If you are a customer of Charter's Spectrum (CHTR), you won't be finding Disney-owned channels (DIS) in your cable lineup. Disney pulled its channels from Spectrum amid a carriage dispute between the two companies. Goldman Sachs Managing Director Brett Feldman says there are two reasons why this dispute is happening.
First with the decline in cable subscribers is accelerating, falling about 6% to 7% this year. Feldman says that's interesting because, historically, media companies have been able to raise the prices of their channels by about 5% to 6% a year. "We've hit this tipping point now where the media companies simply can't raise prices fast enough to offset the loss of paid TV subscribers," Feldman says, going on to say that it has "emboldened" cable companies to start discussing the possibility of a new model.
The second thing is that the cable companies have reached the "point of economic indifference," Feldman says. What that means is that given how much cord-cutting is happening, Charter is losing so much profitability in that business and "basically what they're saying is we almost don't care anymore whether our customers decide to pay for a channel package or not," Feldman says, adding that they are primarily making their money by providing internet service.
