Charter Communications and Disney have reached a carriage agreement that will see ESPN+ being provided to Charter's Spectrum TV Select Plus subscribers and the Disney+ Basic ad-supported offering being provided to Spectrum TV Select package subs, the two said Monday. They said the deal also ended the blackout for most Disney networks and stations on Spectrum. They said Charter will offer Disney's direct-to-consumer streaming services to its customers, particularly its broadband-only sub base. They said networks that won't be included in Spectrum TV video packages anymore are Baby TV, Disney Junior, Disney XD, Freeform, FXM, FXX, Nat Geo Wild and Nat Geo Mundo. Charter has said it would pursue hybrid linear/streaming deals with other programmers that have D2C streaming (see 2309010013). Many of the streaming terms of the deal are wins for Charter, and thus for the whole cable industry through most favored nation terms, Thompson Sports Group principal Bob Thompson posted on X, formerly Twitter. "Think skinny bundles with ala carte streaming options packaged with broadband," he said. N.Y. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said in a statement that her administration "will ensure that New Yorkers receive a refund for the days they were without service, holding true to our commitment that we will always prioritize consumer protection."

In the struggle between video content and distribution, leverage seems to be swinging back toward distribution in the Disney/Charter Communications carriage fight (see 2309010013), MoffettNathanson wrote investors Friday. That's due to fears that sports content like ESPN will increasingly be available through alternative means like direct-to-consumer streaming, undermining its uniqueness, it said. Comcast has been reducing support for linear video, and direct broadcast satellite is "in free fall" and virtual MVPDs are shrinking, it said. If Charter permanently dropped Disney programming, content companies would have one growing distributor in Google, it said. Charter "is surely emboldened" by the fact Cable One, which de-emphasized video, has a much lower percentage of residential customers taking video than Charter has, but its margins are higher, it said.

Disney will likely drop its demand for increased carriage minimums and perhaps its demand for a longer duration agreement in its carriage fight with Charter Communications, Deutsche Bank's Bryan Kraft and Benjamin Soff said in a note to investors Thursday. They said Charter will likely meet Disney's per-subscriber asking price in the carriage fight that has ESPN and other Disney channels blacked out on Charter's channel lineup (see 2309010013). Charter will likely concede its demand for Disney streaming apps to be included in Charter subscription packages that contain Disney linear networks, they said, calling that Charter ask "unrealistic." They said the two will likely agree that Charter will distribute Disney's streaming apps through its Xumo streaming app platform joint venture with Comcast. Kraft and Soff said the two sides won't come to terms only if Charter wants to be out of the video distribution business "and the free streaming app ask is intended just to make a point" or the two "irrationally" dig in. The Charter-Disney fight might be "the moment in which the decline of pay TV evolves from Stage 3 to Stage 4; the point at which its acute illness becomes terminal; the moment decay metastasizes from slow-and-steady to on-its-last-breath," Aluma' Insights' Michael Greeson blogged Wednesday. He said both companies face difficult decisions. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (R) is pressing Disney and Charter Communications to end the blackout. "North Carolinians are passionate about college sports and it's a severe blow to have the rug pulled out from under them," he said in a letter Wednesday to Disney CEO Bob Iger, Charter CEO Chris Winfrey and ESPN Chairman James Pitaro. "We know there is a resolution out there, and you should get to it soon without using your customers as leverage."

Disney and Comcast agreed to accelerate the time frame by which Comcast can exercise its right to sell its third of Hulu, with that process starting Sept. 30, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said Wednesday at a Goldman Sachs investor conference. Hulu is "way more valuable" today than a few years ago when values of $27.5 billion were bandied about, he said. Asked about Charter Communications' carriage fight with Disney and Charter's proposed linear/streaming hybrid video model (see 2309010013), Roberts said both those companies are trying to deal with a changing video marketplace "and you're going to see some tension." Mobile is a product strategy today for Comcast and becoming a network strategy, he said. He said if the company's testing in Philadelphia of its ability to offload some of its mobile traffic onto its own spectrum is successful, it can look at expanding that effort to other markets.

A collection of broadcast affiliate station groups pushing for the FCC to reclassify streaming services (sometimes called virtual MVPDs) as falling under the FCC retransmission consent regime said Thursday they're merely trying to update the rules (see 2308090065). The Coalition for Local News is “asking for the FCC to use its existing authority to align the rules with the modern-day market,” said a blog post on the coalition’s website. The post appears to be a response to posts from a group of networks and streaming services, including Fox, Paramount, ABC, NBC and YouTube, formed to oppose the reclassification of virtual MVPDs. "Don’t turn back the clock,” said a post from the Preserve Viewer Choice Coalition. “Cable and satellite regulations were enacted decades ago in a pre-internet era with much less competition and higher prices. The policy justifications underlying their adoption do not apply to the online video services of today and are a solution in search of a problem.” Reclassifying streamers as MVPDs and subjecting them to retransmission consent requirements is “hardly an unbearable regulatory burden,” said the Coalition for Local News post. “It would simply take a well-established framework and update it for the modern marketplace.” Policymakers “must stand up for viewers & say no to big station groups asking Congress for unwarranted leverage over streaming providers’ offerings,” the Preserve Viewer Choice Coalition tweeted on X, formerly Twitter, earlier this week.

Clearly Android "will achieve complete dominance" over RDK globally in the video device operating system landscape, with Huawei's HarmonyOS confined to China, Rethink Research said Wednesday. It said competition from Huawei has been "thoroughly beaten down" by sanctions, and RDK's hopes of entering the European set-top marketplace fell apart when Vodafone opted to go with Android TV. Rethink also said to expect a continual decline of connected TV devices as their functions are replaced by smart TVs that directly integrate their features.

Nearly two months into the blackout of 159 Nexstar stations on DirecTV's direct broadcast satellite and streaming lineup (see 2307030032), the two continue to blame one another as the cause. In a filing this week, DirecTV called Nexstar's arguments about nearly identical news releases issued by Nexstar sidecars Mission and White Knight "fairly implausible." It also cast doubt on Nexstar claims the sidecars' retransmission consent information couldn't get to anyone at Nexstar involved in retrans negotiations. Nextar emailed us Thursday that DirecTV is continuing "its campaign to thwart fair marketplace negotiations and instead use the impasse it created to pursue its broader regulatory agenda [of] undermine[ing] local broadcasters like Nexstar." It said DirecTV's arguments "are baseless and self-serving, and its abusive filings should be ignored."

The FCC should refresh the record on reclassifying streamers as MVPDs, said One Ministries in a letter to the FCC posted in docket 14-261 Monday. “To truly preserve viewer choice entails granting must-carry rights to independent TV stations on any streaming service that carries another local TV station in the same TV market,” said One Ministries. One Ministries endorsed a recent Writers Guild of America West report that condemns large streaming companies such as Disney, Netflix and Amazon as “gatekeepers” and asked lawmakers and agencies to block streaming consolidation, investigate anti-competitive issues, and increase regulation for streamers: “It is unfair for vMVPDs to both control streaming services and major networks and content and to purposely exclude independent TV stations.”

The nation's largest pay-TV providers lost more than 1.7 million net video subscribers in Q2 2023, about the same loss as in Q2 the year before, Leichtman Research Group said Tuesday. Those pay-TV providers combined have about 71.9 million subs, it said. The largest virtual MVPD services have about 13.4 million subs, it said. For the quarter, the largest cable providers had a net loss of about 925,000 video subscribers, down from about 950,000 subscribers lost in 2Q 2022. Leichtman said other traditional pay-TV services had a net loss of about 690,000 subs, vs. a loss of about 710,000 the same quarter a year earlier. The top virtual MVPD services had an estimated net loss of about 115,000 subs, compared to a loss of 65,000 in Q2 2022. Leichtman said top pay-TV providers had a net loss of about 5.4 million subs overall over the past year, compared to a net loss of about 4.2 million in the 12 months prior.

Streaming commanded a record 38.7% of TV usage in July, with Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and YouTube all hitting all-time highs, Nielsen said Tuesday. Broadcast viewing was 20%, a new low, it said. Year-over-year broadcast usage was down 5.4%, it said. Cable viewing, at 29.6% of TV in July, was down 12.5% year over year, it said.