What's the Story? It's hard out there for a pay-TV provider

Charter is working on its latest pay-TV strategy to hold onto and hopefully expand its subscriber count.

At a Glance

  • Why Charter made a deal with NBCUniversal to provide Peacock to its pay-TV subscribers (00:47)
  • Why Charter is carving out new deals with streaming video providers (03:30)
  • The trouble with managing multiple pay-TV, streaming video and bundling options (05:46)

For pay-TV providers, slowing subscriber churn probably feels like watching cracks in a levy form.

Charter, for example, lost 408,000 video subscribers (393,000 residential and 15,000 business) in Q2 2024 – a hefty toll compared to a year-ago loss of 200,000.

Not to be knocked down for long, Charter is working on its latest pay-TV strategy to hold onto and hopefully expand its subscriber count. Charter recently renewed its deal with NBCUniversal to provide Peacock for free to its pay-TV subscribers. Next year, Charter plans to make Peacock available for purchase to its broadband-only subscribers as well.

Light Reading's Jeff Baumgartner joins the podcast to discuss what this means for Charter's payTV and broadband subscribers and whether this move will be enough to slow down subscriber losses.

For a lightly edited transcript, please click the caption button in the video toolbar.

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What's the Story

About the Authors

Kelsey Ziser

Senior Editor, Light Reading

Kelsey is a senior editor at Light Reading, co-host of the Light Reading podcast, and host of the "What's the story?" podcast.

Her interest in the telecom world started with a PR position at Connect2 Communications, which led to a communications role at the FREEDM Systems Center, a smart grid research lab at N.C. State University. There, she orchestrated their webinar program across college campuses and covered research projects such as the center's smart solid-state transformer.

Kelsey enjoys reading four (or 12) books at once, watching movies about space travel, crafting and (hoarding) houseplants.

Kelsey is based in Raleigh, N.C.

Jeff Baumgartner

Senior Editor, Light Reading

Jeff Baumgartner is a Senior Editor for Light Reading and is responsible for the day-to-day news coverage and analysis of the cable and video sectors. Follow him on X and LinkedIn.

Baumgartner also served as Site Editor for Light Reading Cable from 2007-2013. In between his two stints at Light Reading, he led tech coverage for Multichannel News and was a regular contributor to Broadcasting + Cable. Baumgartner was named to the 2018 class of the Cable TV Pioneers.

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