VideoNuze Posts

It’s NBA All-Star weekend and for the first time, the league is offering free access to live-streamed interviews of players to TV networks, social media and other publishers in over 180 countries around the world. Half the interviews will occur today at 11:05am PT with the other half at 11:50am PT. The NBA views these interviews as a way of generating visibility for players in their home countries and bringing fans closer to the action.

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YouTube TV announced it is adding 7 networks from Turner to its base package, including Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, CNN, TBS, TNT, truTV and Turner Classic Movies. YouTube TV will also add NBA TV and MLB Network to its base package soon, with NBA League Pass and MLB.TV available for additional fees. YouTube TV is also raising its rate by $5 to $40/month on March 13th, though all subscribers on board prior to then will be grandfathered at the current $35/month rate.

VideoNuze readers know I’ve been skeptical about how big the market opportunity is for skinny bundles like YouTube TV. A big challenge for skinny bundles has been striving to offer a sufficiently complete channel lineup to have broad appeal, while also keeping programming costs down, so consumer pricing is low enough to be a differentiator. At a more specific programming level, I’ve believed that skinny bundles had to carry the big 4 broadcasters in local markets given their still dominant viewership. Doing so is a tough, expensive slog.

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I’m excited to share that Christy Tanner, EVP and GM of CBS News Digital, will be the keynote guest at the NABShow’s Online Video Program on April 10th in Las Vegas. I will be interviewing Christy about how CBSN, which is CBS News’ streaming video news service launched in 2014, creates new value for viewers, advertisers and the CBS Corporation.

As a direct-to-consumer service, CBSN offers live news coverage from 5am to 10pm 7 days a week. It delivered 280 million live streams in 2017, up 17% vs. 2016. CBSN leverages CBS News’ original reporting, simulcasts special reports and rebroadcasts programming such as “CBS This Morning” and “Face the Nation” in addition to its own original programming. CBSN is a free, ad-supported service.

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I’m pleased to present the 406th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week, Colin and I share our experiences live-streaming the Super Bowl. Both of us were on the road and were extremely impressed.  Except for latency of up to a minute or so, neither of us experienced any buffering or pixelation. In short, it was nearly a TV-like experience and really demonstrates how far live-streaming at scale has come.

We then shift gears to discuss strong growth at HBO Now, which just reported hitting the 5 million subscriber mark at end of 2017. HBO Now is benefiting from not being a “buy-through” on top of expensive pay-TV services. By going direct-to-subscriber, HBO Now has made its product much more accessible. We suspect that Amazon Channels and AT&T (which strongly promoted HBO Now in 2017), were pivotal to growth.

(Apologies, our audio quality isn’t that good this week).

Listen in to learn more!

 
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On Disney’s earnings call earlier this week, company CEO Bob Iger shared some details about ESPN’s new sports streaming service that will launch this spring and cost $4.99/month. Based on the initial reveal, it seems like a sports super-fan product that will give Disney some incremental revenue, but won’t be a game-changer in the broader pay-TV or online video worlds. It’s a refresh of the existing ESPN app powered by newly-acquired BAMTech technology.

Iger described 3 main features of the new ESPN app:

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Video ad tech provider Pixability has announced a new brand safety solution guaranteeing that 100% of an advertiser’s YouTube campaign will be in brand-safe placements. There are two options, DependAbility Premium and DependAbility At Scale, which are both available as part of Pixability’s overall video ad suite. Pixability is providing refunds on any views that happen in non-brand-safe context.

Brand safety has emerged as a huge industry issue over the past year, with YouTube in particular coming under scrutiny. Advertisers are justifiably focused on making sure their ads don’t show up adjacent to controversial content. But managing this has turned into a major challenge.

To learn more about Pixability’s new solution, I interviewed Andreas Goeldi, the company’s chief technology officer. A transcript follows.

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New research from SpotX reveals an expected shift in advertising spending from TV to OTT over the next 2 years. The research was conducted by Kagan among 41 U.S. pay-TV operators, OTT providers, content owner and advertisers. Just 11% of advertisers reported spending 21%-40% of their budgets on OTT today, but that’s expected to rise to 67% doing so in 2 years. Meanwhile, 33% said they currently spend 21%-40% on TV, but that’s expected to drop to 22% in the same time frame.

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