If you speak to people in and around the television industry, most will tell you that the cable bundle is in the nursing home stage of life. Still alive, but certainly not in its prime.
Perhaps then, it’s ironic to hear that at least one cable executive is still optimistic about the future of the business. In speaking with CNBC’s Alex Sherman, Altice USA CEO Dennis Mathew expressed his belief that cable operators like his own could be the portal with which consumers access future, new-age television bundles that combine the best of linear television and streaming.
“We’re going to make it super simple where you can have linear content combined with streaming content, and the option to turn that streaming content on and off,” Mathew told CNBC.
The idea seems nice in theory. In Mathew’s ideal future, consumers will signup for a (likely skinnier) bundle of linear television networks — perhaps similar to the offerings currently available to DirecTV and Comcast customers — then pick and choose which streaming services to pair with the linear offering, with dynamic pricing deciding the all-in price. The bigger someone builds their bundle, the bigger the discount. Conversely, a consumer selecting fewer options would pay closer to the a la carte price.
Mathew’s logic makes sense. A key pillar to many recent carriage agreements between cable distributors like Altice, and content providers like Disney, is the right to bundle streaming services like Disney+ into customers’ cable packages. So the idea that cable companies and content providers can work together to create more attractive offerings for the consumer isn’t foreign.
However, the idea that cable companies can provide the long-term solution here seems optimistic; and maybe that’s being kind. While it’s possible — they certainly have the technical infrastructure in place, for one — they’ll have to compete with the likes of Amazon, Apple, Google, Disney, etc., to make it happen.
Those companies, with their dwarfing scale, surely have to be the odds-on favorites to create the type of all-in-one service that will eventually replace the traditional cable bundle. Disney has already expressed interest in being the go-to portal for all live sports, regardless of what network is actually airing the game. And Google, who already operates a cable alternative in YouTube TV, would seemingly be better positioned to bundle with streaming services than any number of disparate, regionalized cable companies.
Even if cable companies are able to wiggle their way into the future of television consumption, there’s still a lot that needs to be sorted out. Per Sherman, “There are still large hurdles that need to be cleared regarding revenue and data sharing and password efficiency. Ideally, cable companies want to be the point of contact for consumers, and it’s currently cumbersome for users to have different logins for each streaming service.”
The good news here is that everyone can agree on one thing: the current model stinks. Content is too fragmented, and consumers want a way to get everything for one price. For years, that’s what the cable companies specialized in. But whether they’ll be the solution of the future is far from certain.
