The best way to minimize Netflix's (Nasdaq: NFLX) impact on cable and its programming packages is to starve it, Turner Broadcasting Chairman-CEO Phil Kent suggested during a presentation at Citi's 21st Annual Global Entertainment, Media & Telecommunications Conference in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Picking up a standard first hoisted by his boss, Time Warner Chairman-CEO Jeff Bewkes, Kent said that programmers will use their influence with studios and other content providers as an economic garrote to strangle Netflix.
"We tell our suppliers, the studios we buy from: This (Netflix offering top-tiered video content on a subscription video-on-demand basis) is going to have a significant impact on what we'll be willing to pay for programming or even bid at all," Kent said. "I think there's a heightened sense across the industry of the importance of freezing those rights and that's what you see from us in the future."
Kent, instead, praised cable's TV Everywhere initiative that would allow operators to authenticate subscribers before pushing content to them. Turner has a deal with Comcast.
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