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Brian Lehrer: Hey, it's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. If you get your television channels through Spectrum Cable in New York, Los Angeles or the other major markets Spectrum serves, you may have discovered by now that some major channels have been blacked out since last Thursday, ABC stations, ESPN, FX, Freeform, the Disney Channel, National Geographic, all the channels owned by Disney, which is in a contract dispute with Charter Spectrum, Charter is the parent company, over how much Disney pays for the privilege of being carried on Spectrum's cable service.

That has meant, for example, that you couldn't be watching the US Open Tennis Tournament taking place in Queens, which ESPN is the channel for, or maybe week one college football games. The ABC News special on the life of Chadwick Boseman last week, not available on Spectrum. This is about much more than news and sports. It applies to whatever you would watch on Channel 7 in New York and LA and all the shows on all those Disney-owned channels. Now this kind of thing has happened before. It's called a carriage dispute, a dispute over who pays what for a TV service to carry your channels.

On one level, it's a yawn. Two corporate giants tussling over which one makes more money from our eyeballs, who really cares who wins, but this one is different. People in the industry say this one is about the very future of how people in the United States get television, whether you currently have cable or streaming services or whatever. It could all come to a head in the next few days because television's big moneymaker, football season, is about to begin including the first ABC/ESPN Monday Night Football game next week, which is of particular interest in New York with the New York Jets and their new star quarterback Aaron Rodgers against the Buffalo Bills, also a New York team, in a week one marquee matchup.

Again, this is about much more than sports, and much more than ABC or ESPN. It's about how and how much we pay to watch TV at all. For example, a few cable systems have actually shut down recently, forcing their customers onto streaming services. What would it mean if Spectrum closed up shop in New York and LA? It all intersects with the issues in the television actors and writers strikes too because the whole business model for how TV companies make money has been transformed by the technology of streaming. With us now to discuss, Alex Weprin, who covers the TV business for Hollywood Reporter. One of his articles referring to Spectrum's parent company, Charter Communications is headlined, "Charter Wants to Blow up the Pay TV bundle in Disney Dispute. This is not a Typical Carriage Dispute." Alex, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Alex Weprin: Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Would you start by reminding people of how these carriage deals work, who pays who what to have their channel carried by cable TV systems or other TV providers?

Alex: Sure. The way this works is an entertainment company like Disney or NBC Universal will have a slate of cable channels like ESPN or USA. They will go to the cable company like Charter, and they will ask for fees in exchange for carrying the channels and those fees then passed off to consumers. In a sense, when you pay your cable TV bill, let's say it's $80 a month, about $9 of that is going to go straight to ESPN, to Disney, maybe another $2 will go to Fox News, $1 to CNN, 50 cents to Food Network. When you pay your cable bill, most of that goes to the big entertainment companies who collect those fees and the cable company skims off the top. They keep whatever is leftover.

Brian Lehrer: It's not just old-school cable that works this way, right? I've seen your reporting that Disney has had carriage disputes and blackouts recently involving Dish Networks and Sling and YouTube TV. This is a dance between show producers like Disney and any provider that carries various channels.

Alex: It applies to satellite TV companies like Dish and DirecTV and to streaming multi-channel services like YouTube TV or Hulu with live TV, any service that offers live linear television, it works this way with the entertainment company charging fees to the distributor and the distributor passing on those fees to the consumers that ultimately pay.

Brian Lehrer: Another scene setter before we get into the points of dispute and the implications for all TV watchers and listeners, we're going to open this up to you in a minute, hang on for a second, though, on how you get your TV now and how you pay for it. The scene setter is how many Americans get their TV through cable systems at all anymore. I see in your reporting that Spectrum is the second biggest cable provider with about 15 million homes. That's not a lot out of 330 million Americans. How many Americans get TV through cable anymore and what's the pace of decline?

Alex: Right now, the number of American homes that pay for pay TV either through cable or satellite or one of these streaming services is about 72 to 74 million. That's down from over 100 million just a couple of years ago. Over the last six or seven years, we've seen this decline from about 100 million households down to about 72 million households, so about 25% or so. It's accelerated in the last couple of years as a lot of these entertainment companies have shifted their investment from their linear channels into their streaming services and that plays into what you mentioned before about how it ties into the Hollywood strikes.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get back to the Hollywood strikes, for sure, but what are the main reasons for the decline?

Alex: There are a few reasons. First of all, I think as any listener knows, the cost of these services has risen substantially. That's partly due to the owners of these channels asking for higher and higher fees and also, they would try and add tertiary channels to the lineup. For example, I think a lot of consumers would want ESPN, they may not want the Big 10 Network or a channel like Food Network will be very popular, but maybe a spin-off of the Food Network that is much smaller channel may not be as interesting to them. The owners of these channels both asked for higher fees and asked for these smaller channels to be included, and they made it a condition of, if you want the really big popular channel, you also have to pay for a much smaller channel. That's part of it.

At the same time, the rise of streaming has meant that a lot of the best shows aren't on linear television anymore. They're on the streaming services, and you can't actually access them if you only pay for cable TV. You may really like Yellowstone on the Paramount Network, it's a very popular show, but if you want to watch any of the Yellowstone spin-off shows, you have to pay for Paramount+, the streaming service. The result is that a lot of consumers felt like they were not getting their money's worth from these services, which they keep paying more and more for every single year. It started off as a slow decline and it's just accelerated over the past few years as these problems have really come to a head.

Brian Lehrer: One clarification because, I may have stated something backwards in the intro, is it that the producers, like all those Disney channels, pay Spectrum to be carried or is it that Spectrum buys the content from Disney?

Alex: Yes, Spectrum is buying the content from Disney and they are passing the costs onto the consumers that pay for the service.

Brian Lehrer: With all these changes that you talked about because of streaming, because of standalone services, I guess Marshall McLuhan is still right. The medium is the message because the convenience of new technologies is driving how people want to get their content and that changes the economics for the producers.

Alex: Yes, that's right.

Brian Lehrer: You report that the dispute between Charter Spectrum and Disney isn't just over how much cash changes hands, it's also about how Disney's streaming services like Disney+ and Hulu, and ESPN+ are included in the cable package. Can you explain that part?

Alex: Well, that's what makes this dispute so interesting. Carriage disputes have happened over the years. Usually, it's about just the economics. The entertainment company like Disney or Paramount wants higher fees and the distributor like Charter just doesn't want to pay that, and so they meet somewhere in the middle. What makes this case so unique is that Charter is asking for something else. They want Disney streaming services to be included in their pay TV offering. Now, Disney has said that Charter wants it for free. If you pay for a Charter cable service, then you would get Disney+ and Hulu for free.

Perhaps there's some sort of middle ground where there's a fee involved, but that is really at the heart of it. Charter wants to rebalance the economics of the pay TV business by incorporating Disney's streaming services into their larger linear pay TV bundle. Disney so far has been reluctant to do that. They want to keep their streaming service somewhat separate from their legacy TV business.

Brian Lehrer: Can't people already, correct me if I'm wrong, but can't people already access ESPN's app, if they have a cable provider to enter as they're trying to log on?

Alex: Yes, if you pay for cable TV, you can stream many Disney shows and many ESPN programs. In fact, you can't watch the entertainment shows that are on Disney+. Disney+, for example, has Star Wars TV shows and Marvel TV shows. Those aren't available on Disney's linear channels like the Disney Channel on FX. Likewise, ESPN has a streaming service called ESPN+. It's got an entirely different slate of sports content. If you pay for cable, yes, you can access the ESPN shows on both the channel and on ESPN's app. If you don't pay for cable and you've just subscribed to ESPN Plus, it's a totally separate service with totally different sports.

Brian Lehrer: I see, you don't get those main things like the US Open or Monday Night Football.

Alex: Correct.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, help us report this story. If you have Spectrum Cable, who are you blaming, if anyone, for this dispute? Maybe this is all too new to you to even know who to blame. How frustrated have you been the past six days for missing certain shows? Has this been the last straw for anybody listening right now and you've just cut the cord and went with streaming in the last week? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 call or text. How about those of you already streaming for your TV content? Does it work for you financially? How do you manage the many different bills you might get to see your various different shows?

Would you like to see ESPN or other Disney station stations currently not available direct to consumer to start selling to you that way or anything related? Help us report this story of the Charter Spectrum versus Disney Dispute and station blackouts with Alex Weprin from Hollywood Reporter. 212-433-WNYC. Call us at that number or text us at that number or tweet @BrianLehrer. Alex, your headline that says, "Charter Spectrum wants to blow up the pay-TV bundle in the Disney fight." What's the pay-TV bundle?

Alex: The pay-TV bundle is, if you're a listener and you pay your cable company like Charter or Comcast, a monthly fee for all those cable channels that you may or may not watch. That bundle of channels is the pay-TV bundle, whether you access it through a cable company or a satellite company or a streaming provider like YouTube TV. It's a bundle of channels that you're paying for. That is at the, it's been the economic engine of the entertainment business for the last 30 years or so. The changing economics of that have really been at the heart of this dispute between Disney and Charter and how they try and navigate these murky waters that they're currently in, trying to make what had been a very lucrative business into one that can keep working in the future.

Brian Lehrer: Based on your reporting, if it went more in the direction of blowing up the pay-TV bundle, would that be good, bad, or neutral for viewers' choices in pocketbooks?

Alex: It depends. There are multiple ways it can go. As a journalist, it's very exciting to follow, but it could go multiple ways. This could end up being beneficial to consumers who could have more choice, and possibly could save some money by having the ability to pick and choose what they want. It could also negatively impact consumers because it could end up hastening the decline of this traditional bundle and some channels and content that people like may not be available anymore. They may not be able to survive.

It's a little too early to tell how things are going to shake out, but whatever happens, whatever deal ends up getting struck between these companies will have major impacts for the entire entertainment business. The devil is in the details.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a call from Mike in Manhattan who I think cut the cord about a decade ago. Mike, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in.

Mike: Hi, guys. I can't even remember the last time I paid for cable television. I don't understand why anybody would. I'm curious from your guest on what people prioritize. Maybe sports is the only thing? I pay for internet and I have a smart TV, and so I stream and I can watch whatever, pretty much whatever you want. If you want to watch a movie, if you have a service like HBO or Netflix or something like that, but then you can always just buy movies on Google Plus. How many movies can you watch? How much TV? What is cable television offering? Why would anybody watch cable TV? [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Well, but in your case Mike, just so we have the comparison on the table, what are you paying if you've done the calculations for yourself, let's say per month on average to get HBO's Max service or Netflix or YouTube TV's expanded services or anything else that you actually use?

Mike: All right, that's a good question. I'm trying to be really careful about it. Just to have internet in my house, because obviously you need that to do any of this, that's already, I don't know, $70 a month or something.

Brian Lehrer: Right, but let's assume everybody's going to have internet anyway, so above that.

Mike: Above that, it just depends. Maybe I'll have Netflix, Netflix for a few months and then I realized I'm not watching much Netflix. Then you just cancel your subscription and then you can subscribe again. They don't care. There's no fees involved.

Brian Lehrer: Entry fees.

Mike: You don't want to run seven subscriptions at once, but you have to be careful about managing that. For example, there's this really amazing foreign language app called MGH or something, I can't remember the name. There's so much good stuff on there. Then I got to watch TV and movies from all over the world. I don't know, I think if you just make sure you don't oversubscribe to too many things at once, you can quit HBO Max and then sign up for it again. You can sign up for YouTube for a month for free if there's something particularly you want to watch, or you can just pay as you go.

Any movie you want to watch, you can pretty much find for $3 or $4 somewhere, unless it's a new movie. If you're just careful about not oversubscribing, why would anybody watch--? Then you can't watch all those movies and TVs on your subscription stuff and then also watch regular cable TV, but what's on cable TV that people want to watch? I don't know. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Well, here's one thing, and I'm going to follow up with you, Mike, with one more call. One thing is news, and if you're calling this show, you're probably a regular consumer of news. Have you given up TV news altogether?

Mike: No. For example, I'm a big NewsHour person, but every night on YouTube for free, I don't subscribe to YouTube, for free on YouTube, you can watch the NewsHour.

Brian Lehrer: PBS.

Mike: I do subscribe to the PBS app because I just want to support them, but you can go to YouTube every night and just watch the PBS NewsHour for free.

Brian Lehrer: Mike, thank you so much for your call. How much of the country does Mike represent at this point, Alex, and is the average TV viewer better off or worse off in our wallets with the cable world of TV or the world that Mike is describing?

Alex: Well, if you think about it, the pay TV universe has shrunk by about 25% over the past few years. Of course, America has kept growing. There's more people than ever. There is a, a majority, it's about 50-50 now between cord-cutters and households that still have some form of pay TV. Obviously, the number of households that don't pay for television is growing, and the number of households that do is shrinking. That's changing every year. I will say that Mike is correct, that sports and news are the two big drivers of the existing pay TV service. If you're a football fan or a golf fan or a hockey fan or a US Open tennis fan, you still have to pay for these linear channels if you want to watch all your sports.

Brian Lehrer: You report that some smaller cable TV systems have shut down altogether over the changing economics of the business. Can you give us an example or two and what happened to their subscribers?

Alex: So far it's just been a couple of very small regional cable providers that had about half a million TV subscribers each. Essentially they didn't have the leverage that Charter has. Charter has about 15 million, not 500,000. Without that leverage, they weren't able to get the best deals from the content providers like Disney. As a result, they made the choice to stop offering television service and direct their subscribers to YouTube TV, which is a streaming multi-channel service. Ultimately, a lot of these cable companies are really internet companies. They make most of their money now from selling broadband internet to subscribers.

Without the profit margins that the pay TV business used to have, these smaller providers just decided, "You know what, let's stop paying for these channels, and let's just focus on our internet and connectivity business." That's been the case. I think they both say that they were quite happy with that decision simply because they just didn't have the leverage that these large providers like Charter have.

Brian Lehrer: Since cable subscribers tend to be older, when these companies went out of business out of the TV business, would that have left many older customers who might not have smart TVs that can get the internet out of the TV [unintelligible 00:20:05]?

Alex: Yes, that is a concern among a lot of providers. You're correct that the typical pay TV subscriber is older and that is still where they get most of their content, not just sports and news, but also their entertainment. It's quite important and I think a lot of the owners of these local television stations and national TV stations recognize that in order to reach that older audience, they need this linear option and so that is a concern. Obviously, local stations are still available over the broadcast airwaves but most people don't have TV antennas anymore so you have to figure out a way to get them and you have to buy an antenna and find a place to put it on your wall. Reaching those older viewers is still really important and that's one of the big risks if the pay TV system collapses overall, that some of these older consumers really won't have an easy way to access their content.

Brian Lehrer: Sean, in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sean.

Sean: Hey, I just love ABC News with David Muir early in the mornings and I wake up and there's a blank screen and a couple of other channels here it says there's no service, write to somebody to complain about it. I'm like, "Okay, there's no more David Muir ABC News early at five o'clock in the morning or four in the morning." Yes, there's just nothing.

Brian Lehrer: Now you know why.

Sean: Yes, now I know why. Thank you, Brian. You're just a wealth of information, mate.

Brian Lehrer: Sean, thank you for that call. For Sean and everybody else who still uses Spectrum Cable to get ABC News and other so-called regular TV news or cable TV news, how seriously is Charter considering a Spectrum TV shutdown like those smaller cable companies that your reference did?

Alex: Executives at Charter say they were absolutely serious about it. They say they have "reached the point of indifference" as to whether they keep their TV service going. Now of course they could be bluffing, but the economics of pay TV have changed so dramatically that most of the Wall Street analysts that I've seen agree with Charter that they don't necessarily need this TV service to continue and as such, they have the leverage in this situation.

Brian Lehrer: What would happen if Spectrum shut down in the major markets in New York, for example, would what many people consider the hands-down best local TV news channel, Spectrum News NY1, go off the air?

Alex: Yes. If Spectrum just totally abandoned their TV business, then there's definitely the possibility that Spectrum News NY1 could go away. Now maybe they would find other providers like YouTube TV to carry it in some capacity. Maybe they'd be able to continue it in some other way through broadband subscriptions but that would certainly be impacted if they did shut down their TV business. To be clear, if Spectrum does shut down the TV business, that is the worst-case scenario that I think everyone in the entertainment business is looking at because the repercussions would be felt everywhere. It's not just the local news, it's the national entertainment programming, films, sports, everything would be impacted by that.

Brian Lehrer: When we continue in a minute with Alex Weprin from Hollywood Reporter, we'll pick up on what he was just saying and see how this dispute between Spectrum TV and all the Disney channels, including ABC and ESPN and the others, how it ties into the issues in the writers and actors strike. We'll take more of your calls. Stay tuned.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we talk about the six-day-old blackout of ABC and ESPN and the Disney Channel and National Geographic and FX. I think I'm leaving one or two out. All the stations owned by Disney, blackout on Spectrum cable TV systems because of a dispute over who pays who what, and how the Disney streaming services fit into the package when you buy cable, and we don't know how this is going to end, but we're having a deeper conversation about how people get and pay for TV these days and what's at stake with respect to how this ends. We have a lot of people waiting with personal stories and with questions about TV history or at least the technology of TV history. I want to ask you this central question, Alex, and again, my guest is Alex Weprin who's been reporting on this for Hollywood Reporter, how related are these issues to the issues underlying the actors and writer strikes?

Alex: There's a through line between both the Charter Disney dispute and the Hollywood writer strikes and that is the economics of the entertainment business. For the last 30 or 40 years, cable TV has really been the economic engine of entertainment. The last few years have changed that. It used to be that the distributors like Charter and the creators, the actors, writers that helped create the content, they would all share in the profits of the entertainment business and they would reap the rewards as customers paid their cable bills. That's changed. The economics have changed. The entertainment companies are now investing in streaming, and the result is that the distributors like Charter and the writers and actors feel like they're not getting their fair share anymore.

They're not getting what they used to, whether it's residuals checks or the profit margins that the cable provider used to have. Everything has seemed to be in decline. That is really the through line here. Now, writers and actors may be more sympathetic than the big cable company but at the end of the day, this march to streaming and away from linear TV is at the heart of both disputes.

Brian Lehrer: Related to that, how much is the explosion of choice central to both these situations? 50 years ago, there was no cable yet, and the three major TV networks were basically all the national programming that there was ABC, NBC, CBS, then cable came along with its hundreds of channels. Now we also have the streaming services, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, Apple TV+, et cetera. Our profits just so diluted by the audience fracturing so much that that makes it harder for all the TV businesses to make profits and therefore all the employees from being paid as much or is that an oversimplification?

Alex: I think that's generally correct. The fractured landscape really has made it harder to run a profitable entertainment business. The old cable business had its flaws, and a big one was that you'd pay for everything even if you didn't watch it so if you didn't watch any sports, you were still paying a lot of money for ESPN. If you were an avid CNN viewer and you did not like Fox News, you were still paying for Fox News and vice versa. The benefit of that was that it helped support a really robust ecosystem of all types of content, so that even if you didn't like everything, you'd like something, and someone down the street who maybe had completely different tastes than you, they'd have something too. This new fractured landscape is very different. It's more you can pick and choose what you want, in that respect, it's a good model, but it means that it makes it harder to run these businesses profitably because you really have to be a super fan of specific channels or brands or shows in order to make it work.

Brian Lehrer: Tim in Montclair has a question about when you cut the cord. I guess Tim you really have a story, a tip about when you cut the cord, you have a certain option, right?

Tim: Yes. Hi Brian. Yes, this is a public service announcement. I cut the cord this past year. I have a few streaming services, but as soon as I cut the cord, I went out and got a $40 antenna. People can, especially in the New York area, throw up an antenna for basically nothing and get 4K content from ABC, NBC, PBS. You can see the news, you can see the news hour, and it's cheap, it's free, it's over the air.

Brian Lehrer: Tim, thanks for reminding people that they can always put an antenna on their TVs and get the over-the-air stations. Noah in Oak Ridge, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Noah.

Noah: Hi, Brian. Thank you for the opportunity to participate and thanks to Alex. I agree with the points very much about this being a-- The Spectrum trying to renegotiate the way the negotiations happen. They're not being subtle about it. This actually shows if you read carefully the text on their channels. One main point I wanted to make is that one thing that holds you captive is the email address of the provider. I got my service a long time, was and I'm still an IT professional and at that time, it was a benefit to going with your provider rather than trusting everything in the cloud, that has flipped on its head now. Coincidentally, I spent the last year or two working on committing to an email change which I completed a month ago and then I see these channels missing and I explore Hulu Live TV and realized that I get a lot of the channels that I would watch even though I live in New York. Where I am now in New Jersey, I can get a lot of those primary news channels and the national networks through the streaming. One last comment about live TV in general is [unintelligible 00:30:10] a tech geek would notice a thing like this. In early 2000s, there was a transition in the Time Warner at the Time Network, it was the first step of the, "digital transition". At that time, we're no longer technically getting things exactly live as evidenced by New Year's celebrations. Before then everyone's clock would go off at the same time. I measured this with open air and the cable networks and there's a varying lag, so that's just a humorous little side look at it, but to a point you've made, it's all streaming these days. I think I may never go back. Plus the open air with an antenna, the [unintelligible 00:30:54].

Brian Lehrer: [unintelligible 00:30:54] thank you very much. Alex, we're getting various versions of this question from people, so I'll just ask aggregating a bunch of listeners who are throwing some version of this onto the table. That is, if the model of cable TV dies, will that defang the power of Fox?

Alex: Yes, it would. Fox's business is really built on the cable TV model. They're very profitable cable [unintelligible 00:31:28], but almost all those profits are from the subscription fees that people pay when they pay for their satellite service or cable service. If the cable bundle were to really collapse, then that would impact Fox. Now, it would also impact MSNBC and CNN, and every other cable channel, but yes that would have a serious impact on the influence of Fox News. The broadcast news divisions like NBC News and CBS news would probably be less impacted because they are part of broadcast networks which are still available over the air, but if the cable bundle were to collapse, then every cable channel including Fox News would be severely impacted.

Brian Lehrer: Let's talk about the sports aspect of this, because sports as you've been describing is such a driver of profits for these cable services. On the Disney side, you and others have reported that they might start selling ESPN direct to consumers as a standalone rather than having to subscribe to something to get ESPN, but it's a double-edged sword as I understand it, because if they detach from cable and maybe other pay TV services, that'll kill cable faster and that's still how ESPN makes most of its money. Would you frame the dilemma that way?

Alex: That's exactly right. I think Disney understands that in the future consumers will be getting their content mostly through streaming, but they don't want to kill the golden goose. They want to milk their linear ESPN channels for as long as they're around. I think Charter is using Disney's public statements about wanting to bring ESPN to streaming as a leverage against them in this dispute. Sports are the big thing that keeps people paying for cable tv. If and when Disney does start offering the main ESPN product directly to consumers, it will make it a lot easier for those sports fans to cut the cord.

Brian Lehrer: For sports watchers, would that be good or bad for their wallets compared to cable if they currently have cable? I see for example that the Yankees TV channel, the Yes Network started selling direct to consumers this season. I looked it up last night and it's $25 a month. $25 a month just for one channel showing just Yankees, Brooklyn Nets, and New York Liberty Games plus some original programs they produce. If viewers have to pay $25 a channel for all content, that's untenable as a business model, isn't it?

Alex: Yes. I think that's the baseline for a sports channel. I think ESPN will probably sell for more than that. Maybe around that same price point, so at that point, if you're a Yankees fan and you're also a big NFL fan yes, you might be paying $50 a month just for two channels, ESPN and Yes. I mean, consumers would have more choice. They could cancel service after the season's over for example, but ultimately I don't know if it's going to save people that much money. Re-aggregating everything individually will probably end up costing the same if not more than the big bundle.

Brian Lehrer: One more call, and then we have Senator Gillibrand standing by as our next guest. Jennifer in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jennifer.

Jennifer: Hi, Brian. Well, actually you just touched on a big part of that. The Yes TV is why we have cable, but I didn't know they had an individual streaming service. We're a big sports-watching family. We've been directly affected by this blackout. Spectrum had a hold on our neighborhood. The only provider we were allowed to get when we moved to this neighborhood was Spectrum. We couldn't get Optimum or anything else, and now we're trying to find a workaround to stream the US Open and coming up football. Because Spectrum is our internet provider, we can't stream. We've tried to get YouTube TV, we tried to find a workaround, but because Spectrum is providing our internet it's blocked anything else, so not just the cable that's affected, but also signing up for a streaming service.

Brian Lehrer: Is that your understanding Alex, that Spectrum blocks competing streaming services?[crosstalk]

Alex: I don't think so. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: I don't think that [crosstalk]-- Go ahead.

Alex: They are currently directing consumers to Fubo which is another streaming service that's very similar to YouTube TV. They say they want to get out of the TV business if they can't cut up a good deal with Disney, and ultimately that would probably mean pushing people to YouTube TV or some of these other streaming offerings.

Brian Lehrer: To wrap up, how do you see this dispute actually ending? Will Jets versus Bills on Monday Night Football next week drive Charter and Disney to a deal before that kickoff because enough money is at stake for both, or does it end some other way?

Alex: Brian, I think Jets versus Bills is going to be the tipping point here. It's either they're going to cut a deal before then, or it could be a very long time.

Brian Lehrer: Alex Weprin covers the TV business for A Hollywood Reporter. Thanks for illuminating what's going on there.

Alex: Thank you for having me.

 

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