Walt Disney and Cablevision Reach Multi-Year Deal
Last Thursday The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Disney and Cablevision settled on a carriage deal that will allow Cablevision to distribute Disney’s lineup of top quality sports, news, and entertainment content to television, Internet, tablets, and handheld devices. As per the agreement, Cablevision will carry several of Disney’s newest services such as ESPN3 and ESPN 3D, as well as the upcoming joint venture between ABC News and Univision, a 24/7 news and lifestyle network for English-dominant and bilingual Hispanics.
Counting these new networks, the agreement covers close to 70 of Disney’s services, some of which include ABC, ABC Family, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes, ESPNEWS, ESPN Goal Line, ESPN GamePlan, ESPN FullCourt, and Longhorn Network.
ABC On Demand is also part of the deal. Though customers are not granted the ability to fast-forward through shows, they can still watch ABC’s prime-time entertainment programming including Castle, Grey’s Anatomy, Once Upon A Time and Revenge. Moreover, this will mark the first time that Cablevision customers can watch outside the home. As stated in the original press release, customers will receive broad access to existing authenticated products like WATCH Disney Chanel, WATCH Disney XD, WATCH Disney Junior, and the to-be-launched WATCH ABC and WATCH ESPN, which can all be retrieved via computers, gaming consoles, smartphones and tablets.
Cablevision and Disney did not release the specific financial deals of the agreement. Though, as stated in MediaPost News, TV analysts have estimated that as part of these big distribution deals, retransmission agreements for TV stations are being set at an industry average of around 50 cents per subscriber per month. As a frame of reference, the chart below shows the ESPN carriage fees.