TIME WARNER’S BEWKES NOT WORRIED ABOUT CORD CUTTING

Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes can’t imagine the day that cord cutting will become any sort of threat to cable companies. Speaking at a media conference in New York on Wednesday Bewkes seemed to suggest that the term was misleading since the same “cords” that bring television channels into the home are the same ones that bring the Internet into the home. If satellite and cable companies see subscribers canceling their TV packages and increasing their Internet usage, he said, the providers would, in response, simply begin charging their heavy users more. [A PriceWaterhouseCoopers study released on Wednesday concluded that cord-cutting concerns in the industry may be exaggerated, noting that many cable and satellite customers already subscribe to broadband services in addition to their television packages.] On the other hand, Bewkes seemed to surprise his listeners by remarking that he would be open to allowing Time Warner’s HBO GO service to be made available via broadband to cable and satellite subscribers who do not currently subscribe to the premium service. “If a way to get them is through a broadband offering, our distributors would be properly interested in that,” he said.