Charter Communications’ Spectrum service launched a new brand platform, Life Unlimited, as part of a new product bundling and marketing approach aimed at competing with wireless connectivity providers.

Spectrum is offering price guarantees, including a 500 Megabits-per-second internet plan starting at $30 a month when ordered with two lines of Spectrum’s fastest mobile and/or video services.

The company said speeds will increase for all of its current internet customers.

Last year, Charter introduced Spectrum One, a converged offering. Customers who don’t take advantage of new Life Unlimited bunded rates may continue to subscribe to Spectrum One, the company said.

“This new commitment to our customers goes beyond words; it is about action,” said Cliff Hagan, executive VP, customer operations for Charter, which operates the Spectrum brand.

“With approximately 100,000 employees, our customers are also our friends, family and neighbors, and we hold ourselves accountable to them,“ he said. “If we are charging for a service, it should work all the time; if it doesn’t, our customers should trust that we’ll make it right. By focusing on reliability, transparency and outstanding service, we want to exceed expectations, build lasting loyalty and address our customers’ needs with renewed energy and focus on keeping them seamlessly connected. 

“We’ve already made the investment in our people, tools and systems that will allow us to execute on these commitments and fully stand behind the great value, products and services we provide to our customers,” Hagan said.

Cable companies have been losing video customers to cord-cutting and more profitable broadband business to cheaper wireless providers.

Cable analyst Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson noted that Life Unlimited is not a price cut.

“Today’s introduction of what Charter is calling a ‘new brand platform’ under the moniker Life Unlimited should be seen as leaning into convergence, and more, into the concept that connectivity in home and out, should be viewed as an entirely new product category, not just a pricing plan,” Moffett said.

Moffett noted that it will be difficult to tell how the new offerings affect the individual products Charter offers.

“What they will do is elevate their converged broadband/mobile offers to the center of the plate,” Moffett said. “They want to be seen as a converged connectivity provider. Their new bundled offers will deliver higher speeds — a relatively standard practice for broadband, whether in bundles or standalone — and they will have new plans targeted to lower-income consumers as they continue to respond to the sunset of ACP… but mostly this is about leaning into bundles. Or convergence, if you prefer.”

Moffett added that the new bundle elevates video as a component. This move comes with Charter having cut deals with The Walt Disney Co., Paramount Global, TelevisaUnivision and AMC Networks to include their streaming properties as part of Spectrum pay TV bundles.

“How much any of this will move the needle for broadband is unclear,” Moffett said.

“And while Charter’s video offering will indeed be differentiated — it is interesting to consider the success Verizon has had with their myPlan bundles of different DTC video services as add-ons to wireless, for example — it is hard to imagine that anything will slow the decline of linear video packages all that much,” Moffett said. “We would imagine, however, that Spectrum Mobile will get a boost, as the company leans into the fact that its broadband + mobile (ahem, converged connectivity) bundles are priced below any converged alternative. And they are available … everywhere.”

Charter is introducing Life Unlimited with a new TV ad campaign that starts Tuesday. The new brand also features new-for-charter colors and a new sound.

“Today’s launch of Spectrum’s Life Unlimited brand platform marks a milestone in our journey to redefine what a connectivity company means to its customers,”  Charter executive VP, chief marketing officer Sharon Peters said.

“This initiative is about so much more than a new look and feel for the Spectrum brand; it is a fundamental shift in how we operate, with the goal of building more trust with our customers,“ Peters said. “Life Unlimited is a platform for action that holds the customer experience at the center of everything we do. By delivering competitive, reliable products and exceptional customer service at an incredible value, we are declaring our unwavering commitment to helping our customers lead unlimited lives, anywhere and everywhere they need us.”

Charter Communications’ Spectrum Business said it made a deal with EverPass Media that will bring NFL Sunday Ticket and Peacock Sports Pass to bars, restaurants and other businesses in the 41-state footprint served by Spectrum.

Spectrum also said it will again carry Thursday Night Football for Spectrum Business customers this season.

In addition Spectrum is introducing a new Spectrum Business Sports Fan TV package consisting of more than 40 live and local sports channels that will be available to new business customers for an introductory price of $79.99 a month, or $59.99 a month when bundled with another Spectrum service for 12 months.

“We know how important it is for small business customers to have access to a broad portfolio of sports content so their patrons can watch all their favorite live events,” said Tom Montemagno, executive VP, programming acquisition for Charter, which operates the Spectrum brand of connectivity services. “The combination of NFL Sunday Ticket and Peacock Sports Pass via EverPass and our new Sports Fan TV tier means we can offer businesses a sports solution that includes almost all NFL games, college football, and professional basketball, hockey, baseball, soccer and more.”

EverPass was founded in 2023 in partnership with RedBird Capital Partners and 32 Equity, the strategic investment arm of the NFL. TKO Group Holdings, parent company of UFC and WWE, joined as an investor in 2024.

“We are thrilled to partner with Spectrum Business as our first official channel partner,” EverPass CEO Alex Kaplan said.

“EverPass was founded with the goal of innovating the out-of-home sports and entertainment viewing experience while also empowering business owners to have complete control of the content their customers desire,” Kaplan said. “This strategic relationship allows us to tap into Spectrum Business’ extensive network and expand access to NFL Sunday Ticket and Peacock Sports Pass for commercial establishments, further positioning EverPass as the preeminent live sports and entertainment content platform for businesses across the U.S.”

Charter Communications’ hard-won carriage renewal deal with The Walt Disney Co. last September was viewed as a watershed moment for pay TV, with the cable operator securing unprecedented abilities to bundle OTT services including Disney Plus Basic and ESPN Plus at no extra charge to its remaining 9.5 million Spectrum TV Select customers. 

Outlining the strategy of ditching lesser-watched linear channels like Freeform and integrating popular SVOD services to investors during its memorable two-week standoff with Disney, soon-to-be-triumphant Charter CEO Christopher Winfrey described the hybrid OTT/pay TV model, which could be delivered and maximized over Charter’s Xumo connected-TV device JV with Comcast, as the “future of video.”

Also read: Disney and Charter Patch Up ‘Broken’ Pay TV Model, Sign Distribution Agreement

But earlier this month, Puck’s John Ourand reported that less than 10% of Charter's TV Select base has signed up for the ad-supported version of Disney Plus since it became available on the platform in January, even though the SVOD, regularly priced at $7.99, comes at no additional cost to the Spectrum subscriber. 

“At first glance, this seemed like the future: adding new streaming offerings desired by consumers and dropping lightly-watched linear TV channels,” LightShed analyst Richard Greenfield noted after reading Ourand’s post. “Unfortunately, it does not appear to be working out that way for Charter. It looks more and more like Disney’s Bob Iger outmaneuvered Charter’s Chris Winfrey.”

On Friday, during Charter's second-quarter earnings call, Winfrey outlined some changes to Disney's SVOD offerings. 

For starters, Spectrum TV Select customers will, starting later on in the third quarter, have the option of signing on to ad-free Disney Plus Premium … if they’re willing to spend an additional $6 a month. 

And in Q4, Charter will also add Disney’s Hulu as a $2-a-month add-on. 

“Our efforts to deploy a new hybrid DTC linear model first for the industry remain on track and we expect it to be fully deployed next year,” Winfrey said. “Together with Xumo, our goal is to deliver utility and value for our customers irrespective of how they want to view content and better and more stable economics for programming partners.”

Winfrey also reiterated the foundation of the strategy — Charter customers shouldn’t have to pay twice for the same content, delivered cia linear channels and streaming services. 

“Customers can’t be forced to pay twice and if the DTC standalone pricing is less-expensive at retail, then that’s what we really should help programmers sell instead," Winfrey added. “Fundamentally, we believe that evolving the video business, even if it isn’t growing, helps customer acquisition and retention, still has positive cash flow, it provides us with option value. And over time, we believe a high-quality video product gives us the opportunity to reintroduce more value into the converged connectivity relationship.“

Undoubtedly, some Spectrum TV Plus customers — those who hate commercials — are paying twice for Disney Plus, Greenfield noted, so this move should address part of the problem. 

Greenfield, however, wondered how many of Charter's video customers — who tend to be older and have more money than the median Disney Plus base — want the SVOD in the first place. 

"It’s also possible that if you are wealthy enough to afford the bloated $100+/month cable bundle from Charter, the last thing you want is Disney Plus with advertising," he wrote. 

With an older user base, many of whom are alien to an app-based world, lack of awareness could also be a factor in Disney Plus’ slow uptake on Spectrum TV Select.

“If you have legacy Charter Spectrum hardware, you cannot tune into a channel to watch Disney Plus, you need to use the app on a smart TV or a third-party streaming device,” Greenfield said. “Even if you have a newer Xumo-based streaming box from Charter that integrates linear TV and streaming, Disney Plus is still a separate app from watching live linear channels inside the Spectrum app (you cannot stumble upon Disney Plus, the way you stumble upon a new channel). We wonder how many Charter subscribers even know they can add Disney Plus at no additional cost?”

Charter Communications posted a second-quarter increase in net income and revenue despite continuing losses of internet and video customers.

Net income at Stamford, Connecticut-based Charter rose 0.5% to $1.23 billion, or $8.49 a share, from $1.22 billion, or $8.05 a share a year ago. 

Revenue rose by 0.2% to $13.7 billion, driven by a 37% jump in residential mobile service revenue.

Also Read: Charter Follows Comcast With Worst-Ever Broadband Quarter, Loses 149,000 Subscribers in Q2

The financial reports beat Wall Street expectations.

Charter said it lost 149,000 residential and small- and medium-sized business Spectrum Internet customers, leaving it with 30.4 million customers. The company said it lost 154,000 broadband homes mainly because of the end of the government’s Affordable Connectivity Program.

Internet revenue rose 1.3% to $5.8 billion. 

The company lost 393,000 residential Spectrum video subscribers, finishing the quarter with 12.7 million. The losses were more than double the losses in Q2 2023.

Revenue from video fell 7.7% to $3.9 billion.

Programming costs fell 9.8% to $268 million as a result of having fewer video subscribers and a bigger share of lower-cost packages.

The company added 557,000 Spectrum Mobile cellphone lines, for a total of 8.8 million. 

Mobile revenue was up 36.9% to $737 million.

The company said it increased the number of homes passed by 2.8% to 57.8 million homes.

“We are executing well on several transformational initiatives, growing EBITDA through efficiencies and improving our service and sales capabilities,“ Charter CEO Chris Winfrey said. “We remain fully focused on driving customer growth, with a unique, high-quality product set that continues to evolve, creating long-term value for shareholders.”

Spectrum News Maine premieres In Focus Maine, a weekly public-affairs program, Sunday, June 30. The half-hour program airs at 10:30 a.m. and will feature discussions with newsmakers, including government officials and expert analysts, on issues affecting Mainers.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is in the premiere episode, with Josh Robin, Spectrum News’s chief national correspondent, conducting the interview. She describes the mass shooting in Lewiston, which happened in October 2023, as “the darkest day in Maine history in my life.” 

Collins also spoke on the rift between parties in D.C., and those who seek to work with those across the aisle. “I would like the people of this country to know that despite the extreme hyper-partisanship that we’re seeing in Washington, that there are people who work hard every day for a better America, and to come together on legislation to try to improve life for everyday Americans,” she said. “And we tend to work together, Democrats and Republicans.”

Spectrum News Maine, owned by cable operator Charter Communications and available to its Spectrum subscribers, debuted earlier this year. 

Local In Focus programs are on the air elsewhere in the Spectrum News group, including in New York City, upstate New York, Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida (Orlando and Tampa), Texas, North Carolina and California. 

Charter Communications is quietly raising the rates for some of its services for the second time in less than six months.

A Charter rep (largely) confirmed a Reddit posting from earlier this week — from an individual claiming to be a Charter employee — stating that base internet pricing will rise in July by $3 a month, with the base-level Spectrum TV Select package also going up by $3 in some states. 

Here’s the post:

Rate increases incoming again July. from r/Spectrum

Also Read: Comcast and Charter Are in a Better Position Than Smaller Cable Companies To Resist Fixed Wireless Competition, S&P Global Ratings Says

Charter did say the changes to its TV Select service will impact “less than 1%” of residential video customers. And CableCard pricing is going up by $4 a month, not $6. (We were surprised CableCARD is still a thing, too, with Charter ending support for the technology two years ago.)

The increases don’t appear to impact Spectrum Mobile.

“Spectrum has worked with programming providers to create a new business model that provides our video customers with more choices to fit their needs and a better value for the products they purchase,” reads a statement emailed to Next TV. “Despite these ongoing efforts, some programmers continually raise fees for their content, which are passed through as increased fees to viewers and drive higher costs across the entire industry.”

The increase comes following an earlier price hike in January, when the company raised rates for its low-income-targeted Spectrum Internet Assist service from $20 to $25 a month.

Last July, Spectrum raised the price of its TV, internet and phone services, again citing programming costs for the increase.

The news also comes after Charter’s first-quarter earnings report revealed that Spectrum lost 72,000 internet customers and 405,000 cable TV customers in the first three months of 2022.

Perhaps more relevant: Broadband average revenue per customer (ARPU) came in at $68.12  in the first quarter first equity analysts' consensus forecasts of $68.60. 

“We continue to expand and improve our offerings to ensure all customers have products and packages that best meet their needs,” the Charter rep added. “While our services have been impacted by rising costs, we strive to keep prices as low as possible.”

Charter is still in the process of notifying its customers of the price increases.

The flagship Pac-12 Network, as well as its various regional sister channels, will leave the pay TV programming grid at the end of June (or slightly after), according to a letter sent by distribution partner Charter Communications to its subscribers.

Last week’s Arizona vs. Stanford conference tournament baseball game was the network’s final live broadcast.

The departure marks a sad ending for the erstwhile “Conference of Champions,” with the storied Pac-12 collegiate sports league ultimately disbanding mainly because its TV distribution deals performed so poorly. 

Also read: Pac-12 ADs Spurn Apple Subscription Streaming Deal, Tragically Dismantle the 108-Year-Old ‘Conference of Champions’

Launched in 2012, Pac-12 Network never found its footing, beset by carriage issues almost from its beginning — most notably, a long-running distribution stalemate with DirecTV. 

In December, the regional sports network announced that it would lay off more than 100 employees in the first half of 2024.

And with all but two of its member schools set to depart for rival athletic leagues the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC in the summer, the Pac-12 conference itself will be down to just Washington State and Oregon State.

With the discontinuation of Pac-12 Networks, denizens of those two remaining schools can watch a selection of Oregon State and Washington State home games on broadcast network The CW. 

Paramount Global and Charter Communications said they reached a new carriage agreement that gives the cable operator’s Spectrum customers Paramount’s streaming services as well as its broadcast and cable programming.

Charter signed a similar deal with The Walt Disney Co. last year. The cable company believes its customers should continue to get the programming media companies are moving to streaming without having to pay more.

The new deal gives Charter’s Spectrum subscribers the ad-supported versions of Paramount Plus and BET Plus, as well as networks including CBS, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

"From the outset, Paramount has embraced Charter's goal of evolving the video distribution model, and we have appreciated their willingness to collaborate on a solution that benefits our mutual customers and the video industry as a whole," said Tom Montemagno, executive VP, programming acquisition for Charter.

“Spectrum continues to transform the cable bundle to become the best destination and value for video customers and we expect to continue to add more enhancements like this in the near future,” Montemagno said.

The deal comes with Paramont’s future ownership in question. There have been several bidders for Paramount and having a carriage deal with the nation’s largest cable operator should bolster Paramount’s value.

”We are very pleased to renew and expand our long-standing partnership with Charter to provide continued access to Paramount's leading portfolio of broadcast, entertainment, news and sports brands,“ Ray Hopkins, president of U.S. Networks Distribution at Paramount, said. “This innovative deal celebrates our mutual commitment to deliver flexibility, choice and value for audiences everywhere, and we look forward to bringing even more of our fan-favorite programming to Spectrum customers through our direct-to-consumer streaming services for the first time.”

Under the deal:

• Charter will continue to carry Paramount’s CBS owned-and-operated broadcast television stations, along with all of Paramount's current cable networks and Paramount Plus with Showtime, in relevant tiers across all Spectrum TV Select packages, Mi Plan Latino, TV Choice and TV Stream.
• Later this year, Paramount Plus Essential and BET Plus + Essential will be made available at no additional cost to all Spectrum TV Select packages and Mi Plan Latino customers through the Xumo Stream Box or any other Paramount Plus supported device, and the Paramount Plus with Showtime plan will continue to be received at no cost by all of Spectrum's Paramount Plus with Showtime linear customers as well.
• Spectrum customers that have Paramount Plus + Essential included will be offered the opportunity to upgrade to the ad-free version of Paramount Plus with Showtime later this year.

The outlook for the U.S. government’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) remains terminal, with none of the multiple late-hour efforts in Congress intended to replenish funding for the depleted program appearing close to achieving that goal.

Introduced in December 2021 as a way to help low-income Americans afford internet, the subsidy program has been on partial rations since May 1 and will officially run completely out of money on May 31, unless Congress acts to save it.

The cancellation of the ACP, which comes at a time when the U.S. broadband industry is already bleeding customers, with Comcast Cable president and CEO Dave Watson telling investors Tuesday to expect increased customer attrition in the second and third quarters. 

On a consumer level, the ACP’s sunset could leave more than 23 million U.S. homes paying up to $40 more each month for internet service, or canceling their service altogether.

And, according to a White House fact sheet, nearly half of ACP subscribers have historically been military families, with seniors, African Americans and Latinos also relying on the service in disproportionately higher rates.

In the past week, two new proposals have surfaced to help refund the program, which is now solely issuing partial payments: one an amendment for an appropriations bill enacted in March, which would include further funding for the ACP; and another that offers a significantly pared-down version of the monthly subsidy.

The latter proposal, introduced Monday by Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.), also provides that all households enrolled in the program will remain eligible for 180 days after the bill’s passage, before having to re-enroll in the ACP, this time through the National Verifier or National Lifeline Accountability Database in order to combat fraud.

According to Williams, the funding for H.R. 8466 would come entirely from existing federal funds, creating no additional taxpayer burden.

But text for the full bill has yet to be released. And with just one co-sponsor — Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.) — it’s highly unlikely that, if passed, it could provide a solution before vulnerable Americans are impacted by the cancellation of ACP aid.

Meanwhile, Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) introduced the ACP Extension Act in January, a bill to fund the program to the tune of $7 billion, with the most bipartisan support of any ACP action item.

Despite its 230 co-sponsors (technically enough support to pass the House), the bill has stalled on the House floor.

Additionally, a discharge petition filed last month to vote on the bill without the support of House Speaker Mike Johnson failed to receive the necessary absolute majority to bring it to vote, leaving the status of the ACP Extension Act uncertain.

In addition to Congressional efforts to save the bill, Charter’s Spectrum Mobile brand is offering a free mobile line for one year for home internet customers who are losing their ACP benefits.

That’s in addition to a buyout plan, which offers up to $2,500 for customers who switch to Spectrum Mobile and purchase at least three lines.

“Our new phone buyout program is designed to help customers switch from the steep costs associated with other mobile providers,” Sharon Peters, Charter executive VP and chief marketing officer, said in a statement.  

While no single program can replace the benefit of the ACP, if it expires, there are a variety of local and state subsidies, and discounted plans that can help those customers struggling with the additional financial burden.

Lifeline, a federal subsidy that provides $9.25 a month to low-income households for internet or cellphone plans is available to individuals with an income totally 135% of federal poverty guidelines or less.

Customers can also receive Lifeline support if they are enrolled in Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, Federal Public Housing Assistance, Veterans Pension and Survivors Benefit or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Charter Communications is offering customers who switch to Spectrum Mobile up to $2,500 to pay off their existing plans.

In an era of cord-cutting and competition from wireless broadband, cable companies are still seeing significant growth in the mobile phone business.

“Our new phone buyout program is designed to help customers switch from the steep costs associated with other mobile providers and take advantage of Spectrum Mobile’s superior value,” said Sharon Peters, executive VP, chief marketing officer at Charter Communications, which operates the Spectrum brand.

“This offer is another example of how we are driving exceptional value and convenience in the mobile marketplace, and we look forward to welcoming new customers with the best service, speeds and performance Spectrum Mobile has to offer,” Peters said. 

In the first quarter, Charter said it added 486,000 mobile lines. Its total of 8.3 million lines is up 36% from a year ago.

Spectrum Mobile offers unlimited data plans for $29.99 per month per line. It includes nationwide 5G access. Customers can sign up for Anytime Upgrades for their mobile devices and get Speed Boost, which offers speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second on phones.

The offer covers customers who switch to Spectrum Mobile from another provider and purchase at least three lines with at least one ported line. Spectrum will pay off their existing phone balance on ported lines up to $2,500 (with a maximum of five ported lines) while also enabling potential savings of hundreds of dollars annually on their mobile bills.

For Affordable Connectivity Program customers, Spectrum is offering a free Unlimited Mobile line for one year — a savings of $360 — that will help offset the loss of the $30 per month ACP credit.

A very tumultuous week for Paramount Global will not include a blackout with the largest U.S. pay TV operator, with the media company and the MSO agreeing to keep Par channels on the Charter programming grid as the two sides keep negotiating, according to multiple published reports in Bloomberg and the Penske showbiz trades, citing inside sources. 

A Charter rep had told Next TV earlier Tuesday, "We have nothing to share at this time, and we're not providing any guidance." (Hmph …) 

In extending the current arrangement, Paramount and Charter avoid a fate similar to Comcast and bankrupt regional sports network operator Diamond Sports Group, which squared off with blackout threats Tuesday amid failing negotiations. 

Controlling around 13.7 million video subscriptions amid lean times in the U.S. pay TV ecosystem, Charter wields considerable leverage these days. And the cable company has used that leverage recently, securing major concessions, for example, in a closely observed renegotiation with The Walt Disney Co. back in September. 

Also read: Three’s Company: Paramount Names George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins as ‘Office of the CEO’ Trio Who Will Replace Bob Bakish

For its part, Paramount just sent its longtime CEO, Bob Bakish, packing on Monday, as it enters advanced M&A discussions with David Ellison and his Skydance Media. 

Benefitting from a record-breaking Super Bowl audience performance in February, Paramount on Monday reported solid first-quarter metrics for CBS, its cable channels and streaming service Paramount Plus. 

But any good vibes would be quickly undone if CBS, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon were to be shoved off Spectrum-branded video program guides. 

Charter Communications reported higher first-quarter profits despite continued cord-cutting and competition for broadband customers.

Stamford, Connecticut-based Charter said it lost 72,000 residential and business interest customers, leaving it with 30.5 million. A year ago, the company added 67,000 broadband subscribers.

Despite the customer drain, residential broadband revenue grew 1.9% to  $5.8 billion.

Cord-cutting accelerated, with Charter losing 392,000 Spectrum video customers, compared with a loss of 237,000 in the year-ago quarter.

The company finished the quarter with 13.7 million video customers, including 13.1 million residential customers.

That kept it ahead of Comcast as the largest cable pay TV provider in the country. Comcast on Thursday reported having 13.6 million total video customers.

Revenue from residential video fell 8.1% to $3.9 billion for Charter. Programming costs decreased 8.2%. 

Charter’s Spectrum Mobile customer base grew to 8.3 million lines with the addition of 486,000 in the quarter.

Overall, first-quarter net income was $1.1 billion, or $7.55 a share, up 8.4% from $1.02 billion, or $6.65 a share, a year ago.

Revenue rose 0.2% to $13.7 billion, driven by growth in residential mobile revenue growth of 37.8%.

The financial results were below analysts’ expectations.

”Our differentiated converged connectivity products provide us with significant competitive advantages that position Charter for sustainable customer and financial growth,“ CEO Chris Winfrey said.

John Malone has stepped down from his role as director emeritus on the Charter Communications board, citing concerns that his simultaneous presence on Warner Bros. Discovery's board of directors violates the Clayton Act. 

“I stepped away from my director emeritus role at Charter due to the uncertainty around Clayton Act inquiries,” Malone said in a statement. “I remain heavily invested in Charter via Liberty Broadband — which maintains its three board seats — and am confident in Charter’s leadership team and strategy for the business.” 

Malone had held the director emeritus position since 2018, when he retired from a full-time director role. 

Malone's move comes after Steven Miron and Steven Newhouse, two other executives who simultaneously occupied Charter and WBD board seats, came under Justice Department scrutiny for possible violations of the Clayton Antitrust Act. The 1914 law was designed to curtail conflicts of interest arising from board members serving two competing companies at once. 

Both Miron and Newhouse resigned from the WBD board earlier this month.  

“Charter, through its Spectrum cable service, and WBD, including through its Max streaming subscription services, both provide video distribution services to customers,” the DOJ said in a statement. 

The news was originally reported by Cablefax.

Last fall, Charter Communications went to the mat with The Walt Disney Co. over program-licensing renewal, trying to, among other things, gain more flexibility in terms of how it bundles channels. 

And the fruits of the cable operator’s hard-won battle are apparent with its introduction Tuesday of Spectrum TV Stream, a virtual, ESPN-less skinny bundle that includes more than 90 entertainment and news-themed channels for $39.99 a month. 

Bundled channels include A&E, AMC, BBC America, CNN, Discovery, Disney Channel, Fox News, FX, Hallmark, HGTV, National Geographic, TCM, TLC, and in some markets, Spectrum News. Here is a complete channel list.

Notice that the bundle includes the Disney Channel, but not ABC or ESPN. 

Charter, which became the No. 1 pay TV operator in America last year — largely because incumbent leader Comcast lost nearly 2.1 million video customers — also announced the introduction of Spectrum Stream Latino. This vMVPD bundles 45 Spanish-language channels, including Bandamax, BeIN Sports en Español, Discovery en Español, Galavisión, Telemundo, TUDN, UniMás and Univision, for $24.99 a month. 

Both skinny bundles are streamed through the Spectrum TV App, which is supported by platforms including the Xumo Stream Box, iOS and Android phones and tablets, CTV gadgets and smart TVs powered by Apple TV, Roku, Xbox One, Amazon Kindle Fire and Samsung, and computers via SpectrumTV.com.

Spectrum Stream comes a little over nine years after Dish Network introduced Sling TV, but better late than never. 

“We are focused on creating more flexible, lower-cost video options for our customers that include a bundle of channels they want to watch,” Sharon Peters, executive VP and chief marketing officer for Charter, said in a statement. “With Spectrum TV Stream and Stream Latino, our customers now have the option to choose high-value, internet-delivered streaming TV packages that include the most popular news and entertainment networks and Spanish-language programming.”

Charter Communications has begun notifying its Spectrum Mobile customers that effective April 24, the wireless service will no longer support data roaming on airplanes, cruise ships and in certain foreign countries with high data rates. 

“You can still use your service to make calls and texts by connecting to public WiFi for internet access,” Charter said in the email, which also includes a link with the list of the banned foreign lands. 

Blocked terrain includes Ascension Island, British Indian Ocean Territories, Comoros, Cook Islands, Diego Garcia, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), Maldives, Federated States of Micronesia, New Caledonia, Saint Helena, Sao Tome and Principe, Somalia, South Sudan, St. Pierre/Miquelon, Turkmenistan and Yemen.

Spectrum Mobile doesn't seem to offer a solution beyond WiFi in these affected areas. Other wireless carriers do, but the fix isn't cheap. Verizon, for example, will charge users $20 a line per day for unlimited data and voice on planes, and $30 per day per line for 500 MB of usage on cruise ships. 

"This change will protect customers from unexpected charges while traveling internationally to locations with exorbitant data rates," a Charter rep told Next TV via email.

Spectrum Mobile said it still offers international long distance and international roaming service to more than 200 countries. 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is seeking to shine light on the many sealed and heavily redacted filings related to a recently settled patent case involving Charter Communications and Entropic Communications. 

The two companies settled Entropic's lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in Texas over Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) technologies in December. (You can read the case here.) 

But according to digital rights advocacy group EFF, the two sides made so much of their beef secret, it's difficult to gauge the impact of the complaint and resulting settlement on the ever-evolving DOCSIS standard, which is the foundation of cable broadband. 

"EFF’s motion argues that the legal issues in the case and their potential implications for the DOCSIS standard are a matter of public concern and asks the district court judge hearing the case to provide greater public access," wrote the group's senior policy analyst, Joe Mullin, and Aaron Mackey, its chief transparency and free speech litigator, in a blog post. 

"In Entropic, both sides are experienced litigants who should know that this type of sealing is improper," the pair added. "Unfortunately, over-broad secrecy is common in patent litigation, particularly in cases filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas."

EFF has filed this motion to unseal the court records. 

Entropic has recently sued other cable companies, including Comcast and Cox Communications, as well as satellite TV companies DirecTV and Dish Network. 

Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group said it reached a multiyear renewal of its carriage agreement with Charter Communications.

The deal covers retransmission consent for AMG’s local TV stations and cable networks The Weather Channel, TheGrio, Justice Central.TV, Pets.TV, Recipe.TV, and Cars.TV.

Similar to Charter’s recent agreement with The Walt Disney Co., which gave Charter’s Spectrum video subscribers free access to Disney streaming services Disney Plus and ESPN Plus, Spectrum video subscribers will also get The Weather Channel DTC app.

"We are delighted to continue growing our relationship with Charter Communications,” Byron Allen, founder, chairman and CEO of Allen Media Group, said. “Charter/Spectrum has been a phenomenal partner to our television networks and our broadcast television stations, and we look forward to prospering from this mutually beneficial arrangement for years to come.”

The new agreement comes three years after Allen and Charter resolved the $10 billion discrimination lawsuit Allen brought against the cable operator for not carrying his channels.

Despite heavy paper losses endured through five rounds of stock buybacks since 2020, Charter Communications will not change its investment strategy, according to chief financial officer Jessica Fischer. 

“We continue to be confident in the long-term trajectory of the business,“ Fischer said Wednesday at Deutsche Bank’s annual Media & Telecom Conference. Mentioning that share buybacks "where that's appropriate" are part of Charter's capital-structure management, she said there's “no change to the way that we've approached those things.” (You can access a replay of the event here.)

Also read: Are You Kidding Me? Charter CEO Chris Winfrey Made More Than Shohei Ohtani Last Year

As noted in longtime ACA Connects coms executive Ted Hearn’s new Policyband Substack newsletter on Monday (you can sign up for that here), Charter’s share price descended to a five-year low last week of $270 a share, versus a high of $825 in September 2021 and an average price of $535. 

Hearn included this compelling graphic highlighting Charter’s recent stock buybacks that have generated around $22.5 billion in paper losses:

“Of course, if Charter’s stock rallies, the paper losses from the buybacks would shrink,” Hearn wrote. “But it’s a long climb — 89%, in fact — to get back to $535, much less $825.“ And as the veteran cable business observer also pointed out, $22.5 billion “would be nice to have about now with Altice USA in search of a buyer and Cable One a potential acquisition target.”

Also read: A Potential Altice USA Purchase ‘Makes Sense’ for Charter, But Comcast Should Kick the Tires, Too, Analyst Says

Things could be looking up for Charter. As Hearn also noted, CEO Christopher Winfrey paid $1.5 million in February for 5,050 Charter shares at an average price of $295.29. It was his first such share purchase in two years, Hearn said, citing Barron's. 

For her part, Fischer believes Charter’s business trajectory is about to change, starting with competition from fixed wireless access. 

As FWA operators T-Mobile and Verizon Communications rationalize the consumer price of fixed wireless service versus the true costs of actually delivering the product, “we’re going to get a large share of those customers back,” she said.

Currently, FWA is priced by a kind of found-money concept: T-Mobile and Verizon are merely monetizing excess capacity, an excess that will dry up over time. 

"The reality is, this is not a costless product,” she added. 

Also read: Charter CEO Chris Winfrey Dismisses FWA as ‘Cellphone Internet’

Fischer also expressed bullishness on Spectrum Mobile, noting the service has only claimed around 8 million wireless lines out of 130 million available in Charter's footprint.

“I think mobile can make up a meaningful portion of our EBITDA growth in the next five to six years,” she said.

Charter Communications CEO Christopher Winfrey came out swinging against cable's fast-emerging fixed wireless access competition at a Morgan Stanley investor conference Wednesday, repeatedly calling the technology an “inferior product” and labeling it several times as “cellphone internet.”

“That’s what it is — cellphone internet,” Winfrey declared repeatedly, noting the cable industry “needs to do a better job of marketing” against its fast-rising wireless competitors. (You can access a replay of Winfrey's Morgan Stanley appearance here.)

"We need to articulate to the customer that the reason you're getting that incrementally low price point [on FWA] is because you're overpaying on your wireless line," he explained. 

Also read: Wireless Org Says Cable Lobbyists Are Trying To Block Allocation of 5G Spectrum To Stymie FWA

After launching their respective FWA platforms in 2021, T-Mobile and Verizon Communications have come to dominate customer additions for home internet service. 

“We’re in a lull right now from a net adds perspective,” Winfrey said, noting that consumers are moving less and that there's still a hangover from the massive uptake of high-speed internet service during the pandemic. 

And there’s new competition from FWA. 

“Any time you have a new competitor inside a marketplace, you're going to see disruption,” Winfrey said. 

Meanwhile, the Charter CEO was also asked about the so-called Spulu joint streaming venture announced recently by Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery. 

“We don't have a lot of the details, and I'm not sure the deal is final, but whether it’s 60% or 65% of sports content, I'm not sure it scratches the itch of the sports fanatic,” Winfrey said. 

In any case, he added: “You have three of the largest programmers who have decided that genre-based packaging is the way to go. I agree with that. We've been saying that for several decades. And when you step back, it's an admission from programmers that that’s the way to go … And I fully expect that we’ll have the ability to distribute content in the same way.”  

Charter Communications’s Spectrum unit said Wally Bakare and Chris Fulton have taken new assignments as regional VP of field operations at the company.

Bakare, who had been regional VP for Charter’s Northern Region since 2021, will be moving to the West Region. He succeeds Shannon Atkinson, who was recently promoted to senior VP, field operations.

Bakare will report to Atkinson.  

“Wally’s more than 25-year career in the industry is highlighted by his focus on organizational performance across all areas of field operations,” said Atkinson. “He has a unique ability to diagnose operational gaps and develop strategic and tactical plans that will improve performance and enhance the experience for millions of Spectrum customers across Southern California, Hawaii and Arizona.”

Before joining Charter in 2014, he held posts at Nextel, Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

Fulton succeeds Bakare as Northwest regional VP of field operations 

He had been group VP, call center operations at Charter since 2017. 

Fulton is returning to Charter’s Northwest region, where he’d held several field operations roles. 

He became part of Charter when it acquired Cablevision’s Optimum West systems, where Fulton spent 15 years in field operations and customer service posts.

Fulton will be based in Denver and will also report to Atkinson.

“Chris brings more than 25 years of experience to his new role, marked by his dedicated focus on optimizing performance within both field operations and customer service,” Atkinson said. “His leadership skills and operational expertise will drive performance and further elevate the Spectrum customer experience across the Northwest.”

With Paramount Global entering key renewal talks with Charter Communications in the second quarter, Lightshed Partners' Richard Greenfield has become the latest equity analyst to question Paramount's ability to carve out the kind of groundbreaking agreement established between Disney and the No. 1 U.S. pay TV operator back in September.

The landmark Disney deal gave wholesale discounts for Charter to resell Disney Plus and other Disney streaming services. The pact will likely serve as “the paradigm for how [Charter] approaches future distribution agreements,“ Greenfield said in a Lightshed blog post.

Paramount Global chief executive Bob Bakish said back in early November that he also wanted to explore similar "hard bundles" with pay TV operators. At the time, another influential equity analyst, MoffettNathanson's Robert Fishman, threw cold water on the plan.

“How incremental to the linear bundle is Paramount Plus?” Fishman asked. “With simulcasts of CBS stations included within the app, including coveted sports rights such as the NFL, we remain skeptical the company will be able to get true wholesale incremental value." 

With Paramount's Charter negotiations now at hand, Greenfield expressed agreement. 

A key Charter objective, he notes, is not to pay for the same content twice.

And while Paramount Plus has exclusive content not carried by Paramount's basic cable networks, Greenfield explains, the current availability of CBS and Nickelodeon on both Charter and Paramount’s streaming service robs the conglomerate of some of its most lucrative bundling opportunities. In fact, four of Paramount Plus' eight trending shows last weekend were from Paramount’s linear TV networks: SpongeBob, Paw Patrol, Survivor and The Neighborhood.

But perhaps most critical to Paramount’s distribution strategy is one key property: the NFL on CBS, which carries historically consistent viewership and the potential to protect other networks.

That was one of the justifications for 2019’s CBS/Viacom merger, which Greenfield says was intended to “use the power of the NFL to protect the carriage of Viacom’s increasingly vulnerable networks.”

However, with NFL available to Paramount+’s lowest-tier, $5.99 ad-supported customers, Paramount is seriously undercutting the earning value of their own channel suite.

"Let’s step back and ask: why are any Paramount networks carried by distributors? Only one reason: the NFL on CBS," Greenfield wrote. "In fact, the entire rationale of the CBS/Viacom merger was to use the power of the NFL to protect the carriage of Viacom’s increasingly vulnerable cable networks. However, with NFL on CBS available on Paramount Plus' low-end, $5.99 ad-supported tier, it has to make distributors wonder why they need to carry the Paramount suite of channels."

Paramount Plus is also available at no additional cost to Walmart Plus subscribers as advertised on the corporation’s website, devaluing the power of NFL programming even further.

By enabling such easy access to sports content via streaming, Greenfield claims that “Paramount has destroyed the value of their content by enabling such easy access to sports content at far too low of a price versus what they expect to be paid for their linear networks by MVPDs.”

Paramount elected not to sell Showtime for $3 billion, and instead incorporated it into their service, offering Paramount Plus to all existing Showtime subscribers.

Paramount has scaled back its production quantity of original content, and according to Greenfield, “is trying to leverage the power of the NFL content that is not exclusive to the bundle,” and therefore lacks the bargaining power needed to tow Paramount.

And he claims that Charter won’t stand for it, likely requiring reduction to affiliate fees paid to Paramount, or for the inclusion of a Paramount Plus Essentials subscription in cooperation with Charter’s networks. If Paramount refuses both of those, Greenfield believes Charter may even drop the networks, a loss of distribution that Paramount can certainly not afford.

Charter Communications has agreed to modify disclosures in its ad campaign after once again receiving a warning from the National Advertising Division. 

This time, it’s regarding Charter’s recent commercial claim that Verizon customers "will save over $1,500 in their first year if they switch to Spectrum Mobile."

The commercial features two couples, "George and Heidi" with Verizon, and "Dan and Tina" with Spectrum, both stated to have two lines, unlimited data and nationwide 5G. George and Tina are told they pay "way too much" and decide to switch to Spectrum.

On February 21, the NAD, the self-regulatory program run by nonprofit advocacy group BBB National Programs, "concluded that while Charter may compare the pricing of two plans at different “tiers” within the carriers’ offerings, in this context, it must be clear that the lowest tier Spectrum Mobile plan is being compared with a plan that is not Verizon’s lowest tier plan."

"In addition, NAD considered whether the advertising omits material information, specifically, the requirement that one must have Spectrum Internet to take advantage of the offer for Spectrum Mobile." said the recommendation. "NAD determined that the disclosure that Spectrum Internet is required is not clear and conspicuous."

In its advertiser statement, Charter said that "while it 'disagrees that its existing disclosures were insufficient' it 'will comply with NAD’s recommendations to improve the disclosures it includes with its savings claim for Spectrum Mobile.'"

The claims at issue were challenged by Verizon Communications, Inc.

Charter Communications ran a commercial for its Spectrum home internet product during the Super Bowl in some Charter markets.

It was Charter's first Super Bowl spot since 2016.

The markets include Kansas City, the home of the Chiefs, which has been generating big ratings.

Also Read: Why Wait for Kickoff? See Some Hot Super Bowl Commercials Here

The humorous spot, called Holes, touts Spectrum Internet’s speed and reliability. By contrast, wireless broadband from carriers like T-Mobile can be interfered with by walls, the spot claims, so the T-Mobile subscriber has decided to smash holes in the wall to ensure a good connection.

“Turns out the walls were getting in the way,” the dad in the spot says.

Spectrum Internet offers speeds up to 1 Gbps everywhere the company operates--even through walls, the company says.

The commercial was created by agency Something Different.

After reporting on Friday a loss of 61,000 broadband subscribers in the third quarter, Charter Communications has taken a hard hit on Wall Street, with shares declining 19% from $382.34 at end-of-day trading on Thursday, February 1.

Equity analysts had expected narrow growth for Charter’s broadband unit, which lost 62,000 residential customers while gaining 1,000 business accounts in the fourth quarter. 

Also read: Charter Reports Video, Internet Subscriber Losses for Q4

“We’ve long argued that Charter doesn’t need to show ‘broadband re-acceleration.’ They merely need to show that broadband unit results are predictable enough, at a level reasonably close to zero or slightly better, to allow for focus on all the other good things that are happening (wireless, ARPU growth, margins),” analyst Craig Moffett wrote in a note to investors Friday. “Today’s report is a frustrating reminder that they aren’t there yet. For better or for worse, the focus will remain on broadband net adds until Charter can prove that the focus can safely be directed elsewhere.”

As this other graphic from Moffett’s report shows, Charter’s “dispiriting” broadband was declining as passings growth accelerated.

As Moffett noted, a lot could change for Charter in the coming months as to render such customer growth data less meaningful. For example, wireless unit Spectrum Mobile, which added 2.5 million lines in 2023, could start generating more revenue. 

Also read: For What It's Worth: Charter Is the New Pay TV King, Narrowly Surpasses Comcast By 17,000 Subscribers

Or broadband ARPU (average revenue per user) could accelerate, as has been the case for Comcast. 

Until that time, the analyst added: “You can’t fight the zeitgeist. It’s all about broadband net adds.”

Charter Communications reported lower fourth-quarter earnings as it lost more Internet subscribers than expected, which drove the cable company's stock lower.

Charter lost 61,000 broadband customers, leaving it with 30.6 million internet customers. Over the full year, the Stamford, Connecticut-based cable operator added 155,000 high-speed broadband subscribers.

The company also lost 248,000 video customers in the fourth quarter, nearly twice what it lost in the fourth quarter a year ago.

Charter said its video customer losses were partly the result of losing programming from The Walt Disney Co., including ABC-owned stations and ESPN, in a September  carriage dispute. The blackout cost Charter 327,000 video customers in Q3.

At year-end, Charter had 13.5 million residential video customers.

In the fourth quarter, Charter added 532,000 residential mobile lines, a slowdown compared to increasing mobile lines by 600,000 a year ago.

Also Read: Charter Says It's Shifting and Expanding Its Call Centers to Keep Up With Its Changing Business, Has No Plans to Move Them Back Overseas

Fourth-quarter net income fell 11.5% to $1.06 billion, or $7.07 a share, from $1.2 billion, or $7.69 a share, a year ago. The company attributed the decline to a pension remeasurement loss and higher interest expense.

Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) grew 1.6% to $5.6 billion as operating expenses fell 0.7% 

Revenue edged up 0.3% to $13.7 billion. 

The earnings were below expectations and Wall Street was shaken by the number of broadband subs Charter shed in the quarter. 

In morning trading, Charter’s shares were down 14%. The stock stayed down and closed at $319.21, down 16.5%, according to Nasdaq.

“Charter had warned that broadband net adds would be negative. But did anyone expect a loss of 61,00 subscribers? Consensus was (inexplicably) still slightly positive. Until expectations and results for broadband net adds come into better balance, nothing else matters. Nothing,” said analyst Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson. 

“Charter’s disappointing Q4 net add total came despite rapid rural expansion (new disclosure that confirms that their rural expansion strategy is performing very well). But that only makes the implied result in their legacy footprint all the more worrisome,” Moffett said.

Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall said the firm downgraded Charter to "equal weight" from "equal weight/overweight" with the stock-price target moving to $340 from $460. Part of the problem is a "much tougher" broadband environment, Cahall said, and Charter reported it has about 5 million customers receiving Affordable Connectivity Program subsidies from the federal government, customers who are relatively more likely to disconnect at some point.

Residential internet revenue rose 3% to $5.8 million. Video revenue dropped 8.1% to $3.9 billion. Mobile revenue jumped 35.7% to $626 million.

Fourth-quarter ad sales plunged 23% to $428 million in a non-election year. Excluding political sales, ad revenues were down 0.7%.

Programming costs dropped 10.6% to $296 million. Charter said that was because it had fewer video customers and more subscribers chose lower-cost packages.

Charter’s footprint expanded 2.5%, passing 57 million households, up from 56 million a year ago. 

“Our rural footprint expansion is exceeding our deployment and penetration targets,” Charter president and CEO Chris Winfrey said. “Our network evolution and convergence efforts remain on course. And we are beginning to see the benefits of investments in our employees and digital service to improve the customer experience. We are executing on a clear strategy to ensure we offer consumers the best products and services, all while saving them money. Not only now, but in the future.”

Having struggled under the language barrier to communicate and get things done with our previous wireless carrier's far-flung call center operation, Next TV has been, so far, pleased with the ease of interaction when dealing with Spectrum Mobile’s domestically situated support team. 

So we were a bit concerned to see a report this week indicating that 173 Charter Communications call center employees in Milwaukee were being laid off amid a facilities closure. This followed a similar Charter Spectrum call center shuttering in Cincinnati involving more than 200 workers in December. And another closure in Syracuse, New York, in July claiming 273 jobs. 

Also Read: Charter Reports Video, Internet Subscriber Losses for Q4

Back in 2017, amid the regulatory approval phase or its $55 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, Charter pledged to create 20,000 new jobs, a declaration that included the repatriation of its overseas call centers. 

Do the closures mean that Charter's shifting those jobs back overseas?

Charter press reps gave us an emphatic "no" on Thursday. 

“We have long felt that in-house employees will be better-trained and better-skilled, and ultimately longer-tenured, and will provide the best service,” a rep told us via email. “That belief underlies the commitment we made to bring service in-house and on shore after the transactions with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.”

Another company representative told us in the same thread: “We open, move and close [locations] based on the demand and product focus — for instance when mobile launched, we needed to ramp up specialists. And then when it really took off a couple of years ago, we had to expand our centers to accommodate [that]. We have also closed smaller centers to expand centers in more geographically central locations.“ 

Back in June, Charter announced a new 88,000-square-foot call center facility, staffed with around 400 workers, in Amherst, New York.

Other new customer support locations have been opened in Charlotte, North Carolina; El Paso and San Antonio, Texas; and Overland Park, Kansas, Charter told us. 

“In a few cases, we have transitioned work to other centers that are larger or have greater potential and capacity to grow, and it’s more efficient to share information, training and technology with our representatives at these larger centers,” Charter added. 

Charter Communications said it will use Sensormatic’s in-store traffic analytics to boost product sales and optimize staffing at its 700 retail locations.

Charter ran a pilot program using Sensormatic in 50 of its stores lat year.

“During the pilot program, we gathered insights into location-specific store traffic that helped us make meaningful changes to better serve customers,” Charter senior VP of Spectrum stores and retail Pattie Eliason said. “By leveraging Sensormatic Solutions’ in-store traffic analytics solutions, we will be able to continue to enhance the overall customer experience at our stores by making it easier for customers to quickly receive the support they need from our expert store specialists.”

During the pilot program, Charter used Sensormatic’s real-time insight into in-store operations to support a more customer-focused culture. Charter also uses the Sensormatic dashboard’s real-time performance, traffic and account data to facilitate in-the-moment sales coaching and optimize its labor allocation practices.

”We are proud to collaborate with innovative retailers, like Charter, as access to integrated insights based on location, region and market-specific data is what’s driving retail’s next-generation experiences,” Nick Pompa, VP and product general manager for Shopper Insights at Sensormatic Solutions, said. “Our work with Charter illustrates the versatility of data analytics for businesses of all kinds and speaks to the wider industry’s growing awareness about the power of data in retail spaces.”

Customers of Charter Communications’ most popular pay TV bundle, “Spectrum TV Select,” now have access to Disney Plus Basic, the $7.99-a-month, partly ad-supported iteration of Disney's flagship subscription streaming product, at no additional cost. 

It's the first consumer-product manifestation from a landmark carriage deal carved out between Charter and The Walt Disney Co, back in September. With much of Disney's best programming migrating to subscription streaming, Charter was able to carve out an arrangement that let it bundle services, including Disney Plus, at attractive price points for its customers. 

Charter also said it will start bundling Disney's ESPN Plus for Spectrum TV subs, also sans additional price, starting in the next few months. 

Bundling streaming services instead of traditional linear cable channels fits Charter's long-term video strategy. 

Charter has entered into a joint venture with Comcast, branded as Xumo, to develop an OTT video platform. The recently introduced Xumo Stream Box CTV device, which supports Disney Plus among numerous other top SVOD services, is now Charter's "go-to" home set-top device. 

Also Read: Xumo TV: Everything You Need to Know About the Comcast and Charter Streaming OS Joint Venture

“With the launch of the Disney Plus Basic offer, TV Select customers can now enjoy access to Disney’s popular streaming content as well as their high-quality linear TV channels, all included as part of one video package,” said Tom Montemagno, executive VP of programming acquisition for Charter, in a statement. “As the video industry continues to evolve, we are committed to including direct-to-consumer apps like Disney Plus with Spectrum services while providing a simplified TV viewing experience through platforms such as the Xumo Stream Box."

Added Justin Connolly, president of platform distribution for Disney: “The inclusion of Disney Plus alongside a curated lineup of our TV channels brings the best of both worlds from Disney’s unrivaled entertainment portfolio to Charter’s video customers. Our goal has always been to meet consumers where they are, and these collective offerings will maximize value for Spectrum TV Select customers while simultaneously broadening the audience of our advertiser-supported streaming services.”

Comcast and Charter Communications have been working to proliferate their IP-based video distribution joint venture, Xumo, across the North American cable industry and beyond. 

Xumo is designed to protect cable’s core broadband product and maintain its prominent position on the home screen while gathering all of the rich data that targeted advertisers so crave these days.

In July, Charter Communications CEO Chris Winfrey told equity analysts that the cable operator will make Xumo its “go-to-market platform for new video sales.”

Xumo enables Charter to continue to offer bundled video options in an app-based format, sans pay TV set-top and truck rolls, existing side-by-side with third-party services including Netflix and Disney Plus. 

LInear cable video isn't necessarily going away immediately. In early December, Charter chief financial officer Jessica Fischer reminded analysts at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York that quadrature amplitude modulation, or QAM, the digital encoding standard for linear cable video, “is going to be with us for a long time.” She added that also while Charter is giving the self-installed Xumo Stream Box to its new video customers, it’s not actively looking to purge legacy Cisco Systems-enabled World Box set-tops from existing Spectrum TV subscribers.

Still, the takeaway was that Charter was in the JV for the long haul, and that this kind of venture was always destined to be a long-term commitment. 

With the traditional pay TV industry in a state of secular decline, in April 2022 America’s two biggest cable operators, Comcast and Charter Communications, launched a joint venture to build an operating system and an entire ecosystem of apps designed to preserve the incumbents’ gateway into the living room and give them a platform to expand into out-of-footprint markets across the U.S. and internationally. 

At the core of Xumo is Comcast's EntertainmentOS, a TVOS rooted in Comcast’s flagship X1 operating system and further developed through the conglomerate’s “Sky Glass” initiative in Europe. 

With the technological foundations already laid by Comcast, Charter committed $900 million to the Xumo TV JV at the time to help expand the platform to handle a new generation of devices and develop additional functionality. 

The Xumo TVOS leverages the Xumo branding established by the eponymous free ad-supported streaming (FAST) service Comcast acquired in 2020 for $100 million. That was at a time when FASTs were still considered a bit of a backwater, where distributors could tap some incremental revenue on cheap library content and re-runs that appealed to the nostalgia of a relatively small niche market of viewers. 

With the new branding, the original Xumo FAST platform is being billed as Xumo Play. 

Xumo TV

Comcast’s previous attempt to establish a TVOS have also given way to the Xumo brand.

Comcast’s Flex set-top boxes. for example, have been replaced by new the Xumo Stream Box as the free streaming gadgets Comcast hands out to its broadband-only customers going forward. Also, the company’s line of XClass TV smart TVs are being replaced by Xumo TV-branded sets manufactured by Hisense, Element and others at retail.

In June the first Xumo-branded Smart TV manufactured by Element Electronics went on sale at Walmart and other retail partners with screen sizes ranging from 43 to 65 inches.

It’s hard to gauge what the consumer response has been so far to the Xumo-powered smart TVs.

As Next TV reported in September, after four months on the market, while those Element sets garnered great reviews, they were being marked down by as much as 34%. 

In the run-up to Christmas, Pioneer became the third TV set manufacturer to introduce sets built on Xumo’s TVOS, launching sets at Best Buy. It’s worth noting that those sets are actually manufactured under license by China’s TCL. 

Xumo Stream Box: The Trojan Horse

Last fall, Charter started doling the puck-sized Xumo Stream Box to new Spectrum TV customers free for one year. Existing Spectrum internet and TV customers can obtain the device via “purchase or for a service fee.” The purchase price is $60.

An October 2023 Next TV review of the Xumo Stream Box plug-in device noted that while lack of second-tier apps was still problematic, “the Stream Box could be the Trojan Horse that ultimately extends Big Cable’s control of the connected living room.”

At SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in late October, Marcien Jenckes, president of the Xumo JV reported that Middletown, New York-based Mediacom Communications will also start distributing the new Xumo Stream Box to its customers in the coming months.  

Comcast made its announcement that it would offer one free Xumo Stream Box to all its broadband customers in early December.

Xumo Play

Meanwhile, the company’s FAST channel lineup has been growing in leaps and bounds throughout 2023, with Xumo Play now fielding more than 300 channels.  

Corporate sibling NBCUniversal has been furnishing Xumo with a wide range of FAST channels built around a broad range of NBCU entertainment, news, sports and Spanish-language content.

While some channels cover genres, the FAST space has plenty of room for others to zoom in on individual series or studio IP ranging from Saturday Night Live and Bravo favorites Top Chef, Real Housewives and Keeping Up With The Kardashians to black-and-white classics, including The Lone Ranger, Lassie and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

In terms of news, Xumo has easy access to corporate siblings NBC News Now and Sky News. In July, Comcast absorbed NBC News Now and 19 Xumo-Branded FAST channels into the Xfinity X1 UX platform. 

In terms of sports, in April 2023, Comcast added the NFL Channel to its Xumo Play FAST service, kicking off with extensive coverage this year’s NFL draft. Speedvision roared onto the platform in September. 

There’s even enough room on the dial for hyper-local FAST services like Cox Media Group’s Neighborhood TV, which was recently added to the lineup, covering more than 100 local neighborhoods spread across Atlanta, Georgia and Charlotte, North Carolina.

The Evolution of Xumo TV: A Timeline

Comcast first rolled its X1 cloud-enabled video platform for Xfinity TV pay TV customers in 2012. The platform quickly became popular among subscribers for its ease of use, incorporating apps from all of the major OTT services at the time. 

Over the years, Comcast and its white-label X1 partners touted the platform as a major churn buster, reporting huge growth in video-on-demand and DVR usage.

In 2014, the third largest cable operator in the U.S., Cox Communications, became the first to license a white-label version of the video operating system, which it branded as Contour. 

In 2015, Canadian cable company Shaw Communications wrote down $55 million it had already invested in developing its own platform and licensed the white-label X1 platform, branded as BlueSky TV. 

In 2016, Canadian operator Rogers Communications came on board, branding its white-label iteration of X1 as Ignite TV. At the time, Rogers wrote off almost $500 million it had already invested in developing its own platform. 

In 2017, Montreal-based Vidéotron licensed the X1 platform for its Helix-branded platform.

In 2019, Comcast released a thin-client offshoot called Xfinity Flex for its growing ranks of customers who only subscribe to broadband. The $5-a-month streaming platform offers access to popular SVOD platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video along with AVOD services like Tubi and, of course, Xumo, plus VOD content for rent through Comcast’s transactional store. 

At that point, it became evident that Comcast had set its sights much higher — that the ecosystem it was building was evolving into a full-blown TVOS destined to compete with the likes of Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Android TV.

But to do that, it would have to be available far beyond the relatively limited footprint of Comcast and its white-label partners. 

The Competitive Field

The Comcast-Charter Xumo TV joint venture landed in a crowded field, with Roku and Amazon Fire TV firmly entrenched in the U.S., and plenty of competition from TV set makers like Samsung, LG, Vizio, not to mention a large installed base of Android TVs as well as its new incarnation as Google TV.  

As Comcast and Charter Communications work to proliferate their IP-based video distribution joint venture, Xumo, across the North American cable industry and beyond, a key selling point has been the ability to lighten the heavy load of carrying traditional video signals on cable networks. 

But it turns out that quadrature amplitude modulation, or QAM, the digital encoding standard for linear cable video, “is going to be with us for a long time,” according to Charter chief financial officer Jessica Fischer.

Speaking at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York Tuesday, Fischer reiterated Charter’s now oft-stated claim that Xumo and the new Xumo Stream Box IP-based set-top comprise the go-to video tech standard for the No. 2 sized U.S. cable company going forward. But while Charter is giving the self-installed Xumo Stream Box to its new video customers, it’s not actively looking to purge legacy Cisco-enabled “World Box’ set-tops from existing Spectrum TV subscribers. 

Also read: Xumo Stream Box Reviewed: The First OTT Player From Comcast and Charter’s JV Has a Few Bugs and Limitations, but We Can Still See Potential

“It will take a long time for those boxes to completely turn over,” Fischer said. “I do think that as the QAM video footprint shrinks — as fewer people have traditional set-top boxes — there are going to be efficiencies that we'll get from moving people from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4. And your switched video can be even more efficient as you're serving fewer QAM services. So we’ll shrink the network footprint imprint of QAM video, which is where you're going. But that point at which you say, I have enough penetration of these that I want to go take out the last piece, I think it's likely very far down the line.” 

Fischer’s remarks come after WideOpenWest CEO Theresa Elder said last month that her midsized cable operation is already feeling a QAM weight lifted by having 13% of its new customers take virtual MVPD YouTube TV as their primary video offering. 

Also, last week, Verizon Communications announced it would be delivering an Android TV-based gadget called Fios TV+ to its new Fios linear video subscribers. 

Addressing the broader, er, spectrum of Charter’s business, Fischer continued her company's home run trot following its successful negotiation with Disney in September, during which the media company agreed to make subscription streaming content from Disney Plus and other direct-to-consumer offerings part of Charter's bundled offering. 

“Ultimately, what’s important for our customers is not to pay twice for content,” Fischer said. 

Customers, she added, “can get from us a product where they have access to everything. And it doesn't mean that they have to buy our product, and they have to buy four DTCs that match the channels that they've already paid for.” 

Fischer also addressed the current broadband industry trend in which cable operators are now ceding market share in home internet service to fixed wireless access products offered by Verizon and T-Mobile in huge quarterly chunks. 

Yeah, Charter, which has added only 216,000 high-speed internet customers through the first three quarters of 2023 vs. 1.589 million FWA subscribers for T-Mobile, still thinks the wireless guys will run out of network capacity. 

“In the case of fixed wireless, eventually they’re going to be capacity-limited,” she said. “And, from a product-usage perspective, as data usage continues to increase, I think that we’ll continue to see customers recognizing that that quality does matter. And so we think that we’ll get those customers back. It’s sort of a temporary impact, but that it does have an impact in the short term.”

Fischer's appearance had impact on Charter's Wall Street fortunes -- and not in a good way. The cable operator's stock tumbled Tuesday after she said Charter might lose broadband customers in Q4. 

Cable wireless providers have one of the biggest “arbitrage” opportunities in the history of the telecommunications business, one that might lead them to “ultimately dominate the U.S. wireless market,” equity analyst Craig Moffett wrote in a Wednesday-morning note to investors. 

In making his case — that their respective MVNO deals with Verizon Communications work decisively in favor of Comcast and Charter Communications — Moffett jumps all the way back to 1775 and Benjamin Franklin’s job as the first U.S. Postmaster General. This tenure led to flat-rate billing on mail delivery, regardless of whether letters and packages were sent to easy-to-reach urban places or far-more-expensive-to-get-to rural destinations. 

This pricing ethos based on “mean average cost” as opposed to “local cost to serve” billing foundations eventually found its way into the U.S. telecom business, where it was exploited as an arbitrage opportunity in the late 1990s by competitive local-exchange carriers (CLECs).

Now, with Comcast recently declaring that 60% of Xfinity Mobile traffic comes from just 3% of its footprint, Moffett said that cable operators have a wonderful opportunity to offload cheap-to-serve urban wireless traffic onto their own networks, while keeping more expensive-to-serve traffic on Verizon’s network via their mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreements. 

“They’ll leave the high-cost areas to Verizon,” said Moffett, principal and senior analyst at MoffettNathanson. 

“That wouldn't be a problem” for incumbent wireless companies like Verizon if the underlying wholesale pricing of the MVNO "reflected local cost to serve,” Moffett said. “It’s a VERY big problem when underlying wholesale prices are based on mean average cost.

“No one else has ever had an arbitrage opportunity in wireless even remotely on this scale,” Moffett added. “Cable is currently charging as much as 30% less than AT&T and Verizon for wireless service, and they are already earning gross margins as high as 70%.”

With Comcast currently deploying Samsung strand-mounted small cells in order to drive down MVNO costs further, Moffett said, “It is not inconceivable that they and Charter will eventually be able to offload more than 60% of their wireless traffic onto their own networks with only minimal incremental investment, boosting their already-high margins to as much as 85%.”

Comcast added 294,000 Xfinity Mobile lines in the third quarter to reach a total of 6.28 million, while Charter tacked on 594,000 Spectrum Mobile lines to reach 7.2 million lines as of the end of September. For its part, Verizon beat analysts’ expectations by adding 100,000 post-paid phone customers in Q3. 

“The investment community still doesn’t take cable wireless seriously,” Moffett wrote. “Because they still think of cable wireless as ‘just’ an MVNO. It is not. Cable is arbitraging a pricing structure — same price everywhere, whether rural or urban — more than one hundred years in the making.” 

With its video customers blacked out from Disney’s ABC and ESPN for 12 long days at the start of the college and pro football seasons last month, Charter Communications began steering Spectrum Video subscribers away from its own TV service and toward third-party virtual MVPDs including YouTube TV. 

Turns out many Spectrum customers took Charter up on that coaching. The nation's No. 2 cable company lost 327,000 video subscribers in the third quarter, far exceeding the 204,000 customers shed in Q3 2022. 

It does turn out that if you go back to the third quarter of 2013, and you add losses experienced by the long-since acquired Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks on a “per forma” basis, there was a bigger customer loss quarter for Charter, according to analyst Bruce Leichtman. But as a standalone pay TV company? This is Charter's biggest quarter for cord-cutting, by far. 

Charter's full Q3 earnings release can be read here. 

Also read: CEO Chris Winfrey Says Charter Wants More Deals Like Disney’s

Charter's robust customer losses came after Comcast on Thursday reported slightly decelerated third-quarter video attrition of 490,000 Xfinity TV users. 

Following its Friday morning earnings report, Charter shares were down on the Nasdaq just under 5%, but that's not because it lost linear video customers. 

The cable operator added just 63,000 residential and small business wireline broadband subscribers in the third quarter, compared to 75,000 in the year-ago three-month period. Just as with Comcast, which lost 18,000 high-speed internet users, investors are concerned that the slow broadband growth is a sign that cheaper fixed wireless access services T-Mobile and Verizon are eating cable’s lunch. 

Then again, Charter's high-speed internet customer metric was positive, and the operator also added a boffo 594,000 Spectrum Mobile lines in the third quarter. 

Comcast on Thursday was dinged for reporting strong average revenue per customer numbers on weak customer growth. Charter seems to have had the opposite problem on Friday. 

“Investors gave a thumbs down yesterday to Comcast’s prioritization of financial metrics over growth. Charter’s results today may or may not get a warmer greeting, but they are certainly … different,” wrote equity analyst Craig Moffett in a note to investors Friday. 

Charter Communications reported higher third-quarter earnings, but its fee dispute with The Walt Disney Co. resulted in a loss of video customers.

Unlike Comcast, whose stock sunk yesterday as it lost residential broadband subscribers, Charter said it added 57,000 internet customers. It also added 6,000 small and midsized business broadband customers.

Cord-cutting continued to eat into Charter’s video business, with 320,000 customers dropping cable TV, leaving it with 13.8 million Spectrum residential video subscribers. The company said the blackout of programming from The Walt Disney Co. was responsible for about 100,000 of those losses.

Also Read: CEO Chris Winfrey Says Charter Wants More Deals Like Disney’s

Third-quarter net income was $1.3 billion, of $8.42 per share, up from $1.2 billion, or $7.51 a share, a year ago. 

Revenue rose 0.2% to $13.6 billion.

Programming costs were down 9.6% to $276 million, including a $61 million benefit resulting from the temporary loss of Disney programming during the September blackout.

Video revenue fell 8.6% to $4 billion. Third-quarter residential internet revenue increased 3.7%.

Charter added 577,000 residential mobile lines, an acceleration from last year’s 382,000 additions. Revenue from mobile rose 33.8% to $581 million.

“We continue to make significant progress against the multi-year strategic initiatives we outlined last year,” CEO Chris Winfrey said. “These initiatives drive continuing improvements in the quality of our products, and when combined with our customer-friendly pricing and packaging and high-quality service, will drive significant, long-term growth in shareholder value.”

Charter Communications has promoted Michelle Powell to senior VP of customer operations and business integration.

In the role, Powell will serve as the primary point of communication between Charter’s product, engineering and information technology departments. She will lead a team focused on the integration of business requirements for residential and small to medium-sized business customers.

“Her contributions over the years, and across multiple departments, have been impressive, and enabled us to execute with efficiency while growing Charter’s business,” said Cliff Hagan, executive VP of customer operations, to whom Powell reports.

“Consumers’ needs grow, new competition emerges and technology advances, and that requires a nimble mindset,“ Hagan said. ”I am confident that Michelle, in this new role, will continue to accelerate our collective success.” 

Powell joined Charter in 2015 as VP of business integrations, guiding the company through its acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Prior to Charter, she spent more than 20 years with Cablevision Systems in business integration.

Also promoted was Greg McMichael, who has been named senior VP of Spectrum Stores. McMichael will succeed Patty Eliason following the 20-plus-year Charter vet's retirement next year.

McMichael joined Time Warner Cable in 2009 from Comcast, and has served as senior VP of customer service since the merger in 2016.

Accompanying McMichael is Bob Calabro, who will move into the former’s prior role as senior VP of customer service.

Calabro also joined Charter from Comcast in 2011 at the VP level with oversight of four customer-care call centers. Before that, he held various roles in the customer operations area at Comcast.

Just a decade ago, when 86% of U.S. homes subscribed to traditional pay TV, Comcast and Charter Communications had undisputed “gateway” control of living rooms in their respective cable footprints via their big, bulky, power-hungry — and very proprietary — DVR set-tops. 

These days, with pay TV penetration down to around 64% and the margins squeezed out of the video business, the nation's top cable operators would just as soon have you stream your video with an app. The better to sell you multi-gigabit-speed broadband, my dear. 

But that doesn’t mean Comcast and Charter want to surrender gateway living room control of video data and advertising monetization to Roku, Amazon and Google. 

Enter the Xumo Stream Box, the first new 4K-capable streaming gadget developed by Comcast and Charter's Xumo TV joint venture. (The box’s debut comes about four months after Best Buy and other retailers debuted Hisense and Element smart TV's powered by Xumo.)

Also Read: Comcast’s Xumo-Branded Smart TVs Are Getting Good Reviews But Are Already Deeply Discounted

Over the long holiday weekend, our cable provider, Charter, sent Stream Box to us for review. 

Initial setup wasn't hard (although we ran into some operational problems later that we'll get into after a short scroll).

We first played around with the copious preloaded apps — all the big SVODs were preinstalled, including Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, Max, Apple TV Plus, Paramount Plus and Peacock. And QR-code signup made authentication easy enough. 

Foundationed on what is now called the "Comcast Entertainment Operating System," the UX is similar in aesthetic to, as The Verge noted,  Google TV/Android TV with the environment emphasizing live TV from free ad-supported sources. Turn on Stream Box, and you’re immediately tuned into FAST programming from the Xumo Play (we were automatically placed into a presentation of NBC News’s Dateline). 

Scroll below the apps and you roll right into a traditional pay TV-like programming grid, defaulting to Xumo Play on startup. And if that FAST isn't the one you want, Tubi, Pluto TV, Freevee, Plex and other free services are also preloaded and are a click away from filling in that guide with their content. 

The experience isn't too dissimilar from turning on a traditional pay TV set-top, which is probably the idea. 

Since Next TV's L.A. headquarters only takes 400 Gbps-speed internet from Charter (at a pricey $84.99 a month), and not TV, we weren’t able to use the device’s primary app, Spectrum TV. And of course, since we're not in Comcast's footprint, we can't use the Xfinity Stream app, either. These apps would let us enjoy our pay TV subscription without a traditional propriety set-top.

And while the Stream Box’s preinstalled selection of apps is robust, the fact that we couldn't add apps was a major limitation. For example, if we were looking to watch the L.A. Kings’ preseason game Wednesday against Colorado on Bally Sports Plus, we'd be SOL without an alternative streaming gadget because the RSN’s DTC app doesn't come preloaded on Xumo Stream Plus. 

Other notable apps were missing — Stream Box comes loaded with Sling TV, for instance, but not DirecTV Stream. (We can only assume that Charter will upload the apps for its new Lakers and Dodgers DTC services when they go live.)

And as mentioned, we did have a little operational/support trouble out of the gate. On Monday morning, the device booted to an onscreen message reading “Hello/Hola.” We pressed OK on our remote dozens of times. The device kept not reading the remote and shutting down. 

We powered down the device for 30 seconds, and that didn’t solve the problem. 

We spent time live-chatting with tech support, which had us do a factory reset on the gadget. That was a difficult exchange, since the individual providing support wasn’t trained to help customers find the button needed to trigger the reset. It's somewhat hidden in plain sight on the back of the device. He kept saying, “press the button,” and we kept responding, ”what button?”

Nothing worked. Eventually, the rep kicked us up to a higher level of support (we still haven't heard back). However, an hour later, we were able to figure out the problem independently — we rebooted the remote by taking the batteries out for 10 seconds, and everything seemed to work fine. 

It's not particularly shocking or deal-breaking for setup to go a little less than seamlessly for a consumer-grade computer device supplied by telecom companies dabbling in a whole new business. 

Likewise, Xumo Stream Box’s utility shouldn't be gauged by folks like us, who have gotten used to more-developed streaming tech. We cut the cord 10 years ago. And we spent part of our late-night weekend streaming John Schlesinger’s 1975 film Day of the Locust, featuring Donald Sutherland and Karen Black, on a buggy, far-flung AVOD channel that Roku search directed us to. Forget Bally Sports Plus — you will never find this channel in a million iterations on Xumo Stream Box. 

We’re pretty used to finding whatever we want with the vast, developed TVOS platforms, like Roku, whose executives like to remind everyone that the TVOS gadget game has a high barrier of entry at this point. 

Maybe, but controlling the broadband of nearly 63 million U.S. homes between them, Comcast and Charter certainly have a pass to get into the TVOS party if they choose to try. 

A lot of their customers are older and have become used to the traditional grids of X1 and Spectrum Guide. For them, Stream Box — and its old-school hardline Ethernet connection port — will be just fine as an entry point into streaming, and Comcast and Charter can continue to control their customer relationship, data and ad transactions, just as it always has. 

Comcast has understood this at least since 2019, when it began giving away its legacy Xfinity Flex streaming boxes to its broadband-only customers. The Xumo JV said last week that Comcast will soon roll out the Stream Box to these same internet customers. 

Charter's initial business model for the Stream Box is a little more perplexing to us, with the cable company choosing instead to target its video base. It's now selling the device for $60, or a $5-a-month lease, to existing Spectrum TV customers. New customers can use the box free for a year before they start getting dinged monthly lease charges. 

But again, it’s early days. 

As we unplugged the Stream Box Monday and let Roku take our TV back over for Monday Night Football, we wondered about the possibilities. What if, say, during football season, Comcast and Charter cooked up an inexpensive bundle that featured not only access to the three broadcasters that have NFL rights — CBS, NBC and Fox — but also packaged in NFL RedZone, then gave away the box and the bundle to every one of their 63 million-plus broadband homes?

We'd all have access to most of the live NFL without an expensive linear or virtual pay TV subscription. That would be a heck of a customer-retention mechanism that would make folks like us think thrice about cutting wireline broadband in favor of cheap fixed wireless access.

And the Stream Box could also be a “gateway drug” to return to traditional pay TV. That big Monday Night Football game on ESPN? Maybe throw the ol’ 16-digit credit-card number Charter’s way so you can finally use that Spectrum Guide app and watch the game live.

Spectrum News has launched a linear news channel in Kansas City and a streaming news channel in Maine. A rebrand of Spectrum Sports Kansas City, Spectrum News in that market will feature local headlines every 30 minutes and local weather, in addition to the local sports coverage the network has been offering. 

Spectrum News in Maine is available via Roku and Apple devices as well as the Spectrum News mobile app, for Charter Communications’s Spectrum customers across Maine. 

“Spectrum News’ expansion into Kansas City is part of our deep commitment to providing objective and trusted journalism, which is essential for a vibrant democracy,” Spectrum News senior VP and general manager Alison Hellman said. “As with our other Spectrum News networks, our mission in Kansas City is to inform the local communities we serve through relevant and balanced coverage of the news and events that impact them, creating a more empowered, engaged, and thriving community.”

Spectrum News integrates Spectrum News Plus, which curates nationally relevant local stories from across the country, local reporting from on-the-ground reporters and Spectrum Sports Kansas City’s key content. The new network will continue to include coverage of the Kansas City Chiefs during the weekly Red Zone show and live postgame coverage. Local high school football and basketball games will air each Friday throughout the respective seasons.

Spectrum News is on channel 1 in Kansas City.

Spectrum News Maine will feature local headlines every 30 minutes, generated by reporters in the state, local weather reporting, and news and content from Spectrum News Plus. 

Currently airing 24 hours a day on weekdays, it goes to a 24/7 programming schedule in late fall. 

“Spectrum News’ new network is a testament to our commitment and investment in Maine,” Hellman said. “The launch is part of an ongoing effort to reach more communities across the country with Spectrum News’ objective news and content and to advance our mission of helping viewers become more informed and engaged citizens.”

Charter Communications launched a new campaign for its Spectrum Business unit aimed at convincing small businesses to switch to the cable operator’s internet, phone, mobile and TV bundle.

The campaign uses the slogan “Made To Work” to show how small businesses benefit from more reliable connectivity.

“Small business owners overcome many obstacles every day, and reliable connectivity has become a critical tool to help power their resilience,” Sharon Peters, executive VP and chief marketing officer for Charter, said. “Spectrum Business is committed to seamlessly connecting all aspects of our customers’ business with fast, easy-to-use, ultra-reliable internet, phone, mobile and video solutions. Whether it’s a home-based business, retail store, restaurant, bar or service firm, our services are ‘Made to Work’ so owners can stay connected and focus on running their businesses.”

In addition to broadcast-TV commercials running in all of the 41 markets served by Charter, the campaign uses radio, direct mail, digital and social media. 

Spectrum Business offers small and midsized business a bundle of products including Spectrum Business Internet, Spectrum Business Connect with RingCentral, Spectrum Business Voice and Spectrum Mobile for Business.

Charter Communications said it expanded its carriage of Jewish Broadcasting Service (JBS) and Jewish Life Television.

The networks will be available to Spectrum TV customers on the Entertainment View tiers in areas where they were not previously carried.

“Our goal is to provide programming that meets our customers’ diverse interests and reflects the communities where we operate,” said Tom Montemagno, executive VP of programming acquisition for Charter. “This expansion helps broaden our Jewish-themed television options throughout the country by giving millions of our subscribers access to the networks’ news, entertainment and lifestyle content in areas where it was not previously available.”

JBS is an independent, nonprofit television channel featuring daily news from Israel, Jewish issues and events, call-in programs, holiday services for the home-bound, children’s programs, films, music, books and entertainment. 

“JBS thanks Charter for their continuing support in bringing our important and relevant programming to their customers,” said David Brugnone, CMO of JBS. “As we head into the Jewish New Year, Spectrum viewers who live far from a synagogue or are unable to attend in person will now be able to watch our live close captioned Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services from a Reform Synagogue and recorded High Holiday services from an Orthodox Synagogue.”

Jewish Life Television provides programming for audiences of all faiths who share an interest in the Jewish experience and the state of Israel, with content across multiple genres.

“It is a powerful statement that at this critical time, Charter Communications is leading the charge in supporting diverse voices by expanding the availability of JLTV throughout Spectrum’s national footprint,” Brad Pomerance, executive VP at JLTV, said.

One of the most closely observed distribution impasses in the history of technology, media and telecom has been resolved, with Disney and Charter Communications agreeing on a new contract that will restore ESPN, ABC and 17 other Disney networks to Charter’s Spectrum TV program guide. 

The channels had been blacked out for the cable company’s 14.7 million TV customers since August 31. 

With both sides diverting live-sports-craving Charter video customers to virtual pay TV services including Hulu Plus Live TV and YouTube TV in recent weeks, Charter’s video ranks are undoubtedly fewer. 

And with Disney making certain concessions, the list of more than 25 channels that Charter was once forced to distribute has been reduced to 19. (Networks that will no longer be included in Spectrum TV video packages include Baby TV, Disney Junior, Disney XD, Freeform, FXM, FXX, Nat Geo Wild, and Nat Geo Mundo.)

But the deal did restore the Disney channels ahead of ESPN's scheduled presentation of the highly anticipated season-premiere Monday Night Football matchup between the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets. 

Under terms of the deal, Charter will pay an unspecified fee increase to Disney. (The conglomerate has described these rate increases as being "very strong.") However, the cable company secured wholesale pricing on Disney streaming services.

This will allow, in the coming months, Charter to bundle the ad-supported Disney Plus Basic and ESPN Plus with its popular Spectrum TV Select programming package. ESPN's much-discussed DTC product will also be available to Spectrum TV Select users when it launches.

Disney will get added distribution for its $6.99-a-month Disney Plus ad tier, which only had around 3.3 million subscribers as of June. According to equity analyst Craig Moffett, Charter has between 9 million - 10 million subscribers in its Spectrum Select tier. 

And this deal term seems particularly important: “Charter will maintain flexibility to offer a range of video packages at varying price points based upon different customer viewing preferences.”

Key to Charter's dissonance has been guaranteed minimum clauses that compel pay TV providers to force channels on consumers they don't watch.

The distribution skirmish was set apart by Charter's notably aloof posture — the cable company seemed sincerely ready to forfeit the network it concedes is the “linchpin” to its video offering, ESPN, and move onto a post-cable-TV world. 

As Moffett astutely noted Monday morning before the announcement of the deal, a typical cable plant will use around 56% of its capacity on quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) video. So freeing that capacity up would render a huge speed benefit to what is now Charter's most profitable product, high-speed internet connectivity. 

Then again, video remains a sticky churn-buster for internet service packages. And being able to supply Disney streaming products at wholesale proved an attractive enticement for Charter. 

The respective CEOs of both companies, Disney's Bob Iger and Charter's Christopher Winfrey, released this statement: 

“Our collective goal has always been to build an innovative model for the future. This deal recognizes both the continued value of linear television and the growing popularity of streaming services, while addressing the evolving needs of our consumers. We also want to thank our mutual customers for their patience this past week, and are pleased that Spectrum viewers once again have access to Disney’s high-quality sports, news and entertainment programming, in time for Monday Night Football.” 

Charter Communications CEO Christopher Winfrey said the longer his cable company’s distribution tiff with Disney drags on, the less likely it is that both sides will ever agree to a renewal deal to restore ESPN, ABC and more than 20 other cable channels to Charter's Spectrum TV program guide. 

“As more video customers who value sports content migrate to alternative sources, our incentive to do a deal is reduced,” Winfrey said, speaking Thursday at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference.

Winfrey's speaking engagement directly coincided with the release of another Disney statement, in which the media company accused Charter of refusing multiple Disney offers to resolve the impasse and “functionally” exiting the video business. Disney also said that 71% of Charter pay TV subscribers watch Disney content. 

Also Read: How Ready Is Charter To Let Disney and ESPN Walk? It Plans To Funnel Blacked-Out ‘Monday Night Football’ Fans to Fubo and YouTube TV

Still, as he has since the dispute broke on August 31, Winfrey conveyed a seemingly sincere ease with “moving on” without Disney underpinning its business of bundled linear video distribution. 

He said that “rich linear fees that our customers are paying are being funneled to the direct-to-consumer products” of content partners, including Disney.

Also read: Is Bob Iger Really Feeling the ‘Squeeze’ From John Malone? Well, So Far, Charter's Down More Than Disney on Wall Street

“The idea that you could solve for DTC profitability by letting linear burn to the ground” is “not sustainable,” Winfrey added. “We have always thought of video as being an asset to our broadband connectivity business, but it’s on the verge of flipping and becoming a liability.”

Winfrey has urged Disney to dispense with the traditional carriage contract staple requirement of “minimum penetration,” which would allow Charter to deliver lower-priced bundles that deliver more value to customers who aren't into live sports. 

Also read: Charter Says Disney Blackout Presents Opportunity To Fix Broken Pay TV Model

Winfrey said Charter could also achieve this goal without Disney.

“In an alternative world, if you had an environment where you don't carry Disney content, what sports content would be left? The answer would be very little, but we could deliver smaller packages at a much better price.”

Winfrey culminated his address on the topic by framing the issue as being in Disney's court, describing the company and ESPN as “linchpins” for the pay TV ecosystem and urging it to “make a decision quickly as to where we’re going to go.”

If a redesigned way of doing pay TV business springs from this dispute, he said, “it will be because of them.” 

A Tampa, Florida, attorney has proposed the first of what seems like could ultimately be numerous class-action suits tied to the ongoing carriage dispute between Charter Communications and Disney. 

Billy Howard's team, the Florida Gators, had their college football opener against Utah blacked out when Charter took down ESPN Thursday. The lawyer said in his proposed class-action complaint, filed on behalf of Charter customer “Jen Gonzalez,” that the cable company “yanked the plug on college football fans and then blamed Mickey Mouse.”

Charter took down ESPN, ABC and 24 other Disney channels from its pay TV programming grid Thursday. The cable operator said that fundamental changes to the way Disney licenses its content networks must first be made before they can be restored. 

The plaintiffs, however, don't want to hear about Charter's problems. The suit contends that Charter could have extended the expired deal and kept Disney's channels on its service but chose not to. 

“Family and friends across America were eagerly waiting for the highly anticipated, beginning of college football, beginning on August 31, 2023, at 8:00 p.m,” the complaint adds. “Instead, the Gator Nation, along with football fans across the country experienced a ‘Lucy taking the football away from Charlie Brown’ moment as Spectrum pulled the football game, broadcasted a blackout and then claimed, ‘Disney made us do it.’ ”

Charter Spectrum customers have taken to social media to express their irritation after a distribution dispute with The Walt Disney Co. caused them to lose access to ESPN, ABC and other Disney channels right at the moment of college football's kickoff last Thursday.

For starters, we'll submit this tweet from former Glen Falls Post-Star sportswriter Greg Brownell that had nearly 10,000 views as of this posting:

In fact, in just the last hour of writing this story more than 100 tweets with the keywords “ESPN Spectrum” were written, nearly all which expressing frustration at the cable company.

Of course, there's the usual bombardment of memes in place of literate articulation:

Meanwhile, Reddit communities with over 500,000 members like R/cordcutters have lit up with similar threads.

How Ready Is Charter To Let Disney and ESPN Walk? It Plans To Funnel Blacked-Out ‘Monday Night Football’ Fans to Fubo and YouTube TV from r/cordcutters

TikTok profiles including one representing far right outfit OutKick Sports have posted videos about the situation to the tune of 22.7 thousand likes.

Comments on that video tended to disperse blame across both parties: “ESPN isn’t worth it,” read one; “I just dumped Spectrum,” wrote another commenter, and “only time I watch ESPN is if I have no choice,” added another.

One Redditor is so frustrated with the situation they suggested that fans “embrace your inner pirate,” when asked what service to use to watch the pulled game.

The Charter-Disney kerfuffle is even showing up in seemingly unlikely places on the social internet, such as Nextdoor. 

Before he got distracted by his current fight for survival in the retail wireless business, Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen spent a lot of time chest-thumping in the pay TV carriage wars, telling the programming community that when he blacked out a channel he was prepared to walk away for good.

And in recent years, Dish made good on some of Ergen’s threats, notably tossing regional sports network Bally Sports to the curb in 2019. If you’ve observed the recent wide-ranging collateral damage caused by the subsequent bankruptcy of the Sinclair Broadcast Group subsidiary that manages Bally Sports, then you understand how fateful and impactful Ergen’s decision was. 

Also Read: ESPN, ABC and 24 Other Disney Channels Blacked Out for Charter's 14.7 Million Spectrum Pay TV Customers

Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League are all currently scrambling to figure out ways to make money from local TV sports amid Bally Sports’s floundering.

So how broad-reaching will the impact be if Charter Communications, which has around twice as many pay TV subscribers as Dish (14.7 million vs. 6.9 million), decides not to try to bring back the biggest sports channel of them all, ESPN?

Well … double it. And add 30. 

There is no precedent for what Charter now seems prepared to do. But in the early hours of Friday morning, less than 12 hours after it took down ESPN, ABC and the rest of the Disney cable TV universe in a carriage dispute, Charter held a conference call, during which it made it clear that this isn’t blackout business as usual. 

“Charter seems genuinely willing to walk away from Disney, and even the entire linear video model, if necessary,” MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett wrote shortly after the cable company’s virtual meeting.  

Observed Moffett: “They even titled their ‘impromptu’ conference call this morning: The Future of Multichannel Video: Moving Forward, Or Moving On.“

Sure, Charter’s morning presentation included typical rhetorical phrases like “drawing a line in the sand” against skyrocketing program licensing costs. 

But consider Charter’s actions. Beyond the immediate disruption to college football broadcasts — a big Utah-Florida game on ESPN was the first contest to get blacked out — the first NFL action on ESPN to be impacted by the Charter blackout will be the highly anticipated season-opening Monday Night Football contest between the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets on September 11.

Besides being Aaron Rodgers’s first game as a Jet, this is a matchup that features two Charter franchise markets. 

What’s truly interesting: According to Moffett, Charter is setting up a QR code that takes its pay TV customers directly to signup pages for virtual pay TV services Fubo and YouTube TV, which do carry ESPN. 

(Not surprisingly, Disney is trying to drive pay TV refugees to Hulu + Live TV, which it controls.)

Charter’s single-click destination will also help Spectrum video customers who choose these vMVPD options to downgrade their Charter service. 

“Forcing customers to pay for Disney content they opted out of, or don’t view and pay even higher rates, would negatively impact our connectivity relationships,” Charter said in its Friday morning presentation. 

Indeed, Charter no longer sees video as a means of profitability but rather a tool to drive its core internet connectivity business. And at this point, it seems less concerned about preserving its remaining pay TV bathwater than the “baby” of mobile and wireline broadband connectivity. 

As for Disney, which is openly planning its migration of ESPN to direct-to-consumer streaming, it faces a pricey multibillion-dollar renewal negotiation with the National Basketball Association with the possibility that its affiliate budget could suddenly come in about $2.2 billion lighter. 

“Programmers are caught in a self-imposed dilemma as they have moved content to their DTC products for short-term profit maximization and their management teams are not incentivized to drive business for the long term,” Charter’s presentation added.

Moffett has already put a name on the virtuous cycles degrading the pay TV business: “doom loops.” 

For its part, Charter seems to understand the “doom loop” sequence quite well, and it's more concerned about it leaking into connectivity, which is itself challenged by disruptive technologies liked T-Mobile's fixed wireless service. 

Here at Next TV headquarters in mid-city Los Angeles, this weekend exchange on Nextdoor validates Charter's concern. 

Charter Communications, with popular programming from The Walt Disney Co. blacked out from its 14.7 million subscribers, sees its talks with Disney as a chance to fix a broken TV model.

“Disney and Charter have the opportunity to work together on transforming the industry for the long-term benefit of both companies and consumers — but we are either moving forward together, or moving on,” Charter said in a presentation for investors and analysts released Friday.

Part of that plan is an agreement that lets people who don’t like sports buy a bundle of programming that doesn’t force them to pay for expensive networks like Disney’s ESPN.

Without a new type of agreement Charter execs said they could see moving ahead without Disney content, including not paying retransmission fees for Disney's ABC broadcast stations.

Also Read: Charter To Drive Down the Cost of Pay TV With Groundbreaking New Distribution Strategy for Regional Sports Networks

 On a call with analysts and investors Friday morning, Charter CEO Chris Winfrey apologized to Charter subscribers for the blackout.

“I'm sorry that Disney has removed its programming from your lineup and for the majority who don't actively watch Disney content, I'm sorry Disney has made you pay for channels you don't watch,” Winfrey said. 

“We've almost always avoided these kinds of disputes and disruption to your service. We had to draw a line in the sand on your behalf. We haven't been able to stop  programmers from increasing the cost of their channels and your packages, but we think that making sure you get value and flexibility and the programming you pay for well, that's worth fighting for.”

In terms of financial impact, Charter said it is currently paying about $2.2 billion in annual programming costs to Disney, not including the impact of advertising revenue for both parties

It said only about 25% of Charter video subscribers regularly engage with Disney content. 

“Disney pulled its content which will impact our operations and financials,” Charter said.

In the short term, the blackout means a reduction in programming costs, but there will be other costs, including more calls from customers and customer credits. 

Over the longer term, Charter said its concerns include maintaining its long-term relationships with subscribers, finding alternative video solutions for its connectivity customers. 

“Cash flow from video has already declined significantly and video ultimately cash flow neutral without structural changes,” Charter said.

On the other hand, agreeing to what Disney is willing would not turn out well. “Forcing customers to pay for Disney content they opted out of, or don’t view and pay even higher rates, would negatively impact our connectivity relationships,” Chater said.

Charter states that the “multichannel video product is too expensive and packages don’t meet consumer needs” and notes that “customers are leaving the traditional video ecosystem and losses have accelerated.”

According to Charter’s presentation, the cable video ecosystem is broken because of a chain of events that started with the failure of TV Everywhere. 

That led to the proliferation of unauthenticated proliferation. Netflix rose and programmers started to withhold their VOD libraries from multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) like Charter.

Content moved to SVOD and programmers launched unprofitable direct-to-consumer products.  In the pursuit of profitability, the programmers are raising the price of their streaming products, selling ads, and reselling their content to other SVOD services.

“Programmers are caught in a self-imposed dilemma as they have moved content to their DTC products for short-term profit maximization and their management teams are not incentivized to drive business for the long-term,” Charter said, describing the vicious cycle that erodes the value of pay-TV for nonsports viewers and encourages them to leave pay TV for SVOD.

At this point in the cycle, “renewing a traditional distribution agreement with higher costs, limited packaging flexibility and no additional value ignores the realities of the changing marketplace and will simply accelerate the decline of video subscription and advertising revenue,” Charter said.

Charter said it still believes that “a compelling Charter-branded video product offering can be a captivating part of our portfolio of connectivity services and appealing to customers,” and laid out what it called its “vision for the future of video.”

To get to that future, “distributors and programmers need to work together to entice and reward customers to utilize bundled subscription products – most programmers simply will not be able to profit/survive solely on a-la-carte streaming revenue and need a hybrid, customer centric model,” Charter said.

This approach will benefit programmers, MVPDs and customers, Charter said.

Charter said that right now, it and Disney are the right parties to start moving down the road toward this new customer-centric video model.

It notes that both companies are at a “crossroads with their video strategy” with Disney looking at a hybrid approach for ESPN that embraces streaming options.

“A new model creates the pathway for Disney to stabilize its linear losses and grow its DTC business, ultimately preserving cash flows,” Charter said.

But at this point, Disney is sticking to the traditional approach in its negotiations with Charter. 

“Disney offered a traditional long-term deal and has not seriously engaged on Charter’s transformational partnership proposal,” Charter said. Disney is insisting on high penetration payment minimums despite its own a la carte offerings, forcing Disney channels into packages where they are not included today, against consumer will and requiring additional large rate increases by forcing DTC service inclusion and additional payment to existing linear customers. That offers little incentive to sell DTC apps to broadband customers, Charter said.

“Disney’s traditional approach would result in a dramatic increase of cost to consumers — many of whom don’t view, want or even subscribe to Disney/ESPN content,” Charter said.

Charter said offered to accept Disney market rate increases in exchange for bundling ad-supported DTC apps with packaged linear products, and lower penetration payment minimums to provide packaging flexibility to customers. 

Charter has also offered to market the Disney DTC apps to its broadband customers. Disney declined, Charter said.

Charter said it also offered a shorter extension of the current contract to further discuss the benefits of Charter’s proposal, which Disney declined. 

 Responding to the Charter presentation, Disney offered its view of the negotiations, saying that Charter has refused to enter into a new agreement with us that reflects market-based terms” and that “contrary to [Charter’s] claims, we have offered Charter the most favorable terms on rates, distribution, packaging, advertising and more.”

Disney added that it has proposed creative ways to make Disney’s direct-to-consumer service available to Spectrum TV subscribers. But Disney emphasized that its linear and direct-to-consumer services are not the same, meaning that a subscriber to one ought not be entitled to both.

“We value our relationship with Charter and we are ready to get back to the negotiation table to restore access to our unrivaled content to their customers as quickly as possible,” Disney said.

Bottom line: To many seasoned observers this Charter-Disney dispute does not seem to be the typical fee negotiation between a distributor and a programmer. 

 “It's a big deal: a Cable MVPD is pushing to undo norms for linear networks/stations,” said analyst Steven Cahall of Wells Fargo.

“Charter has drawn a line in the sand and is either prepared to drop major content sources to protect earnings, or rewrite the linear script. With some MVPD contagion, none of this is constructive to media. Long term, this could mitigate cord cutting, but the uncertainty for now is incremental,” he said. 

Looking ahead as this situation evolves, most at risk are companies that generate a larger share of revenue from traditional distribution, Cahall said. Those include Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox. Those also have sports rights that have to be parsed between exclusivity with pay-TV and streaming. 

Charter Communications said it promoted Meg Hall to senior VP, corporate software.

Hall had been group VP, mobile and enterprise. In her new role, she will lead the systems and teams that power ordering, provisioning, telemetry, mobile, corporate and desktop systems.

Hall reports to Jake Perlman, executive VP, software development and IT.

“Meg’s leadership and contributions to key programs have significantly benefited employees and brought new product features and capabilities to customers,” said Perlman. “In this expanded role, she will lead the corporate software team to develop and drive consistent end-to-end system quality for Charter.”

Hall joined Charter in 2016 as VP, portfolio and project management. She had previously worked at CenturyLink for more than 15 years as senior director in the IT department.

Charter Communications said it will pay the tuition costs for full-time employees who want to take online courses to enhance their education and expand their careers.

The Charter Education Benefit gives employees access to a catalog of about 300 online programs and degrees from 30 universities and institutions including eCornell, University of Denver, Ohio University and Spelman College.

The company encourages employees to pursue business aligned courses in areas such as management, operations, marketing and technology.

Charter will also cover qualified program-related expenses such as books, supplies and enrollment fees. 

Also Read: Charter’s Starting Minimum Wage Reaches $20 Per Hour Company-Wide

“Charter has always been a great place to build a long and fulfilling career, for both those with and without college degrees,” said Paul Marchand, executive VP and chief human resources officer at Charter. “Our employees earn competitive wages, receive high-quality and affordable benefits and now, with the new Charter Education Benefit, they can pursue a tuition-free college degree. Creating meaningful opportunities for career mobility results in a more knowledgeable workforce, which ultimately benefits our customers as well.”

The company is providing the education benefit through Guild, a career opportunity company. People who participated in Guild’s Learning Marketplace programs were 2.2 times more likely to get better jobs at their company, compared to peers who didn’t use Guild, per the company.

“Charter is spearheading what it means to unlock career opportunity in the communications industry, providing best-in-class programs, support and resources for their employees to learn and advance in their careers,” Guild CEO Rachel Romer said. “Guild is looking forward to partnering with Charter on this strategic investment in their workforce.”

Last year, Charter doubled its tuition reimbursement program to $10,000 a year. That benefit covers employees attending the college or university of their choice.  Charter will also cover up to $10,000 of costs for employees who pursue select graduate degrees outside of the Guild program.

The linear video news didn't get any more unexpected or brighter Thursday morning, as Comcast reported yet more accelerated cord cutting, losing 543,000 residential Xfinity pay TV subscribers in the second quarter.

Last year, Comcast lost around 520,000 pay TV subs from April - June. Comcast has lost 12.6% of its video subs over the last 12 months and it now only has 14.98 million video customers left. 

Also read: Comcast Earnings Jump Despite Peacock Losses, Cord-Cutting

Charter Communications, which is not only the second largest U.S. cable company next to Comcast but also the second biggest pay TV provider, reports Q2 earnings Friday. Charter finished Q1 with 14.906 million Spectrum pay TV subs and has been losing video customers at a much slower clip. 

In the first quarter, Charter reported Spectrum TV losses of only 241,000 and its rate of attrition stood at only 4.6%.

It's not at all unlikely that Charter finishes September as the biggest supplier of linear pay TV in America. 

Regardless of the rankings, operators of linear networks are absolutely scrambling, as other major pay TV suppliers including satellite TV companies DirecTV and Dish Network are also in the double-digit percentages range on cord-cutting. 

The good news in Q2, video-wise, for Comcast was that its direct-to-consumer streaming play, Peacock, added another 2 million paid subscribers and now has 24 million in its ranks. 

Revenue for the subscription video service was up 85% year over year to $850 million for the quarter. But that's only a fraction of the revenue that Comcast still makes from linear pay TV. 

And worse, its EBITDA losses on Peacock keep growing, reaching $651 million in second-quarter compared to a $467 million loss in the second quarter of 2022. 

Meanwhile, back on the managed pay TV services side, Comcast has pivoted its sales efforts to supplementing what is now its core customer constituency -- its residential broadband users -- with skinny programming bundles provided a low cost. 

In May, the cable company introduced a $20-a-month streaming bundle, Now TV, to its broadband users that provides them with a limited number of entertainment-themed cable channels and FASTs. 

But Comcast's residential broadband business is in decline, too, losing 19,000 souls in Q2. 

In yet another drastic change affecting the business of distributing regional sports networks, the nation's second-largest pay TV operator, Charter Communications, will now offer a new lower-priced iteration of its most popular Spectrum-branded programming tier that will not include local sports and league channels. 

Separately but related, Charter announced an extension of its carriage agreement with No. 3 operator DirecTV for its own regional sports networks (RSNs). In the Southern California region, DirecTV will now have more flexibility in how it distributes Spectrum SportsNet (exclusive local TV home of the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers) and Spectrum SportsNet LA (home of Major League Baseball’s Dodgers). 

Additionally, Charter will launch direct-to-consumer iterations of SportsNet and SportsNet LA, charging nonaffiliate subscribers an undisclosed fee to access the channels sans pay TV package. 

The moves comes as the spiraling cost of local sports channels continues to drive consumers who aren’t big sports fans to cut the cord and exit the pay TV ecosystem. 

Traditionally, RSN distributors have used their leverage in local markets to require pay TV operators to make their channels available to the highest number of subscribers possible. These high “minimum penetration” threshold requirements typically exceed 90% of an operator’s subscriber base. This has forced operators to include local sports channels in their most attractive programming packages, driving up the price. 

New terms reduce the minimum penetration threshold to around the 60%-plus range, according to one pay TV insider. This flexibility better enables pay TV operators to create tiers that better match the tastes and budgets of their target market, reducing the pressure to force channels on consumers that don’t want them. 

“While viewing habits continue to shift, it’s clear that regular season professional sports programming remains extremely popular with a core base of traditional cable, satellite and OTT customers,” Dan Finnerty, senior VP and GM of Spectrum Networks, said in a statement. “That said, given these customers represent a relatively small percentage of the overall video subscriber base, and recognizing the marked increase in direct-to-consumer choices, the model for RSNs needs to evolve to reflect the realities of the current marketplace. With this agreement, we are taking a step to shift the business model so that customers have more control.”

Charter will now split its most popular programming package, Spectrum Select, into two tiers within a portion of its footprint. Spectrum Select Plus will include RSNs and league networks, such as NBA TV and MLB Network. Spectrum Sports Signature will be priced at around $10 a month less and not include these sports channels. 

According to Sports Business Journal's John Ourand, Charter has secured the more favorable minimum distribution terms needed to execute this plan as it recently renewed carriage for most of the RSNs it licenses covering around 85% of Spectrum's footprint. 

Meanwhile, high minimum distribution requirements for Charter's own RSNs have been an issue with DirecTV for over a decade. 

SportsNet was launched by the erstwhile Time Warner Cable in 2012 based on a 20-year, $4 billion deal with the Lakers. Two years later, TWC also launched SportsNet LA on the foundation of a 25-year, $8.35 billion deal with the Dodgers. 

From the beginning, TWC was at odds with DirecTV over carriage of the two channels, a dialectic that didn't improve at all in 2015, when Charter acquired TWC and AT&T purchased DirecTV. 

In fact, DirecTV didn't license the SportsNet RSNs until 2020, and not before the carriage dispute wound up in the halls of the U.S. Justice Department. 

Now, with the subscriber bases of both telecommunications companies whittled to a fraction of what once were, they're finally devising more flexible distribution strategies. 

“DirecTV continues to believe in the power of local sports, while also recognizing the demands of the many homes we serve with other diverse programming interests,” DirecTV chief content officer Rob Thun said. “This agreement with Spectrum Networks achieves three key objectives — putting consumers first, recognizing local value and enabling both parties to extend their relationship with long-term, mutual benefits.”

Spectrum News Challenge is returning for a second season on all of the Spectrum News Networks and the Spectrum News app, starting July 12.

The quiz show features teams of high school students from schools in New York, California, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Kentucky competing to win a $15,000 prize.

The teams have to answer a series of questions based on their knowledge of the news. Each week the game concludes with a question posed by mystery newsmakers including Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, astronaut Mike Massimino and former U.S. soccer player and two-time Olympic gold medalist Mia Hamm.

The series is hosted by Spectrum News 1 Southern California anchor Amrit Singh. 

“Season two of the Spectrum News Challenge promises even more of what viewers loved about season one and provides younger audiences with the chance to test their news knowledge in a creative, entertaining and accessible format,” Cater Lee, VP, original programming and talent development at Spectrum News, said. “In our all-new tournament style competition, the new season ramps up the excitement for students and viewers to examine their knowledge of what’s in the headlines — past and present.”

The teams draw from members of clubs and other groups at participating high schools.

Matchups include model U.N. members from Lecanto High School in Florida versus the Mock Trial team from West Bent High School in Wisconsin; student journalists from Hathaway Brown High School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and Student Council members from Whittier High School in California; and Science Olympiads from Bronx High School of Science in New York against National Honor Society members from Green Level High School in Cary, North Carolina.

Ever since Comcast attempted (and ultimately failed) at selling its own smart TVs two years ago under the brand name “XClass TV,” it’s been clear that the company is keen on transitioning its X1 pay TV UX expertise into the cutthroat gateway TVOS business. 

In its latest attempt to enter that market, Comcast and its Xumo TV JV partner, fellow cable giant Charter Communications, aim to bring a new line of smart TVs to market, manufactured by Element Electronics and called “Xumo.”

Update: An earlier version of this story included an incorrect reference to Element's headquarters. 

Calling it “the moment of truth for Comcast’s streaming efforts,” veteran video tech writer Janko Roettgers, publisher of the new Substack newsletter Lowpass, reported those TVs are about to arrive at Walmart and other retailers.

Over the next few weeks, Comcast plans on launching four different 4K Xumo models made in partnership with Element, with screen sizes of 43, 50, 55 and 65 inches. 

While the XClass TVs were only sold at Walmart, Comcast has secured other retail partners for the launch of Xumo. In addition to Walmart, the line will be available at rent-to-own store Aaron’s, as well as other retailers.

After the XClass sales drive stalled for nearly a year, this is a critical time for Comcast to prove whether or not it is capable of going toe-to-toe in the gateway TVOS market with entrenched competitors including Roku, Google and Amazon.

Comcast purchased free, ad-supported TV (FAST) platform Xumo three years ago for $100 million. The Xumo FAST service lives on as Xumo Play, but Comcast is using the ‘Xumo’ branding to define a broader TVOS joint-venture play with Charter, hoping to control the living-room TV set as it did in cable TV’s pre-cord-cutting halcyon.

The stakes are high. 

Which apps are allowed on the interface, who monetizes the advertising and how content is displayed are just a few of the key matters determined by ownership of the operating system. 

If Comcast (and Charter) can create a market foothold for its OS, it will provide an incredible amount of data about program viewership, not to mention a bunch of other advantages that they can use to monetize and drive revenue.

Smart TV companies like Samsung, LG and Vizio have already made similar moves, eschewing Roku et al and developing their own operating systems. For its part, Samsung is now licensing its OS to third parties. 

The good news for Comcast — according to Roettgers, Xumo TV specs look solid on paper.