He also thinks the industry should get on board with a new model.
The CEO of one of the largest cable companies in the U.S. on Friday put media content companies on notice that negotiations would look different after Disney-owned networks went dark on Charter’s Spectrum service.
The so-called blackouts have gone on for decades and usually stem from a battle over rising fees — when programmers like Disney want higher rates and pay-TV distributors like Charter balk at paying up. Usually, the demand for sports events like the U.S. Open, which is in full swing, or the upcoming NFL season, help to prevent channels going dark for customers.
But this time it’s different, Winfrey said on a Friday call with investors.
The pay-TV model is broken, said Winfrey, the CEO of a company that has 14.7 million customers subscribed to its bundle but sees that number drop every year.
For Charter, a company that doesn’t produce content itself,the TV bundle is still a big part of its business, even as broadband grows. Charter is pushing to keep the bundle alive with new options — flexible packages and improved technology to tie streaming and traditional TV together — as high prices and streaming have driven customers to cut the cord.
Pay-TV bundle as we know it is dead
Streaming has upended the economics of television, as cheap memberships offer boatloads of content — a lot of which is already featured on pay-TV channels. Consumers are cutting pay-TV bundles and opting for streaming options at a rate that’s only intensified over the last five years.
And while companies like Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global and Comcast‘s NBCUniversal are trying to make streaming businesses profitable, they still rely on their TV networks for not only the lucrative fees they reap from pay-TV providers, but also for the content produced for the channels themselves, which often carries over to streaming.
Media mogul Barry Diller said recently the legacy media companies should revert back to focusing on their broadcast and pay-TV networks, which are profitable, unlike streaming.
Winfrey, as well as his predecessor Tom Rutledge, have often spoken publicly of the high fees pay-TV providers have to send the networks, which get passed down to customers as price increases. Those in turn often accelerate cord-cutting.
The growth of streaming has made it less fruitful for Charter to pay those costs, even as the company loses fewer pay-TV customers than its peers each quarter.
Often, series and movies that air on cable channels run on streaming services shortly after — sometimes just a day. Meanwhile, more and more live sports are making their way onto streaming.
NBCUniversal airs Sunday Night Football, one of the top-rated programs on live TV, simultaneously on its streaming service Peacock. Paramount follows suit with its Sunday package of football games on Paramount+, while Disney offers some, but not all, Monday Night Football games on ESPN+.
Charter said Friday it was willing to pay the rate increase that Disney was asking for in exchange for a lower minimum penetration term — meaning Charter guarantees fewer customers to stem costs.Some of Disney’s networks fetch the highest prices in the bundle, such as ESPN, which receives $9.42 per subscriber a month, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.
The company is also pushing to offer Disney’s ad-supported streaming services — Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu — at no additional cost so its customers don’t have to pay twice for similar content.
On Friday, Disney said in a statement that it had proposed “creative ways” to make Disney streaming services available to Spectrum customers without giving it away for free. It did not provide further details.
Disney said on Friday its traditional TV channels and streaming services “are not one and the same, per Charter’s assertions, but rather complementary products.” It noted its investment in “original content that premieres exclusively” on traditional TV, such as live sports, news and other programming. Disney also noted its multi-billion dollar investments in exclusive content for Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu.
Charter also said it would be willing to market Disney streaming apps to its broadband-only customers, something it views as a way to help Disney move toward making ESPN’s live feed a direct-to-consumer streaming service. Disney has said it’s a matter of time before it offers ESPN outside of the pay-TV bundle. ESPN+ offers only limited content from the network.
On a Friday call with investors, Winfrey said the talks with Disney are what negotiations with content providers would look like moving forward — a stark change for the pay-TV provider.
Long live pay-TV
During Charter’s second-quarter earnings call in July, Winfrey said that the company was “committed to trying to find a path forward” for traditional TV bundles.
“And if we can have the flexibility to package and price it in the right way, we think it’s good for customers and it’s good for us. And ultimately, it’s much better for programmers over time as opposed to having the cord cutting continue to accelerate at the pace it’s going,” Winfrey said.
Charter’s recent negotiations aren’t the only example of the company trying to find a new path for pay-TV.
In July, the company announced it would soon offer a cheaper, sports-lite bundle option.
Live sports often carry the highest ratings but come with the most costs for pay-TV companies. The sports-lite offering will remove regional sports networks from the equation, giving customers who don’t watch their local teams a cheaper option rather than cutting the bundle altogether.
The pivotal move happened as the regional sports networks business has declined a faster speed. Diamond Sports Group, the largest owner of these channels, filed for bankruptcy protection this year. Other networks are offering streaming options, too.
Still, major national sports networks like ESPN remained in both bundles. While Winfrey said he would “love” to put ESPN in a sports-only bundle, he knew it was “a stretch too far” for Disney.
In another step to revamp the pay-TV model and stem losses, Charter entered into a joint venture with Comcast, the largest pay-TV provider in the U.S.
The venture launches later this year and will give customers the option to take the pay-TV bundle without a cable box. Winfrey noted in July that two-thirds of Charter’s pay-TV sales come without a clunky cable box, meaning customers are using the Spectrum TV app on their own devices, like Roku or Apple‘s Apple TV.
Branded with Comcast’s Xumo, the product will mean Charter can provide a smaller streaming device that integrates the traditional TV bundle with streaming apps in one place, making it a more seamless transition between the two for consumers.
The company is betting that service, plus cheaper and more flexible bundle rates, will keep pay-TV alive and kicking.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC.
Ben Powell, chief strategist for Middle East and Asia Pacific at BlackRock Investment Institute, during a Bloomberg Television interview at the Abu Dhabi Finance Week (ADFW) conference in Abu Dhabi, AD, United Arab Emirates, on Monday, Dec. 9, 2024.
Bloomberg | Getty Images
The wave of capital pouring into artificial intelligence infrastructure is far from peaking, said Ben Powell, chief investment strategist for APAC at BlackRock, arguing the sector’s “picks and shovels” suppliers — from chipmakers to energy producers and copper-wire manufacturers — remain the clearest winners as hyperscalers race to outspend one another.
The surge in AI-related capital expenditure shows no sign of slowing as tech giants push aggressively to secure an edge in what they see as a winner-takes-all contest, Powell told CNBC Monday on the sidelines of the Abu Dhabi Finance Week.
“The capex deluge continues. The money is very, very clear,” he said, adding that BlackRock is focused on what he called a “traditional picks and shovels capex super boom, which still feels like it’s got more to go.”
AI infrastructure has been one of the biggest drivers of global investment this year, fueling a broader market rally, even as some investors question how long the boom can last.
Nvidia, whose GPU chips are the backbone of the AI revolution, became the first company to briefly surpass $5 trillion in market capitalization amid a dizzying AI-fueled market rally that sparked talk of an AI bubble.
The build-out has set off long-term procurement efforts across the tech sector, from chip supply agreements to power commitments. Grid operators from the U.S. to the Middle East are racing to meet soaring electricity demand from new data centers. Companies, including Amazon and Meta, have budgeted tens of billions of dollars annually for AI-related investments.
S&P Global estimates data-center power demand could nearly double by 2030, mostly driven by hyperscale, enterprise and leased facilities, along with crypto-mining sites.
‘Dipping toes into credit market’
Powell also noted that leading tech firms have only begun to tap capital markets to fund the next phase of AI expansion, suggesting additional capital is on the way.
“The big companies have only just started dipping their toes into the credit markets… feels like there’s a lot more they can do there,” he said.
The “hyperscalers” are behaving as if coming second would effectively leave them out of the market, Powell said. That mindset, he added, has pushed firms to accelerate spending even at the risk of overshooting.
Much of that capital, Powell noted, is likely to flow to the companies powering the AI build-out rather than model developers, reinforcing a growing view among global investors that the most durable gains from the AI boom may lie in the hardware, energy and infrastructure ecosystems behind the technology.
“If we’re the recipients of that cash flow, I guess that’s a pretty good place to be, whether you’re making chips, whether you’re making energy all the way down to the copper wiring,” Powell noted, expecting “positive surprises driving those stocks in the year ahead.”
Netflix’s headquarters are pictured in Hollywood, California on December 5, 2025.
Patrick T. Fallon | Afp | Getty Images
“Who’s watching?” Netflix asks whenever someone accesses its site. On Friday, it was probably everyone with an interest in business, markets and television.
The key characters that had people hooked were Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery, which jointly announced that the streaming giant will acquire the latter’s film studio and streaming service, HBO Max. The equity deal value is pegged at $72 billion.
Netflix investors did not seem too jazzed about the deal, with shares dropping 2.89% on the sheer size of the transaction.
“Look, the math is going to hurt Netflix for a while. There’s no doubt,” Rich Greenfield, co-founder of LightShed Partners, told CNBC. “This is expensive,” he added.
But if one side is paying a lot, that means the other is receiving a bounty. Indeed, investors cheered the potential Warner Bros. Discovery windfall, sending the stock up 6.3% on the news.
It is not a done deal yet, and faces regulatory scrutiny. U.S. President Donald Trump said he would be involved in the decision, Reuters reported Monday, after a senior official from the Trump administration told CNBC’s Eamon Javers on Friday that they viewed the deal with “heavy scepticism.”
Despite this initial show of resistance, stranger things have happened in this administration, and the transaction might eventually go through. We may as well get ready for Netflix’s next blockbuster: “The K-Pop Demon Hunters’ Song of Ice and Fire”?
What you need to know today
U.S. stocks had a positive Friday. The S&P 500 clocked its ninth winning session in 10 and rose 0.3% for the week. Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed Monday. Japan’s Nikkei 225 ticked up even as data showed the country’s economy shrinking more than expected in the third quarter.
Netflix to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s film and streaming businesses. The total equity value of the deal is $72 billion, announced the two companies Friday. But the transaction could run intoregulatory hurdles.
China’s exports grow more than expected. In U.S. dollar terms, shipments in November jumped 5.9% year on year, outstripping the 3.8% increase estimated in a Reuters poll and returning to growth from October’s 1.1% drop. But U.S.-bound exports plunged 28.6%.
A Ukraine peace deal is ‘really close.’ That’s according to Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine, who reportedly said Saturday that there were two key outstanding issues: the future of Ukraine’s Donbas region and its Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
[PRO] Have $1 million to invest? The current investment landscape might look volatile. But veteran strategists suggest that the path forward is more straightforward than it seems, advising how they would craft a $1 million portfolio.
And finally…
A construction workers paints an eagle on the Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building, the main offices of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, on Sept. 16, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Elon Musk has called for the European Union to be abolished after the bloc fined his social media company X 120 million euros ($140 million) for a “deceptive” blue checkmark and lack of transparency of its advertising repository.
The European Commission hit X with the ruling on Friday following a two-year investigation into the company under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which was adopted in 2022 to regulate online platforms. At the time, in a reply on X to a post from the Commission, Musk wrote, “Bulls—.”
On Saturday he stepped up his criticism of the bloc. “The EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries, so that governments can better represent their people,” he said in a post on X.
Musk’s comments come as top U.S. government officials have also intensified their opposition to the decision.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the fine an “attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments,” in a post on X on Friday.
“Today’s excessive €120M fine is the result of EU regulatory overreach targeting American innovation,” said Andrew Puzder, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, on X on Saturday.
“The Trump Administration has been clear: we oppose censorship and will challenge burdensome regulations that target US companies abroad. We expect the EU to engage in fair, open, & reciprocal trade — & nothing less.”
Last week, the Commission said breaches included “the deceptive design of its ‘blue checkmark,’ the lack of transparency of its advertising repository, and the failure to provide access to public data for researchers.”
“With the DSA’s first non-compliance decision, we are holding X responsible for undermining users’ rights and evading accountability,” said Henna Virkkunen, executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, at the time.
X now has 60 days to inform the Commission of plans to address the issues with “deceptive” blue checkmarks. It has 90 days to submit a plan to resolve the issues with its ads repository and access to its public data for researchers.
“Failure to comply with the non-compliance decision may lead to periodic penalty payments,” the Commission said in a statement.
X.ai, the company which owns X, and the Commission have been approached for comment. oh
