Narrative: Disrupting TV
Each narrative page (like this) has a page describing and evaluating the narrative, followed by all the posts on the site tagged with that narrative. Scroll down beyond the introduction to see the posts.
★ Twitter Announces a Dozen New Video Deals (May 1, 2017)
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★ Comcast Reports Slight TV Sub Growth, 1m Home Automation Customers (Apr 27, 2017)
Comcast reported Q1 2017 results this morning, and in keeping with past trends, the numbers were generally good. It saw another rise in TV subscribers as the cable companies continue to take share from the telcos, despite the overall trend of cord cutting, and it also saw strong growth in broadband subscribers, which now significantly outnumber its TV subs. Interestingly, it also began placing more emphasis on its home automation and security business this quarter, and reported that it has almost a million subscribers, or around 4% of its broadband base. The big theme that’s emerging from this quarter’s earnings reports from these providers is bundling – Comcast continues to see the percentage of customers taking more than one product rise over time (it’s now reached 71%), while AT&T suffered precisely because it can’t offer broadband/TV bundles to DirecTV customers. The wireless-TV bundles it can offer aren’t the ones consumers are looking for, which makes Comcast’s push into wireless somewhat questionable too. At NBCU, we’re seeing many of the same trends we’ve seen before too – subscriber numbers and viewing are down, but contractual rate increases with MVPDs are driving revenue growth anyway (of course those rate increases are rising costs on the cable side). Ad revenue was down in the cable networks business but up slightly in the broadcast business despite lower ratings because prices have been rising, though my analysis across the TV industry suggests the rate of price increases is slowing dramatically. Comcast continues to be a powerhouse across the categories where it competes (which also includes movies through Universal) but it’s facing some significant headwinds in the form of cord cutting, ratings declines, and rising content costs, which are going to take an increasing toll over the long term.
Note: you can see all my earnings posts or all Q1 2017 earnings posts specifically by clicking on the relevant tags below.
via Comcast
ESPN Lays Off 100 On-Air Personalities (Apr 26, 2017)
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YouTube Kids Now Has 8 Million Weekly Viewers, Will Expand to Smart TVs (Apr 26, 2017)
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Facebook is Now Paying Companies to Produce Non-Live Video (Apr 22, 2017)
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Apple Acquires First Movie at Tribeca Film Festival (Apr 20, 2017)
This didn’t get a ton of attention, but it’s symbolically important. Apple has so far mostly commissioned content rather than acquiring existing content, while existing online streaming companies Netflix and Amazon have been bidding up prices for movies at festivals for several years now. But Apple has now acquired its first festival film, a documentary about the live of Clive Davis, a music executive. As such, even though the format and origin of the content is different, the subject matter of music is very much the same as Apple’s other original content, suggesting that it still sees Apple Music as the home for this stuff. But Apple is also testing out different models for original content, which will stand it in good stead if (when) it eventually decides to launch its own video streaming service.
via Variety
NBC Lines Up Affiliates for Streaming Distribution Deals (Apr 13, 2017)
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TV Channel Owners Consider Offering a Bundle for Non-Sports Fans (Apr 13, 2017)
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Roku TVs now know what you’re watching, will suggest related shows – TechCrunch (Apr 11, 2017)
This is another example of Roku’s inevitable move into gathering more data from its devices and using those to both serve up recommendations and potentially help target advertising. Last week, I covered a piece about Roku offering to target specific demographics among its user base, and this week Roku says it’s going to track the video its users watch through the inputs to its smart TVs and offer up recommendations. Presumably, it’ll also use that data to help build profiles on users for those ad offerings. Though this article suggests it will only use this technology to track what users are watching through inputs, it can of course already see what users are watching through its smart TV interface already, so users shouldn’t assume that that activity won’t be tracked too (and likely already has been for some time). As we’ve already seen with Vizio, this kind of tracking is often non-transparent to users, as is the ability to opt out, so Roku is going down a somewhat risky path here, and one which will likely set it apart from Apple, which uses any tracking exclusively for recommendations and not for advertising purposes (Amazon’s stance here is less clear as it builds up its ad business).
via TechCrunch
Comcast Is Planning a Netflix Rival Using NBC Shows – Bloomberg (Apr 10, 2017)
I wrote a piece last week for Techpinions about the fragmentation in the TV market as everyone launches their own streaming services, and here comes yet another example of that. It sounds like Comcast is working on a service that would combine content from NBC and the NBCU cable networks into a single subscription package, although the conditions on the Comcast-NBCU merger make it unlikely that it will debut in the next 18 months or so. But we’ve already seen the premium cable networks (HBO, Starz, and Showtime) go over-the-top, along with broadcaster CBS and NBC itself with a comedy subscription service called Seeso. As cord cutting and cord shaving eat into cable network subscriber numbers, we’re going to see lots more of this direct-to-consumer stuff. In principle, that sounds great for consumers, who will now be able to pick and choose just the content they want, but in practice they’re likely to end up spending more and dealing with multiple bills, user interfaces, and content models to get it, which is in turn going to lead to an opportunity for re-aggregation down the road.
via Bloomberg