VideoNuze Posts

Below is the full video of the opening session at last week's VideoSchmooze, which featured 3 of Wall Street's top pay-TV/broadband/media/advertising analysts, Laura Martin (Needham & Co.), Craig Moffett (Sanford Bernstein) and Michael Nathanson (Nomura) along with me moderating. The group had a spirited discussion that was packed with data and touched on virtually every major topic industry. Some of the highlights include:

- The evidence that there is a gap of approximately 600K-800K U.S. households per year that are either cord-cutters or cord-nevers and what's causing this.

- TV networks' strategy to protect existing revenue streams and not have online delivery undermine their business models.

- Implications of mobile video usage on traditional TV usage.

- Changing consumer viewing behaviors and adoption of new devices, particularly among younger audiences, and what this means for the TV ecosystem.

- The runaway cost of sports rights and whether this will drive more cord-cutting and cord-nevering.

- How upstart programmers like YouTube can succeed with niche content approaches.

- How TV's upfront advertising will change due to online video alternatives.

- What's ahead in 2013.

And much more.

Watch the session video

Late yesterday NBC Sports and Yahoo announced a content sharing and promotional partnership that further cements Yahoo's role as a video syndication magnet for big media companies. In addition to the new NBC Sports deal, over the past year, other major media partnering with Yahoo include ABC News, CBS Television Distribution, Wenner Media, Clear Channel, CNBC, Fox Digital Entertainment/DirecTV and others, as each has sought to extend its online video presence beyond their own properties and to generate new ad revenues.

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I'm pleased to present the 158th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon, senior analyst at The Diffusion Group. Colin and I each back in the office, after being together at VideoSchmooze in NYC.

(Apologies in advance, the audio quality this week is diminished because we couldn't get Skype working on both ends, so I had to use a cell phone connection.)

On the opening session at VideoSchmooze with the 3 Wall Street analysts, Laura Martin, Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson, Craig made a point that cable operators are, in his opinion, "infrastructure providers," not video providers. He means that because they now supply both video, broadband and other services over the same networks, their real business is maximizing the ROI derived from subscribers' total payments for all services delivered.

To the extent that large numbers of video subscribers may cut the cord at some point down the road to use OTT services instead, cable operators would respond by trying to recapture lost revenue and margin via increased, "usage-based" pricing on broadband for heavier OTT users. Craig believes there's approximately $50/month/video subscriber of video profit margin that would need to be recouped.

In our discussion, Colin and I discuss the concept generally, and in particular whether this type of revenue shifting is feasible. Colin is skeptical whether this can happen, pointing to competitive, regulatory and consumer demand obstacles. I'm more in Craig's camp, and believe that operators would certainly try their best to accomplish this, as it's a natural thing any business would try to do.

Putting all of this into context however, it's still a largely hypothetical discussion. There isn't yet cord-cutting to an extent that operators feel the need to recoup profits through broadband. And where data caps exist they're still high enough that few subscribers need to buy more bandwidth to accommodate their OTT viewing.

Still, it's interesting to speculate on the topic, as higher broadband pricing would make OTT services like Netflix, Hulu and others relatively more expensive, therefore making them less attractive relative to pay-TV video services.

Click here to listen to the podcast (18 minutes, 18 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

The VideoNuze-TDG podcast is available in iTunes...subscribe today!

Scan comScore's monthly rankings of top video properties and one of the interesting things you'll notice is that aside from maybe one or two TV networks' sites, those with the heaviest traffic (e.g. YouTube, Yahoo, AOL, VEVO, Facebook, etc.) specialize in short-form content.

What this means is that unlike traditional TV - which features 30 and 60 minute programs (if not longer) - in online video many viewers' experiences consist of cobbling together numerous shorter clips, requiring them to repeatedly make a choice of what to watch next. The reality is that in online video there is little actual "programming" or "scheduling" that happens - where human beings actually create and curate a flow of programs designed to keep the viewer in place for longer (and more monetizable) periods of time.

Recognizing this deficiency - and the proliferation of Internet-connected TVs - a new service launching today called Portico, from startup Net2TV, aims to package, or cluster by genre as "mosaics," certain online videos, to create a more TV-like experience for viewers. Portico's service, which is available initially on Philips SmartTVs in the U.S. presents mosaics featuring either a specific content provider, or multiple providers. In the former example, CBS Interactive's CHOW.com has its own mosaic, whereas the "Portico Tech" mosaic includes content from Discovery's Revision 3 and Bonnier's Popular Science.

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Over 300 executives turned out for VideoSchmooze: Online Video Leadership Forum yesterday in NYC, who enjoyed a jam-packed morning of learning and networking. If you weren't able to attend, all of the sessions were video-recorded and I'll be posting them over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, a few photos from the morning are below:

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A final reminder - VideoSchmooze: Online Video Leadership Forum is tomorrow in NYC. Over 300 executives from across the video and digital landscape are signed up for this premier morning of learning and networking. Registration is open until 6pm ET this evening.

The program includes an amazing group of industry analysts and executives who will be speaking to many of the main issues in online video. We will kick off at 8:15am with our panel of 3 top Wall Street broadband/cable/Internet/media analysts (Craig Moffett from Sanford Bernstein, Michael Nathanson from Nomura and Laura Martin from Needham & Co.) discussing the tectonic changes driving the video industry. Expect a data-rich, detailed discussion of the industry's dynamics and what's ahead in 2013.

After the analysts' panel, there will be sessions on key industry topics including the OTT landscape, TV Everywhere, multi-platform distribution, monetization, innovation/technology enablers, changing consumer behaviors, devices, mobile video and more.

In addition, all VideoSchmooze attendees will receive a complimentary copy of the brand new 16-page "Ultimate Guide to TV Everywhere and Anywhere," a collaboration of VideoNuze and B&C/Multichannel News magazines, published this week.

Thanks again to VideoSchmooze's lead sponsors Adobe, AOL, Collective and thePlatform plus supporting sponsors Akamai, NeuLion and Undertone, all of whom will have executives in attendance who can share information about their products and services.

If you're not able to join us, please follow all the tweets at #schmooze12.

I look forward to seeing you at VideoSchmooze!

Learn more and register now

With billions of video streams now being viewed each month, across an ever-growing array of devices, consumers' expectations are higher than ever that video is a part of the storytelling mix. For print publications like magazines and newspapers, that's creating a massive new opportunity to re-imagine their businesses, better connect with their audiences and pursue a new vein of ad spending.

To get a better sense of why video is so strategic for magazines, last week I spoke with Lauren Wiener, who 6 weeks ago became president of global sales and marketing at Tremor Video, after spending 9 years at Meredith Corp, most recently as SVP of Digital. Meredith has been among the most active magazine publishers with video through its Meredith Video Studios business. The unit creates original video that is syndicated to YouTube and other online outlets along with VOD, and provides videos to Meredith's numerous magazines' online properties.

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I'm pleased to present the 157th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon, senior analyst at The Diffusion Group. This week we devote the full podcast to discussing TDG's new report, "Pay-TV Refugees - A Primary Research Profile of Cord-Cutters and Cord-Nevers."

Colin notes that U.S. households with broadband service that don't subscribe to pay-TV have grown steadily in the last 3 years, and are forecast to continue doing so over the next 5 years. We dig into the main reasons behind this - affordability and relevance, particularly for younger consumers.

As I wrote earlier this week, the fundamental question here is what broadband users - presented with a huge new diversity of online video choices, the rising cost of pay-TV and a proliferation of new viewing devices - will do? Admittedly it's still very early in the game and hard to predict what's ahead. But it does seem inevitable, given human behavior, that some percentage will peel off, either dropping pay-TV or not subscribing in the first place.

All of this - and more - is on the table for discussion at next Wednesday morning's VideoSchmooze in NYC. More info here.

Click here to listen to the podcast (19 minutes, 12 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

The VideoNuze-TDG podcast is available in iTunes...subscribe today!