From a missing, now-resurrected episode of The ADOTAT Show, featuring Dan Callahan, CRO of Spectrum Reach (now folded into Charter’s latest identity crisis).

We finally unearthed this one from the archives—the “lost tape” of a conversation that hits way harder now that the house is on fire. Back when we recorded it, Spectrum still pretended linear TV was “evolving.” Now, after merging deeper into Charter’s media blob, they’re just hoping not to flatline before the fiscal year ends.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t denial; it’s triage. The world’s largest cable operator is quietly rebranding itself as a streaming-first, AI-assisted, data-powered, adtech-scented “video platform.” That’s corporate code for: the golden goose has gout, and we’re teaching it to code before it dies.

Dan Callahan—smart, sharp, and seasoned—doesn’t sugarcoat it. “TV’s not dead,” he told me, “it’s just alive in a lot more places than it used to be.” That’s the line of a man who’s seen the obituary drafted and still shows up to the funeral in a nice suit.

The media industry keeps selling “cord-cutting” like it’s Woodstock for millennials, a rebellion against Big Cable. That’s nonsense. Nobody “cut” anything. The cord just moved from your wall to your Wi-Fi.

Spectrum didn’t lose viewers—they just migrated. The company quietly stopped distinguishing between cable and streaming because, frankly, why remind people they’re paying for both? Now it’s all just “video.” The bundle never died; it reincarnated as an app with worse UX and a subscription you forgot to cancel.

Here’s the kicker: Spectrum households still average four and a half hours of viewing a day. That’s not a medium on life support. That’s America’s favorite coping mechanism. If you’re still measuring success by “monthly active users,” you’re not in media—you’re in fantasy fiction.

If you want proof that linear’s not entirely compost, look at the Super Bowl. “We’re still the most-watched event in the world,” Dan said, with that mix of pride and pain that comes from selling nostalgia for a living.

He’s right. Sports are the last thread holding the TV economy together—the last communal act where humans still yell at screens at the same time. Everything else—dramas, sitcoms, even prestige streaming—is just on-demand background noise between scrolling sessions.

Advertisers aren’t paying for ratings anymore; they’re paying for a few fleeting seconds of shared consciousness. And that’s worth billions. The NFL is now the high-speed rail keeping ad budgets from completely derailing into TikTok hell.

So yes, linear still has its moments. They’re just measured in touchdowns instead of time slots.

Here’s the thing: when the guy selling both linear and CTV starts talking about “the unified household graph,” you know which side of the boat he’s rowing toward.

“We look at it as one video universe,” Dan said. “The same household might watch live sports on cable and binge a show on the Spectrum app—it’s all part of the same ecosystem.” Translation: linear doesn’t lead anymore. It’s the sidekick in its own movie, lucky to get billing after the credits.

The internal math says it all. “Only-linear” homes are vanishing faster than adtech startups claiming to have solved measurement. The “only-streaming” crowd is booming. And the “both” households—the hybrids—are the only ones that matter. Those homes are where Spectrum can still sell reach, target deterministically, and pretend it’s all one big happy bundle.

Spectrum’s now in the continuity business, not the cable business. Linear’s not the product anymore—it’s the pre-roll.

If you’re still using GRPs to prove value, you’re basically reading entrails. “We’ve moved way past that,” Dan told me. “It’s about deterministic data—proof that your ad reached the right home and drove action.”

This is the quiet revolution: Spectrum has the deterministic data moat everyone else dreams about. They know who pays for broadband, who logs in, who watches, who clicks. And they’re not shy about using it. The future isn’t Nielsen panels—it’s IP addresses and receipts.

But here’s the dark irony: as they evolve into a digital-first data beast, the clock keeps ticking on the core business that built the whole thing. The pipes that delivered CNN now deliver Netflix. The infrastructure survived; the business model didn’t.

And Dan knows it. “It’s not the death of TV,” he said, “it’s the death of one way of watching it.” That’s a man giving a eulogy at his own industry’s funeral—with PowerPoint slides.

Linear isn’t dead, but it’s definitely been written out of the script. Spectrum’s merging, morphing, and rebranding at breakneck speed because they know this is the final act. The play’s not over yet—but the audience already left for YouTube.