Cable giants Comcast and Charter Communications on Wednesday announced a new partnership with chipmaker Broadcom to jointly develop a new silicon standard capable of delivering downstream speeds of up to 25 gigabits per second over cable's traditional hybrid fiber-coax wires. 

Outlining their collaboration during the cable industry's big annual tech trade show, SCTE TechExpo in Atlanta, the companies billed the standard as the launch of “DOCSIS 5.0” — a new version of the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification, which the cable industry uses to transmit data. 

It's an attempt to unify the fractured development paths of the current DOCSIS 4.0 iteration, which has two disparate threads — Full Duplex DOCSIS 4.0 and Extended Spectrum DOCSIS 4.0 (ESD). 

Comcast, Charter and Broadcom are looking to develop unified DOCSIS chipsets for network nodes, smart amps, and cable modems, enabling both FDX and ESD versions of the DOCSIS 4.0 specification. 

“Supporting a single technology that can be used by all operators efficiently, over their existing networks, allows the industry to leverage its collective investment, and to increase the benefits of AI at the edge,” Charlie Herrin, president of technology, product and experience for Comcast, said in a statement. 

Added said Rich DiGeronimo, president of product and technology for Charter: “By integrating Broadcom's cutting-edge technology into our network infrastructure and cable modems, our network will leverage artificial intelligence to enhance power, reliability, and cost-effectiveness, ultimately delivering superior services to our customers.”

Comcast on Monday unveiled a virtualized network management system called Janus that aims to maximize its network efficiency and reliability.

According to Comcast, Janus does this by shifting the brunt of the company’s internet routing, switching and transport services to its edge cloud platforms.

“Data usage continues to skyrocket at unprecedented rates, primarily due to the rapid increase in streaming high-quality live sports,” Comcast chief network officer Elad Nafshi said in a memo. “Janus builds upon years of investment and innovation to maximize our network performance and will be a game-changer for our customers, our business, and the environment.”

Also Read: Comcast Advertising Names Scott Weisenthal Head of Global Marketing and Insights

Comcast said the new organization of its networks will allow the company to keep up with the massive data traffic that fluctuates around live sports events.

In addition to enhanced network performance, Janus can self-diagnose functionality issues through a real-time telemetry algorithm and offload processing onto redundant, intact network pathways.

That means that in most cases of weather or accidental damage, Janus is capable of restoring service through backup network connections.

Comcast also said that Janus would help the company achieve its goal of being carbon-neutral by 2035.

Since the initiative’s computing platforms would be switched from traditional network facilities to cloud-based platforms, their environmental impact should be significantly reduced.

Initial trials for Janus are underway at Comcast’s network hub in Atlanta, with wide-scale rollout expected in 2025.

The vast majority of Comcast’s Xfinity X1 customers tuned in to the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to a company blog post published Monday.

Comcast said 87% of active households that subscribe to its live cloud-based pay TV service, X1, watched Olympics programming.

A significant portion of that viewership came from NBC’s primetime marquee programs, Paris Prime and Primetime in Paris.

Also Read: NBCU Claims Ad Revenue Gold Medal for Paris Olympics

The news comes just a month after Comcast's NBCUniversal division announced that its primetime Olympics coverage averaged a total audience delivery of 30.6 million viewers across all platforms, for a total streaming time of 23.5 billion minutes.

During the Paris Olympics, coverage on NBCUniversal’s networks represented approximately 20% of total viewing across X1 and Xfinity Stream.

All told, viewership led by NBC was up 82% from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

That’s in part due to Peacock, which saw a 25% increase in its total share of U.S. TV viewing, according to Nielsen’s monthly Gauge report.

The streaming service also saw a 33% increase in total usage, driven by viewership for Olympic coverage.

According to Nielsen’s live and same day (L+SD) tracking, ratings for NBC’s daytime and primetime coverage on X1 were up 78% from the national average.

Notably for Comcast (and any invested advertisers), 65% of X1 customers also interacted with the service’s Olympics product features, designed to engage viewers with personalized playlists and other customized features.

View the figures below.

As the 2024 college football season officially kicks off, new Big Ten members Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA could all see TV blackouts on Comcast’s Xfinity pay TV platform this weekend due to an ongoing carrier dispute.

Washington’s soccer game against former Pac-12 conference rival Oregon State on Monday night was the first match impacted.

When fans in the coverage area of the four programs attempt to watch the Big Ten Network, they are redirected to a Big Ten website which urges them to “take action now” and call Comcast.  

Also Read: New Conference Alignments, Expanded Playoffs Mark Changes for Upcoming College Football Season

If the impasse between the cable giant and the regional sports network isn’t solved by Saturday, Comcast will continue to black out live events involving the four new Big Ten schools in their local markets. 

That includes third-ranked Oregon's season opener against Idaho on Saturday afternoon, and Washington's first game against Weber State on Saturday night. (USC plays LSU on ESPN Sunday night and UCLA opens against Hawaii Saturday on CBS and Paramount Plus.)

All four West Coast schools are beginning their first academic year under the Big 10 banner after decades of allegiance to the venerable but now forsaken Pac-12. 

The disagreement reportedly hinges on Comcast’s refusal to pay higher in-market rates for the four new Big Ten programs, following their new addition to the division. 

The Big Ten Network, a joint venture between Fox and the Big Ten athletic conference, said in a statement that Comcast “declined to expand along with us.

“The Big Ten Network is proud to present an expanded slate of live sporting events featuring the newest members of the B1G conference," the network added. "However, most Comcast subscribers will not see these games. Comcast Xfinity viewers in many areas will not have access to live broadcasts of the highly anticipated inaugural B1G season games for Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington.”

Comcast's response: “We’re sensitive to the impact these costs have on our customers and have been in discussions with Fox and the Big Ten Network to find a solution to make certain former Pac-12 games available to the people who want them while not forcing others to pay for content they don’t want to watch.  We hope to be able to reach a fair agreement with FOX and the Big Ten Network to be able to offer these games to our customers.” 

Comcast has begun notifying customers via their billing statements that starting October 24, it will no longer be issuing CableCARD security modules. 

Comcast told LightReading that it will provide affected customers with a free year's usage of a streaming device and guide them to use the Xfinity app. It will also continue to support existing CableCards after October 24.

Also read: Charter to Cut Off CableCARD Support

The move comes a little more than two years after ended support for the device, and four years following the end of the FCC's requirement of its usage. 

Creation of the CableCARD was mandated as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and designed to force cable operators to provide their customers a choice of using third-party set-tops. 

The module was developed to allow third-party devices sold at retail to be used in the cable TV ecosystem. However, only a handful of gadgets in the market today still support CableCARD. 

Comcast Advertising said it made a deal with Comscore that will enable the measurement firm’s clients to use Comcast Advertising’s Signal Authentication product to increase the accuracy of their measurement and attribution calculations.

The agreement builds on the existing data partnership between Comcast and Comscore and comes as advertisers have expressed concerns that signal loss is making cross-platform measurement more difficult.

“Our clients are facing many challenges, especially in understanding the true impact of their advertising due to signal loss and privacy regulations,” Comscore chief commercial officer Steve Bagdasarian said. “We’re excited to expand our longtime partnership with Comcast Advertising to enhance identity resolution capabilities. This will give our clients increased confidence in cross-platform measurement and attribution, helping them create more informed media strategies to reach their most valuable audiences.” 

Comcast Advertising’s Signal Authentication service, announced earlier this year, uses data from 32 million U.S. households in a private-protected manner to understand the reach, frequency and outcomes of campaigns across linear and streaming TV and provide stronger identity resolution for marketers and programmers.

“Signal loss and data quality are greatly impacting the ability for advertisers to understand how they are reaching their target audiences, and how their media campaigns are performing,” Comcast Advertising VP and general manager, data Carmela Fournier said.

“Since Comcast Advertising’s solution is based on deterministic household signals across millions of households, we are able to offer reliable, privacy-forward signal authentication at scale,” Fournier said. “We’re excited to further our partnership with Comscore as they become one of the first measurement companies to tap into this service to provide clients a better understanding of their campaign performance and drive improved business results, while upholding the highest standards of consumer privacy.” 

Comscore had been able to use to Comcast set-top viewing data for audience measurement since the two companies struck a deal in 2020.

Comcast’s ad-sales unit began using Comscore data to sell local ads since 2022.

Comcast also licenses set-top data to Nielsen. Nielsen and Comcast renewed and expanded their relationship last year.

Comcast said it named Lance West as executive VP of federal government affairs and head of its Washington, D.C., office, effective September 3.

West was most recently VP of federal government relations for the American Petroleum Institute.

He succeeds Mitch Rose, who had held the post since 2020 and retired earlier this year.  

West will report to Tom Reid, chief legal officer and secretary for Comcast.

“With his exceptional leadership experience, wide reach on the Hill, and broad understanding of the regulatory landscape, Lance brings fresh strategic perspectives to the company that will enrich our engagement with policymakers and other stakeholders at this critical time,” Reid said.

At Comcast, West will oversee the company’s advocacy strategy and ensure the company’s leadership voice is represented in Washington. He will lead a team that collaborates with industry associations, advocacy groups and other stakeholders to support the company’s goals.

Before joining API in 2023, West served as chief of staff to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). 

“Comcast is the leader in global media and technology, and I could not be more excited to join this dynamic team,” West said. “I look forward to helping advance Comcast’s vision and priorities benefiting the millions of customers we proudly serve. The future is bright.”

With a deadline to finally submit its long-awaited restructuring plan once again being pushed off indefinitely, Diamond Sports Group announced Monday that it has signed a carriage renewal deal with Comcast, ending a blackout that lasted nearly three months. (This story was updated from an earlier version reporting that a deal was said by Diamond to be close at hand.)

Financial terms of the deal weren't included in Diamond's announcement. According to Comcast, Bally Sports channels will now be included on the pricier "Ultimate TV" package. (Comcast all along wanted to bump the regional sports networks to the higher tier, which was the basis for the impasse.)

“Entering a new carriage agreement with Comcast, our third largest distributor, is a critical step forward in our restructuring effort, and we are pleased that fans will again be able to access broadcasts of their local teams through Xfinity," said David Preschlack, CEO of Diamond Sports, in the statement. "With certainty on our distribution, we are focused on finalizing an agreement with the NHL and resolving our ongoing negotiations with the NBA. We are mindful that time is of the essence with basketball and hockey seasons fast approaching, and once agreements with our team and league partners are complete, we intend to move expeditiously to present a plan of reorganization to the Court.”

Last week, Diamond lawyers convinced the Houston court overseeing its protracted bankruptcy to once again delay, indefinitely, the presentation of its long-awaited restructuring plan, which was supposed to happen starting Monday. 

“We believe that we have made substantial progress on resolving our issues with Comcast, and we have the intention of fully documenting and executing an agreement with Comcast to broadcast our RSNs in the very near term,” Diamond lawyer told Brian Hermann told the Houston court. 

Also Read: Everything You Need To Know About the Bally Sports Bankruptcy

Diamond, which operates the 18 remaining Bally Sports regional sports networks, has been in Chapter 11 since March 2023. And 15 of it's Bally Sports channels had been blacked out on Comcast since the beginning of May, with Diamond unwilling to cede to Comcast's hardline demands that its channels be placed on a more expensive premium tier. 

With 12 Major League Baseball franchises calling Bally Sports their exclusive local-TV home, it's been an issue for baseball fans this summer. 

Also read: Diamond Sports and Comcast Reportedly Back in Negotiations

Diamond's sports league partners, most pungently the MLB, have expressed in no uncertain terms that they don't see the Sinclair Broadcast Group subsidiary as having a viable future without carriage on the No. 2 U.S. pay TV platform. 

At least for now, Judge Chris Lopez played along and gave Diamond yet more time to get Comcast back in the tent before it presents its restructuring plan, despite an admonishment to Diamond lawyers in June that they should come ready with a "viable plan" on July 29.

For his part, at last week's hearing, Diamond lawyer Hermann seemed to acknowledge that his team probably doesn't have a lot of time ... and that avoiding liquidation might not happen, despite his best efforts. 

“If we conclude that we cannot reorganize the business, which is a possibility, we will similarly pivot quickly,” Hermann said. “That is not our focus today, but that is a possibility and that’s not lost on us.”

With the Comcast deal in hand, Diamond has deals with all of the major pay TV distributors, save Optimum/Suddenlink operator Altice USA. 

Some misguided NBA enthusiasts on the social internet reveled Wednesday at the possibility of future NBA Finals telecasts no longer festooned with the omnipresent YouTube TV logo, perhaps assuming the ascendance of Comcast’s Xfinity pay TV platform as the league’s “Official TV Service” meant that the Google/Alphabet-owned vMVPD's marketing role had somehow been replaced. 

But that's not what's happening, a league source told Next TV Thursday. 

It is true that as part of the NBA’s new $2.5 billion-a-season deal with Comcast's NBCUniversal unit, Comcast Cable’s Xfinity brand will become the “official TV service” of the NBA, WNBA and USA Basketball (despite the fact that more than 2 million users bolted the platform in 2023 alone).

Also Read: NBA Says Warner ‘Didn’t Match the Terms’ of Amazon’s Proposal, Enters Long-Term TV Deal With Online Retail Giant

“The partnership includes collaboration on marketing and storytelling opportunities, virtual signage during game telecasts and activations at marquee NBA, WNBA and USA Basketball events,” the league said in an announcement about the broader deal. 

YouTube TV has paid to occupy the role of "presenting sponsor" of the NBA Finals since 2018, and that role is not changing, our source told us, noting that the Google and NBCU deals “are not in conflict.” 

That won’t be welcome news to everyone. 

After watching the 2023 NBA Finals featuring the Denver Nuggets and Miami Heat, Awful Announcing writer Devin Raab noted: “The degree to which these ads are omnipresent is breathtaking even by modern sports standards. For starters, the NBA Finals logo itself has ‘Presented by YouTube TV’ officially attached underneath it, meaning that every time you see that logo in branding either throughout the stadium or in graphics, you are also seeing the gaudy, red YouTube TV logo. There are also, throughout these broadcasts, commercial spots for YouTube TV and narrated voiceovers explaining that these games are sponsored by YouTube TV. You would think this would be sufficient, that this alone would represent so much product placement that any more would be overkill; after all, by tethering the YouTube TV logo to the Finals logo, you’re seeing it almost everywhere you look throughout the stadium, including the stanchion of the hoop and the chairs the players are sitting on. But oh no, this is merely the tip of the iceberg.”

Comcast lost 120,000 high-speed internet users in the second quarter, its biggest quarterly loss of broadband subscribers ever. 

The result marked a significant acceleration of erosion, relative to the 19,000 subscribers lost in the second quarter of 2023. According to researcher Bruce Leichtman, Comcast’s previous worst broadband quarter was Q1, during which it lost 65,000 customers. 

Also read: Peacock Losses Drop to $348 Million in Q2, But Some of That NFL Playoff Subscriber Growth Churns Away

Analysts, who weren’t surprised by the amount of blood loss, attribute the result not so much from competition from fiber and fixed wireless access, but to the Republican-led defunding of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).

Also read: American Connectivity Program Enters Partial Funded Death Spiral With Republican House Speaker Seemingly Indifferent Towards Its Rescue

“Comcast’s loss of 120K broadband subscribers was much worse than a year ago, but it was actually less bad than feared,” wrote equity analyst Craig Moffett. “The culprit for the decline was unlikely to have been higher competitive churn — Verizon already reported lower FWA and FiOS net additions than a year ago, and T-Mobile will almost certainly report lower FWA net adds as well — but instead lower gross additions. Lower gross adds are traceable to the end of ACP new enrollments; additionally, when an ACP customer moved in Q2 they weren’t able to resubscribe at their new address.”

Also read: Comcast’s Mike Cavanagh Expects NBA Deal To Score With Advertising, Subscription Revenue

Notably, however, Comcast’s average revenue per broadband user keeps rising, up 3.6% in the second quarter to $73.88. Overall domestic broadband revenue of $6.6 billion was up 3.0% year over year, right in line with consensus forecasts.

Those lost ACP customers weren't necessarily APRU drivers. 

The growth was “a step down from last quarter, as expected — they’re still at the higher end of their target range — but it’s still below the rate of increase at competitors, making it reasonable to project continued growth in this range going forward,” Moffett added. 

Speaking to equity analyst on Tuesday, Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said the operator is close to covering 50% of its network footprint with "mid-splits," a task necessary to upgrade its hybrid fiber-coaxial infrastructure to next-generation DOCSIS 4.0 speeds. 

Comcast reported significantly lowered EBITDA losses for Peacock in the second quarter, with the subscription streaming platform bleeding just $348 million during the April - June period, nearly half the $651 million it lost in the comparable span of 2023. 

Also read: Comcast’s Mike Cavanagh Expects NBA Deal To Score With Advertising, Subscription Revenue

Comcast also said the NBCUniversal streaming unit increased its Q2 revenue by 28% to $1.046 billion during the quarter. 

Also read: NFL Postseason Drives Peacock and Paramount Plus to Biggest Penetration Gains Among U.S. Subscription Streaming Companies (Charts)

Peacock, however, experienced its first quarterly subscriber loss ever, with some of the gains made during its NFL postseason exclusive window back in January churning away. 

With Peacock exclusively presenting the AFC Wild Card Game in prime time, featuring the eventual Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs hosting the Miami Dolphins, the platform grew faster than any other U.S. premium SVOD in the first quarter. 

“I don’t really look at Peacock standalone. I mean it’s an interesting exercise and I’m happy to share the numbers on the losses on Peacock as we build it,” Comcast president Mike Cavanagh told equity analyst Tuesday. 

“We are thinking about it over multiple years. I’m very confident that what we’re doing around Peacock in the media business, operating together, is going to put us on a path to optimize that business. And this is a year where we see the growth in Peacock offsetting the decline in some of our linear businesses, and that’s basically a trend I would expect to see carry forward,” Cavanaugh added.

Here's the full Comcast second-quarter earnings release. 

Comcast reported lower second-quarter earnings despite paring losses at its Peacock streaming unit.

Philadelphia-based Comcast continued to lose pay TV subscribers, with a net loss of 419,000 video customers. Its Xfinity cable operations lost 120,000 domestic broadband subscribers.

Peacock ended the quarter with 33 million paid subscribers, down from 34 million at the end of Q1. But losses at Peacock were $348 million, down from $651 million a year ago and $639 million in the first quarter. Thanks to rate increases, Peacock revenue hit $1 billion in the quarter, up from $820 million a year ago.

Also Read: Comcast’s Mike Cavanagh Expects NBA Deal To Score With Advertising, Subscription Revenue

Compared to a year ago, Peacock subscribers are up 38%.

Overall, Comcast’s net income dropped 7.5% to $3.9 billion, or $1 a share, from $4.2 billion, or $1.02 a share a year ago. 

Earnings per share were up 7% when adjusted. Revenue fell 2.7% to $29.7 billion.

The results were mixed compared to Wall Street expectations, with earnings above estimates and revenue lower.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization at Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit — which the company calls Content & Experiences — fell 10.9% to $1.9 billion on declines at the company’s studio and theme park divisions.

NBCU’s media business registered a 9% increase in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) to $1.4 billion. Media revenue rose 2.1% to $6.2 billion. 

Also Read: Peacock Losses Drop to $348 Million in Q2, But Some of That NFL Playoff Subscriber Growth Churns Away

Domestic advertising revenue fell 1.7% to almost $2 billion. The company said ad revenue was lower at its linear networks, partially offset by an increase in revenue at Peacock. 

Domestic distribution revenue were up 5.7% to $2.8 billion.

Comcast’s cable business — known as Connectivity & Platforms — had adjusted EBITDA of $8.5 billion, up 1.6%.

Revenue dipped 0.7% to $20.2 billion. Residential revenue was down 1.5% and business services rose 5.7%

Despite losing subscribers, domestic broadband revenue grew 3% to $6.6 billion thanks to rate increases that averaged 3.6%.

Video revenues fell 7.9% to $6.7 billion and programming costs fell 7.3% to $4.2 billion.

Domestic wireless customer lines were up 20% to 7.2 million from a year ago, including net adds of 322,000 in Q2.

Wireless revenue jumped 17.3% to $1 billion.

Advertising revenue was flat at $993 million.

“We grew adjusted [earnings per share[ by high single digits and continued to invest aggressively in our businesses while returning $3.4 billion to shareholders,” chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said.

“More broadly, I am excited about the growth opportunities ahead, as our teams innovate and collaborate to connect our customers, viewers and guests to the moments that matter,” Roberts said. “The Paris Summer Olympics is a perfect example of this, where starting this Friday our company will be leveraging our most advanced technology and expertise in storytelling to provide millions of households in the U.S. with the finest, most-expansive television and streaming coverage in media history for an Olympics or perhaps any televised event … and even more important, an experience they hopefully will never forget.”

While Comcast only had 13.6 million linear pay TV customers left at the end of March, those dwindling ranks of subscribers still on the cable company's once vaunted X1 platform still get nice things. 

For the Paris Olympic Games, Comcast said it's rolling out a little something it calls "Enhanced 4K." USA Network, owned by the conglomerate's NBCUniversal division, will render 24/7 coverage of the Games, which will be delivered to X1 customers "at the highest bitrate" via Comcast's network, and, er, "enhanced" by Dolby Vision picture quality and Dolby Atmos immersive audio. 

Comcast also said it will deliver "ultra-low latency" that's only "seconds behind" the live hot Olympics action unfolding in and around the River Seine. 

X1 customers can access Comcast's enhanced 4K feed within X1’s Olympics destination. The destination features curated and personalized access to every minute of coverage across the networks of NBCUniversal, including NBC, USA Network, E!, CNBC, GOLF Channel, Telemundo, Universo, two new Paris Extra channels featuring 24/7 Olympics programming, as well as streaming on Peacock.  

Comcast is paying $7.65 billion so that its NBCU division can televise the Olympic Games domestically through 2032. So consumers across divisions are getting an Olympics experience. X1 Games features also include:

* Personalized experience across devices: In just a few clicks, customers can choose their favorite sports to build a custom destination. Any favorites will carry over to the Xfinity Stream app mobile app.

* Comprehensive and interactive schedule of events: X1 will feature an interactive daily schedule, giving customers one comprehensive guide of all live and upcoming events airing across NBCUniversal’s cable and broadcast networks and streaming on Peacock. Customers can filter the schedule by any of the 39 sports, tune directly to live events, set reminders, or schedule DVR recordings.

* Catch-Up Highlights: With Catch-up Highlights on X1, customers can quickly jump to top moments in recorded primetime and daytime coverage on NBC, as well as men’s and women’s basketball, soccer, and golf. 

* Venue Tours: Some of Paris’s most storied landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower, Palace of Versailles and Roland-Garros will play host to Olympic events. The venue tours showcase how events such as beach volleyball, equestrian and tennis will come to life at these iconic sights.

* Xfinity Sports Zone App, Featuring Odds Zone: X1’s sports companion experience will offer customers the ability to watch one event while getting updates on others in progress. It is also where customers access Xfinity Odds Zone, a new sports betting experience that makes it easy for customers to follow live odds and initiate wagers on the DraftKings Sportsbook mobile app without taking their eyes off the main screen. For the first time, Xfinity Odds Zone will be available for select Olympics sports, including men’s and women’s basketball, soccer and golf.

“The Olympics is the best example of how Comcast can bring together its fantastic sports content, entertainment platforms, and innovative technology and connectivity offerings to deliver one-of-a-kind experiences to customers,” said Vito Forlenza, VP of sports entertainment for Comcast. “By premiering enhanced 4K during Paris 2024, fans of the Olympics will be among the first to experience this new innovation and enjoy all the live action in stunning picture and audio quality, with significantly less delay compared to anything else in the market.”

Comcast and bankrupt Diamond Sports Group have returned to the negotiating table, two and a half months after the latter’s Bally Sports regional sports networks were pulled off the pay TV operator’s Xfinity TV programming grid in a carriage dispute. 

Also read: Everything You Need To Know About the Bally Sports Bankruptcy

John Ourand reported the resumption of talks via Puck News late last week. Diamond didn't immediately return our emails asking for confirmation that the negotiations have resumed.

The 15 Bally Sports channels carried by Comcast were removed at the end of April, with Diamond Sports unwilling to cede to the cable company's demand that its RSNs be moved to the more-expensive “Xfinity Ultimate” tier. 

Over the last several years, Comcast has boldly moved RSNs to higher-priced programming packages, relieving non-sports-enthusiast customers of its more-affordable video packages the burden of paying for channels devoted to local teams they don’t care about. It’s the kind of stand you make when you lose more than 2 million linear video customers in just one year. 

Diamond, meanwhile, has a hard July 29 deadline to finally present a restructuring plan to the court, its creditors and its league constituents, the latter of which having expressed deep concern in recent months that Diamond is not a viable local TV partner without the carriage support of Comcast. 

Attorneys for the bankrupt Sinclair Broadcast Group subsidiary have asked the court to move a deadline for creditors and constituents to object to Diamond's restructuring plan from July 18 to July 24. 

Comcast said it appointed Javier Garcia as senior VP of sales & marketing in its Central Division, based in Atlanta.

Garcia had been senior VP of competitive marketing and strategy for the central division.

In his new role, he will oversee brand and product marketing, sales and customer retention strategies across a 12-state footprint.

“For nearly a decade at Comcast, Javier has implemented customer-centric, innovative, and engaging strategies to propel the brand forward in a constantly changing, high-demand industry,” Christine Whitaker, president of Comcast's Central Division, said.  “I am confident that his results-driven approach to driving strategic growth and building competitive teams, combined with his extensive expertise in multicultural engagement, will continue to enhance Comcast as a beloved consumer brand across our division.”

Garcia joined Comcast in 2014. In addition to his most recent role, he was senior VP of sales & marketing for the Comcast Florida region and senior VP and and general manager of multicultural Xfinity services.

Comcast announced Monday the release of Now TV Latino, a Spanish-language version of the “Now”-branded skinny bundle it launched a year ago.

The $10-a-month offering includes more than 25 live streaming channels, and comes bundled with a Peacock subscription.

Also read: Comcast Introduces $20-a-Month Now TV For Its Broadband-Only Customers, Delivering Peacock, Live Pay TV Channels and FASTs

“As we continue our focus on providing unique experiences, differentiated products and bring value to Hispanic consumers, [the platform] provides great Spanish-language and English-language content at an affordable price,” said José Velez Silva, VP of multicultural strategy, operations and community engagement at Comcast, in a statement.

The cable company said that Now TV Latino will feature movies, novelas, sports and live news across both paid streaming and free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) formats.

Channels in the bundle include Estrella News, Caracol Televisión, CentroAméricaTV, WAPA America and various Telemundo FAST channels like Noticias Telemundo Ahora, Telemundo Noticias Florida, Telemundo Noticias Texas, Telemundo Noticias California and more.

The new package is built on technology developed for Sky’s Now TV platform, which launched in May within the Xfinity Stream app as a $20 monthly streaming product.

Also Read: Fubo Launches on Xumo and Xfinity Flex Streaming Devices

The service, available only to Xfinity’s broadband customers, can be purchased standalone or as an add-on to Xfinity’s other streaming offerings.

In addition, the streaming service can also be bundled with Comcast’s cable service, or the recently released streaming bundle that combines Peacock with Netflix and Apple TV Plus for $15 a month.

“We’ve been bundling video successfully and creatively for 60 years,” Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said in May of the aforementioned bundle. “This is the latest iteration of that.“

Comcast’s plan to keep its pay TV business alive with a variety of streaming bundles is a likely response to the nosedive that’s plagued cable operators for years, causing the telecommunications giant to lose nearly 500,000 cable customers in the first quarter.

Comcast customers who purchase the bundle can also order a Xumo Stream Box, powered by Comcast and Charter’s joint set-top OS, for no additional cost.

Comcast said Thursday that it has integrated support for the Fubo app into Xumo Stream Box and Xumo TVs, as well as Xfinity Flex. 

With the inclusion, users download the Fubo app to Xumo and Flex. And if they're a subscriber to one or more of these respective services,  they'll have voice control access to the four largest virtual MVPDs, with YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV and Sling TV already supported by Xumo Stream Box, Xumo TV and Flex. 

These devices also come pre-installed with FAST services Xumo Play, Tubi and Pluto TV. 

Fubo, which ended March with just over 1.5 million subscribers, markets itself heavily on live sports access. 

Comcast, meanwhile, launched Xumo as a joint venture with Charter Communications two years ago, attempting to establish a gateway OS presence in living rooms increasingly dominated by TV operating systems created by Roku, Samsung, Amazon and Google.

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

Like Flex, Comcast is now giving the HDMI-connectable Xumo Stream Box OTT device for free to its broadband-only customers. The "Comcast Entertainment OS" also powers Xumo TV-branded smart TVs made by manufacturers including Hisense and sold at stores including Walmart. 

“For many consumers, one of the first things they look for in a streaming service is whether it provides access to their favorite sports,” said John Dixon, senior VP of entertainment for Comcast, in a statement. “With a huge collection of sports-focused channels ranging from local broadcast to national networks covering the biggest and smallest of sports, Fubo is a great addition to the growing catalog of streaming options available on our platforms.”

Added Isaac Josephson, senior VP of product management for Fubo: “Live sports is best enjoyed on the big screen — in fact, 95% of Fubo viewers are watching their favorite content on connected and smart televisions.” 

The move certainly won't help improve cord-cutting metrics for Comcast's Xfinity-branded linear video services, which lost more than 2 million customers last year.

Also read: Minnesota Senator Urges Comcast to ‘Return to the Negotiation Table’ With Diamond Sports Group

Fubo, for example, carries Bally Sports channels, regional sports networks that have been blacked out on Comcast pay TV services since late-April. Certainly, fans of the Atlanta Braves, Minnesota Twins and other Major League Baseball teams affected by this pay TV renewal impasse can simply call Comcast, ditch Xfinity X1, have the cable company send them a free Xumo Stream Box for their remaining ISP subscription, then sign up for Fubo. 

Fubo delivers a base tier of 195 channels, including many RSNs, for $80. By the time fees are factored in, it’s not a cheap “skinny” vMVPD bundle, but it’s certainly less expensive than Full Monty Comcast cable TV service, all sub fees and other gouges considered. 

U.S. Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) has sent a letter to Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts, urging him to get his cable company to "return to the negotiation table" with bankrupt regional sports network operator Diamond Sports Group and get a carriage deal done for Bally Sports North. 

“My constituents are furious,“ Smith tells Roberts in the missive. “Minnesotans look forward to watching the Twins all winter long.” 

Bally Sports channels have been off Comcast programming grids since April 30, with Diamond recently telling the bankruptcy court overseeing its restructuring that it’s at an “impasse” with the No. 2 U.S. pay TV operator. 

Also Read: Everything You Need To Know About the Bally Sports Bankruptcy

Bally Sports North is the local TV home to Major League Baseball’s Minnesota Twins, as well as the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx, which are currently in third place overall in the league.

The channel is also the RSN home to the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves and NHL's Minnesota Wild. 

For its part, Diamond asked the court for an emergency hearing on Tuesday to stop its league partners from demanding that it show details of its contracts with other pay TV operators. 

Also read: Diamond Sports Asks Bankruptcy Court for Emergency Hearing as Leagues Demand to See Sensitive Pay TV Contracts

The NBA, NHL and MLB want to know if Diamond has a viable business path moving forward. More specifically, they’d like to know if the Sinclair Broadcast Group subsidiary has “most favored nation” clauses in its contracts. If it does, capitulating to Comcast’s demands could trigger changes to its other pay TV deals. 

Marquee Sports Network, the regional sports network home of the Chicago Cubs, faces a pivotal carriage renewal negotiation with Comcast, with the current deal expiring in September. 

The channel’s top executive, Cubs president of business operations Crane Kenney, told Chicago radio station 670 the Score's Bernstein & Holmes show that he’s not confident that Marquee will maintain distribution with a pay TV provider that controls around half the channel’s reach. 

“I think distribution is going to be a challenge,” Kenney said. “And I’m sure you’re going to be asking me in September, ‘Hey, what’s going on now?’ Because it’s going to be bumpy.”

The Cubs launched the channel in the middle of a pandemic back in spring 2020, a joint effort with Sinclair Broadcast Group. Marquee also launched a $20-a-month direct-to-consumer app last year, but that effort seems far away from providing enough revenue to support the channel.

Meanwhile, Comcast — which remains at a distribution impasse with 18 Bally Sports regional sports channels operated by bankrupt Sinclair subsidiary Diamond Sports Group — might not be inclined to deviate from its current trend line and break the bank for an RSN built around a 33-35 ball club currently trying to keep its mouth and nose above water in Major League Baseball's National League Central Division. 

“I wish the clock was turned back to 2011,” Kenney said. “Because the market is in turmoil. You’ve got half the RSNs in bankruptcy, being rejected in their rights agreements. You got wonderful markets like Atlanta — like if you’re a Comcast subscriber in Atlanta, you can’t watch the Braves [on Bally Sports] today. If you’re a Comcast subscriber in Milwaukee, you can’t watch the [Brewers] today. If you’re a Comcast subscriber in Detroit, another great baseball market, you can’t watch the Tigers today.”

Kenney also noted that earlier this month, Chicago Bulls and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf exited his teams’ RSN partnership with Comcast on NBC Sports Chicago. The teams, along with the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks, are launching a new multi-platform channel, Chicago Sports Network, in partnership with broadcaster Standard Media Group.

"Comcast has made it pretty clear that they are exiting the sports market,” Kenney added. “And half of our homes are Comcast homes. And our contract with Comcast ends in September. So trust me, the reason I spend — other than worrying about our batting average with runners in scoring position — the other thing that keeps me up all night is worrying about what’s going to happen with distribution.”

Cable operators controlled more than 75% of U.S. net additions for wireless customers in the first quarter, according to a new tally published by equity analyst Craig Moffett. 

Simply put, cable operators are able to bundle discounted bundles of fast, reliable wireline home broadband and mobile that are undercutting the offerings of wireless giants. 

“Cable’s success owes to a very clear advantage,” Moffett wrote in a Thursday morning report. “Cable can offer its bundle everywhere; every cable customer — and indeed, every customer in a Charter or Comcast market — can get the same bundle at the same price.

“That's not true for the TelCos,” he added. The wireline footprints of wireless companies including T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon “simply don't support a converged offering.” 

The wireless giants “aren’t even in the ballpark of having a national offering,” Moffett also noted. Consider that AT&T, the closest to that benchmark among the trio, currently has fiber available in only 12% of households. 

Meanwhile, cable’s share of gross mobile additions has grown steadily, surpassing 16% in the first quarter. 

“To put a finer point on it, a converged offer that is available in 12% of the country, for a national wireless operator that competes in 100% of the country, is lunacy,” Moffett added. “It simply isn’t a viable strategy.” 

The ranks of U.S. cable operators launching mobile services has increased recently, with Breezeline and Mediacom Communications hoisting new offerings in recent weeks. 

A new, separate research report published earlier this week by S&P Global Ratings suggested that mobile products from tier 2 and 3 U.S. cable operators won't enjoy near the prosperity of Comcast's Xfinity Mobile and Charter's Spectrum Mobile. The reason: Comcast and Charter have the ability to offload much of their Verizon MVNO traffic to their own network resources via WiFi and other mechanisms. 

A report published Monday by S&P Global Ratings suggests that the revenue lost for cable operators from customers opting for fixed wireless access (FWA) services is greater than the gains generated from new "junior cable" mobile services.

Amid this dynamic “wireless convergence” marketplace, S&P analyst Chris Mooney said Charter Communications and Comcast are “better positioned than other cable providers” dabbling in mobile, primarily because of their respective wholesale mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreements with Verizon. 

These MVNO deals date back to a 2011 spectrum sale, in which Comcast, along with the erstwhile Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, sold wireless spectrum to Verizon for $3.6 billion and wholesale use of its network in perpetuity.

Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile and Charter’s Spectrum Mobile have the ability to limit how much their customers use the Verizon network and can better control costs and margins because of that. Both cable operators have robust WiFi coverage in urban areas and can offload wireless traffic accordingly. Because the two companies must pay variable fees to Verizon under the perpetual wholesale agreement, the more data they offload onto their own networks, the less expensive the MVNO costs are.

In fact, Charter says it offloads 88% of mobile traffic onto WiFi, with Comcast even higher, at around 90% of traffic.

As Comcast and Charter develop more cost-effective ways to offload mobile traffic, their margins on mobile could eventually swell to sky-high levels, equity analyst Craig Moffett noted in his own report last November. Mooney agrees.

But smaller cable operators, Mooney said, lack the resources to develop similarly competitive wireless services.

Also Read: Charter and Comcast Rout FWA in OpenSignal’s Latest ‘Fixed Broadband Experience Report’

That could be a problem, considering wireless operators like Verizon and T-Mobile have collectively amassed more than 8 million FWA customers in the U.S. in just the past couple of years. These fixed 5G wireless home internet plans are typically cheaper than cable internet. 

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

Smaller MSOs are responding to the lost wireline broadband market share and revenue by trying to turn the tables and encroach on wireless’s core business. But Mooney suggested that, given their inferior MVNO economics, the “modest” margins available to them on the wireless side won't match their lost home broadband profitability.

Meanwhile, if Comcast and Charter focus on expanding their traffic offload and scale of coverage, Mooney believes that both cable giants could generate EBITDA margins as much as 15% to 20% in the next four years.

Charter’s aggressive, volume-focused strategy focuses on low-price promotions, which helps attract and create a “stickier consumer,” according to S&P.

Comcast, however, has favored a strategy focused on profitability and conservative pricing over low-price promotions, and that’s likely to generate more immediate profit and EBITDA growth, S&P said.

Navigating what he described as the most competitive broadband market he has ever seen, Dave Watson, chief executive for the cable side of Comcast’s business portfolio, believes investor focus should remain on Comcast's stable revenue picture, and not the currently volatile visage of customer additions. 

“Our No. 1 focus is growing revenue,” Comcast Cable president and CEO Watson said Tuesday, while appearing in Boston at the JP Morgan Media and Communications Conference. (A full audio playback is available here.)

Also read: U.S. Broadband Customer Growth Slows to Pre-Pandemic Levels in Q1, With Every Sector Losing Steam

It has been noted by equity analysts for some time that Comcast has the data to back up this narrative. 

Also read: Comcast Prices StreamSaver Bundle at $15 a Month

Amid a toxic milieu of increased competition from fiber and fixed wireless, combined with the slowing creation of new households, Comcast’s broadband customer growth — once so robust during the pandemic — has reached negative quarterly terrain. The company lost 65,000 high-speed internet users in the first quarter. 

For Comcast, however, there has been no significant corresponding decline in average revenue per broadband customer, which was 4.2% in Q1.

That represented a slight drop versus the 4.5% reported for the first three months of last year, but fits the “3-4%” range Watson referenced several times during Tuesday’s JP Morgan sitdown. 

“We've been focused on the value between volume and rate,” said Watson, who played up the importance of market segmentation. 

On the higher end of that spectrum, Watson said that by the end of 2024, 50% of his company's footprint will be covered with the labor- and cost-intensive process of conducting “mid splits” of optical nodes, a process necessary to integrate multi-gig symmetrical broadband service via Full Duplex DOCSIS 4.0 conducted over a virtualized network. 

Watson said this capital-intensive upgrade is the best response to fiber-to-the-home, which he believes poses Comcast's greatest long-term competitive threat. 

On the low end, he believes the company’s recently introduced Now Internet and Now Mobile prepaid services are a solid hedge amid the sunsetting of the Affordable Communications Act, which he also believes will further cut into broadband growth over the coming quarters as less well-off customers see their subsidies disappear. 

"We are competitive in every segment,” Watson said, reiterating that Comcast “feels confident“ it will be able to maintain its 3-4% quarterly ARPU, regardless of the market circumstance. 

Comcast has officially introduced its StreamSaver service bundle, packaging the $6.99 Netlflix Standard with Ads, the $5.99 Peacock Premium and the $9.99 Apple TV Plus for just $15 a month for Xfinity broadband, mobile and pay TV customers. 

StreamSaver will be available starting next week. 

Comcast is also letting its Xfinity customers bundle the $20-a-month virtual pay TV bundle Now TV with StreamSaver, pricing the whole package at $30 a month. Now TV already includes on its own 40 basic cable channels (no ESPN), 20 hours of virtual DVR storage, and access to Peacock Premium. 

Also read: Did Comcast Just Announce Streaming's Stickiest Bundle? These Charts Suggest a 'Yes'

Speaking at the JP Morgan Media and Technology Conference in Boston Tuesday, Dave Watson, CEO of Comcast's cable business, described StreamSave  as a "home run" experience for consumers. 

Not only do they receive discounts on popular subscription streaming service, he noted, but they can "experience" these services on the Comcast Entertainment OS, "this wonderful platform, this operating system we’ve been able to scale between Sky and in the U.S. that goes way back to X1."

Integration into the Comcast Entertainment OS, he said, provides search and recommendation benefits, such as the ability to use the Comcast Voice Remote for search. 

Watson described the $15-a-month StreamSaver as a "bolt-on" to any combination of Xfinity-branded services. 

"The reason we did it in the first place is broadband," he added. "Our broadband customers are looking for alternatives."

Indeed, Comcast would like to rekindle broadband growth. But the cable operator is also trying to grow scale for Peacock, which ended Q1 with 31 million subscribers. The SVOD's sales have been strong the past two years, but it needs far more reach to generate the kind of income the conglomerate's NBCUniversal division needs to replace the fast-declining income of NBC broadcast and linear cable channels. 

Hooking its wagons to Netflix is a start. The platform has by far the lowest churn among all subscription streaming services. 

Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts on Tuesday said his conglomerate will soon bundle its own streaming service, Peacock, along with Apple TV Plus and Netflix for Comcast Cable video and broadband customers at a "vastly reduced price."

Speaking at a conference conducted by equity research firm MoffettNathanson, Roberts didn't reveal what that price will be, or much in the way of any other details, although he did say the bundle will be called "Stream Saver." (Here's a Seeking Alpha transcript of Roberts' appearance.)

The announcement was immediately noted as a follow-up to last week's declaration by Disney and Warner Bros Discovery that Disney Plus, Hulu and Max will soon be available in a discounted bundle, as well. 

“Following the Hulu-Disney-Max announcement last week, it’s not surprising that Comcast is following up with its own bundling plans that can help both Peacock and Xfinity broadband, offering great value to its customers," said Jason Cohen, co-founder and CEO of MyBundle, which works with broadband suppliers to bundle streaming video services for their customers. 

"Broadband providers are in the strongest position to facilitate the re-bundling of streaming, but expect plenty more streaming-streaming and broadband-streaming bundles to come," Cohen added. 

Of course, Stream Saver's quality and popularity will rests in the key details. But here's why we think Comcast's announcement surpasses Disney's -- it's in the churn. 

Netflix, which now has more than 80 million customers in the U.S. and Canada, has maintained an annual churn rate of less than 2% over the last five years, while the weighted industry average is at 5.5%, according to figures published in February by research company Antenna. 

Antenna also measured how many subscribers stick with SVOD services over four years. With Netflix factored in, 29% of premium streaming service subscriptions are in their fourth year, on average, the research company said in its February State of Subscriptions report. Not factoring in Netflix, that number drops to 16%.

That resistance to customer quitting will undoubtedly help the $9.99-a-month Apple TV Plus, which has never published a subscriber count and has maintained one of the subscription video streaming business' highest churn rates, according to outside observers like Antenna. 

The same holds true for Peacock, which ended the first quarter with 31 million customers while also maintaining an above-average churn rate. 

Certainly, with Comcast losing 481,000 linear pay TV customers in the first quarter, hooking the monthly Xfinity TV bill to an SVOD service many American TV homes deem essential might ply some added resistance to cord-cutting, as well. 

Comcast said its Now Internet and Now Mobile prepaid services are now available nationwide across the cable operator’s footprint.

The Now brand is designed to be a low-cost option for consumers looking for reliable digital connectivity services.

Customers can sign up for Now, or pause or cancel their subscriptions online, via the Xfinity app or at an Xfinity store.

“Now is a simple, reliable, and low-cost way for people to get Internet and Mobile service on their own terms.” Bill Connors, president of connectivity and platforms at Comcast, said. “Our trials have shown there is a need for a better prepaid product that provides a more consistent and reliable connection and we’re excited to bring fresh new options to this market.”

Now Internet costs $30 a month for 100 Mbps or $45 a month for 200 Megabits per second. (Unlimited data and an Xfinity gateway are included.)

Now Mobile has a base price of $55 a month when bundled with Now Internet. Additional mobile lines cost $25 a month.

Comcast is also offering Now TV, a $20 streaming product with 40 live channels, two dozen free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels and Peacock premium, and a Now WiFi Pass, which provides access to more than 23 million Xfinity WiFi hotspots for $20 a month.

Comcast says its Now product could be attractive to customers now relying on the Affordable Connectivity Program to subsidize their digital services.

The government is winding down ACP, which is expected to sunset in May.

Perhaps concerned that it's taking the brunt of the viewer heat amid the one-week-old blackout of Bally Sports channels on Comcast, the bankrupt subsidiary that operates the regional sports network, Diamond Sports Group, went on the offensive Tuesday with a letter to Bally Sports subscribers. 

Also Read: Everything You Need To Know About the Bally Sports Bankruptcy

The core of the impasse revolves around Comcast's insistence that the Bally Sports channels be placed in a more expensive programming tier. 

"Bottom line, Xfinity’s current proposal will immediately put Bally Sports on a tier requiring you to pay more to see your favorite teams," Diamond wrote. "This matter is not an attempt to ask Xfinity for more money. In fact, we are just asking them to accept market terms, similar to what Charter Spectrum, Cox Communications, DirecTV and DirecTV Stream all did just last month."

Diamond announced in April renewals with the aforementioned three pay TV companies, which seemed to put the bankrupt Sinclair Broadcast Group subsidiary in position to finally exit the restructuring process next month. 

However, Comcast, which has a footprint reaching all 18 remaining Bally Sports-branded RSNs, probably senses it has quite a bit of leverage at this point. 

For its part, Diamond also set up a website, www.saveourlocalteams.com, to help fight the battle. 

Here's the company's letter:

Dear Sports Fans,

Comcast Xfinity recently pulled the plug on our networks despite our best efforts to reach a mutually beneficial distribution deal. Their refusal to broadcast games while we continue the conversation is disappointing for many reasons, but above all because it hurts you, the fans, and the sports media industry at large. We appreciate that sports rights are confusing – and the industry is evolving in a way that is not always prioritizing the fans. This letter is an effort for us to be honest and transparent with you.

Bally Sports isn’t just a local sports network; it brings you, the fans, closer to your favorite local teams and talent, delivering shared memories, night after night. And it's not just the fans who are directly impacted – the teams and leagues with whom we have built relationships for decades are hurt by this as well.

Bottom line, Xfinity’s current proposal will immediately put Bally Sports on a tier requiring you to pay more to see your favorite teams. This matter is not an attempt to ask Xfinity for more money. In fact, we are just asking them to accept market terms, similar to what Charter Spectrum, Cox Communications, DirecTV and DirecTV STREAM all did just last month.

Our goal? Reach a deal and get your local teams back on air. Sadly, Xfinity hasn’t been willing to engage in meaningful discussions, nor will they put the channels back on while we continue to work through this. We’re not giving up, though. We want to make this work with Xfinity and hope that they recognize the crucial role Bally Sports plays in serving local sports fans. The stakes are high. Millions of our customers who enjoy the games we broadcast are already being left in the dark.

Now we’re turning to you, the fans. Raise your voices, let Xfinity know you want your teams back on the air. Tell them to do right by the fans. After all, you are the ones who pay to make it happen. Your opinion matters.

Back on November 1, The Walt Disney Co. seemed to culminate one of the most active discussions in media entertainment, agreeing to purchase Comcast's remaining 33% share in Hulu. 

But it turns out the drama isn’t over. 

Reuters reported Tuesday that the two companies are looking to hire a third outside financial adviser to determine the value of Comcast's share in the streaming company. 

Also read: Disney Entertainment DTC Business Gets Out of the Red in Q2

This comes after Disney's adviser, JPMorgan Chase, and Comcast’s consigliere, Morgan Stanley, came in with valuations that were more than 10% apart from one another. 

As per the purchase agreement carved out last year, if the valuations had been within 10% of one another, the two sides would have met in the middle, agreeing to the average of the two sums. 

As it happened, JPMorgan Chase valued Hulu at $27.5 billion, while Morgan Stanley put the number at above $40 billion.

The valuation will now be determined based on the average of the third-party valuation and whichever of the two existing appraisals is closest to the new one. 

And Comcast and its NBCUniversal division will receive 33% of whatever that works out to be. 

The valuation can be no lower than $27.5 billion, which is the floor value assigned to Hulu in the 2019 “put call” agreement between the two media giants, the deal that paved the way for Comcast to sell its share in the former joint venture. 

Hulu ended Disney's fiscal second quarter at the end of March with 50.2 million subscribers, up about 500,000 sequentially and 2 million customers year over year. 

Disney has already integrated Hulu into its flagship Disney Plus streaming app. 

While it’s the pay TV distributor that usually catches viewer heat when channels are pulled off programming grids amid licensing disputes, based on the fickle winds of the internet, it's the other way around for bankrupt regional sports networks operator Diamond Sports Group and its six-day-old impasse with Comcast.

All 18 remaining Bally Sports-branded channels that Diamond manages were pulled off Comcast on April 30, placing into dire jeopardy Diamond's attempt to emerge from a 15-month bankruptcy process intact. Diamond is reportedly reluctant to cede to Comcast’s demand that the Bally Sports channels be bumped to a more-expensive digital tier. 

Also Read: Everything You Need To Know About the Bally Sports Bankruptcy

Among the Comcast franchise markets impacted are Atlanta, where Major League Baseball's National League East-contending Braves are on Bally Sports, as well as St. Louis, where Bally Sports serves as the regional sports network home of the avidly watched Cardinals. 

And it’s not just baseball fans who have lost their local coverage of their teams on Comcast. Bally Sports Indiana, home of the WNBA’s Indiana Fever and its new star, Caitlin Clark, also went dark on the nation's No. 2 pay TV service as the team plays highly anticipated preseason games and approaches the start of its regular season on May 14.

Don't look for this dispute to lead to a mass exodus of Comcast’s video subscriber ranks (an exodus that tends to be pretty massive every quarter all on its own).

A quick perusal of the social internet finds that the majority of impacted sports fans side with Comcast, at least early on:

Comment from r/cordcutters

Comment from r/cordcutters

After a spree of odds-defying dealmaking that resulted in what had seemed be an unlikely but imminent emergence from bankruptcy restructuring, Diamond Sports Group's luck may have run out. 

Comcast released a statement early evening Tuesday indicating negotiations on a new long-term carriage agreement have not been successful so far, and that it expects the Bally Sports regional channels Diamond manages to come off its video platform when the calendar month of April — and its current deal with Diamond — ends at midnight. Networks and teams affected by the outage in Xfinity markets include the Atlanta Braves on Bally Sports South, the Minnesota Twins on Bally Sports North and the Detroit Tigers on Bally Sports Detroit.

Also read: Diamond Sports Group Announces Another Big Pay TV Renewal … But No, It's Not with Comcast

“We have been very flexible with Diamond Sports Group for months as they work through their bankruptcy proceedings, providing them with an extension on the Bally Sports Regional Networks last fall and a unilateral right to extend the term for another year, which they opted to not exercise,“ Comcast said. ”We’d like to continue carrying their networks, but they have declined multiple offers and now we no longer have the rights to this programming. We will proactively credit our customers for the costs associated with them — most will automatically receive $8 to 10 per month in credits.”

Diamond responded with this statement: “It’s disappointing that Comcast rejected a proposed extension that would have kept our channels on the air and that Comcast indicated that it intends to pull the signals, preventing fans from watching their favorite local teams. Comcast has refused to engage in substantive discussions despite Diamond offering terms similar to those reached with much larger distributors of ours. We are a fans-first company and will continue to seek an agreement with Comcast to restore broadcasts, and at this critical juncture for Diamond, we hope that Comcast will recognize the important and mutually beneficial role Diamond and RSNs play in the media ecosystem. In the meantime, fans in Comcast regions can access our networks through subscriptions to Fubo, DirecTV or DirecTV Stream, or through our direct-to-consumer offering, Bally Sports Plus, for the teams for which Diamond retains DTC rights.”

Also Read: Everything You Need To Know About the Bally Sports Bankruptcy

According to CableTV.com, 13 of the remaining 17 Bally Sports channels are listed as being carried in Comcast Xfinity-branded "Popular" tier -- the company's most basic pay TV plan. Comcast has, of late, negotiated deals with RSNs that have moved local sports channels to its more expensive "Ultimate" bundle. 

Renewing its pay TV contracts is a core component of Diamond’s effort to emerge from a 15-month restructuring process that began in March of last year. In order to approve its restructuring plan — a gambit that could happen as soon as June 18 — Diamond’s creditors and league partners need to see that its core distribution capabilities are intact. 

Things had been going well: Diamond announced a carriage renewal for the Bally Sports channels with Charter earlier this month, and new deals with DirecTV and Cox Communications this week. 

Comcast and Diamond had already agreed to a temporary extension last fall. 

And for its part, Comcast — which reported the loss of 487,000 video customers in the first quarter — has been taking a tougher stance lately in negotiating carriage for regional sports networks, relegating them to a pricier tier or icing them out altogether.

Is this just a bump in the road from which Diamond can quickly recover?

Not to get hyperbolic or anything, but at least one TMT-focused equity analyst is signaling the end times for the RSN business. 

Warner Bros. Discovery stock on Tuesday fell nearly to depths not seen since the Great Recessionary abyss of 2009 following a Wall Street Journal report that Comcast and NBCUniversal are preparing an aggressive bid to poach TNT’s NBA television rights. 

Warner stock cratered nearly 9% as word came that Comcast is willing to pay the NBA $2.5 billion a season to broadcast games on NBC and stream them on Peacock in primetime two nights a week during the pro-hoops season. 

Incumbent NBA national TV rights holders Disney and WBD’s TNT Sports had an exclusive negotiating window with the league that ended last week. It was reported last week that Disney and its ESPN unit carved out the framework for a 10-year renewal that will start in the 2025-26 season.

It was also reported that Amazon had negotiated its own ability to become a third national TV partner for the NBA.

The erstwhile Time Warner Inc. acquired its NBA TV rights package back in 2007 and is currently presenting the NBA Playoffs on TNT and Max through a legacy deal that calls for it to pay the league an average of $1.2 billion a season. 

Also read: Are Kenny, Chuckster and 'Inside the NBA' Moving to Amazon?

NBC held NBA rights from 1990 - 2002, and it seems fairly serious about getting them back. 

CNBC reported on Tuesday that NBCU has already spoken to composer John Tesh about repurchasing the rights to “Roundball Rock,” the iconic jingle that punctuated NBC broadcasts of pro hoops games all through the Michael Jordan-dominated 1990s. 

Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts received $35.4 million in compensation in 2023, up 11% from the previous year, according to a proxy statement filed by the company.

In addition to his $2.5 million salary, Roberts got $15 million in stock awards, $9.2 million in option awards and $8.6 million in inactive plan compensation.

Mike Cavanagh, who is president of Comcast in addition to running its NBCUniversal unit, received total compensation of $29.6 million in 2023.

In 2022, Cavanagh signed a new contract that gave him an option to purchase 2 million shares of Comcast Class A common stock valued at $14.8 million. His total pay in 2022 was $40.5 million.

Earlier this week, Comcast reported flat first quarter earnings, with revenues up 1.2% to $30.1 billion.

Comcast reported flat first-quarter earnings as it reduced the red ink at Peacock but continued to lose video and broadband customers.

The company said it cut its losses at Peacock to $639 million from $704 million a year ago.

Peacock added 3 million paid subscribers in the quarter, increasing its total to 34 million, which is up 55% from a year ago.  Peacock got a boost from having an exclusive NFL playoff game during the quarter. 

"We added and then retained more subscribers than we expected,” Comcast president Michael Cavanagh said during the company’s earnings call with analysts.

Revenue for Peacock was $1.1 billion, up 54% from a year ago. 

Overall, Comcast said Q1 net income rose 0.6% to $3.9 billion, or 97 cents a share, from $3.8 billion, or 91 cents a share, a year ago.

The earnings exceeded Wall Street expectations.

Revenue grew 1.2% to $30.1 billion.

At NBCUniversal, which Comcast calls its content and experiences division,  earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, fell 7.1% to $1.5 billion.  

Revenues were up 1.1% to $10.4 billion.

EBITDA for the company’s media business was down 6.1% to $827 million as revenue rose 3.6%. The company said expenses were up because of higher programming costs at Peacock. 

Domestic advertising revenues were flat at $2 billion, while domestic distribution revenue increased 7.2% to $2.9 billion. 

The company’s studio business saw earnings fall 12.2% to $244 million as revenue slid 7.2% to $2.7 billion.

Comcast’s cable business — called connectivity and platforms — increased EBITDA by 1.5% to $8.2 billion. Revenue declined 0.1% to $20.3 billion. 

Comcast lost 65,000 domestic broadband customers, leaving it with 32.2 million residential and business customers.

Revenues from domestic residential broadband were up 3.9% from a year ago to $6.6 billion.

Domestic video customers were down by 487,000, leaving 13.6 million remaining for the former top U.S. cable operator. Residential video revenues dropped 7.7% to $6.9 billion.

Advertising revenue was up 3.5% to $951 million.

“Our team is continuing to execute exceptionally well in a dynamic and competitive marketplace,” chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said. “Overall, I am proud of our ability to consistently perform at the highest levels and continue to position the company for long-term growth.”

Canada’s Rogers Communications, which has licensed Comcast’s X1 video platform technology since 2016, announced Wednesday that it has signed a 10-year agreement with the American cable giant to use a lot more of its tech. 

The bounty will include what Rogers describes as a “new device powered by Entertainment OS,” which on the surface sounds like Xumo Stream Box, the streaming gadget jointly launched last year by Comcast and Charter Communications that runs the former’s TVOS. 

So it is the Xumo Stream Box, which is also being deployed by Cox Communications and Mediacom Communications, right?

A Rogers rep told us that “commercial details” about the video product “will be announced later this year.”

Meanwhile, Rogers said it's also licensing Comcast’s “10G” wireline internet gateway, as well as its Storm-Ready WiFi product, a gateway introduced last summer that includes backup battery power and a system for switching from wireline to cellular internet connectivity. 

Rogers said it’s also licensing various Xfinity-branded home security tech from Comcast. 

“Our partnership with Comcast builds on our legacy of bringing Canadians the best networks, entertainment and services in the world,” Tony Staffieri, president and CEO of Rogers Communications, said in a statement. “Canadians want to be connected to the best entertainment, anywhere, without interruption and we’re proud to partner with Comcast to make this a reality.”

Rogers is the largest wireless company in Canada, with 11.6 million customers at the end of 2023. But it’s also still one of the country’s largest cable companies, with 4.2 million “retail internet” users and 2.25 million remaining linear video subscribers

Comcast is extending its line of low-cost, Now-branded connectivity products, introducing new prepaid home internet and mobile services. 

Now Internet will challenge the fixed wireless access competition by delivering 100 Mbps of unlimited hot download action for $30 a month, or 200 Mbps for $45 a month, all over an Xfinity gateway.

And Now Mobile will provided unlimited 5G data, voice and text for $25 a month per line, while also offering connectivity to Comcast's network of 23 million WiFi hotspots nationwide. 

The two prepaid offerings — which can be paused or cancelled at any time sans contracts — join Now TV, the skinny virtual MVPD that bundles more than 40 linear cable networks, along with Peacock Premium, for $20 a month; and Now WiFi Pass, which gives users unlimited access to Comcast hotspots for $20 a month. 

With the Republican-led House opting to no longer fund the Affordable Connectivity Program, and the ACP set to run out of money this month, Comcast is pitching Now as an affordable connectivity alternative. 

“Consumers have told us they want low-cost, easy-to-use connectivity and entertainment options that deliver the same reliability and consistency of our leading Xfinity services,” Dave Watson, president and CEO of connectivity and platforms for Comcast, said in a statement. “With Now, we’ve developed a new product construct from the ground up to be simple and easy for anybody who wants Internet, mobile or TV on their own terms without sacrificing quality. It rounds out our product offering to provide something for every consumer segment of the market and plays to our strengths in superior network capabilities, WiFi and streaming.”

There is also the specter of fixed wireless access competition, with Verizon Communications and T-Mobile undercutting the growth of cable broadband with wireless home internet services that run about $50 a month. 

Comcast is also pitching Now Internet as being more reliable than FWA. 

Comcast announced several new features for its Xfinity X1 pay TV platform, including a partnership with DraftKings that will make degenerative sports gambling as easy as clicking on a QR code. 

X1’s new Odds Zone shows DraftKings odds for major sporting events as they unfurl live on the same screen. X1 now allows the user to place bets using a QR code and the DraftKings app on their smartphone. 

Comcast said that Xfinity Odds Zone will be available for most major sporting events, including the upcoming men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments, the NBA and NHL playoffs, and for the start of the NFL and MLB seasons.

Separately, Comcast is also launching what it calls a new “immersive viewing experience” around pro golf's The Players Championship, which will be presented on NBC, Golf Channel, Peacock and ESPN Plus from Palm Valley, Florida, March 12-17.

By saying “the players” in their voice remote, customers can tap into features including an interactive course tour of all 18 holes of the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, a dynamic scorecard that shows how the course is playing in a given round, and a live leaderboard with tee times and in-progress round-by-round scoring. 

Additionally, users will find curated news and highlights from NBC, ESPN and the PGA Tour FAST channel, which offers live programming powered by new technology available to content partners through Xumo Enterprise. Customers can also launch Xfinity Odds Zone from the experience, providing a quick and seamless way to see the latest tournament odds and initiate bets via the DraftKings mobile app.

“With Comcast Business as a Proud Partner, The Players Championship is a perfect opportunity to showcase the power of our platform to help customers find, watch and enjoy events that span multiple networks and streaming services, along with interactive features for fans who want an even deeper experience,” said Vito Forlenza, VP of entertainment apps for Comcast, in a statement. 

Predictably, the rate of video cord cutting continued to accelerate for most leading operators in 2023, but the industry, ostensibly fading to black, experienced several key changes last year, not all of them bleak. 

For starters, there's a new top dawg in the U.S. pay TV business, with Charter Communications -- which is bleeding customers at a slower rate than Comcast -- narrowly surpassing its frequent cable-biz JV partner in terms of video subscriber count in Q4. 

Secondly, while the seven pay TV companies still publicly reporting customer tallies collectively lost 4.566 million video customers in 2023, Alphabet/Google said that YouTube TV gained around 3 million subscribers from July 2022 through the end of last year. 

Prorating that addition to just a 2023 estimation, YouTube took on around 2 million linear TV customers last year, expanding its ranks at a rather astounding 33%. 

YouTube TV is on the cusp of surpassing Dish Network as the No. 4 U.S. supplier overall. DirecTV, which hasn't reported customer numbers since it was spun off from AT&T in 2021, is believed to have around 11.5 million remaining subscribers across its various platforms. 

Even thought Alphabet doesn't give specific customer totals for YouTube TV, we included the virtual MVPD in our ranking of the eight leading publicly traded pay TV operators below. 

New Street Research equity analyst Jonathan Chaplin responded positively to a Bloomberg report Monday that Charter Communications is in private talks to possibly acquire devalued cable operator Altice USA, saying the two MSOs' regional footprints in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts and  "would fit well together."

But in a note to investors, Chaplin also said it would be "irresponsible" for Comcast not to also take a look at struggling Altice USA. 

"We would put the probability that Comcast has discussions with Altice at very high. We would put the prospect of a competing bid, if any of this turns out to be true, much lower," Chaplin wrote. 

Also read: Altice USA CEO Dennis Mathew: Struggling Cable Operator Is Learning to Compete Against Fixed Wireless

Chaplin also said it would make sense for T-Mobile to also take a run at Atlice USA, although he doesn't believe the wireless company's counteroffer prospects are as good as the one Comcast could render. (Fierce Wireless and Light Reading first reported on Chaplin's note.)

Altice USA has been trading at only a small fraction of its 2021 peak share price of nearly $40. But shares have spiked nearly 62% since Bloomberg's report. 

None of the aforementioned companies have publicly commented on the M&A reports

“The industrial logic of putting Altice together with Charter or Comcast is powerful," Chaplin wrote. "It is slightly more powerful for Charter than it is for Comcast. The integration costs would be very high for both companies, and both are very aware of these costs. The leverage makes the deal very difficult, given the magnitude of the integration costs.”

During Comcast's Q4 earnings call in January, chief executive Brian Roberts tried to throw cold water on any M&A speculation. 

“While there may be speculation what we could do next, I’d like you to hear it directly from me,” Roberts said. “I love the company we have. So the bar continues to be even higher for us to do anything other than the plan you heard today.” 

Comcast and Paramount Global, which already jointly operate streaming effort SkyShowtime in parts of Europe, have held talks to discuss possibly combining their streaming platforms here in the U.S. 

The discussions, which were not described as at all advanced by the news platform first reporting them, The Wall Street Journal, also involved “other strategic options.” Neither media company is publicly discussing the dialogue yet, but there has been third-party confirmation by the Penske showbiz trades and other outlets via anonymous sources.

The move would be, of course, about scale. 

Paramount Plus touted 63.4 million U.S. subscribers as of the end of September, up 38% year over year. Comcast said in January that Peacock, operated by its NBCUniversal division, had around 31 million paid subscribers at the end of 2023, triple what it had just two years ago. 

For its part, the biggest subscription streaming operator, Netflix ended 2023 with 80.13 million subscribers in the U.S. and Canada. 

Comcast and the erstwhile ViacomCBS formed SkyShowtime in August 2021, combining their streaming efforts in parts of Europe in which Peacock or Paramount Plus weren’t already established independently.

Both media companies are engaged in a lot of exploratory dialogue right now. 

Also read: Paramount Global Set To Dismiss 800 Employees in Cost-Cutting Move

During Comcast’s fourth-quarter earnings call, CEO Brian Roberts once again asserted his lack of desire to enter into any substantive M&A. But with Peacock seeking scale, a JV certainly wouldn't be out of the question.

Meanwhile, as they face numerous media-business headwinds, Paramount and its parent company, National Amusements, have been exploring a broad range of deals recently.  

PHILADELPHIA — Comcast held an upfront-style event on Tuesday showing off home-technology improvements coming to Xfinity customers sooner or later, including motion-detection services in the home, speed boosts to outdoor Wi-Fi hot spots and a new home gateway device that could be connected to hundreds of home devices.

The cable company, parent to NBCUniversal, brought in Saturday Night Live star Kenan Thompson as a celebrity emcee and screened a commercial touting the Paris 2024 Olympics for analysts, reporters and other guests. Also shown was a spot directed by Kathryn Bigelow that depicts a reunion of aging military pilots who relive their aerial exploits using virtual-reality headsets. The latter ad’s tagline was, “Comcast 10G WiFi Built to Wow.”

“Our mission is simple: we’re going to connect people with what they need and love now and in the future,” Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said during the gathering, called Comcast Converge and held at the Comcast Technology Center super-tall building in downtown Philadelphia.

Demonstrations included big-screen displays of English professional soccer presented in “high fidelity video,” combining high-resolution 4K video that looked far superior to 720p high-definition TV in a side-by-side display. The technology, which officials said was recently tested in trials for Comcast employees, also included high-dynamic-range audio and trimmed the latency delay in pre-recorded soccer action by about 20 seconds in the demonstration. During demos, Comcast said the goal was "10 seconds from the moment something happens in the stadium until you are experiencing it in your home." No timetable was offered for when it might be rolled out to customers.

A new home gateway device, the XB10, which officials said was being introduced today, includes Wi-Fi 7 and DOCSIS 4.0 technology that can connect to 300 different devices in the home. It's expected to be introduced in the second half of the year, officials said. Watson said the average Xfinity home now has 30 devices connected to WiFi, an increase of 40% over five years, and the forecast is for bandwidth consumption to keep on rising.

Officials said speed boosts are being rolled out to Xfinity Mobile WiFi hotspots that will enable 1 gigabit-per-second speeds. And motion detection will be added to Xfinity home gateways that will allow, for example, a parent at work to know when their children come home from school and then remotely manage what WiFi-connected devices the kids are allowed to use while they are supposed to be doing their homework. 

This story was updated to correct the speed enabled by the speed boosts.

Charter Communications, which has for several years been losing linear video customers at a much slower pace than Comcast, has surpassed the Philadelphia cable conglomerate as the No. 1 pay TV operator in America. 

Also read: Did Comcast Just Slip to Become the No. 2 U.S. Pay TV Operator?

Charter lost 257,000 video customers across residential and business channels in the fourth quarter, and 1.025 million for all of 2023. It finished the year with 14.122 million remaining customers. (Here's Charter's Q4 earnings release.)

Comcast, meanwhile, bled 389,000 Xfinity TV customers in Q4 and 2.036 million video subscribers for 2023 and finished the year with 14.106 million subs across residential and commercial sectors. (Here's Comcast's Q4 earnings release.)

"Charter has fought harder than anyone for the flexibility to offer skinnier and cheaper bundles. Charter seems much more committed to the idea that video is a valuable part of their overall offering," equity analyst Craig Moffett told Next TV over email Friday afternoon. 

"Comcast made peace with the idea that the best course of action when customers want to cut the cord is to let them," he added. 

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

Comcast had been America's largest linear pay TV company since the third quarter of 2019, when the quickening erosion of DirecTV resulted in AT&T slipping behind the cable company in terms of pay TV girth ranking. 

Comcast and Charter are currently in a joint venture, Xumo, attempting to develop a cable-industry-wide connected TV platform that will compete with Roku, Google and Amazon. 

Charter has even explicitly said that Xumo is the tip of its video spear moving forward, so these linear benchmarks, while notable, aren't likely to move either cable company's stock needle. 

Comcast’s U.K. pay TV company Sky is planning to cut about 1,000 jobs in Britain this year, as the media group moves away from linear cable and satellite TV towards streaming-based services.

“The launch of Sky Glass and Sky Stream represents a shift in our business to deliver TV over IP [an internet connection] rather than satellite. Increasingly, customers are choosing Sky Glass and Sky Stream which don’t require specialist installation, and that has led us to change the number of roles we need to deliver our services,” reads a Comcast release sent to various Penske showbiz trades.

The news was first reported by the Financial Times.

In the coming weeks, management for the European pay TV provider is set to talk to staffers who could be affected by the job cuts. With about 27,000 employees, job losses are expected to affect 4% of Sky’s staff.

The majority of the cuts will come from Sky’s engineering division, including technicians who make home visits to install satellite dishes and conduct repairs. 

Since Comcast acquired the media group in 2018 for $40 billion (a reported 15 times Sky’s EBITDA value), the U.S. cable giant has reoriented the direction of the British pay TV unit toward IP distribution of video. One example: The release of Sky Glass Smart TV in 2021 and the accompanying Sky Stream service.

Sky Glass is unique among smart devices in that customers can lease the set on a four-year contract, making monthly payments on installment plans, similar to how wireless company's allow their customers to finances smart phones. 

According to the company, consumers increasingly prefer this “cordless” option.

In fact, more than three-quarters of Sky customers sign up for streaming services rather than opting for a traditional satellite dish.

Sky is making important choices about its distribution technology preferences following its decision in early December to enter an $8.5 billion, multiyear TV rights deal with the Premier League. 

Sky isn’t the only British TV company undergoing serious restructuring, as industry pressures force more legacy media organizations to adapt to shifting consumer habits that increasingly favor the ease of streaming.

Just this week, the U.K.’s Channel 4 confirmed its largest staff cuts in 15 years, with more than 200 roles being trimmed, or almost 15% of staff, while the company makes the shift to streaming.

After losing 2.036 million linear video customers in 2023, and 389,000 in the fourth quarter, Comcast's reign as the No. 1 pay TV operator in America is very much up in the air. 

Comcast ended 2023 with 14.106 million Xfinity TV customers after losing 12.6% of its base in 12 months. Charter Communications ended Q3 with 14.379 million Spectrum TV clients and reports its earnings next Friday. (Comcast's Q4/full-year earnings release can be viewed here.)

Will Charter report a loss of 273,000 or more video subscribers when it delivers its Q4 report on Feb. 2?

Charter uncharacteristically lost 327,000 pay TV customers in a third quarter marred by a high-profile, two-week distribution standoff with Disney, during which it was redirecting angry football fans to YouTube TV since ESPN and ABC were temporarily taken off Spectrum. But beyond the last quarter, Charter's video losses have typically been less than the broader pay TV industry. 

In a sense, it's an anachronistic discussion, with Comcast and Charter teamed up on a new IP-centric video joint venture, Xumo, and slowly pivoting away from the traditional linear video bundle. 

Still, dating back to its mega $72 billion merger with AT&T Broadband back in December 2001, Comcast has been No. 1 in video ... or close to it. 

As research maven Bruce Leichtman noted for us, AT&T (the ongoing phone company concern) ranked No. 1 from the third quarter of 2015 through the third quarter of 2019, before DirecTV began its serious erosion and was subsequently spun off the telecom. 

In fact, up until about a decade ago, when it was surpassed by China’s Jiangsu Broadcasting Cable Information Network, Philadelphia-based Comcast was the No. 1 pay TV operator in the world. 

Comcast lost 34,000 broadband customers across consumer and business channels in the fourth quarter and bled 64,000 subscribers for the full 2023, results that might have tanked the cable company's stock in previous quarters.

Also read: Comcast Reports Higher Earnings as Peacock Makes Progress, but Broadband, Video Subs Decline

But the company’s shares are up nearly 4% Thursday. Sure, good news from theme parks and streaming platform Peacock have a lot to do with that. But a shift in cable investor thinking continues to occur, according to top telecom-industry analyst Craig Moffett.  

“We’ve long argued that cable investors are no longer counting on a ‘re-acceleration’ in broadband net additions. They simply want to see broadband net adds or losses that are predictable enough to allow focus to shift elsewhere. Most importantly, on broadband ARPU,” he wrote Thursday morning. 

For the second consecutive quarter, Comcast has reported 3.9% year-over-year expansion in average revenue per broadband customer (ARPU) — a rate that doesn't suggest Xfinity Internet services are overpriced, but which also indicates the company is getting enough for the service. 

”Comcast’s second-straight quarter of 3.9% residential broadband ARPU growth YoY is right in line with the 3-4% range we’ve characterized in the past as being ‘not too hot and not too cold,‘ ” the analyst added.

Speaking during Thursday's earnings call, Comcast CEO Mike Cavanagh spoke of his company's broadband business in resolute terms. There's a belief among management that multi-billion investments in DOCSIS 4.0 cable technology, along with aggressive government subsidies fueling increased passings -- the BEAD program is expected to ramp up next year -- will soon rekindle customer expansion. 

And confidence remains high that competition from fixed wireless access will abate. This was perhaps illustrated in the past few weeks, with T-Mobile capitulating on the price of its 5G Home Internet service, which is going back up $10 a month to $60 for folks who don't also have a T-Mobile wireless account for their phone.

"Our domestic broadband business remains strong," Cavanagh said. "We kept our very large and healthy base of subscribers flat while growing residential ARPU 3.9%, the high end of our historical range, driving solid EBITDA growth in connectivity and platforms and expanding margins to around 40% on an underlying basis. We achieved all of this despite an intensely competitive environment, and as I look back on 2023, I am confident that our strategy combined with excellent execution sets us up extremely well to navigate the road ahead."

Comcast declined to say how many viewers signed up for Peacock just before its streaming-exclusive NFL playoff game this month.

“We would expect to see an increase in paid subs,” Comcast president Mike Cavanagh said on the company’s 4th quarter earnings call Thursday. 

Comcast said Peacock grew to 31 million paid subs in the fourth quarter, an increase of 3 million.

“We’re focused on retention,” Cavanagh said. “What’s important is both the subs that came in during the game and the engagement of the people that were already on the platform.”

Comcast paid $110 million for rights to the wild card playoff game. Nielsen said that 23 million people watch the wild card game between the Chiefs and the Dolphins, including those who watched on local stations in Kansas City and Buffalo.

Research company Antenna estimated that 2.8 million users subscribed to Peacock during the three days leading up to the game. Antenna called it the biggest subscriber acquisition moment it ever measured.

However, it is fairly easy for new customers to cancel subscriptions to streaming services, so Comcast will have to work to hold onto as many of those new customers as it can.

“Engagement and retention is really going to be focused on what's coming next,” Cavanagh said.

Peacock has already seen record levels of viewing hours in the days that have followed the wild card game, Comcast said.

Ted, Peacock’s new comedy, was the most-watched original series ever in its first seven days on the platform. And Season 2 of Traitors is Peacock’s biggest original reality launch in its first four days.

Big ticket items coming to Peacock are the Oscar nominated film Oppenheimer on February 16 and the summer Olympics from Paris.

"Now that we’re post-strike, you’ll see a number of Peacock originals and additional movies from the pay-one window that we’ve got with Universal,” which is the studio Comcast owns, Cavanagh said.

“At the scale we've gotten to, what's important is to keep people engaged with the platform and all the content that's there and not the wild-card game unto itself,” he said. “So the job is we'll get more people in the door and get everybody that's already in the door re-engaged with the platform.”

Comcast reported higher fourth-quarter as losses from Peacock abated, but the company continued to lose residential broadband and video customers.

Paid subscribers to Peacock rose by 3 million in the fourth quarter to 31 million, Philadelphia-based Comcast said. Subscribers are up 50% from a year ago. The subscriber count does not count the signups that happened before Peacock’s exclusive telecast of an NFL playoff game earlier this month. Comcast has called the game the biggest night on the internet it has experienced., but declined to share how many people signed up.

Peacock losses dipped to $825 from $978 million a year ago as revenue topped $1 billion, up 57%. In the third quarter, Peacock recorded a $565 million loss.

Comcast has said it expects Peacock losses to peak in 2023. Peacock losses were $2.7 billion for the year, better than earlier predictions of $2.8 billion in losses.

Comcast’s cable division lost 34,000 broadband customers and 389,000 video subscribers. Both figures were better than analysts' consensus of predictions. 

On the company’s conference call with analysts, Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts downplayed the possibility of a big acquisition. “I love the company that we have," Roberts said.

Overall Comcast’s net income rose 7.8% to $3.3 billion, or 81 cents a share, in the quarter, from $3 billion, or 70 cents a share.

Revenue rose 2.3% to $31.3 billion.

The company announced that it increased its dividend by 8 cents a share to $1.24 a share annually.

NBCUniversal, now called Comcast’s Media division, had adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $108 million, down 60.2%  from a year ago. 

Revenue was up 3.1% to $7 billion. Domestic ad revenues fell 6.9% to $2.6 billion. Comcast said that excluding Telemundo’s World Cup revenues a year ago, ad revenue was up 2.7%, with Peacock gaining and linear networks falling off.

Distribution revenue grew 8.9% to $2.7 billion.

NBCU’s studio business had earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of $308 million, up 83.9% from a year ago. Revenue rose 4.3% to $3.1 billion.

Theme-park EBITDA increased 11.8% to $872 million as revenues jumped 12.2% to $2.4 billion.

Cable EBITDA Up, Revenue Down

At Comcast’s cable business — now called Connectivity & Platforms — EBITDA rose 3.1% to $7.6 billion despite revenue falling 0.5% to $20.4 billion. Residential revenues were down 1.3% while business services increased 5.8%.

Comcast lost 31,000 domestic residential broadband customers in the quarter. Domestic broadband revenue rose 3.7% to $6.4 billion. 

Cord-cutting cost Comcast 389,000 video customers, leaving it with 14.1 million video subscribers. Video revenues dropped 5.1% to $6.9 million.

Comcast added 310,000 wireless lines and revenue rose 15.4% to $1.02 billion.

Ad revenue fell 13.6% to $1.1 billion.

Programming expenses fell 2.5% to $4.4 billion 

“We capped off 2023 and the fourth quarter with excellent operational and financial performance,“ Roberts said in a statement. ”At the same time, we invested in future growth, returned $16 billion to shareholders and maintained a healthy balance sheet.

“We also reported the highest adjusted EBITDA on record at Theme Parks; were the No. 1 studio in worldwide box office for the first time since 2015; and maintained Peacock's position as the fastest growing streamer in the U.S.,” Roberts continued. “2024 is already off to a great start — I couldn't be more proud of how our company came together to deliver a record-breaking NFL wild-card game on Peacock and the nation’s biggest night on the internet ever. Our unique and complementary capabilities will enable us to capitalize on the many opportunities ahead, and the board’s confidence in our future is reflected in today's announcement that we are increasing our dividend for the 16th consecutive year."

It's something we haven’t been able to figure out — wireless companies are forever coming up with aggressive “on-us” deals to attract new customers, looking to lure them in with great prices on the latest Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy devices. 

Loyal existing customers, meanwhile, are often told to pay up once their hardware ages. And they often churn elsewhere to find a better deal.

Also Read: Uncarried! After More Than 4 Dutiful Years and 51 Loyal Billing Cycles, T-Mobile Tells Us to Pound Sand

Credit Comcast with its latest “on-us” promotion, which offers the latest Samsung Galaxy S24 series devices to new and existing Xfinity Mobile customers at $800 off with eligible trade-in. 

Customers can also get $500 off the S24, S24+ and S24 Ultra without a trade-in. 

Xfinity Mobile has grown to exceed more than 6 million service lines since its launch in 2017, with Comcast undercutting traditional wireless companies AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon in many cases on service and hardware. 

Comcast said its exclusive presentation Saturday on subscription streaming service Peacock of the NFL Wild Card matchup featuring the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs beating the fleet-footed Miami Dolphins drew the biggest live-streaming audience in U.S. history.

Citing Nielsen data, Comcast said the game averaged 23 million viewers, reaching a total of 28 million watchers. The game drew a 6% bigger audience than last year's primetime AFC Wild Card contest, which had a "total average delivery" of 21.8 million viewers across NBC, Peacock, NBC Sports Digital and NFL Digital.

Comcast, the top U.S. ISP, also said the internet itself on Saturday experienced a high-water usage mark for a single day, with the game consuming 30% of the massive traffic. 

Comcast reported more than 30 million paid Peacock subscribers as of the end of September. Notably, however, the company didn't disclose how many new Peacock signups it netted Saturday. 

Comcast's NBCUniversal division paid the NFL $110 million to put the NFL playoff game exclusively on Peacock. And the media company drew notable blowback from pundits and fans, displeased that the widely anticipated game wasn't available on either free over-the-air broadcast or linear pay TV.

But Comcast, NBCU and Peacock ended up big winners, attracting record attention -- and usage -- for a SVOD platform that had, until recently, been only a bit player in the Streaming Wars. 

“From NBC Sports and Peacock to the Comcast team, our entire company worked seamlessly to plan for this game and executed flawlessly to deliver a streaming experience with the NFL on a scale that’s never been done before. It’s a very proud moment,” said Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts, in a statement.

Added NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell: “We couldn’t be prouder of our partnership with Peacock and are thrilled with the results of the first-ever exclusively live streamed NFL playoff game. To best serve our fans, we need to ensure games are available to them as their viewing habits change and this includes digital distribution as we continue to help shape the future of the sports and entertainment industry.”

Regional sports networks continue to lose distribution footing in the eroding pay TV ecosystem.

SportsNet Pittsburgh, which was recently cast off by AT&T and put under the control of its two main pro-team tenants, Major League Baseball's Pittsburgh Pirates and the National Hockey League's Pittsburgh Penguins, with day-to-day management handled by co-owner New England Sports Network, just took a significant tier bump with its Comcast renewal, the the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports.

SportsNet Pittsburgh will no longer be available on the No. 1 U.S. pay TV operator's $70-a-month "Popular TV" tier in the local Pittsburgh region. Local Comcast subscribers who want the channel will now instead have to pay an additional $20 a month for the more sports-loaded "Ultimate TV" package.

Also read: Better Late Than Never: Charter to Drive Down the Cost of Pay TV With Groundbreaking New Distribution Strategy for Regional Sports Networks

“Most of our customers who receive the network today already have Ultimate TV, and our viewership information shows that they are the ones primarily watching it, so that’s why we’re making this change,” Comcast said in a statement. “We appreciate SportsNet Pittsburgh working with us to find a solution that balances cost and consumer choice to watch local sports in this changing video marketplace.”

RSN providers have long exerted pressure to make pay TV operators carry their channels in base tiers. With those economics making non-sports fans flee in droves to cheaper direct-to-consumer streaming options, RSNs have lost leverage and are now beginning to move to more premium programming tiers. 

Comcast confirmed that it has reached a renewal agreement to keep Paramount Global networks on its cable TV systems.

The deal renews a contract that was last re-established when Paramount's broadcast and cable concerns were operating under the ViacomCBS moniker in January 2022. 

It's unclear as to whether there are any new wrinkles to the deal, similar to the OTT bundling gains made by Charter when it negotiated its hard-won renewal with Disney back in September. 

Paramount Plus is already integrated into Comcast's X1 video platform. 

Sports Business Daily originally reported the news. 

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.