TV Distributor Consolidation Complicates Fee Talks -- Market Talk
September 21 2015 - 1:57PM
Dow Jones News
13:27 EDT - Big television channel owners should be prepared for
carriage fee negotiations to become "much more challenging" as pay
TV distributors consolidate, writes research firm MoffettNathanson.
In the wake of news last week that deal-hungry Altice NV, a
European telecom giant with big U.S. cable ambitions, is set to
acquire Cablevision Systems, MoffettNathanson says 90% of the pay
TV universe will be controlled by six distribution companies. That
means that "gone are the days of picking on small and weak
distributors" for media companies to ram through big carriage fee
increases. The upshot is that smaller media companies like AMC
Networks, Starz, Discovery Communications and Scripps Networks
Interactive need to "figure out a way to get bigger" to better
compete for their share of the affiliate fee pie.
(shalini.ramachandran@wsj.com; @shaliniwsj)
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 21, 2015 13:42 ET (17:42 GMT)
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