TV must push back against Apple and Netflix, says Discovery boss

The chief executive of Discovery, the television arm of John Malone’s global media and telecoms empire, has called on the industry to push back against erosion of its power by Apple, Amazon and Netflix.

David Zaslav, who was America’s best-paid chief executive last year with a total package worth more than $156m, said broadcasters and producers should resist pressure to serve up programming piecemeal to the benefit of technology giants.

He told senior executives from the BBC, ITV and Sky, among others: “Apple is a fantastic company and there’s probably nobody better at building the right consumer interface. Netflix and Amazon and all the device opportunity, all these things are great.

“But the thing we’ve got to remember is every one of these things, and I don’t mean to be pejorative, it’s just a device.

“No matter how beautiful, whatever colour it is or how you spin it, or how you make it come up [on screen], ultimately it’s just a pipe and a device.

“Where’s Netflix without our great content? How many iPhones would you buy if all of our stuff wasn’t on there?”

He argued that the tendency for streaming services to want to strip away channel branding to offer programmes individually as part of vast libraries was bad for viewers because “6,000 choices equals zero”.

Mr Zaslav said at the Royal Television Society Conference in Cambridge: “If there were no anti-trust laws we’d all get together and say no, no, no, here’s how you’re going to offer it.

“And by the way, the reason we’d say that is not because we’re biased and we want to go with an old model, it’s because content needs to be curated.”

Discovery has expanded rapidly outside America in recent years to became a major global player. Last year it acquired the sports broadcaster Eurosport and this year swooped for rights to the 2020 Olympics, as part of a strategy to shift towards sport, as well as children’s programming.

The company, which is focused on basic pay-TV and free-to-air broadcasting, was in the running to acquire Channel 5 but lost out to Viacom.

Mr Zaslav stoked speculation that it could emerge as a bidder for ITV or even a privatised Channel 4.

He said: As assets become available we’re always looking at them. We have a lot of synergy, a lot of content but I would say for us right now we would say we can have double-digit growth internationally with the hand that we have.”

Asked specifically about ITV he added: “The question for us is 'does this help us strategically, is this important content for the future and can we grow faster'?

“That’s how we look at every asset. We do expect to be deploying more capital for acquisitions in the years ahead and if there was a channel available in the UK - this is a fantastic market, one of the best in the world and we have loads of infrastructure here - we would probably look.”

Mr Malone’s European cable operator, Liberty Global, which owns Virgin Media in the UK, already controls almost 10pc of ITV after what it has said were “opportunistic” stake acquisitions.

Industry speculation about a potential US takeover of ITV is rising, with NBC also in the frame. Britain’s biggest free-to-air broadcaster has risen to a market capitalisation of nearly £10bn, although has fallen back from an all-time high in July amid a major sell-off of media stocks on Wall Street.