If you wanted an example of the utter power of the NFL, you got it Monday. In all likelihood, America’s most popular sport played a role in getting two business behemoths to stop fighting and play nice.
OK, maybe it was just a coincidence that hours before the first “Monday Night Football” game of the 2023 season, the New York Jets vs. the Buffalo Bills, simulcast on ESPN and ABC with the alternate Manningcast on ESPN2, Charter Communications and the Walt Disney Co. ended their standoff.
Me? I’m not a big believer in coincidences. And, as Fordham University communications professor John Fortunato told The Associated Press, “When the passionate fan base is being deprived of something they desire, you’re going to hear about it.”
The deal gets the Disney-owned networks back on Charter’s Spectrum cable systems in exchange for some concessions that would enable Charter to package not only ESPN+ but the future direct-to-consumer streaming of ESPN’s main product to its premium tier subscribers. That’s recognition of where the industry is heading.
Bottom line: Each side gets some of what it wants. And some 14.7 million Charter subscribers (full disclosure, including This Space’s household) regained the Worldwide Leader in Wretched Excess back on their screens just in time for Aaron Rodgers vs. Josh Allen. Marvelous.
(If you think Rodgers had an ego before, just imagine how big it is now that it seems his Jets debut against Buffalo could have been a tipping point in resolving this dispute.)
As spitting contests between networks and carriers go, this was short but not painless. Sports fans missed ESPN coverage of two college football Saturdays and the bulk of the U.S. Open during the 12-day standoff. I’m guessing the fine folks at the U.S. Tennis Association are still bemoaning a missed opportunity, given Coco Gauff’s women’s singles victory Saturday and the performances of American men Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton into the late rounds in New York.
Clearly, USTA CEO Lew Sherr doesn’t have nearly as much juice as the NFL’s Roger Goodell. Then again, that’s not exactly a fair fight.
The most interesting aspect of Monday’s resolution of what was supposed to be a battle over what sports TV would look like going forward? Neither side determined that this was a hill worth dying on.
We still seem to be in the land in between. While so many TV homes have abandoned cable or satellite to go all-in on streaming entertainment, a healthy percentage still maintain cable or satellite subscriptions. And the suspicion here is that a good number of those hang on specifically because of their variety of sports programming, be it ESPN, Fox Sports, the Bally or Spectrum SportsNet channels, etc.
Change is coming, for sure. But we’re not there yet.
Much of the genesis of the original dispute was the assumption that Disney was terrified of losing the billions of dollars it gets in subscriber fees from cable viewers who pay for ESPN’s networks as part of their basic service but might not ever watch it.
It’s a practice – or, you might say, a scam – that goes back to the very beginning of the cable era. And Disney did charge far more per subscriber for ESPN than it did for other channels, but consider: If you watch ESPN and its sibling channels, how many out of the multitude of other channels available do you ignore? People who don’t watch sports aren’t the only ones subsidizing others’ viewing.
Maybe we should have taken the hint a few months ago when Charter quietly removed the requirement that its Lakers and Dodgers regional networks, originally launched by Time Warner Cable, be included on other systems’ main viewing tiers. That was the original motivation for those networks’ carriage disputes, which among other things kept the Dodgers’ channel off of DirecTV for six full seasons.
When I made the observation on The Platform Formerly Known As Twitter last week that SoCal Spectrum viewers still had access to those channels, retired Fox Sports Networks president Bob Thompson noted, “Charter has agreed to let other distributors re-tier the LA Sports channels. Kind of hard for them to ask others to do it if they weren’t prepared to do it for their channels. Will be interesting to see if Charter does this on their own systems.”
Charter has agreed to let other distributors re tier the LA Sports channels. Kind of hard for them to ask others to do it if they weren’t prepared to do it for their channels. Will be interesting to see if Charter does this on their own systems. https://t.co/psqfg1MPUX
— Bob Thompson (@rltsports) September 2, 2023
And, he added later, “There was a reason Charter changed the carriage terms of its LA RSNs in July. It was to prepare for this fight and the inevitable ‘you don’t do this with your networks’ comparisons. That argument doesn’t exist anymore.”
There was a reason Charter changed the carriage terms of its LA RSNs in July. It was to prepare for this fight and the inevitable “you don’t do this with your networks” comparisons. That argument doesn’t exist anymore. https://t.co/1BNlloOcVw
— Bob Thompson (@rltsports) September 6, 2023
You can make the case that technically it wasn’t hypocritical because the former terms were set by Time Warner Cable before Charter purchased it in May 2016. But considering that Charter kept those terms for seven years, they probably wouldn’t want to defend that argument in a negotiation.
As it turns out, Charter will offer a skinny (or at least skinnier) bundle of the Disney properties to all subscribers: ABC, the Disney Channel, FX, Nat Geo and the ESPN family of networks. Charter will also market Disney’s streaming services to its broadband customers and will include ad-supported Disney+ in its Select packages and ESPN+ to Select Plus subscribers. (The latter should please those who follow Big West Conference basketball, since much of ESPN+ programming involves mid-major college sports).
The amount Charter will pay Disney in broadcast fees is not yet known, though it’s assumed to be an increase.
So was this really a “transformative” deal, as the Disney/Charter joint statement suggested? Not really.
Charter representatives talked of being determined to change a bloated system, but short of a la carte pricing that’s not going to happen any time soon. They kicked the can down the road, and while the industry is approaching the precipice it hasn’t gone over the cliff yet. (And if you’re a Spectrum customer don’t be surprised if there’s another rate hike soon.)
For sports fans who subscribe to Spectrum, all is well again. ESPN is available once more, and corporate shenanigans won’t cause us to miss a minute of the NFL. But there’s one issue still to be decided.
Where’s my refund for those 12 days of deprivation?
jalexander@scng.com
