WHEN: Today, Monday, September 11, 2023
WHERE: CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street”
Following is the unofficial transcript of breaking news from CNBC’s David Faber on “Squawk on the Street” (M-F, 9AM-12PM ET) today, Monday, September 11. Video of the news will be available on CNBC.com.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
DAVID FABER: Of course I’m talking about that continued dispute between Charter and Disney. Got some new reporting for you that indicates perhaps surprisingly that the two sides are nearing a deal. They are nearing a deal is what I’m hearing from people familiar with the situation in which ESPN and the Disney channels would resume being broadcast on Charter’s distribution network for video. And unclear exactly what the parameters of a transaction are. And again, these kinds of things can fall apart at the last moment. But many of us who’ve watched these kinds of battles in the past had distinguished this one because if it has gone on for a while, it involved Disney actually choosing to pull the content, but it also involved Charter being in a position that we haven’t really seen very often in which its video business was simply not of great importance to it any longer. And so with the possibility of us New Yorkers, for example, who are Charter subscribers not being able to watch the Monday Night Football game tonight, you had people suspecting that once that was breached, this thing is not coming back. 2.2 billion in sub fees paid each year by Charter subscribers to Disney for all of its channels FX, Nat Geo, ESPN of course being one of the keys. Unclear in terms of parameters of a deal. You know, whether it’s a marketplace deal, would you have to believe involves some sort of give here by Disney on its direct to consumer, perhaps just Disney+. Charter had been asking basically for its subscribers to get the ad supported tier for free, not for free, for what they were paying for no more price than the increase that was built in. But again, perhaps surprisingly, I am hearing that a deal could be reached very quickly and perhaps announced very soon and prior to tonight meaning that I don’t have to worry about getting Fubo TV or YouTube TV or Hulu live all of which I was looking through, Sara, this weekend to determine which tier, which one I would want to go to a virtual MVPDs of course replacing in many ways what you get from cable, and doing so at actually a price that’s lower. I mean I may still make that move anyway at some point.
SARA EISEN: Is it lower?
FABER: 75 bucks seems to be where they are. They don’t have everything. They have most of what you want. And you twin that with your broadband and you probably are coming in for maybe, maybe a bit less. You’re obviously still paying for a lot of your your streaming services separately. Right now like I get Max via Spectrum but yeah, I think could be it could be a bit less, YouTube basically they do it at cost. I think it’s the data that’s incredibly—
EISEN: So if they have a deal here, does that mean that all the existential threats about the future of cable go away? That the—
FABER: Well, let’s see what the deal looks like. Let’s see if it does include Disney+, for example, perhaps at some lower price for Charter subscribers, but there’ll be promoting it to them. But again, the fact that they are near a deal perhaps somewhat unexpected, but that is what I’m hearing. And you can see actually what’s happened to Fubo TV, which has just turned around on this news because it was a beneficiary in fact, Spectrum had set up texts to all of us on Friday saying here’s a link to Fubo if you needed to sign up for it, and that’s not had been up as much as 7%, not a huge market cap there below a billion dollars but it has turned around. I am seeing Warner Brothers Discovery up sharply remember it stock price came down dramatically last week in part because there are obviously questions about the leverage that these cable content companies have or these network companies if in fact they’re just getting dropped. They don’t even have, you know, they don’t have a lot of sports to begin with.
EISEN: Paramount is up five.
FABER: Paramount is up, Warner Brothers Discovery up so again a deal apparently quite close. We will monitor the situation and bring it to you if in fact we do get it whenever we get it.
