Advanced Television

Bewkes “OTT HBO will open a new audience”

December 10, 2014

Time Warner chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes says HBO’s OTT channel will open up the premium channel not only to the 10 million broadband-only homes in the country, but will attract many of the 70 million basic cable customers that don’t subscribe to the channel.

HBO will initially market the channel (that launches next year) in conjunction with distribution partners to the 10 million broadband-only homes in the country, generally younger customers that subscribe to Netflix, Amazon Prime or Hulu. But Bewkes told the UBS Global Media & Communications conference in New York that the bigger opportunity is in the 70 million cable, telco and satellite basic service homes that don’t take HBO.

CBS CEO Les Moonves told the same event its over-the-top service CBS All Access was “ahead of projections,” but refused to reveal numbers. Moonves said: “When Netflix tells you how many people are watching House of Cards, we’ll tell you how many subscribers we have.”

Categories: Articles, Broadband, Content, OTT, OTT, VOD