kicked off an appearance Wednesday at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference by saying he’s “not completely surprised” by the Disney-Charter carriage battle.
“When you have many distributors of the same product in the same geography, you’re going to have disputes,” he said. “It’s not the first dispute and probably won’t be the last dispute.” Charter, the No. 2 cable operator in the U.S., has said it could “move on” from the pay-TV business if a swift resolution with Disney is not achieved. Last Thursday, 18 Disney networks and eight ABC stations went dark as the companies reached an impasse. Cord-cutting, which has shaved Charter’s Spectrum TV business to 14.7 million customers and whittled away at the overall pay-TV bundle, has put pressure on all stakeholders.