Cable operator Charter Communications, in which John Malone's Liberty Broadband owns a big stake, on Friday reported a second-quarter pay TV subscriber decline that doubled compared with the year-ago period. And Charter chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge said content companies were in part to blame for the challenges of the pay TV bundle in the streaming video age, because they make too much of their programming available for free.
The Charter CEO also said that the higher carriage fees content companies continue to demand in negotiations with pay TV firms is causing a dilemma for him and his management team. "I don't like raising the prices to our customers. Customers don't know where the price increase is coming from, and they attribute it to us," Rutledge explained. "What I really wish is that the price-value of programming wasn't being destroyed by the programmers. ...
Charter reported Friday that it lost 150,000 residential pay TV subscribers in the latest quarter, compared with the loss of 73,000 in the year-ago period. The company added 9,000 small and medium business video customers, compared with 16,000 in the year-ago period. The broadband business again led the way in the second quarter as Charter recorded 258,000 internet subscriber net additions across the firm's residential and business customers. The company also added 208,000 mobile lines in the quarter.
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