Disney and Comcast Link Up for Another 10 Years

Comcast has re-upped its distribution deal with Disney, which means the country’s largest cable company will continue to pipe programming from ABC, ESPN and other channels into its subscribers’ homes for another 10 years. The deal will also give Comcast customers more ways to watch those shows, including the ability to stream some of the programs live, on the go, on laptops, iPhones and iPads.

• While there are digital goodies and benefits included in the new deal, this is still fundamentally about good old-fashioned TV, just like the 10-year deal that Comcast signed with CBS in 2010: It means Comcast (funded by its customers) will pay Disney an increasingly big chunk of money each year, in exchange for a big bundle of programming.
• That underscores how difficult it will be for would-be Web-only “over the top” services to truly change the TV paradigm: When Disney and the other big-media companies are still able to bundle their channels together in exchange for big guaranteed revenue streams, they don’t have any incentive to break that up and offer “a la carte” programming.