Jeff Bewkes: Time Warner Would Consider Bundling HBO With Broadband

Time Warner‘s CEO says he’d be open to helping a broadband-only product from a cable company because it would protect HBO‘s relationship with the biggest source of the premium channel’s customers. “Distributors are competing more,” Jeff Bewkes told investors at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in NYC. A cable-provided broadband arrangement with HBO “will make it an offer you can’t refuse. … We see growth there for HBO in that.” The exec still doesn’t like the idea of offering the premium channel on broadband to people who don’t also deal with a pay TV provider. As many as 10M homes receive Internet service without cable or satellite, he says. “If you take out old people, it’s probably 5M or 6M.” But people in about 70M homes subscribe to pay TV but not HBO. “We’re working more on that.” Bewkes also provided the most vigorous response I’ve heard so far by a programming exec at the confab to questions about whether their price increases might drive the pay TV business off a cliff by making it too expensive for consumers. (more…)