Steven Cahall: You covered most of the yes, you ever consider like a spin out, but I think you kind of covered that in the last business
Operator: The next question is coming from Barton Crocket from Rosenblatt.
Barton Crocket: Okay. I was interested in your thoughts about an event that’s been put out there or the group, which is [indiscernible] saying that you expect at some point the ESPN will go direct to consumer, maybe in some type of partnership I’m just wondering, Chris, for your thoughts about what that means for the Pay TV ecosystem. Do you think others would respond? Do you think this accelerates subscriber erosion or not? And is there anything that Sinclair to do to prepare for that?
Chris Ripley: Well, when you take a look at what’s on ESPN Plus right now, I mean, ESPN is pretty much already there. very little that is not on SAMs that is on ESPN. And when you think about what’s happened over the last 5 years, to me, this is just one of the last Domino’s certainly not the first is essentially exclusivity has gone away. When you’re — if you’re a consumer, there may be some inconvenience to it all, but you can access any content on the pay TV bundle in a myriad of ways. And that’s just really the outcropping of what’s happened in the industry over the last 5 years with the advent of SVOD streaming et cetera. And so what does that mean for the industry? Well, it means that the pay TV bundle, which is discounted and a large wholesale content bundling when you break down the cost to the consumer is less on a per program per channel basis than anywhere else.
And so what it’s going to come down to at the end of the day since exclusivity really does not exist in the industry anymore is what’s the value proposition to the consumer. And Pay TV is now competing on a value proposition basis with all the other sources, mainly the SVODs out there. And it is, I think, significant that there’s a shift of major shifts going on in the industry away from subscriber growth and towards profitability for all the major SVOD players. I think Pay TV got disproportionately hurt when there was a dive for subscribers. And essentially, these other services were underpriced massively enterprise. And you’re seeing now with the advent of advertising, not having the ability to share passwords, price increases, you name it, the relative pricing of the SVOD alternatives is going up rapidly, which means that the value proposition of buying a large wholesale discounted bundle like pay TV is becoming more attractive on a relative basis as the industry becomes more rational.
So that’s what I see from a bigger picture perspective. And really, just one player within the market, taking some of the programming and making them more direct-to-consumer is not all that impactful, but it really is what’s happened over the last 5 years. And — what’s more important to me is that the marketplace is turning rational and focusing on profits and not underpricing its product. The other thing to look at is the local sports teams. You just recently saw gray do a deal with the Phoenix Suns — we’ve done a deal with the Utah Jazz — and when you think about sports, you should be thinking about how the local viewership typically dwarfs national sporting events, except for the major events like the Super Bowl. So we would be carrying 70 games at the Utah Jazz, there’s kind of what was old is new again and the return of local sports teams to broadcasting which builds our value to the MVPDs in a strong way.
So not only will we have the local news, but broadcasters will be returning with local sports teams as well.
Barton Crocket: Okay. That’s great. I appreciate the insightful comment. There’s one other thing I wanted to ask about, which is political. So I think many of us have been reading in the news that some of the fundraising totals for perhaps Trump and others are coming up a little shorter than it appeared earlier. Yet your commentary about political still seems very kind of optimistic. How do you kind of reconcile what we’re reading about fundraising and maybe running away with the Republican nomination? — and you’re kind of constructive view of political at this early juncture.
Chris Ripley: It won’t be just the individual seat raises, and we are in the majority of the contested states that were type races in 2020, but you’re seeing an abundance of issue advertising as well. So it’s not just a candidate but issue as well that keeps us bullish on where the political outlook will be in 2024. Speaker 2 55:15 Is, we also think there’s a lot of money sitting on the sidelines as the current — the Republican primary looks sort of uncompetitive at this point. which could be affecting fundraising. But as things change, they always do is if you get down to the stretch here, and we think you’ll see fundraising start to raise later in the season.
Operator: The next question is coming from David Karnovsky from JPMorgan.
