Once again, it’s the little guy who stands to get the shaft — or so he believes, anyway.
Comcast’s proposed $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable has some smaller cable programmers upset that it will make getting space on the dial even harder than it already is.
The CEO of one such programmer, Veria, a healthy-living channel owned by India’s ZeeTV, spoke out on Friday.
Veria’s Eric Sherman claims cable-industry consolidation has not been good for providing new opportunities. Sherman sent a statement to The Post: “We are a minority-owned company and despite the fact that the Comcast-NBC merger was supposed to provide increased opportunities for diverse platforms, we have witnessed very little proof of such activity.” The channel doesn’t disclose how many homes it serves.
Sherman, who previously ran Fuse music network and a host of Viacom music channels, added: “This leaves us with very little choice but to begin exploring our options with the FCC and other government groups so that consolidation does not stop diversity in our industry.”
Even with heavy financial backing, The Weather Channel, owned by Bain, Blackstone and NBCUniversal (part of Comcast), got axed from DirecTV’s lineup for asking a penny more in licensing fees. The Weather Channel sells itself to distributors as a stand-alone service and doesn’t have the leverage to fight big operators for increases. DirecTV wants to decrease its fee and has replaced Weather Channel with another service, WeatherNation.
Not all the small guys share the same view however.
Two niche programmers told The Post their hope was that Comcast’s bigger footprint could push back against big programming groups who bundle content that no one watches and help reign in those taking too big a share of the cable operators’ programming budgets.
One top executive told The Post privately: “The bigger issue for independents is the pressure from the broadcasters who are squeezing us out from a licensing-fee perspective. I think Comcast could move the needle a little bit.”
A second cable programmer had a similar view: “It could be good for those who aren’t gouging cable operators by packaging channels no one watches. I think Comcast has a lot bigger issues than the amount they pay independents.”
The big broadcast network-helmed groups formed a new industry association called TVFreedom.org this month to argue that cable operators have plenty of cash coming in from broadband and phone sales and that they could easily afford fee increases without making the networks a scapegoat.