Key Points:

• Charter’s Spectrum TV bundles combine linear channels with ad-supported streaming apps like Disney Plus, Hulu and Peacock, aiming to reduce subscriber losses and boost retention.
• The company uses the Xumo Stream Box and a new digital storefront to integrate and upsell streaming apps within its pay TV and broadband ecosystem.
• Charter’s Disney carriage deal set the template for these bundles, letting customers access Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus without paying twice for the same content.

Charter Communications is leaning on its new pay television packages as a way to differentiate itself in a sea of competing traditional and streaming cable-like services, a senior executive confirmed at an industry conference this week.

Speaking at the Bank of America Securities 2025 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference, Charter’s Chief Financial Officer called the company’s new Spectrum TV packages “the best…that we’ve had in a decade.”

The packages, which started rolling out to Spectrum TV subscribers last year, combine traditional pay TV channels like ESPN, AMC Network, CNN, FX, TBS and USA Network with the ad-supported plans of network-owned streaming services like Disney Plus, HBO Max, Hulu, ESPN Unlimited and AMC Plus. Nearly all of the streaming services offered in a Spectrum TV package are accessible on the Xumo Stream Box, a streaming device that Charter jointly develops with Comcast and which are available to Spectrum TV and Spectrum Internet customers as part of their service.

By integrating linear TV channels, streaming apps and a streaming platform into a single package, Charter stands out from competitors like YouTube TV and Hulu with Live TV, which offer the same linear networks but require customers to bring their own smart TVs or streaming devices.

“The video product is now marketable to a whole new demographic who have not been buying linear video for some time now,” Fischer said.

To further educate Spectrum TV and Spectrum Internet customers on the apps available to them, Charter recently launched a new streaming storefront that explains which apps a customer can access for free with their plan. The marketplace also allows customers to upgrade streaming apps to remove commercials, or buy access to apps that aren’t part of their plan; in both cases, subscribers are billed through the same account as their Internet or TV plan.

The new strategy took shape during a carriage dispute with Charter’s programming partner Disney two years ago. Then, Charter argued Disney was charging pay TV customers to receive programming that was also available on its Hulu and Disney Plus services. In some instances, Disney was moving valued programming like “Dancing with the Stars” over to its streaming service on an exclusive basis.

The situation was worse for live sports fans: While ESPN’s linear multiplex offered “Monday Night Football,” some National Football League games that season were offered exclusively through ESPN Plus — meaning Charter customers were expected to pay for ESPN through their TV plan, and then pay separately for ESPN Plus, just to watch all Monday Night Football games available that season.

Charter felt it was unfair to force customers to pay for ESPN and other channels, with the expectation that they also had to pay for Hulu, Disney Plus and ESPN Plus to get other programming offered by Disney. After a brief dispute, the company eventually reached a new agreement with Disney that allowed Charter to drop some lower-watched cable networks from its base package while unlocking access to Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus in plans that included Disney-owned channels.

Under the arrangement, Charter pays wholesale prices to offer Disney’s streaming apps to its customers, but the wholesale price winds up being less than what customers would pay for Disney Plus, Hulu or ESPN Plus, and Charter is able to justify the cost because it was no longer required to carry some smaller channels like Freeform and FXM in its lower-priced plans. (Charter has since restored some of those channels to its base Spectrum TV package, called Spectrum TV Select.)

The arrangement has since expanded to other programmers, including Paramount, Comcast’s NBC Universal, AMC Networks, Allen Media and Televisa-Univision, whose streaming apps are now included in Spectrum TV packages with their linear channels.

Fischer noted that the inclusion of streaming apps in pay TV packages was a breakthrough moment, one that has resonated with other pay TV providers. In recent months, DirecTV has taken the same approach, launching genre-based packages of its streaming service that also include access to Hulu, Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, Vix Premium and HBO Max as part of a customer’s service.

The networks have benefitted from the arrangement as well: Over the past year, Paramount, Comcast and Warner Bros Discovery have reported an uptick in subscribers to their streaming services, with executives acknowledging that activations from pay TV providers played a significant role in that growth.

“Ultimately, we’re not going back,” Fischer said. “We’re not going to make customers pay twice for this content again.”

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Read more:

• Charter, Disney reach deal to end blackout of ESPN, FX
• Spectrum rolls out streaming subscription management platform
• Spectrum TV returns some channels to line-up, adds access to Hulu
• Spectrum begins offering Vix Premium with Ads to TV customers
• Ampere: Vix to experience substantial growth in 2025
• DirecTV announces new low-cost, genre-based TV packages
• Antenna: DirecTV genre-based packages boosting pay TV sales