Cable TV is dying — and can still be a very good business.

Aug 07, 2026 12:27 AM - 1 hour ago 3

Peter Kafka

By Peter Kafka Chief Correspondent covering media and technology

What do you do if you're a large media institution that owns a bunch of cablegram TV networks?

In galore cases, you effort to get free of them. Just this week, Disney dumped its half-ownership of A&E and different networks for $1.2 billion,

Versant CEO Mark Lazarus doesn't person that option: The bulk of his institution is a postulation of cablegram networks, spun retired of Comcast earlier this year. Has to tally them, not waste them.

So Lazarus has to do 3 things astatine once: Manage his declining cablegram business, usage the rate it still generates to build caller businesses for a post-cable era, and constitute checks to shareholders to support them willing while he does it.

We sewage a advancement study Thursday, and it highlights some the situation and imaginable upside of what Lazarus is doing.

Start pinch the aged TV business: It is declining, arsenic expected. Versant's distribution gross fell 6.3% from a twelvemonth ago, mostly because it has less cablegram subscribers. Advertising is besides down, but conscionable barely, successful ample portion because individual cablegram Versant channels, for illustration CNBC and MS NOW, are still attracting eyeballs. And the institution raised its full-year gross and profit forecasts.

That matters because Lazarus doesn't request cablegram to commencement increasing again. He needs its diminution to beryllium gradual capable that the institution tin support extracting rate from it.

Meanwhile, Versant's non-cable TV businesses are growing. If you portion retired the capacity of SportsEngine, a younker sports business the institution sold earlier this year, its "platforms" business — which includes Fandango, the movie ticketing company, and GolfNow, which sells tee times — grew 9.3%. It is besides building up integer subscription businesses that necktie into its TV properties, for illustration an MS NOW work launching this fall.

Even successful the best-case scenario, nary of that is going to switch the diminution successful Versant's halfway business successful the adjacent future. But it is simply a motion of wherever the institution wants to go.

And successful the very near-term, Versant has different scheme to support investors happy: Hand them cash.

The institution says it will dress up to $1.2 cardinal successful free rate travel this year, which gives it the expertise to salary quarterly dividends, and to bargain backmost stock: Versant had already bought backmost $100 cardinal worthy of its shares this spring, and connected Thursday, it told Wall Street it would bargain backmost different $100 million.

Which is the astir apt logic Versant banal changeable up astir 10% aft the company's announcement Thursday morning. Investors whitethorn judge that MS NOW has plentifulness of life near successful it, aliases that Fandango tin use from Hollywood's kind-of revival. But they tin besides use from the existent business, moreover if it has a sell-by date.

That's the entreaty of Versant's pitch: Lazarus doesn't person to person investors that he tin make cablegram turn again, aliases that he has already built its replacement. But he does person to show that the aged business tin support producing cash. And that investors tin get their hands connected immoderate of it, nary matter what happens successful the agelong term.