VideoNuze Posts

In yet another sign of how SVOD is upending the traditional TV industry, Amazon has announced this morning that renowned film director Woody Allen has signed on to create his first-ever TV series. Amazon ordered a full season of the half-hour series, named "Untitled Woody Allen Project." It will available in Prime Instant Video in the U.S., U.K. and Germany at launch. No additional information on release date, casting or subject matter was released.

In typical Woody Allen fashion, he is quoted in the press release saying "I don't know how I got into this. I have no ideas and I'm not sure where to begin. My guess is that (VP of Amazon Studios) Roy Price will regret this."

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At last night's Golden Globe awards, Amazon's series "Transparent" won Best Comedy, with its star Jeffrey Tambor winning best actor - TV Comedy, while Netflix's "House of Cards" star Kevin Spacey won for best actor - TV drama. Granted, it's just one awards show, and just two programs, but the Amazon and Netflix wins further legitimize OTT as a bona fide alternative source of high-quality programming to broadcast and cable TV.

The operative word here is "alternative." Note that for years, Netflix in particular has characterized itself as "supplemental" to broadcast and cable TV. And to be sure, with around 37 million Netflix subscribers in the U.S. and cord-cutting still relatively muted, the reality is that today Netflix still is mostly a "supplemental" service.

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I'm pleased to present the 255th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week we assess the prospects for Dish Network's upcoming Sling TV OTT service, which Colin and I each wrote about earlier this week (here and here). We both see Sling TV's slim programming selection as its biggest challenge. Dish is confronting the challenge that both broadcast and cable TV networks are very expensive to carry and so, to the extent Dish wants to keep Sling TV as affordable as possible, it must severely limit what's included.

We then recap some of the news out of CES that caught our attention including several announcements around 4K TV, the Cisco-Charter partnership for cloud delivery/security and FCC chairman Tom Wheeler's plan to regulate broadband under Title II.

Listen in to learn more!



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Akamai has released its Q3 2014 State of the Internet Report, its compendium of global connection speeds and broadband adoption for fixed and mobile networks, along with 4K readiness, attack traffic and IPv4/IPv6 updates. Among the highlights are that broadband adoption rate reached 60% globally, a 1% increase vs. Q2 '14. (Broadband is defined as an average connection speed of greater than 4 mbps.)

South Korea once again led all countries with 96% adoption above 4 mbps, followed by Bulgaria (95%), Switzerland (93%) and Israel (92%). South Korea also had the highest percentage (81%) of adoption of "high broadband" (defined as average connection speed above 10 mbps), followed by Hong Kong and Japan (both at 55%) and Switzerland (54%).

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Digital purchases of movies in the U.S. boomed in 2014, to $1.55 billion, up 30% from $1.19 billion in 2013, according to new data from the Digital Entertainment Group. However, the $360 million increase was more than offset by a decline in purchases of physical movies (DVD and Blu-ray) of $844 million in 2014, to $6.93 billion, an 11% drop. In fact, as the chart below shows, physical sales have declined by over $2 billion since 2011 when they were nearly $9 billion. 

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Dish Network has finally announced its OTT virtual pay-TV operator ("vPop") service, dubbed "Sling TV," priced at $20/month and available in Q1 '15 on multiple connected and mobile devices.

Sling TV includes 12 linear cable TV networks from Disney (ESPN, ESPN2, Disney Channel and ABC Family, plus a feed of Maker Studios' videos), Turner (Cartoon Network, CNN, TBS, TNT and Adult Swim) and Scripps (Food Network, HGTV and Travel Channel). Beyond the obvious missing cable TV networks, none of the big 4 broadcast TV networks are included.

In addition to the $20/month tier, Sling TV is also offering two $5/month packages - one for kids (with Disney Junior, Disney XD, Boomerang, Baby TV and Duck TV) and one with news and information (with HLN, Cooking Channel, DIY and Bloomberg TV).

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Roku has added two more TV manufacturers to its Roku TV lineup - Best Buy's in-house Insignia brand along with Chinese brand Haier. The Insignia Roku TVs will be available in the spring, with the Haier models available in the third quarter. Roku TVs from initial partners TCL and Hisense became available in 2014. TCL is also expanding its lineup to 12 different Roku TVs in 2015.

In addition to the new manufacturers, Roku has also announced a Roku TV 4K reference design, with TCL as the initial partner. Roku has also teamed with Netflix to bring 4K content to Roku TVs. Netflix began offering "House of Cards" and "Breaking Bad" in 4K in 2014, despite the fact that very few subscribers actually have 4K TVs.

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Happy Holidays! This will be my last post of 2014, as I prepare to take some time off through New Year's. I hope all of you will get time to rejuvenate over the next week and half as well.

As I mentioned in last week's podcast, 2014 was a key turning point year for online video, when it truly went mainstream and became a top priority for everyone in the media and technology ecosystem. 2015 will build on 2014's momentum as we see still further viewer shifts to online and mobile video.

For VideoNuze, 2014 was another year of growth and evolution with the industry, with over 300 original posts and over 2,200 curated links to the most relevant news around the industry. Each weekday morning I strive to have VideoNuze be an essential tool for industry decision-makers to better understand the disruptive changes sweeping through the video industry. Hopefully VideoNuze is hitting the mark more often than it's missing!

Once again, I'm deeply grateful for all of the industry companies that have sponsored VideoNuze and our events in 2014, without whom none of this would be possible. Thank you!

I wish you and your families a happy, healthy holiday season and all the best in 2015!