Key Points:
- Charter will integrate four more streaming apps and plans into its Spectrum TV Select package by the end of the year.
- Hulu, Disney Plus, ESPN Unlimited and BET Plus are the four apps that will be offered to subscribers of Spectrum TV Select and Spectrum TV Select Plus in the coming months.
- Charter’s inclusion of network-backed streaming apps in Spectrum TV select hasn’t reversed its TV subscriber losses, but there are signs it has slowed churn.
Charter Communications will include access to four additional streaming video apps to customers of its newer Spectrum TV packages by the end of the year, the company confirmed on Friday.
Subscribers of Spectrum TV Select will have access to the ad-supported tiers of Hulu, Paramount’s BET Plus and Warner Bros Discovery’s (WBD) Discovery Plus by the end of the year, the company confirmed in its second quarter (Q2) financial earnings release. Charter will also include ESPN Unlimited, a streaming plan being launched by ESPN this fall that will include online access to the ESPN multiplex of cable channels and the service ESPN Plus.
Charter did not say when BET Plus, Discovery Plus and ESPN Unlimited will be offered to customers. The ad-supported plan of Hulu was integrated into Spectrum TV Plus last month as part of an expanded distribution agreement reached with Disney, which also saw the return of certain channels like Freeform and FXM.
An earlier deal with Disney set the stage for Charter to begin offering access to the ad-supported tiers of network-owned streaming services as part of its newer cable TV plans. Over time, the company has added access to the ad-supported tiers of HBO Max, Paramount Plus, Peacock, AMC Plus, Vix Premium and Disney Plus. ESPN Plus is available within Spectrum TV Select Plus, a higher tier of service that includes national and regional sports networks.
Charter says the inclusion of network-owned streaming services helps save TV and sports fans money when compared to the retail cost of each app. The inclusion of ESPN Unlimited, the Disney-Hulu bundle, Discovery Plus and BET Plus will bring that monthly savings to over $100 per month.
So far, the strategy of tying streaming services to Spectrum TV has not reversed the trend of cord-cutting, but there are signs that it has improved churn rates. On Friday, Charter said it lost 73,000 residential Spectrum TV accounts during Q2, a marked improvement from the 393,000 video customers the company lost during the same time period last year. Charter ended June with 12.09 million residential TV accounts.
