CMCSA
#You know, I think on the video side we've got what I believe is the best product out there in X1.
We continue to add content.
We are getting integrating new content into the platform.
We are getting on more devices so and I think we're just executing better.
So I see room in continued churn reduction, it's been 29 straight months in the video and HSD side and I think there is still opportunity there as we improve the customer experience and continue to develop the product.
And your second question was.
The competitive environment, I mean I think that we're competing well across all markets.
Verizon had the strike this quarter but that's only in 15% of our footprint and the rest of our footprint performed just as well.
So I think we're always in a competitive environment.
Nothing has changed dramatically and we think we're competing very well.
So when you look at all the changes going on in the video spaces I think it's easy to overreact to a change or to predict that a change is going to be more dramatic than it really is.
The fact of the matter is something like 40% of the people in America have Netflix now and the people it's obviously an extremely successful service and people are watching a lot on Netflix.
And whatever Netflix is doing to viewing habits I think a lot of that is already done and it's going to change and the tide will come in and go out, but the fact that <UNK> is putting it on the set-top box is a great idea.
It's very customer focused.
It's going to make Comcast an easier place to view, particularly with X1, easier place to view all the options in video.
And I think it's a very smart strategy for Comcast and I think to the degree the MVPD ecosystem stays strong, that's good for NBCUniversal.
Our relationship with Netflix has never been better.
They are huge purchasers of our content, we talk to them all the time.
So my prediction is it will be quite a good thing for Comcast Cable and it will be a good thing for NBCUniversal.
As <UNK> said, the X1 platform gives us the ability to be an aggregator of aggregators and to incorporate services like Netflix and to give the customer easy access to it, a seamless access.
We had tossed around the decision for a while but really it came down to what's best for the customer as we get very customer experience focused and making sure we had critical mass in X1 so it made a difference.
But concerning the premium packages overall I don't see their role changing dramatically.
I think there needs to be some sort of a relationship or an indexing between retail and wholesale pricing.
But we still think they add great value to the service and we'll continue to work them into the service.
Hey, <UNK>, it's <UNK>.
Just to clarify because you did break up for a part of the question, the first question was about inventory sold in the upfront.
Is that the entirety of it.
I would say the scatter market continues to be extremely strong, as strong as we can remember it being and that's continuing.
We're going into an Olympics period, so who knows what's going to happen there.
But I think the advertising market is very, very strong and some of that is reflected in the upfront.
In terms of volume in the upfront I think we could have sold a lot more than we sold in the upfront.
We sold about 10% more volume on the broadcast side, about 5% overall.
We turned away a lot of volume, we're working on mix on the cable side to try to get higher, more profitable advertising into our mix in some of our cable channels.
But there was plenty of volume.
And we could have sold more if we wanted to.
The percentage sold as a percent of the total is roughly comparable to previous years, so we still have depending on the network 20%, 25% of the volume available for a strong scatter market.
And concerning political, we see a good opportunity in the fourth quarter as we have seen in the past, so we think there is room there.
And concerning YES, we had very detailed viewership data where we assumed that if we took it off the air there would be a certain amount of lost subscribers and our assumptions were much higher than the actual case turned out to be, if we had lost many fewer subscribers than we anticipated.
So I think at the end of the day great programming there will always be a price for.
And we will go in well informed to our conversations and look for value add to the consumer and value add between the programmers and distributors.
Thank you, <UNK>.
Regina, make this the last question, please.
Concerning the Q4 OTT products, as <UNK> said earlier we haven't seen an OTT model that really is very profitable for us.
And we think that bundling our products and having business services and operating the bundle is still the best value.
And concerning single play and broadband we do market that.
We think there is going to continue to be streaming services and OTT services that come through and broadband will continue to grow as we continue to invest in the network and the WiFi capabilities.
In terms of programming costs, so for the full year we still expect to be up about 10% for the full year.
Year over year we were about 9.4% for the year to date when you adjust out the deflation caused by the fight.
And that's on the back of the contract renewals that we had at the beginning of the year and we will have in the second half and some of that will carry over to next year as well.
Well, first half of the year on overall margin we were down 40 basis points to 40.3% versus 40.6% last year.
And as we said at the beginning of the year it will be flat to down 50 basis points.
And not going to tune up the second half of the year but all the trends are as described so we will be in that range.
Okay, thank you, <UNK>.
And thank you everyone for joining us today.
Regina, back to you.
