After cable giant Charter Communications lost 226,000 pay TV subscriber during its latest quarter, company chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge says his video business isn’t going away any time soon.
“I don’t think it’s about to precipitously fall apart. All the forces in it remain and [if] they stay in the next three or four years, I think you’ll have continued reduction in the fat basic product,” Rutledge told the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference.
Among industry headwinds, he added escalating costs were driving industry players out of the market. But Rutledge saw Charter seeing the benefit of consumers increasingly viewing video via app-based platforms.
“What we have stays like it’s been for a while,” Rutledge added as, at the same time, Charter and rival cable giant Comcast launch a 50:50 joint venture to roll out a next-generation streaming platform to allow consumers to access their favorite apps using Comcast’s Flex platform.
“This new platform … gives us an opportunity to monetize video and to use our customer relationships to drive that platform deeper into the market and to create an advertising business and a transaction business,” he told the investors conference.
And as Charter targets ad revenue from the joint venture, Rutledge touted the strength of the current domestic advertising market.
“It’s an election year, and that always makes you feel great. The more contentious the elections, the better, from an advertising perspective,” he insisted.
