Cable is the “core” of ESPN’s businesses even as it...
Cable is the “core” of ESPN’s businesses even as it expands into other areas of media distribution, its president, John Skipper, told C-SPAN’s The Communicators in an episode to be telecast Saturday. The interview was recorded at last month’s Cable…
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Show in Boston. “We'll always remember that’s what has got us here,” he said. “There’s no doubt that’s the core of our business.” And the affiliate fees ESPN receives from pay-TV distributors are the most important revenue stream at ESPN, he said. Its new products such as authenticated online viewing applications WatchESPN “prolongs and expands that relationship” with distributors, he said. Discussing Dish’s “Hopper” DVR service that lets viewers easily skip TV ads, Skipper said he’s not very concerned about that hurting ESPN because so much of its audience watches live. “From a Walt Disney Company perspective, where on the ABC network you can’t produce those shows without the revenue from advertising, yes it concerns us,” he said. “But from an ESPN point of view … 99.4 percent of our viewing is live, so the Hopper is fairly inconsequential to ESPN.”