“Hard-Bundle” Carriage Deals Resembling The Recent Charter-Disney Pact Appear To Be In Paramount’s U.S. Future, CEO Bob Bakish Says

deadline.com:

Paramount CEO Bob Bakish has long touted “hard bundles,” the hybrid carriage agreements found in Europe and other international markets that weave streaming into conventional pay-TV packages.

The new Disney–Charter pact, reached in September after a 10-day blackout of ESPN, ABC stations and multiple other Disney networks, could provide a domestic template for Paramount, according to Bakish.

Recent dealmaking raises questions about “whether the hard bundling of streaming and pay-TV will become the norm in the U.S., and what that could mean for companies like ours,” Bakish told Wall Street analysts on the company’s third quarter earnings call. “The reality is, operators have different priorities.

But we’ve shown that we can adapt our partnerships to adapt common objectives.” In its international hard-bundling, Bakish said, Paramount has experienced “dramatically lower” costs to acquire customers along with lower rates of churn.