Commentary
Altice USA Knocks Off Nexstar, MSG: Rehabbing Sports/News Content?
- by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, January 15, 2025
Altice USA has dropped Nexstar Media Group -- the largest U.S. owner of TV stations -- and MSG Network off its cable TV platform over a week-and-a-half-long period due to separate renegotiation contract disputes.
To refresh your memory, that would be two content platforms where key linear TV content focuses on local news and sports, respectively.
Altice USA -- which is the fourth-largest cable TV distributor with 2.3 million subscribers -- may be positioning itself as other pay TV platforms such as DirecTV, Comcast, Charter have been doing, to focus more on “skinny bundles”.
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If legacy cable, satellite, and virtual pay TV providers have any chance of surviving in the near term, it will be not only to offer up modestly priced packages of limited quality cable and broadcast TV networks (maybe at $30 to $40 a month) but ones giving consumers the option of adding in popular streaming platforms of their choice -- say, Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, AMC+, whatever.
The linear TV piece of these bundles will be platforms that are heavily sports and/or news oriented. For the latter, one might assume not all will focus on CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC but TV stations which have big swaths of local news content.
Sports will also be a factor --- especially national TV networks. But it is left to be determined where regional sports networks (RSNs) like MSG Network will fit into the mix.
RSNs, those premium/tiered, pay channels, have been an issue for pay TV providers for some time -- legacy and virtual -- due to the high contractual guaranteed subscribers reach levels pay TV providers need to shell out. Recently virtual pay TV providers like YouTube TV and Hulu+Live TV have rejected efforts around new RSN carriage deals.
Altice may be looking to set new pricing levels for upcoming distribution/transmission deals made with all content/network owners -- just like the bigger cable companies like Comcast and Charter have done.
The rub? Altice is much smaller than their cable TV distributor competitors, which currently have around 13 million U.S. subscribers.
Where is its leverage? Not with more powerful national broadcast/cable TV network groups.
It is seemingly targeting regional cable and local TV platforms to gain a foothold. Will its consumer/subscriber base hang with them in appealing to their "skinny TV" bundle desires?
Wayne Friedman is West Coast Editor of MediaPost. You can reach Wayne at wayne@mediapost.com.
Altice may be "small" but their ace in the hole is the NY suburban market...
Altice has argued that Nexstar is trying to force them to carry Nexstar's NewNation in order to have access to the local and HD channels. Altice doesn't want to carry the small cable news channel because less than 10% of its subscribers watch it and Nexstar is asking for a significant carriage fee price hike. As is, Optimum's reputation among its subscribers has taken a bit hit since Altice acquired it from Cablevision, with many subscribers becoming cord cutters as a result - taking off MSG, WPIX and WTNH (New Haven, CT ABC affialiate) adds another dagger in their already shaky customer service.
Altice can't get the Suckvision smell out oh, I mean Cablevision I believe Altice and Nexstar will reach a deal before MSG Networks in my opinion. I had Cablevision when they were in Kazoo my very first house there was a bit of more choice in the late 80s I wanted a remote control which I don't think they offered at the time. When I moved with my parents as a teen it was Cablevision or nothing other than go with Sat dish.
Cablevision was always in a dispute with LIN TV owner of WOODTV at the time in 93 was off for a few months didn't agree few days before that little thing called the Super Bowl, happned again in Jan 96 Suckyvision found a loophole to get WOODTV back on until Jan 97 where it was off for a year, i wasn't even about $$$ was about a local weather channel that LIN wanted in the basic package but Cablevision refused to put on. 2 Days before Super Bowl 32 they finally agreed and WOODTV was back on. Cablevision wasn't the best with adding cable channels ESPN2 wasn't added until until May of 99 had to pay extra for it which was $2 dollars I believe and they would add a channel that you had to pay extra for in the basic package that was there to say were adding when it really wasn't.
I was glad when Cablevision finally was bought out in Kazoo in the fall of 2000 to Charter and also adding hundreds of channels.