Spectrum Reach, the advertising sales business of Charter Communications, says it has expanded the capabilities of its self-service online media planning tool, Ad Portal, “to become a true multiscreen self-service platform that now allows businesses to create, plan and schedule live TV and streaming TV advertising campaigns.” “Advertising on any screen should be easy to buy […]
A Dallas jury found Charter Communications grossly negligent in the December 2019 murder of an 83-year-old customer by one of it service technicians, hitting the cable operator with a $337.5 million compensatory damages verdict. Following an 11-day trial, the jury determined that Charter was 90% responsible for the stabbing death of Betty Thomas, an Irving, Texas, grandmother, at the hands of Roy Holden, who is currently serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to her murder.
As Comcast prepares to leverage its Flex system in a streaming platform joint venture with Charter, the cable giant is “extremely focused” on growing the base of U.S. operators who it licenses to, Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said Wednesday.
Charter Communications and Comcast Corp. said they named Marcien Jenckes president of their joint venture to build a new streaming platform. Jenckes, who has been president of Comcast Advertising since 2017, will focus on developing the business and monetization models for the new platform, which will be built on Comcast’s Flex and include Comcast XClass TV business and the Xumo streaming service.
Charter Communications and Comcast on Wednesday announced a 50/50 joint venture to develop a streaming platform on branded 4K streaming devices and smart TVs. Comcast will license Flex, the company’s aggregated streaming platform and hardware to the new joint venture, contribute the retail business for XClass TVs as well as Xumo, a streaming service acquired in 2020. Charter will make an initial contribution of $900 million, funded over multiple years.
Exclusives
Sinclair Broadcast Group and Charter Communications on Thursday reached a “comprehensive distribution agreement” for continued carriage of Sinclair’s TV stations, Tennis Channel, 19 Bally Sports RSN brands, Marquee Sports Network and the YES Network, in which Sinclair is a joint venture partner. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The two sides appear to be earnestly hammering out a longterm deal and will abide by temporary agreements until that’s done.
Charter Communications and Sinclair Broadcast Group have agreed to a one-month extension on an expired deal to carry the broadcaster’s regional sports networks and local broadcast channels on Charter’s Spectrum TV system. The extension will keep Sinclair’s 294 broadcast stations in 89 markets — at least those of which that are in the Charter footprint — on the program guides of Charter’s more than 15.8 million remaining pay TV subscribers. More notably, it might — or might not — keep Sinclair’s Bally Sports-branded regional sports networks on Spectrum TV, as well.
The 12-year cable company veteran will lead ad platforms, video products and tech strategy
Charter looks poised to go over the top, with Chairman Tom Rutledge telling investors that he “likes the Comcast model of putting its platform on televisions.”
A new deal ends the impasse that kept the cable operator’s OTT app from being downloaded on Roku.
Charter Exceeds 2Q Forecasts
Charter exceeded Wall Street estimates in the second quarter, reporting earnings of $5.29 a share and revenue of $12.8 billion. Analysts’ consensus expectation was for earnings of $4.79 and revenue of $12.6 billion.
ViacomCBS and Charter said they have a new multi-year distribution agreement that includes carriage of ViacomCBS’s broadcast stations and cable networks, as well as a license to sell the ViacomCBS streaming services to Charter’s Spectrum customers. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. One of the reasons for merging Viacom with CBS was to give the company greater clout with distributor like Charter.
Comcast, Charter Communications and Vizio, among others, have created a consortium to identify ways to simplify and scale an increasingly complex TV ad business.
Charter still values being able to sell traditional video packages alongside its broadband products but CFO Chris Winfrey suggested that a breaking point is coming. Speaking at an Evercore investor event, Winfrey reaffirmed that video is still an in-demand product and that it’s still profitable for Charter. But he warned changes are needed to ensure that his company can continue assembling attractive products that can be packaged for different customers with different budgets.
The upcoming 24-hour news network for multicultural communities has a multi-year nationwide linear distribution agreement that will make it available to Charter’s Spectrum customers upon the network’s commercial launch.
Charter Communications Chairman and CEO Thomas Rutledge’s compensation at the U.S. cable and Internet giant rose sharply from $8.74 million in 2019 due to option awards figuring in his overall pay package.
A new partnership with Charter Communications adds nearly 40% more households and expands inventory for marketers.
Charter Communications President and COO John Bickham will ride off into the sunset when he retires at the end of 2022. To date, Bickham has spent 35 years in the cable industry with additional stops at Time Warner Cable and Cablevision before the latter was bought by Altice USA.
Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios Networks said it has “resolved and withdrawn” its lawsuit against Charter Communications. The one-sentence joint statement from Entertainment Studios and Charter did not elaborate on whether Allen’s TV channels would now be carried by Charter or if any money changed hands.
Comscore, whose weak financial position has hampered its ability to compete as a provider of media measurement, has wiped out its debt with a $204 million strategic investment from Charter Communications, Qurate Retail and Cerberus. In addition to cleaning up its balance sheet, the deal gives Comscore access to data that will help it provide the new types of audience and impression based measurement that are being demanded by a changing media and advertising industry.
The nation’s second largest cable operator, Charter Communications, said Monday it’s selling $1.5 billion in debt and could use the fresh cash to repay existing debt and fund share buybacks. It expects to close the offering of senior unsecured notes due in 2031 on July 9.
The telecom giant says the online video market is flourishing and there’s no reason to hold it back from negotiating interconnection agreements with some of the world’s largest companies.
Three of the nation’s largest pay-TV companies are taking joint ownership of Blockgraph, a platform designed to make it easier for brands to harness data to serve targeted ads to people watching cable TV, a move that comes as cost-pressured ad buyers are increasingly turning to targeted advertising.
The WarnerMedia streaming-video service will be made available to all of Charter’s existing HBO subscribers, the two companies said Wednesday. There will be no additional charge for the new package, but customers will have to sign in to the HBOMax app.
Charter Communications and AT&T have finally reached an agreement on the latter’s carriage of regional sports network SportsNet LA, breaking an impasse that started in 2014.
A special news feed for Charter subscribers in Berkshire County, Mass., will be launched in the next 30 to 60 days and includes a dedicated journalist to provide regular coverage of issues affecting the various communities.
When Charter Communications executives needed someone to run their Spectrum News operation in Ohio, they found a candidate with just the right amount of TV experience. None. “I’m playing catch-up on the TV part,” says Karl Turner, who held senior editorial jobs at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and Cleveland.com. “And I’m helping to think about stories in a different way.”
Fox Corp. and Charter Communications today said they struck a new “long term” carriage deal for Fox’s suite of TV networks, the latest in a recent series of agreements Fox has struck with various distributors. The pact covers distribution of Fox Television Stations, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, FS1, FS2, BTN and Fox Deportes. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Charter Communication said Sunday that it reached a long-term retransmission consent deal with Tegna that will keep the broadcast group’s network affiliates available to the cable company’s subscribers. The new contract follows a week of extensions after the old agreement expired.
Cable Clams Up On Its 3.0 Recalcitrance
In the six weeks since Charter Communications executives met with senior FCC staffers to explain their reluctance to carry ATSC 3.0 signals, a continuing flurry of discussions has simmered — usually couched in questions about why Charter picked this moment to voice its opposition to carrying the value-added broadcast signals.
What if you could build a local television news operation from scratch? How closely would it resemble the typical newsroom of today — say the places where you’ve worked or work now? And how would it be different? That’s what Charter Communications is attempting to do in Los Angeles.
