According to Los Angeles Times there’s a sense of urgency surrounding the annual National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. convention in Chicago this week, as big media firms grapple with a host of business challenges that threaten their livelihood.
“There clearly is a growing underclass of people who can’t afford the services they want. It would behoove all of us to work together to meet the needs of that population,” Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt said. “Most of the people want everything but not everyone can afford it. The economics of all of us [programmers and operators] make that difficult, and it would serve us well to worry about that group of people.”
The audience broke into applause.
Patrick Esser, president of Cox Communications, said an increasing segment — estimated at 40% of the U.S. population — no longer have enough extra money, after the cost of food and housing, to continue to pay their rising TV bills.
Even with the economy on shaky footing, Viacom CEO Phillipe Dauman remained particularly bullish about cable’s prospects, reports Reuters.
Dauman said it was “remarkable” that cable was one of the last things that customers cut off during the recession and was a testament to the value that cable offered.
If people cut off cable, how would they watch Keeping up with the Kardashians?