Posts for 'SVOD'

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.

Listen now to learn more!
 

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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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Amazon made a very significant announcement this morning, unveiling its “Streaming Partners Program,” which I believe could disrupt the entire SVOD industry if executed well. There are many ramifications of the Streaming Partners Program (which has been rumored, and I’ll call “SPP” for short) that I’ll explain below, albeit based on still limited information.

First, what is SPP? From an SVOD provider’s perspective, it’s an opportunity to have Amazon promote the SVOD service to tens of millions of Prime subscribers, with special pricing and promotions. Amazon handles subscriber acquisition, customer service, billing, credit card management, video streaming and device compatibility. Basically it frees up SVOD providers to focus on what they do best - create great content. Amazon announced that Showtime, Starz and 18 other SVOD providers are initial SPP partners.

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Sandvine has released its December, 2015 Global Internet Phenomena report, revealing that video and audio traffic now accounts for 70.4% of North American downstream traffic on wired networks in peak period. Sandvine said that 5 years ago, video and audio accounted for less than 35% of peak period traffic.

Netflix has become even more dominant in the past year, now with 37.1% of downstream traffic, up from 34.9% that Sandvine reported in November, 2014. Among other popular services, YouTube was in second place with 17.9% share (up from 14% share in Nov. ’14), Amazon Video was fourth (3.1% share, up from 2.6% in Nov. ’14), iTunes was fifth (2.8% share, flat from Nov. ’14), Hulu was sixth (2.6%, up from 1.4% in Nov. ’14) and Facebook seventh (2.5%, down from 3% in Nov. 14).

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The WSJ reported last night that YouTube is now talking to Hollywood studios and production companies about licensing TV shows and movies to include in its recently launched $10/month YouTube Red subscription service. The WSJ said the talks are still preliminary and YouTube’s specific plans are not well understood. While it’s too early to judge, I’m skeptical that this will be a game-changer for YouTube Red for many reasons.

First and most important, the world does not need another place to watch TV shows online. We already have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, TV networks’ full episode players/apps, TV Everywhere services, HBO Now, iTunes, Google Play, etc, the list goes on and on. Though it’s by no means straightforward for viewers to actually FIND the shows online they’re looking for, the shows are almost certainly somewhere online already. For YouTube Red to become yet another online home for TV shows creates little new value and only more confusion.

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I'm pleased to present the 300th edition (wow!) of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week we discuss Disney’s newly launched “DisneyLife” SVOD service in the U.K. In his post on the launch, Colin noted that Disney CEO Bob Iger said DisneyLife lets the company “reach consumers directly and not through middlemen.” That’s a huge departure from the traditional pay-TV model, and more aligned with Apple CEO Tim Cook’s vision of “TV as an app.” Colin sees broad implications of DisneyLife, though I think expanding it to other geographies, given rights issues, will be difficult in the short-term.

We then dig into some good news for JetBlue fliers - unlimited Amazon Prime video streaming will now be available on 150 JetBlue airplanes per an announcement from the companies this week. If it works well, this would be a winning deal for everyone involved - Amazon, JetBlue and passengers. We explain why and what could follow.

Listen now to learn more and happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Click here to listen to the podcast (22 minutes, 4 seconds)

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The VideoNuze podcast is also available in iTunes...subscribe today!