TelevisaUnivision CEO Talks Disney-Constitution Deal, Pondering In a different way About Streaming and Linear TV

Spanish-language media big TelevisaUnivision has distinctive benefits in maximizing the returns of its content material investments throughout its linear and streaming companies, and the latest new-look carriage deal between the Walt Disney Co. and cable big Constitution Communications is nice information for the corporate, CEO Wade Davis mentioned on his workforce’s third-quarter earnings convention name on Wednesday.

“We completely agree with Constitution,” Davis mentioned in regards to the cable firm taking a robust stand towards Disney and different content material giants to seal a brand new sort of deal for the streaming age. “To strip down their linear programming proposition to create DDC providers which might be cannibalistic and ended up fragmenting the viewers and competing with the linear bundle, whereas on the similar time elevating costs for customers has completely undermined the worth of the video bundle and pushed cord-cutting which has harm all of us.”

Importantly, “our technique has been completely different from day one,” he argued. “We construct streaming as a very non-overlapping (providing), complementing linear, and we’re investing in each.” This has led to development in TelevisaUnivision’s share of TV viewership and development in streaming “the place 60 p.c of that viewers is exclusive,” he mentioned. 

Concluded the CEO: “The place we sit as we speak with these two platforms, it’s actually, actually constructive for us if the remainder of the business strikes within the route that Constitution set with Disney.”

Why? For instance, “we’ve no long-tail community drop danger,” Davis mentioned, noting the corporate has 4 broadcast networks and “seven area of interest networks that distributors can take or not, which has no financial impression to us.” Plus, the agency has two cable networks, certainly one of which is high sports activities community TUDN, and the opposite is high cable leisure channel Galavision that collectively symbolize “54 p.c of all the viewership out of the highest 10 Spanish-language cable networks.”

Second, as a result of “our streaming providers are fully additive to linear from a programming and content material perspective, we expect distributors are a lot, more likely to ascribe worth and pay incremental charges ought to they search to broaden the bundle and embody ViX.” 

Plus, ViX being nonetheless in its early levels of development means “comparatively low ranges of penetration, (so) we’d get much more profit from penetration that might come from bringing ViX into right into a broader video bundle.”

Davis additionally addressed how TelevisaUnivision effectively manages its linear and streaming companies. “Our large, totally built-in infrastructure has been always producing at full capability, guided by refined analytics and perception, optimizing the ability of all our platforms by revolutionary windowing and manufacturing methods and permitting us to maximise the worth of our rights and mental property,” he mentioned. “This method permits us to program our linear and streaming platforms. We’re persevering with to thrill our networks’ viewers on linear TV, whereas increasing our attain to new audiences that haven’t been traditionally effectively served by linear TV and Spanish on streaming.”

Importantly, he highlighted that “our technique and property enable us to leverage every platform for what it does finest,” explaining: “Linear is designed round cultural and habituated viewing with reside soccer, tentpole, high-volume novelas and appointment viewing, like morning and night information. Streaming is designed to ship high-intent viewing round our unique motion pictures and sequence.”

The third quarter had “some unbelievable examples of the 2 platforms working collectively in live performance,” Davis mentioned, mentioning Mexican actuality present La Casa de los Famosos, “the place we produce completely different and complementary content material for streaming and for linear. The linear present is a conventional twice-weekly reside actuality present that aired on Channel 5. And for streaming, we produced separate content material that was pitched from linear and included a number of reside 24-hour feeds that drove always-on engagement for the superfan. We’re in a position to produce an enormous quantity of content material at extremely low value factors per hour, and we’re in a position to cross-promote the 2 platforms and experiences to create monumental regional engagement on linear the place the present propelled Channel 5 to the quantity 2 place in Mexico.”

Davis on the decision additionally known as sports activities, particularly soccer, “crucial” to the corporate’s linear and streaming companies. He additionally touted the corporate’s unmatched quantity of soccer programming on the streaming facet.

Earlier, TelevisaUnivision reiterated that it plans to be worthwhile in its streaming enterprise as of mid-year 2024. “Once we ship this, this may have had the shortest ramp to profitability of any main streaming service,” Davis mentioned, arguing that “the distinctive content material prices and the highly effective advertising and marketing benefits we’ve created with the mixed TelevisaUnivision enterprise” are among the many key drivers making this doable. “We consider our margins may even be finest in school,” the TelevisaUnivision CEO added.