
TV Exec Slams Streamers for This Reason
By Movieguide® Contributor
DirecTV’s chief content officer is criticizing streamers like Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery for what he claims are efforts to “drive everyone to themselves.”
Rob Thun, DirecTV’s CCO, was initially excited about a judge’s ruling to halt Disney, Fox and WBD’s sports streaming platform, Venu. However, that excitement turned to anger as he realized the extent of what these companies were allegedly trying to do.
“These guys lied to us,” he told Business Insider. “When you pulled back the curtain and saw what they were really doing — wow. They really just want to disintermediate all of pay TV and drive everyone to themselves. It’s horrific.”
Thun takes issue with streaming companies’ demands that pay-TV companies include certain channels in their packages, even if they are not popular with viewers. These larger bundles mean many customers are choosing to pay for channels they will never watch.
“We’ve hit a ceiling of price that customers are willing to pay, and the only way to try to adjust what people can pay, then, is to offer skinnier bundles,” he explained. “And that’s the one thing that is not allowed.”
Venu would not have had to deal with these rules about bundling, which is part of why the launch of the streamer was halted by Judge Margaret Garnett. Movieguide® previously reported:
The launch of ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery’s Venu Sports, dubbed “the future home of sports streaming,” has been temporarily blocked after Fubo, a smaller sports streaming platform, requested a preliminary injunction.
Per ESPN, “United States District Judge Margaret M. Garnett in the Southern District of New York said in her 69-page ruling Friday that Fubo was likely to be successful in proving that the joint venture would violate antitrust laws and that Fubo and consumers would ‘face irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction.’”
“U.S. Judge Margaret Garnett noted that the three companies control about 54% of all U.S. sports rights, and at least 60% of all nationally broadcast U.S. sports rights,” CNBC said.
“There is significant evidence in the record that the true figures may be even larger,” Garnett said “This means that alone, Disney, Fox, and [Warner Bros. Discovery] are each significant players in live sports licensing, who otherwise compete against each other both to secure sports telecast rights and to attract viewers to their live sports programming. But together, they are dominant.”
“We absolutely have to find our way to offering something smaller and less expensive than what we have today,” Thun said. “I’m not sure what the wake-up call is going to be, frankly, for the programmers to realize this isn’t good. If I drive pay TV out of business, the gravy train is over.”
Disney and DirecTV are currently locking horns over carriage renewals, with a Disney spokesperson telling Deadline, “They have not engaged in earnest on proposals we’ve made to them. They’re trying to lay the blame for their lack of investment in their platform at the feet of programmers.”
Justin Connolly, president of Disney Platform Distribution, told Variety, “We continue to put a number of tangible options on the table, and DirecTV has not engaged in earnest at this point.”