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Time Warner Cable boss Glenn Britt is playing both sides of the field.
Britt yesterday defended his pricey TV sports packages, including a multi-billion dollar deal for the Los Angeles Dodgers, even as he complained about soaring programming costs.
Last week, the No. 2 cable operator inked a 25-year pact to carry TV rights for the Dodgers, costing as much as $8 billion. That follows an earlier $3 billion, 20-year deal for the Los Angeles Lakers. (News Corp., which owns The Post, also competed for the rights to broadcast the Dodgers.)
Britt, who has been one of the biggest critics of rising programming costs, tried to spin the Dodgers deal as a way of “managing and stabilizing” the cost over the long run. The deal allows Time Warner Cable to create a new regional sports network.
He said the cable operator would end up paying one way or another to make popular sports programming available to customers, and it might as well cut out the middleman.
“We do not pretend these deals are inexpensive or cheap,” Britt told analysts yesterday. “Our sense is that if we’re going to carry these games, they’re going to be expensive when we get them.”
Meanwhile, Britt moaned that programming costs had risen 32 percent over the past four years.
Indeed, Time Warner Cable suffered its worst one-day drop in almost four years yesterday after its full-year forecast fell short. The company cited rising programing costs and the fall-off of political advertising. The shares plunged 11.3 percent to close at $89.34.
“The downside surprise for 2013 guidance seemed to be OIBDA margin contraction,” said Wells Fargo cable analyst Marci Ryvicker. She had expected programming expenses to be up around 8.7 percent per subscriber, rather than 10 percent.
Britt has been trying to shave programming costs by dumping smaller, low-rated channels, including Ovation, that cost peanuts to carry in comparison to sports packages.