Media Mogul Malone Calls Streaming 'A Terrible Business'

John Malone

John Malone – a major shareholder and power behind the throne at Warner Bros. Discovery, Charter Communications and Liberty Global – sat down with research company MoffettNathanson co-founders Michael Nathanson and Craig Moffett and senior analyst Robert Fishman for a wide-ranging conversation released last week that looked at cable, streaming, satellite TV, and wireless, and their increasingly messy interplay. reports Forbes.

Among other key thoughts, Malone said, the subscription streaming sector that has reshaped Hollywood media companies the past five years is “a terrible business.”

“In Dr. Malone’s view, ‘There shouldn't have been a Netflix,’” the analysts wrote in their not-quite-a-transcript of the conversation. “Instead, the transition to an on-demand world should have been a routine morphing of a linear business, adding random access to its content, and then going more a la carte, breaking it down to affordable bundles.”

None of that happened, at least in the United States, in part because the media companies making so much money from cable TV deals for four decades refused to allow a la carte bundles or other approaches that might have stranded some of their lesser or specialized networks.

“He said he wished that the late (U.S.) Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) had prevailed in his quest to force something like a la carte on the programmers and distribution industry; if he had, then we probably wouldn’t have evolved the way we’ve evolved,” the MoffettNathanson analysts recounted. “The fact that we got broadcast retransmission consent, combined with the greed of sports-rights owners who drove the cost of the bundle through the roof, at a time when sports content was only wanted by about 30% of households and yet was forced down the throats of 100% of video customers, led us to an unsustainable place.”

Sports have been particularly ruinous for the legacy mediacos as they try to keep pace with the deep pockets of tech giants such as Netflix, Amazon and Apple.

The NFL signed a $110 billion, 11-year deal, including with Amazon and Alphabet’s YouTube TV, then added lucrative side deals with Comcast, Amazon and Netflix for one or two games in special slots.

CNBC reported last week that TV executives are already “freaking out” over the “look-in” provisions in the NFL’s mammoth deal.

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