"One of the things that happened over the last 12 months has been happening for quite a while and we have been monitoring it for quite a while, is the consumption of long form video over-the-top [Internet] and we all have Netflix to thank for this," said Barrios, transcribed by Seeking Alpha. "They have done the spade work of creating the environment and the consumption habit of consumers to watch long form video over-the-top. So this, earlier this year we said where two years ago we didn't think there was enough of that happening to make a network viable over-the-top, we now believe it is viable over-the-top."
"The network for us is taking those ala-carte pay-per-views, bundling them together, using our live range, our production capacity to program around those pay-per-views 24x7 linear as well as a large VOD component," Barrios said. "Home entertainment library, previous pay-per-views, everything our fan is always clamoring about, all in one place. So that most valuable content that today costs $600 or $700 at retail, more linear content and VOD packages at somewhere between $10 and $15, we've done a lot of research.
"If we get to about a million subscriber even with the cannibalization of that pay-per-view business we break even. 2 million to 4 million subscribers, incremental $50 million to $150 million of OIBDA. We've been working at this for a while. We've been working with the MVPDs, the same pitch I just gave you here, let's transform the pay-per-view business together, grow the business for both of us. Quite frankly it's been a bit of a slog, having those discussions but we continue to have them."