Charter Communications

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 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Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios Networks said it has “resolved and withdrawn” its lawsuit against Charter Communications.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.

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.

Charter and Disney have reached a multiyear carriage agreement, avoiding a blackout of networks including ESPN and ABC. Charter has agreed to carry the ACC Network, a new network in the ESPN family, as part of the deal.

Charter execs put on something of a full court press at FCC last week to talk down broadcaster’s ATSC 3.0 transition. They met with staffers in the Media Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology, as well as aides to four of the five commissioners, including the chairman. “We also discussed the consumer benefits of the ATSC 3.0 transition, noting that broadcasters have yet to define which among those possible uses of the new standard they are interested in pursuing,” Charter said in summarizing the meeting.

Disney is set to renew its multiyear carriage agreement with Charter, the second-largest U.S. pay TV provider, at the beginning of August, according to people familiar with the matter. So far, there are no signs the two sides will have a testy public renegotiation.

According to a recent research note, Charter has struck a retrans deal for renewal of Sinclair TV stations that includes the Fox RSNs. Charter declined to comment, but a recent Wolfe Research note declared, “CHTR renewing the Fox RSNs for a ‘slight increase’ is a nice little positive.”

Charter Communications said it plans to launch an over-the-top streaming video service at the end of March dubbed TV Essentials to its broadband-only customers without a video service, in the cable industry’s latest effort to recapture pay TV subscribers.

An appeals court has again denied Charter’s effort to dismiss the claim by Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios that the cable operator’s “refusal” to enter into a carriage contract with the programmer was racially motivated. The case now proceeds to trial unless it is settled beforehand.

The new contract covers Tribune’s 42 television stations and cable network WGN America.