VideoNuze Posts

Philo has officially launched as a $16 per month entertainment-only skinny bundle targeted to viewers who don’t care about sports. The company has also raised $25 million from Discovery, Viacom, Scripps, A+E Networks and AMC, which are represented among the 37 TV networks included in Philo’s base tier. Another 9 TV networks are available for an additional $4 per month.

Philo’s primary value proposition is that it frees non-sports fans from paying the exorbitant costs of sports programming that are embedded in the typical monthly pay-TV bill. A while back I estimated that at least $2 billion per year flows from non-sports fans to sports-oriented TV networks as an annual subsidy for networks that are rarely, if ever viewed. These billions in turn fund massive player salaries and support team valuations. The wastefulness of tens of millions of non-sports fans paying for programming they don’t care about is the single most inefficient aspect of the TV industry’s current structure.

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Today’s the last day for early bird discounted tickets for the SHIFT // 2017 Programmatic Video & TV Advertising Summit on Wednesday, November 29th in NYC. Early bird registration saves you $100 and also doubles your chances* of winning 1 of 3 Roku Ultra 4K players, generously provided by Roku. Additional discounts are available on 5-packs and 10-packs. And, startups and students can register for the reduced $245 ticket (contact me for the code).

SHIFT is going to be a jam-packed day of learning and networking with 30+ industry executives on a dozen different sessions. Attendees will hear from companies leading the charge into programmatic video and TV including 4C Insights, A+E Networks, Amplifi, Beachfront Media, Bloomberg Media Group, Brightcove, Cedato, Cross MediaWorks, eMarketer, FreeWheel, Fox Networks Group, IAB, IBM Watson, MediaLink, Prohaska Consulting, Publicis, Roku, SintecMedia, SpotX, Time, Inc., Turner Ad Sales, Vemba, VertaMedia, Vevo, Viacom, Videology and others.

Our amazing keynoters are Mike Rosen, EVP, Portfolio Sales and Strategy, NBCUniversal and Jon Stimmel, Chief Investment Officer, Universal McCann,

I hope you’ll join us for this must-attend day of learning and networking!

Learn more and register now!

(* Early bird registrants get 2 entries each for the Roku Ultra drawings.)

I’m pleased to present the 395th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. Many thanks to Brightcove, this week’s podcast sponsor. Brightcove will be presenting insights on server-side ad insertion at our SHIFT Programmatic conference on Nov. 29th.

The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division has reportedly put 2 unpalatable options in front of AT&T to gain approval for its proposed acquisition of Time Warner: divest Turner (including CNN) or divest DirecTV, which was only acquired 2 years ago.

On today’s podcast, Colin and I discuss how incongruous it feels for the government to assert AT&T will be gaining too much market power by acquiring Time Warner. To the contrary, Colin and I believe the market power of all incumbent media and telecom companies has dramatically decreased as big digital players like Google, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Facebook, etc. have become leaders in advanced advertising and subscription business models.

Recognizing the massive disruptions, including accelerating cord-cutting, established providers are scrambling to reinvent themselves, with Disney’s decision to go direct to consumer with its most premium content the best example. We discuss how government limits on the ways established companies can reposition themselves for this era would be a major limitation.

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Click here to listen to the podcast (23 minutes, 31 seconds)

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No doubt you’ve already heard about the remarkable turn of events in the saga of AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner. As reported by multiple news outlets yesterday, the Justice Department’s Antitrust division is apparently telling AT&T it would have to commit to either divesting Turner (including CNN) or DirecTV in order to gain regulatory approval for the deal. Both are totally unpalatable to AT&T.

All of this puts Makan Delrahim, the recently confirmed head of the Antitrust division in the hot seat. Assuming he decides to block the deal and AT&T then sues the government, it will fall to Delrahim to make the government’s case that absent any divestitures, the deal would be anti-competitive. The bar is even higher for Delrahim because when he was a professor at Pepperdine, he said in a telephone interview with Canada’s BNN that he did not see the deal as a “major antitrust problem.” He explained that any Antitrust objection must be based on a belief that the deal would “substantially lessen competition” by “very defined legal and econometric standards” and that the burden of proof is on the government to prove this in federal court.

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Yet another sign of how the times are changing: the new “Conquering Content” report from Hub Research finds that 52% of viewers now watch their favorite TV show from an online source rather than via a pay-TV set-top box (either live TV, VOD or DVR). Online sources include SVOD services, a TV network or pay-TV app/web site or services like iTunes.

While 48% of viewers still cited their set-top box for how they watch their favorite show, that was down from 64% in 2014. Online sources as the primary way to view is up from 31% in 2014.

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Early bird discounted tickets end on Friday for the SHIFT // 2017 Programmatic Video & TV Advertising Summit on Wednesday, November 29th in NYC. If you register early you save $100 and also double your chances* of winning 1 of 3 Roku Ultra 4K players, generously provided by Roku. Additional discounts are available on 5-packs and 10-packs. Startups and students can register for the reduced $245 ticket (contact me for the code).

SHIFT is going to be a jam-packed day of learning and networking with 30+ industry executives on a dozen different sessions. Attendees will hear from companies leading the charge into programmatic video and TV including 4C Insights, A+E Networks, Amplifi, Beachfront Media, Bloomberg Media Group, Brightcove, Cedato, Cross MediaWorks, eMarketer, FreeWheel, Fox Networks Group, IAB, IBM Watson, MediaLink, Prohaska Consulting, Publicis, Roku, SintecMedia, SpotX, Time, Inc., Turner Ad Sales, Vemba, VertaMedia, Vevo, Videology and others.

Our amazing keynoters are Mike Rosen, EVP, Portfolio Sales and Strategy, NBCUniversal and Jon Stimmel, Chief Investment Officer, Universal McCann.

I hope you’ll join us for this must-attend day of learning and networking!

Learn more and register now!

(* Early bird registrants get 2 entries each for the Roku Ultra drawings.)

Facebook and other big platforms are facing lots of scrutiny about Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. So on last week’s Q3 ’17 earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg opened with a long statement about the investments the company is making in security and ad transparency. These investments will contribute to a 45%-60% increase in Facebook’s 2018 expenses.

One might have expected that Wall Street analysts on the call would then focus their questions mainly on understanding these topics further and their impact to Facebook’s business. And while several did ask for details, 8 of the 11 analysts who asked questions instead focused on Facebook’s video strategy (which was the second main topic Zuckerberg discussed in his opening comments).

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I’m pleased to present the 394th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Pay-TV operators are likely to have lost around a million video subscribers in Q3, while skinny bundles (or virtual MVPDs as Colin likes to call them) may have gained around 900K. In this week’s podcast Colin and I talk about these dynamics and what kinds of consumer behaviors are driving these changes.

For the skinny bundles, a big part of the growth is AT&T’s deep discounting of DirecTV Now to support its wireless service. Among others, YouTube TV, with its widespread broadcast coverage and major World Series promotion, is also poised to grow strongly.

But how much of skinny bundles’ gain is coming at pay-TV’s loss is still murky. No doubt some people are swapping, but I question how much they’re actually saving per month, and whether churn will ultimately be high as they realize certain networks aren’t included. Conversely, Colin sees these as “good enough” solutions when combined with SVOD services.

Listen in to learn more!
 
Click here to listen to the podcast (23 minutes, 26 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts.

Click here to add the podcast feed to your RSS reader.

The VideoNuze podcast is also available in iTunes...subscribe today!