Posts for 'SVOD'

Turner announced this morning that it will launch a new ad-free SVOD service this Fall dubbed FilmStruck, which will be managed by Turner Classic Movies and exclusively draw on movies from Criterion Collection. According to the release, FilmStruck is targeted to “diehard movie enthusiasts who crave a deep, intimate experience independent, foreign and art house films.”

A Turner spokesperson confirmed that Criterion’s 1,000 movie catalog will move over from Hulu in November, where it has been under an exclusive deal announced in February, 2011 and extended in April, 2014.

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I'm pleased to present the 319th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Colin and I are back from NABShow where I produced the 2-day Online Video Conference, which included 52 speakers over 15 sessions. One of the highlights for me was doing a keynote interview with Michael Paull, VP of Digital Video at Amazon who oversees the company’s new Streaming Partners Program (SPP).  

As I wrote yesterday, SPP will likely have a majority of U.S. SVOD services included this year, putting Amazon in the undisputed role as THE third-party distributor of SVOD in the U.S. Colin and I dig into why that is potentially so critical and the implications it could have for Netflix and the pay-TV industry. (Colin provides a personal example of how Amazon hooked him on a subscription to Tribeca Shortlist which he never would have found on his own).

We then transition to specific takeaways from NABShow. Colin notes that many vendors were demonstrating how online video can be delivered with guaranteed quality and user experiences, making online video every bit as good as TV itself. For pay-TV operators specifically, the imperative to move video services online has never been higher.

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Amazon is likely to have a majority of all SVOD services available in the U.S. included in its recently launched Streaming Partners Program (SPP) this year, setting the stage for the company to become the main third-party distributor for dozens of SVOD services. As this happens, there will be significant implications for the structure of the SVOD industry, not least of which will be changing the competitive dynamic between Amazon and Netflix, just as the latter’s domestic subscriber growth appears to be flattening. Another important implication would be Amazon’s impact on the U.S. pay-TV industry and role with cord-cutters.

Michael Paull, Amazon’s VP of Digital Video, who runs the SPP, told me during our keynote interview on Tuesday at the NABShow Online Video Conference that he expects “dozens” of SVOD services in the U.S. will become part of the SPP in the coming months. When added to the 30+ SVOD services already available in SPP, the result would be that the majority of U.S. SVOD services would be part of SPP. (Note, according to Parks Associates’ recent research there are 98 U.S. SVOD services aside from Netflix, Hulu and Amazon currently available).

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Amazon has launched an $8.99/month standalone plan for its Prime Video service, breaking it out of the overall Prime service for the first time. The company is also offering a $10.99/month option for Prime itself, a first time departure from the traditional annual approach.

The standalone plan for Prime Video means that for the first time Amazon’s video service can be valued by consumers on an apples-to-apples basis with other SVOD services without being clouded by other Prime benefits. By bundling video with Prime Amazon was able to introduce video to millions of Prime subscribers without them having to make an incremental purchase decision, enabling buzz to build about Prime’s original programming.

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I'm pleased to present the 318th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week Colin and I dive into the Parks data from yesterday revealing that just 5% of US broadband homes subscribe to one or more of the 98 SVOD services other than the big three (Netflix, Amazon and Hulu). We agree that the data underscores just competitive it will be for the 98 and growing) minnow SVOD services to breakthrough.

One of those 98 services is Sling TV, which this week announced the beta of a new $20/month multi-stream service that includes select Fox networks. While Colin believes it’s a smart move by Sling TV to further segment the market, I view it as both confusing and also counter to Sling TV’s brand proposition, at least as it’s currently offered.

By separating the Fox networks and ESPN networks on 2 different tiers, Sling TV is in effect forcing sports fans to take both. That means $40/month for just the 2 base packages, and, as best I can tell there are 22 other networks that are duplicated in both tiers (meaning dual subscribers are in effect paying twice for them).

It’s hard to see how this represents breakthrough value and simplification of TV. Rather it just seems like unnecessary confusion, likely driven by Disney and Fox licensing restrictions to hedge against Sling TV becoming too popular.

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Here’s a measure of how dominant the big three SVOD services (Netflix, Amazon and Hulu) are in the US: according to new OTT data from Parks Associates, just 5% of all broadband homes subscribe to one or more of the 98 SVOD services available in the US aside from the big three. Among the 98 services Parks counted are high-profile offerings like HBO Now, CBS All Access and Sling TV.

At the end of 2015, there were approximately 96.3 million broadband homes in the US, according to Leichtman Research. So that would mean that about 4.8 million broadband homes were subscribing to one or more of the 98 SVOD services outside of the big three. Parks did not specify the actual subscriber levels of any of the 98 SVOD services.

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I'm pleased to present the 316th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

It seems like a week doesn’t go by these days without a new SVOD service being announced or launched. For example, this week Fullscreen said it would launch its “fullscreen” SVOD service on April 26th, while comedian Kevin Hart and Lionsgate announced a new video/games service.

In today’s podcast, Colin and I discuss these ventures, as well as Redbox’s planned SVOD service, NBCU’s Hayu (“hey you”) reality SVOD startup, Cinedigm’s CONtv, Vessel and YouTube Red, all in the context of the crowded SVOD landscape.

We’re both convinced that ultimately viewers won’t subscribe to more than a handful of SVOD services, meaning many of these new ventures won’t ever achieve scale. To support our SVOD analysis, we use the framework I posted a year ago with 9 key criteria. I continue to believe it is a valuable tool to add rigor when comparing services.

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Another day, another new SVOD service. Yesterday, Fullscreen said that April 26th would be the launch date for its “fullscreen” $4.99/month ad-free SVOD service which had been teased last fall. Fullscreen is targeting 13-30 year-olds with 800+ hours of content that will include films plus scripted and unscripted online originals and exclusives from YouTube stars like Grace Helbig, Shane Dawson, Hannah Hart and Jack & Dean.

Like Vessel and YouTube Red, two other SVOD services based on exclusive or windowed YouTube creator content, fullscreen is another test case for millennials’ willingness-to-pay for content that they’re long accustomed to getting for free (putting aside the differentiators of earlier access and exclusivity).

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I'm pleased to present the 314th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week, Colin and I dig into the TV Everywhere awareness/usage data from Digitalsmiths’ Q4 ’15 Video Trends report. Both of us found it pretty sobering that 60% of pay-TV subscribers are still unaware of TVE services and usage has stalled out, despite the industry’s big bet. The data indicates that only around 10% of pay-TV subscribers use TVE on a weekly basis.

We then turn to the frustrations of buffering, which IneoQuest focused on in its “Buffer Rage” survey released this week. But despite the issues online viewers may be having with delivery quality, SVOD remains on a roll. DVDs have clearly been a victim of SVOD’s success and Colin notes that Digitalsmiths’ report found respondents’ usage of Redbox DVD kiosks dropped precipitously from 18.4% in Q1 ’15 to 13.1% in Q4 ’15. This week Redbox’s parent Outerwall said it was exploring “strategic and financial alternatives.”

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I'm pleased to present the 313th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week brought 2 data points that seem at odds with one another: even as SVOD penetration has crossed 50% penetration of U.S. TV households, cord-cutting remained minimal, with the pay-TV industry losing just 385K subscribers in 2015.

While that number is up substantially over 2014’s loss of 150K, it still represents just a .4% contraction. That seems relatively modest given Netflix alone is now in 45 million U.S. homes. Many had predicted that as SVOD grew it would be a substitute for pay-TV, but increasingly it seems like a complement.

Colin asserts SVOD will indeed be a substitute for pay-TV for many in the years to come with cord-cutting sharply increasing. There are lots of reasons to believe this, and yet pay-TV continues to remain quite resilient. We debate how things will unfold.

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New research from Pivotal Research Group, based on Nielsen data, reveals that at the end of February, 2016, SVOD services were in over 50% of U.S. TV households, up from 43% in February 2015. The SVOD services included are Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu.

No surprise, Netflix is by far the most popular SVOD service, in 45% of U.S. homes (up from 38% a year ago), followed by Amazon Prime in 21% of homes (up from 15% a year ago) and then Hulu in 10% of homes (up from 7% a year ago).

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I'm pleased to present the 308th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

In today’s podcast we discuss a number of different items that hit our radar this week. We start with Facebook’s growing impact in video, which was detailed on the company’s earning call earlier this week.

We then transition recent research from Nielsen which Colin analyzed, showing the level of viewership by device.

Next up, Colin and I were watching reports from the Sundance Film Festival noting the aggressive bidding by Amazon and Netflix, underscoring another industry segment being disrupted by SVOD. Last, we touch on the problems Netflix is already running into with its international expansion. Indonesia was the latest country to raise red flags on Netflix’s content this week.
 
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I'm pleased to present the 307th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Netflix reported its Q4 ’15 results this week, beating its forecast for international subscriber growth while falling short on domestic subscribers, for the second quarter in a row. We have our differences in how we interpret the results, with Colin focusing much more on the international story, while I’m paying more attention to the domestic shortfall.

Still, Colin and I agree that Netflix will be defined more as an international company going forward and will face a slew of new challenges addressing disparate countries around the world. How they navigate these challenges will greatly impact their future performance.

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Netflix reported its Q4 ’15 and full year results yesterday, showing a second quarterly slowdown in U.S. subscriber growth, offset by accelerating international subscriber growth.

In Q4 ’15 Netflix added just 1.56 million subscribers in the U.S., down from 1.9 million in Q4 ’14 and below the company’s forecast of 1.65 million. It was also the lowest number of additions in 4 years. In Netflix’s letter to shareholders, it cited “high penetration in the U.S. seems to be making net additions harder than in the past” and new credit/debit card rollovers continuing to be a “background issue” (the latter was cited by the company as the main issue for the big shortfall in Q3 ’15). Both of these points were reinforced on the video earnings review call.

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I'm pleased to present the 306th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week Colin and I share our top predictions for the video industry in 2016. We also look back at our predictions for 2015 and rate how we did (how’s that for accountability?).

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I'm pleased to present the 305th edition of the VideoNuze podcast  and the first of 2016, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week we dig further into Netflix’s rollout to 130 additional countries and more specifically, the implications of its “content globalization” experiment that I wrote about yesterday. We discuss the pros and cons of the company’s “produce locally, distribute globally” approach. With Netflix’s viewer data, I continue to believe the company has a big opportunity to leverage its international reach in ways we’ve never seen before. It also has a potentially powerful competitive differentiator.

However, Colin points out a few gotchas, including that Netflix is only deploying in 20 languages, the single price of the Netflix global player means it will be very expensive in lower-wage countries and the risk that government censors in some countries may intervene given some of Netflix’s racier programming. These are all great points, and will make it even more interesting to see how the international expansion goes.

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I'm pleased to present the 304th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

2015 has been another big year of change in the video industry. On this week’s podcast we dig into some recent research on changes in linear TV consumption from Nielsen and the rise of connected TV devices. We also discuss research showing the relationship between pay-TV and SVOD.

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(Note, this is our 49th podcast of 2015; we’re taking a break next week and will be back on January 7th. Happy holidays to all of our listeners!)

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New research from Interactive Broadband Consulting Group (IBB) suggests that pay-TV subscribers may actually be more fertile targets for adding SVOD services than non-pay-TV subscribers. IBB found that 31% of current pay-TV subscribers plan to add an SVOD service over the next 6 months, vs. 21% for non-pay-TV subscribers.

The data supports the theory that heavier TV watchers seek more great TV to watch (and therefore are more prone to subscribe to SVOD services which are offering a ton of originals) than lighter watchers. That’s not to say there isn’t also a segment of what I’ve called “entertainment-only’s” who will resist paying for the multichannel bundle which is anchored by expensive sports networks.

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Amazon announced this morning that it has added content from NBC, NBC Sports, Watch HGTV, Watch Food Network, Watch Travel Channel, Fox Now, NPR One, GoPro and others to Fire TV. Amazon said there are now over 4,000 channels, apps and games available in Fire TV, which it believes is the largest of any connected TV device. Amazon also said Amazon is the top-selling connected TV device “across all retailers” from July-October, though it’s not clear what retailers are included.

All of this additional content strengthens Fire TV, especially in the all-important holiday season. Conversely, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my Fire TV over the past week, and I’ve been surprised, and quite disappointed, with Fire TV’s implementation (or lack thereof) of the 20 content partners Amazon announced on Dec. 8th as part of its new “Streaming Partners Program” (SPP).

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I'm pleased to present the 302nd edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Earlier this week I wrote bullishly about Amazon’s new “Streaming Partners Program,” (SPP), which could disrupt the SVOD industry. I emphasized the word “could” because, as with everything in life, execution is everything.

In that post, I noted that SPP on Amazon’s web site was already implemented well, but that the iPhone app experience didn’t work. In today’s podcast, Colin shares his experiences on both Android and Fire TV, which are shockingly incomplete.

It’s very surprising to see Amazon, which is typically an execution machine, come up so short here, and it suggests they rushed SPP to market before being 100% ready.

Implementation issues aside, we discuss the overall merits of SPP and Colin’s view that Netflix is actually better positioned for an SPP-like role in SVOD. I still like Amazon’s SPP strategy a lot and will keep an eye on how things unfold.

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