Complete Coverage: NYC TV & Video Week
New York – As the fourth-quarter launch date of DirecTV Now nears, AT&T Entertainment Group senior vice president, strategy and business development Tony Goncalves said the over-the-top service won’t be riding the skinny bundle bandwagon like some of its competitors.
DirecTV Now is expected to offer more than 100 channels of live and on demand programming, targeted at younger viewers. But at the Next TV Summit here Wednesday (Oct. 20) during NYC Television & Video Week, Goncalves said while skinny bundles may work for niche offerings, that’s not the case for a broader service like DirecTV Now.
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“In a scaled business, addressing the economic requirement that reach the most customers would require the need to cast a rather wide net,” Goncalves said in the fireside chat with Next TV editor and Multichannel News Technology editor Jeff Baumgartner. “You would need multiple skinny bundles to appeal to enough audience to get a scaled product. Our opinion is much of what is called skinny bundles evolve into something bigger. I’m not sure OTT is the driver of that.”
Goncalves also addressed some pay TV execlutives like Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts, who has said he doesn’t believe there is a business model for OTT.
