Topic: TV
Apple looking to buy TV shows and studios – Business Insider (Mar 3, 2017)
There’s not much in this report to suggest that Apple is actually interested in buying a studio, and indeed Imagine strongly refuted reports to that effect recently after those reports surfaced. Reports that Apple wants to acquire TV shows, on the other hand, are a lot more plausible – it’s already bought or commissioned a couple for Apple Music, and I could see it doing more of this, especially if it’s finally getting serious about building its own subscription TV service. The comments in here about the confusion over who’s leading the negotiations are a bit more worrying – if they’re true. Eddy Cue obviously does oversee the overall effort here as head of Apple’s content business, but he might well delegate some of the actual negotiations to other team members, and Jimmy Iovine in particular is known to have good relationships in the content industry. Recent reports about the change of leadership over Apple TV hardware suggested that Pete Distad was going to be taking the lead on these negotiations, and his name isn’t even mentioned, so there do seem to be a lot of people involved here. Hopefully Apple is clearer on this than some of those it’s approached seem to be.
via Business Insider
Roku Got Close to $400 Million Revenue in 2016 – Variety (Feb 28, 2017)
Roku has to be pretty much unique as a small standalone player which nonetheless dominates a market in which major ecosystem players also compete. Taking 48% share (per Nielsen) against a combination of Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sony, and others is quite the achievement, and it’s especially remarkable given that Roku really doesn’t have any unique features or much unique content at this point. That’s the power of being an early player and one of the most open ones in a market where some of the big ecosystem players have been later to the game and/or offered more closed systems. I’m not sure how sustainable this position will be over the longer term, and that’s why Roku has already begun pivoting to the smart TV licensing model as an alternative to the standalone set top box.
via Variety (press release here)
YouTube Bets It Can Convince Youngs to Pay for TV – Bloomberg (Feb 28, 2017)
It looks like Bloomberg got a pre-brief on the YouTube TV announcement this afternoon, and has posted its article just as YouTube’s event gets underway. The service is called YouTube TV, it’s $35 per month, and the headline is that it includes all four major broadcast networks, but not several big cable networks (no Viacom, Discovery, AMC, A&E, or Turner networks including CNN, TBS, and TNT). From what I’m seeing on Twitter as the event unfolds, it looks like the service will only launch in local markets where the broadcasters have affiliates, which means people like me (I live in Utah) are out of luck. As I predicted a couple of years ago in the context of a potential Apple TV service, local and sports are the big challenges, and YouTube hasn’t really cracked this on a national basis yet. The US TV market continues to be incredibly resistant to real disruption – every over the top streaming alternative to traditional pay TV is handicapped in at least one way, and often several. YouTube TV will offer cloud-based DVR as a differentiator, but the missing cable networks are a big downer. This is basically a four-way deal with the big broadcasters and their cable affiliates, but it means if you want any of the other networks you’re still going to have to buy Sling, DirecTV Now, Sony Playstation Vue, or whatever else comes down the pike later this year. There’s a certain irony to the fact that, though these services are nominally disruptive, they actually offer even less choice individually in many cases than the pay TV services they’re aiming to replace. These companies are each so determined to reach a $35 price point that they’re making decisions on behalf of customers about what should be included, and in all cases they’re excluding some channels a lot of consumers are going to want. We’re still a long way from being able to choose a bundle of channels that makes sense to us, rather than having to buy a bundle someone else configured for business reasons.
via Bloomberg
Facebook is starting to put ads in the middle of its videos – Recode (Feb 23, 2017)
This was reported as being on the way back in January, but now it’s official and expanding. That means Facebook is finally going to start trying to make some real money from all the video it’s been trying to get natively onto its platform, hopefully justifying all the effort it’s put into its video push over the last couple of years. For users, of course, that means you’re going to start seeing ads in yet more places on Facebook, though only on longer videos (ads can’t run until the 20 second mark on recorded videos or the 4 minute mark on live videos). Given that the vast majority of videos I see on Facebook are under a minute, I don’t imagine I’m going to be seeing that many. But that’s also why Facebook has been tweaking its algorithm to help promote longer videos. And of course all these ads can potentially go into the videos Facebook will show on its TV app.
via Recode
Apple Vowed to Revolutionize Television. An Inside Look at Why It Hasn’t – Bloomberg (Feb 16, 2017)
I think the shorter version of this story is that Apple hasn’t been able to revolutionize TV because the traditional TV industry isn’t willing to let it, at least not yet. More than in any other industry, the traditional players still hold pretty much all the cards when it comes to future services from a licensing and content perspective, and until that starts to break down, no outside player is going to make a meaningful difference. That means we’ll continue to have a mosaic of partial replacements for pay TV, mimicking some of the features and content but not others, and leaving users to pull it all together in custom bundles. Apple is part of that aggregation layer today, but doesn’t really play anywhere else – the Apple TV box and the TV app are partial solutions for the fragmentation problem, but are incomplete – you still can’t watch a full slate of traditional pay TV on your Apple TV, and the TV app excludes Netflix among other content providers. Both the box and the app are still useful, but they’re not revolutionary, and the intransigence of the old guard is the single biggest reason. In music, Apple was able to get the labels on board because they were panicking about Napster and file sharing, but the TV industry isn’t yet at that crisis point. In the next couple of years they’ll get there, but in the meantime Apple either has to continue to tinker around the edges or do something that looks less like a pay TV replacement and more like something different, a la Netflix.
via Bloomberg
No ‘Daily Show’ on Hulu: Viacom-Hulu Licensing Pact Expires – Variety (Feb 15, 2017)
Further evidence here that if tech is to disrupt TV, it’s often going to do it without the support of the traditional TV industry, which is in some cases starting to pull back its content to its own platforms while leaving others like Hulu out in the cold. Viacom’s new CEO said on its recent earnings call that the company would be pulling back from SVOD services, and this is the first sign that he meant what he said. This is also the single biggest reason for SVOD providers to invest in a big way in original content which can’t be yanked away due to skittishness on the part of content providers. Hulu is a unique animal in this space, with several of its its owners among its biggest content providers, but it’s still vulnerable to this kind of thing, and the other big streamers even more so.
via Variety
Amazon just shared new numbers that give a clue about how many Prime members it has – Business Insider (Feb 15, 2017)
I had missed this earlier in the week, but we got some juicy new numbers from Amazon as part of its 10-K filing, and they’re quite illuminating when it comes to Prime. This article specifically talks about Prime subscriber numbers, but the same underlying figures from the 10-K can also be used to derive some other interesting conclusions about Prime revenues and so on. I put together an in-depth blog post just now on all this, which you might want to check out too (my subscriber numbers are a little different from Morgan Stanley’s).
via Business Insider
Caavo’s $400 streaming box unites Amazon, Apple, and everything else into one TV interface – The Verge (Feb 14, 2017)
This feels like an absurdly large, heavy, and expensive (albeit attractive) box for simply switching inputs on your TV. That’s a shame because the device has a great pedigree, but this is just inserting yet another box between all your various boxes on the TV. This Variety piece actually does a better job of explaining the user interface than the Verge one, but it still doesn’t sound like nearly enough to justify the price and size here. The problem here is we’re still trying to solve this problem in the same way – by pulling together multiple inputs rather than creating a single input that does everything you want natively. That’s still a long-term hope rather than a proximate reality at this point, but several boxes are getting closer and I think we’ll see more progress this year.
via The Verge
Facebook is launching an app for Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV – Recode (Feb 14, 2017)
More news out of Recode’s Code Media conference today (after Apple’s last night). This one was actually reported by the Wall Street Journal a little while ago and I commented on it then. I’m still a little skeptical about this, but there weren’t many more details in the announcement, and so we’ll have to see what the app actually looks like and how it works – I do think there’s potential for Facebook to use some of its clever technology to present people with a better feed of relevant video, but I think that’s some way off still. Also worth noting: Facebook will have apps for Amazon and Apple TV boxes as well as Samsung smart TVs, but not for Android TV. And of course Twitter already has a TV app, mostly useful for its live video, though there as here the big questions remains whether the companies can actually sell enough ads around this video to make the effort worthwhile.
via Recode
Apple Debuts Planet of the Apps Trailer – Recode (Feb 14, 2017)
Apple debuted the trailers for its Planet of the Apps and Carpool Karaoke shows at the Code Media conference last night. These are two of Apple’s first bits of original video content, both of which will debut as part of Apple Music. Carpool Karaoke still features James Corden on some episodes, but not all, which will detract at least somewhat from the original format, which is compelling in large part because of him. Planet of the Apps is a Shark Tank-style reality / competition show focused on apps. This clearly plays to Apple’s strengths, and gives potential competitors a big draw in the form of featured placement on the App Store. This isn’t my kind of thing – I’ve never been a big fan of reality shows – but Shark Tank is very popular, and Apple’s show mirrors its format pretty closely, so it should do well among the same people that like that show. In addition to music exclusives, these bits of video content are another unique feature of Apple Music, which should help set it apart versus the competition. But to my mind, it’s more interesting to see this as an ongoing push by Apple into original content, which for now may live in Apple Music but certainly has the potential to become the foundation of an Apple subscription video service in future, which could be a much bigger deal.
via Recode (Planet of the Apps trailer here)
YouTube Orders First Original Kids’ Programming for Red Subscription Service – Variety (Feb 13, 2017)
YouTube has some original content for adults already, almost all of it tied to YouTube creators in one way or another, but it’s now extending that investment into kids’ programming to go with its YouTube Kids app. Again, several of the shows feature YouTube personalities, so it’s leveraging its access to content as well as giving creators yet another reason to stick with it rather than switching focus to, say, Facebook. The YouTube Kids app has been a bit of a mixed bag so far – at a time when several big traditional kids’ programmers eschew advertising, it’s shown ads (unless the viewer has a YouTube Red subscription), for example. But this is an interesting next step.
via Variety
Jeff Bezos wants Amazon to be the next HBO, Showtime – New York Post (Feb 13, 2017)
This feels like a totally logical next step for Amazon, which already has lots of both episodic and feature length content, and has been selling other companies’ premium channels for a while now. It’s presumably learning a lot from selling Showtime and the like, and has seen an opportunity to add yet another layer of subscription revenue to the base Prime membership. One big question, of course, is how it will divvy up its original and acquired content between the existing Prime service and this premium tier – any exclusivity around the paid channel dilutes the value of the base subscription, which Amazon wouldn’t want to do. It’s possible that this will be an offering primarily aimed at non-Prime subscribers, or part of its video-only version.
via New York Post
What’s different about Snapchat’s next new original series – Mashable (Feb 10, 2017)
Yet more ammo for the “Snapchat is TV” crowd, though that feels more and more literal all the time, since Snapchat’s content is more and more actual TV content from actual TV companies, as with A&E in this case. What’s unique here is that the show is both unscripted and not based on an existing show – i.e. it’s original content for Snapchat, though importantly not original content by Snapchat a la Netflix/Amazon/HBO. Snapchat did spend $13.3 million more in 2016 than 2015 on content creation, but in reality that’s about collaborating with existing providers on content rather than creating its own. For now, Snapchat remains a great way for existing TV brands to reconnect with the large portion of its target audience which has abandoned traditional TV.
via Mashable
Apple Hires Amazon’s Fire TV Head to Run Apple TV Business – Bloomberg (Feb 7, 2017)
Two things worth noting here: firstly, this is one of a relatively small number of senior hires at Apple in recent months amid what has seemed like a larger number of departures from the upper echelons there (including one earlier today). In and of itself, the numbers don’t mean much – Apple is a massive company and many of those poaching its employees are smaller (notably Tesla) such that the balance will always be lopsided in favor of the smaller companies, where promotion opportunities will also be greater. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, this hire itself is into a hardware product role, but it frees up the guy who had been running the Apple TV product to focus on content negotiations, which is arguably where Apple really needs to be putting its investment right now. I continue to maintain that this is the year when Apple finally launches its own subscription video service – the pieces are in place with the Apple TV and the TV app it launched last fall, and the market is getting to a tipping point where an over-the-top pay TV alternative is both more feasible and more needed than ever. This move will hopefully help move Apple along in its pursuit of that goal.
via Bloomberg
‘Planet Earth II’ Snapchat Show Will Promote BBC TV Series – Variety (Feb 6, 2017)
More evidence that Snapchat is TV for millennials? (As Ben Thompson, Kerry Flynn at Mashable, and today Christopher Mims at the WSJ this morning have each suggested.) Perhaps more interestingly, though Snapchat has been described as trying to win over TV advertising dollars, this is actually a promotion of sorts for a traditional TV show itself, with shorter-form, vertically-oriented videos on Snapchat as a sort of taster. There will actually be ads within this video as well, so this isn’t advertising per se, though its goal is clearly to drive viewership on BBC America here in the US. As with its Google relationship, Snap’s relationship with TV is likely to be complicated, as it both seeks to steal ad dollars from TV while also taking ad dollars (and content) from the TV industry. At any rate, if you haven’t seen Planet Earth II yet, I highly recommend tuning in when it airs – it’s fantastic.
via Variety
Comcast Is About to Sell You Cable TV Without the Cable Box – Bloomberg (Jan 31, 2017)
This announcement was very well timed given the apparent death of FCC set top box reform reported earlier today. Comcast has argued all along that market forces will bring the choice in set top boxes consumers want, and this announcement is a useful token of that vision. It’s limited – it’s Roku only for now, and customers still have to have an old-style STB in the home as well until later this year. It also appears customers will still have to pay something for the privilege of using a box they own rather than one of Comcast’s. This is progress of a sort, but very much the kind of progress the cable companies are willing to go along with – with control, fees, and more still in place to some extent. The more interesting question is whether Comcast might use this experiment as the basis for a broader rollout of over-the-top Xfinity TV services outside its footprint – that would be far more disruptive.
via Bloomberg
Facebook Tunes Into Television’s Market – WSJ (Jan 31, 2017)
Facebook’s quest to find new places to put ads continues. It’s far from clear what this Apple TV app will actually look like yet – whether a simple feed of all the videos from the user’s News Feed, or something more. Making the jump to TV from mobile is really tough – Facebook on a smartphone neatly fills all those moments during the day between things: waiting for a bus, killing time during a commercial, and so on. I’m not convinced it can make the transition from the thing you do while watching TV to watching TV itself. It’s another one of those cases where the reasons why Facebook would do it are obvious, but the reasons for people to actually use it are far less so.
via WSJ
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Scraps Set-Top Proposal – Variety (Jan 31, 2017)
This was inevitable – the STB proposal was one of two issues, along with net neutrality, which the incoming chair of the FCC was expected to dump as he took the helm. And along with net neutrality, these were popular issues championed by consumer rights groups and some big consumer technology companies. However, it’s also true that the impact of ditching these policy issues may not be as widespread as feared – I wrote a piece last week about the real likely impact of net neutrality rules being dismantled, and I’ve always been skeptical that the STB reforms proposed would actually bring about meaningful change in the industry. Previous attempts (see CableCard) had failed, and it wasn’t clear to me that the new approaches would be more user friendly or likely to deliver greater openness around the boxes we get to use to watch TV. Realistically, positive change in the TV market is more likely to come from increasing competitive pressure leading to concessions by major legacy players to the new world order (though we’re not there yet) – and now that the FCC has dropped STB reform that’s the only kind of progress we’ll see regardless.
via Variety
Verizon grows its strong customer base profitably in 4Q – Verizon (Jan 24, 2017)
Verizon puts a brave spin on its results in its headline, but there’s a lot of detail beneath the headline which isn’t quite so positive. Having started the transition to device installment plans in wireless later than its peers, it’s still seeing declining service revenues and now expects to see that trend continue into 2018 rather than 2017 as previously forecast. Its postpaid phone net adds continue to be well down over last year’s Q4 results, and adds over 2016 as a whole were pretty anemic. Tablets are another drag on the company’s overall results as it continues to see customers who bought cheap tablets two years ago turn off their service as they exit their contractual lockups. On the wireline side, penetration of Fios TV continues to fall each quarter, while Fios broadband penetration holds up a little better. Verizon continues to be the largest carrier in the US, and a very profitable one, but as smaller competitors become more aggressive on price, there are questions about whether Verizon can maintain its margins and grow at the same time – recent evidence suggests that’ll be tough.
via Verizon
AT&T’s Streaming Service DirecTV Now Peaking At 35,000 Simultaneous Users – StreamingMediaBlog.com (Jan 20, 2017)
Update: AT&T has now released official numbers, with over 200k paying users. So it appears Dan’s estimates were a little short. Though given that AT&T offered a free Apple TV for those who committed to three months of service, it’s possible some of those users aren’t active and will churn shortly.
Dan’s very good at what he does, so I have no reason to doubt that he’s in the right ballpark here, and these numbers are interesting in their own right. What’s even more interesting is how poorly this service has performed, and how unapologetic AT&T has been about it. I met with Enrique Rodriguez, the CTO for AT&T’s Entertainment Group, at CES, and although he acknowledged there were issues, he downplayed them. I have had better luck than some with the service once the first few days were over, but many people are still clearly having lots of issues, which is just baffling for something AT&T talked up so much ahead of time. Moreover, the platform AT&T is using for DirecTV Now is the same one it plans to use for Sunday Ticket online, its TV Everywhere services, and more going forward. I’d hope things start to change quickly here, because the way things are going right now this doesn’t look pretty.
via AT&T’s Streaming Service DirecTV Now Peaking At 35,000 Simultaneous Users – StreamingMediaBlog.com