Forced Bundling 'Long-Term Losing Proposition,' Says BTIG, on Record Cord Cutting
A record level of cord cutting hit U.S. MVPDs in Q1, with net losses widening to nearly 1.2 million from 682,000 in the year-ago quarter, BTIG's Richard Greenfield wrote investors. Subscriber trends are slowing for vMVPDs, too, as net additions…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
shrank to 174,000 vs. 933,000. Total subscriptions of companies tracked, representing more than 90 percent of the industry, were down nearly 2 percent year over year, said the analyst, and they should begin to negatively affect broadcast and cable network programmer retransmission/affiliate revenue in Q2. “The collapse in multichannel video subscribers that we are now witnessing is caused by the unwillingness of Disney and other legacy media companies to allow distributors to create the channel packages that their consumers actually want,” said Greenfield, citing Disney’s channel bundle, now with FX and Nat Geo, which costs distributors some $17-$18 per month “with no flexibility.” Legacy media’s “forced bundling tactics continue to put business models and profits ahead of the consumer,” which is “always a long-term losing proposition.” Greenfield Friday cited irony in recent quotes from media executives on cord-cutting trends, including Disney CEO Robert Iger saying last month: “I don’t think the consumer really wants to buy 150-200 channels of programming, for a fairly significant price when they’re not interested in many of those channels.” Comcast CEO Steve Burke said vMVPD gains, which “pretty much offset the loss on the traditional MVPD side,” are “over” and that vMVPDs are raising prices, pulling back and redirecting -- a reflection of “slowing” growth.