has long been on keeping Paramount going. He took the reins as CEO of Viacom four years before its 2019 merger with CBS, inheriting the distribution mess of his predecessor Philippe Dauman, whose notoriously inflexible negotiating style steered the company away from a number of large distributors.
"We started thinking about transforming our business probably seven years ago", se recalls Bakish, emphasizing "working with distributors on this to modernize the way we do business." Echoing comments earlier in the day from Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, Bakish said the carriage dispute "didn't surprise us" given the inherent balance required by both ends of pay-TV cable. /p>
He pointed to co-marketing agreements with "all major distributors" in the United States for Paramount+ streaming services. With Showtime and Pluto TV. Co-marketing is an issue at the heart of the Disney Charter tangle, with the latter accusing Disney of wanting to charge customers twice for the same content (a characterization of...
You will be redirected to your article in a few seconds
September 6, 2023 4:20 p.m.
Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish says the Disney-Charter transportation dispute has had a "significant" financial impact on many people. pay-TV players, but he touted his efforts to "modernize" the company's distribution relationships for the streaming era.
Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Tech conference, Bakish said last Friday was “ obviously a remarkable day for the industry." It was the first trading day after 18 Disney cable networks and eight ABC stations shut down on Charter's Spectrum TV service. This resulted in a collective loss of $15 billion. dollars on the market value of a number of programmers and operators, Bakish said, as the transportation standoff "has been interpreted as negative" by investors. Nonetheless, he continued, "all companies are not on the same page" when it comes to coordinating their efforts in linear television, streaming and other business areas.
Although there has been considerable angst over whether Charter, the second cable operator American, Will Really Follow Despite his threat to "move on" from the video business, Bakish said his focus has long been on keeping Paramount going. He took the reins as CEO of Viacom four years before its 2019 merger with CBS, inheriting the distribution mess of his predecessor Philippe Dauman, whose notoriously inflexible negotiating style steered the company away from a number of large distributors.
"We started thinking about transforming our business probably seven years ago", se recalls Bakish, emphasizing "working with distributors on this to modernize the way we do business." Echoing comments earlier in the day from Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, Bakish said the carriage dispute "didn't surprise us" given the inherent balance required by both ends of pay-TV cable. /p>
He pointed to co-marketing agreements with "all major distributors" in the United States for Paramount+ streaming services. With Showtime and Pluto TV. Co-marketing is an issue at the heart of the Disney Charter tangle, with the latter accusing Disney of wanting to charge customers twice for the same content (a characterization of...
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