VideoNuze Posts

Early bird discounted registration for the next VideoSchmooze: Online Video Leadership Forum, on Thursday morning, Dec. 4th in NYC is now open. This will be the 11th VideoSchmooze and once again the morning will be packed with top notch learning and networking with 250+ industry executives. Early bird tickets are $95, with 5-packs for $430 and 10-packs for $760.

All early bird registrants will be entered to win a TiVo Roamio Plus DVR with Lifetime service - $1,000 value, generously provided by TiVo. As an owner of a Roamio Plus (plus virtually every other connected device), I can attest this is the best of all of them, providing integrated pay-TV and VOD via CableCard, Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube, AOL and much more, in addition to 6 tuners, storage for up to 1,000 hours and best of all remote streaming/downloading.

I'm still finalizing the full program, but I'm excited to share the opening session will be an interview with two of the industry's top researchers, Dounia Turrill, SVP, Client Insights at Nielsen (who oversees, among other things, the company's quarterly Cross-Platform Report, the industry benchmark for understanding viewer behaviors) and Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst at Leichtman Research Group, whose broadband, pay-TV and OTT research are widely followed and quoted).

Dounia and Bruce will share specific data and insights from their research, helping to demystify key industry trends and what to expect ahead. As always, this opening session will be a great stage-setter for the rest of the morning.

Then we'll dive into TV Everywhere, but through the lens of sports, which have been the most critical driver of adoption. What lessons have been learned and how can TVE be spread to other programming? Colin Dixon will moderate, joined by panelists Clark Pierce from FOX Sports and Vito Forlenza from Comcast (others to follow).

I'll be sharing details on additional sessions soon. I'm grateful for the support of Lead sponsor Brightcove and Branding sponsors FreeWheel and Tremor Video for this VideoSchmooze (other sponsor opportunities still available, so contact me). The video industry is undergoing unprecedented change, making VideoSchmooze a must-attend event for executives who need to be in the know!

I look forward to seeing you on Dec. 4th!

Underscoring the dramatic shifts occurring in millennials' TV viewing behavior, a new survey from comScore has found that millennials (18-34 year-olds) now use digital platforms for 1/3 of the time they watch original TV programs. That's double the 16% of time 35-54 year-olds spend using digital platforms for TV program viewing, and triple the 10% of time for those over 55 years-old.

For all 3 age groups, computers were the preferred digital platform by a significant margin - 19% for millennials, 10% for 35-54 year-olds and 6% for 55+. Smartphones and tablets trailed in single digits for all 3 groups. Just 55% of millennials said they "typically" watch TV programs on traditional TV, vs. 70% for 35-54 year-olds and 83% for 55+.

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Sporting News Media, which operates a large sports online video syndication network, has launched a new research service called "Sporting Views," which will provide insights about how online viewers engage with sports-related video.

The data is based on Sporting News Media's SN ePlayer network which syndicates video highlights from major leagues and rights-holders to over 350 publishers' sites, generating over 20 million unique visitors/mo and 300 million streams/mo. The SN ePlayer network has been comScore's top-ranked online video sports property for 9 of the last 12 months.

In the inaugural report, Sporting Views found that viewing of sports content on local publishers sites is quite diffused, actually drawing big out-of-market audiences. In ten of the largest U.S. markets, 62.1% of viewers who watch sports video on local publishers' sites were from outside that market. Dallas (72.7%), LA (71.3%), New York (70.9%) and Miami (70.3%) led in terms of percentage of viewers from outside their markets.

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I'm pleased to present the 245th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Today we debate the odds of success for so-called "vPops," or virtual pay-tv operators - companies looking to deliver pay-TV services over-the-top. I expand on some of the points I made earlier this week for why I think the odds are against vPops succeeding. Fundamentally this comes down vPops' inability to cost-effectively access programming and package it in an appealing way to gain market interest.

Colin sees it very differently, believing vPops CAN create skinnier bundles of channels and successfully target highly specific cord-nevers, cord-cutters and even some existing pay-TV subscribers. Colin believes these bundles can be created at a $30 retail price point and include a compelling array of channels. He also sees room for vPops to offer full channel line-ups at lower cost than today's pay-TV operators, complete with lots of user experience enhancements.

It's a great debate and we're both eager to see what vPops actually DO come to market with over the next 6-9 months to see how things turn out.

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London-based video ad tech provider Videoplaza has launched Konnect, a supply side programmatic platform intended for broadcasters and other premium content providers. Currently, over 50% of European broadcasters use Videoplaza's Karbon video ad serving platform, so the move into programmatic is a natural extension for the company.

In fact, Videoplaza's CEO and founder Sorosh Tavakoli told me that broadcaster customers have been asking for the company to enter the programmatic space. Sorosh said they're motivated to work with software providers that are already integrated with existing workflows and which offer enterprise level customer service plus full transparency and control. Sorosh believes all of these are Videoplaza differentiators vs. competitors.

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Lately there's been a lot of talk about so-called "virtual pay-TV operators," (vPops as my partner Colin Dixon at nScreenMedia likes to call them), which are also called "virtual MVPDs" (multichannel video programming distributors). These are companies that will deliver linear and on-demand broadcast/cable TV network bundles from the cloud, over broadband to connected/mobile devices, offering an alternative to traditional pay-TV services.

Sony, Verizon and Dish Network have all publicly stated their interest in launching vPop services in either 2014 or 2015. Though it's still early and much is yet to be known about their actual offerings, there are already many reasons to be skeptical that they'll achieve any material success.

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Big Ten Network (BTN) is the latest example of how sports fans are benefiting from online video's rise - gaining more convenient access, more content choices and additional packaging options.

BTN rolled out BTN2Go, its TV Everywhere service, four years ago, which is currently available to over 90% of its 60 million+ subscribers. Now, it is using BTN2Go as its platform brand and has introduced BTN Plus, a "hybrid TV Everywhere" service, which includes non-televised games and events from Big Ten schools and is available exclusively online and on connected devices. BTN Plus takes the place of previously fragmented efforts by individual schools under the CBSSports.com brand.

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