David Zaslav has seen actual skinny TV bundles in 200 other countries, so the Discovery Communications president and CEO doesn’t want to hear that term being used stateside — at least, not until it rings true.
“Outside of the U.S., there have been very successful skinny bundles — and we’re in all of them,” Zaslav told media analysts Tuesday morning on his company’s first-quarter earnings conference call.
“There is no skinny bundle here,” he said of the industry’s latest small-screen catchphrase, which refers to smaller, relatively inexpensive packages of desirable cable channels. “Skinny bundle in the U.S. is a fiction.”
“The idea that you have a $40 offering filled with regional sports … an incomplete package, really — and then you have to buy broadband on top of it, so the skinny bundle is $60 or $70,” Zaslav added. “It’s really not a skinny bundle — it’s a bundle.”
“Ultimately, there should be a bundle like everywhere else in the world that’s $8, $10, $12 — I think that will happen,” he continued. “I think these overstuffed turkeys are gonna end up being a challenge from a consumer perspective.”
Current cord-cutting trends would tend to agree with the Discovery boss. Read the company’s somewhat disappointing Q1 financials here.