VideoNuze Posts

No doubt by now you’ve read all about AT&T’s plan to acquire Time Warner for approximately $85 billion - it was hard to miss the wall-to-wall press coverage over the weekend. As has been observed by a number of others, this deal is mostly about diversification, specifically AT&T’s desire to add another large revenue stream that offsets its declining wireless business.

Looked at through this lens, the deal represents a kind of “two plus two equals four” motivation; Time Warner brings a totally different set of revenues to AT&T, which makes the company less reliant on its sagging wireless business. If Time Warner can continue to perform at the same level as part of AT&T as it would have on its own, then AT&T wins because it achieved its diversification goal. The key of course is that AT&T didn’t overpay, in turn generating a suboptimal ROI. I’ll leave it to the Wall Street analysts to determine if the deal’s price is appropriate relative to Time Warner’s financial forecast.

Where the deal gets off track to me is the high falutin statements found in the companies’ press release that promise all kinds of benefits that are no more likely to happen as a result of Time Warner being owned by AT&T, and arguably, could actually be LESS likely to happen as a result of the deal. This is the risk that two plus two may actually LESS than four. This is the all too common outcome of many corporate mergers (with the infamous AOL-Time Warner one right at the top of the list).

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I'm pleased to present the 344th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week was busier than usual in the video industry and on today’s podcast, Colin and I discuss a number of news items that hit our radar. First we talk about the new Google-CBS deal for the upcoming Unplugged skinny bundle. Next up is VUDU’s Movies on Us, new free, ad-supported VOD service which we both think has potential. We then dig into Facebook’s new feature for advance scheduling and promoting live broadcasts. Finally we review LeEco’s new content and TVs (Colin attended the company’s big launch event this week.)

Clearly there was a lot happening this week as major players in the video industry continue jockeying for position. One news item that broke after we recorded is the rumor about AT&T acquiring Time Warner. That type of deal would be straight out of the Comcast-NBCU playbook and could trigger even more distribution-content tie-ups.

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Each week brings more innovation, product announcements and new business models to the ever-changing video industry. This week was certainly no different, and news from 3 companies - Google (a deal with CBS for its Unplugged skinny bundle), VUDU (a new ad-supported on-demand movie offering) and LeEco (a range of new products from the Chinese giant, including TVs and content) - caught my attention. Each has the potential to cause further industry disruption, or amount to nothing. Below I share thoughts on each.

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Facebook released an important feature yesterday, enabling certain content creators to schedule and promote Facebook Live broadcasts in advance. While a lot of the hype around live-streaming has been about capturing breaking news - with streams spontaneously discovered - as I explained a few months ago on our weekly podcast, the bigger application for live-streaming is for broadcasts scheduled in advance and promoted to content creators’ fans.

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It seems the only thing predictable about Netflix’s subscriber growth these days is its unpredictability. After badly missing its target subscriber additions both domestically and internationally in Q2 ’16, yesterday’s Q3 ’16 earnings report showed Netflix beating its Q3 forecast, including by a huge amount in international. Domestically, Netflix added 370K subscribers vs. its forecast of 300K, while internationally it added 3.2 million, well ahead of the 2 million it forecast.

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In an interview this morning at the Paley Center, Turner Chairman and CEO John Martin hit on several key themes he believes will be critical to the company’s future success. Specifically, Martin cited business flexibility, the power of data, the shift to audience-based ad sales and mobile. Following are some of the details of the interview, which was conducted by the Guardian’s Matthew Garrahan.

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