DirecTV Gives Subscribers Choice to Cut Local Stations

variety.com:

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Tired of forking over hundreds of dollars for cable channels that aren’t always available?

DirecTV may have a solution, albeit a controversial one. The satellite content distributor said Sunday it would give its subscribers the choice to “opt out” of receiving the feeds of local TV stations “for as long as they want,” and get a discount for doing so.

Customers who choose to do so will reduce their bills by $12 a month, or $144 a year. DirecTV said subscribers could test out the feature by cutting local stations in the summer, when most TV networks show repeats in primetime, and start watching them again in the fall — coincidentally, when the NFL season kicks off. “Consumers have been voting with their wallets for years that pay TV — as currently constructed — is tooexpensive and restricts their choices,” said Rob Thun, DirecTV’s chief content officer, in a statement. “Our new ‘No Locals’ package enables customers to take an important step forward in culling out certain types of content they may no longer care to watch and better balance the price they are willing to pay.” The maneuver represents the latest pushback from the nation’s content distributors, who have grown concerned about the amount of premium video entertainment that has moved to streaming hubs, which are sold directly by companies such as Walt Disney Co., NBCUniversal and Warner Bros.

Discovery to entertainment fans. Charter Communications in the fall of last year successfully prodded Disney to give it access to sell streaming services including Disney+ and Hulu, and drop some of Disney’s best known cable networks, including Freeform and Disney Junior.