Posts for 'Hulu'

For those interested in a deep-dive look inside how dramatically the business of making TV shows has changed over the past several years, last week’s Vulture cover story, “The Business of Too Much TV,” is essential reading. At 10,000+ words, you’ll need to set aside a chunk of time to get through it, but it’s well worth it for a peek behind the curtain of how SVOD has influenced every aspect of TV production.

The biggest driver of change has been the massive increase in the number of scripted TV shows being made - from 36 in 2005 to over 400 in 2015. Cable TV networks were the initial cause of this explosion, but in the past several years it’s been the major SVOD services, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, which have each turned to originals as a source of differentiation as competition has intensified.

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I'm pleased to present the 321st edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Hulu was in the news in a big way this week, confirming a WSJ report that it plans to launch a skinny bundle next year. As I wrote on Monday, the move raises numerous questions, which Colin and I debate on this week’s podcast.

Absent more information, I’m still somewhat skeptical. It feels very risky to me for Disney and Fox to convert Hulu into a pay-TV competitor. It’s also not clear that the economics of a direct subscriber relationship are superior to the steady flow of monthly retransmission consent and affiliate fees. Finally, I wonder about how big the addressable market is and how appealing the Hulu skinny bundle actually will be, particularly from an all-in cost perspective.

Colin, on the other hand, is much more optimistic. He doesn’t believe there’s much risk, thinks the economics are better going direct and believes the service can be very appealing. So clearly we’re coming at this from very different angles.

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While the main goal of Hulu’s NewFront this morning was of course to excite advertisers to open their checkbooks, the event also marked the unofficial kickoff of the company’s ambitious repositioning from a catchup SVOD hub to an all-encompassing, next-generation, personalized TV service including live linear TV feeds.

At its NewFront, Hulu’s CEO Mike Hopkins confirmed what had been strategically leaked to the WSJ in an article reported Sunday night - that the company intends to launch a skinny bundle of linear broadcast and cable TV networks to augment its on-demand programming, for monthly fee of approximately $40.

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With so much uncertainty in the TV and online video industries these days, I keep telling myself to never be surprised by anything anymore. But last night, when the WSJ headline, “Hulu is Developing a Cable-Style Online TV Service” popped up in my Twitter feed, I have to admit it tested the boundaries of my imagination.

The most immediate head-scratcher was that such a move would position Disney and Fox, two of the three network shareholders in Hulu (along with Comcast, which is now a silent partner due to terms of its NBCU acquisition) as direct competitors of pay-TV operators, their biggest distributors. These companies spend billions of dollars per year to carry the very same TV networks that would now be included in the skinny Hulu lineup.

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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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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 298th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

T-Mobile announced something breakthrough earlier this week, with its new “Binge On” program that allows its subscribers to watch unlimited video from 24 different providers without it counting against their data plans. Granted video quality will be a modest 480p or better, but the significance here is that T-Mobile is enabling long-form viewing out of the home, without needing to hunt down a good WiFi connection or risk massive data plan overage charges.

Over 2 years ago, I questioned whether optimistic forecasts for mobile video consumption were realistic given expensive data plans. In fact, research has shown that most “mobile” video viewing actually occurs in the home. But with T-Mobile’s Binge On, it will be fascinating to see if other wireless carriers are compelled to do something similar, which would be a huge boon to video providers. Colin and I discuss the ramifications.

We then turn our attention to SVOD licensing, which is all over the board. Last week, Time Warner said it was going to pull back on SVOD licensing, but earlier this week AMC said it will continue to pursue a one year window. Meanwhile, Time Warner is now rumored to be investing in Hulu, in a deal that would include a content commitment. TV networks and studios are clearly caught between the short term appeal of SVOD revenue vs. the long term concern that it undermines the ecosystem. We dig into the issues.

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Yesterday pay-TV network EPIX announced a multi-year distribution deal with Hulu that will kick in on October 1st, as EPIX’s current deal with Netflix phases out.

Perhaps most noteworthy here is that in the current Wild West environment where everyone and their brother are launching standalone SVOD services, EPIX has remained disciplined in choosing to instead team up with a large SVOD player (EPIX has a separate SVOD deal with Amazon dating to 2012 as well).

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When Sesame Workshop announced its deal with HBO last week, everyone seemed to have an opinion about whether another “poor door” had been created, this time for Elmo and his iconic friends.

It’s an interesting societal debate, but what was more intriguing to me was that Sesame’s deal with HBO signaled that its own SVOD efforts had not delivered material results (and with the new HBO deal, I’d guess will likely be phased out at some point). That in turn reinforced my belief that the niche SVOD model is extremely difficult given the rise of “super” SVOD services like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu.

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There’s been a lot written in the past few days about Comcast’s reported plan to introduce a new platform called “Watchable,” that will curate short-form online video content from various providers for viewing on its X1 set-top boxes and eventually on mobile devices. The initiative is seen as helping Comcast increase its appeal to millennial viewers and drive additional online video advertising revenue.

On the one hand, I applaud the company’s desire to dive more deeply into online video, which has many synergies with Comcast’s broadband and TV businesses. Without knowing any of the details, the biggest issue to me with Watchable is that it’s hard to understand why Comcast would prioritize it as a current initiative when a far more significant opportunity would be integrating popular OTT services into X1, which would have huge subscriber acquisition and retention benefits.

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At a time when the rapid rise of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and other streaming services is upending the traditional broadcast and cable TV industries (see last week’s market meltdown for more on that), Hulu is pursuing the tried-and-true,  announcing at the Television Critics Association (TCA) Summer Press Tour that it would not release all of its original content for immediate binge watching.  Instead, Hulu will release new episodes one at time each week, following a typical TV release schedule. So, only when the full season has run, will all episodes be available for binge watching enthusiasts.

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I'm pleased to present the 285th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

It’s been a wild week for major media companies as mixed earnings reports, fears that cord-cutting is accelerating and anxiety over ad dollars leaving TV all combined to send big media stocks plummeting. Meanwhile, with Netflix expanding internationally, Hulu and Amazon gaining ground and many other SVOD services launching in 2015, the question of what role SVOD will play for consumers and in the media ecosystem of the future is becoming more relevant all the time.

Those are the topics of today’s podcast, as we start by analyzing recent Parks research (which both Colin and I wrote about, here and here) revealing high levels of churn for various SVOD services. Colin is less concerned about high churn than I am, as I see high churn as indicative of a broader challenge SVOD services have with consumers, namely, not being seen more as transactional opportunities, given how frictionless it is to add/drop these services.

Colin and I agree that great content is going to be the key to SVOD services retaining subscribers. But with more people walking around with binge-viewing bucket lists, I think it’s going to be harder than ever to hook viewers on shows they didn’t have an interest in already, especially given the proliferation of great content. We explore these dynamics further.

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Research released late last week by Parks Associates, which revealed high levels of churn for many smaller SVOD services, reinforced for me that many of these services are at risk of being seen as little more than transactional VOD opportunities by consumers. If this occurs it would have huge implications for both the SVOD services and larger ecosystem.

First, to review the research, Parks found that for SVOD services other than Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, the churn rate over the past 12 months was equal to 60% of those who subscribed to such services. For Hulu Plus, 7% of U.S. broadband subscribers cancelled their subscription in the past 12 months (equaling churn of half or more of Hulu Plus’s subscribers). Parks estimated Amazon’s churn at around 25% (though that’s clouded by value of the overall Prime service). Only Netflix fared well, with churn in the past 12 months running around 9% of its subscriber base. Note, none of these SVOD services publicly disclose their churn rates.

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Programmatic is one of the most important trends in the online video advertising industry, with eMarketer forecasting that in 2016 nearly $4 billion of online video advertising will be transacted programmatically. At last month’s Video Ad Summit, one of our sessions focused on programmatic video advertising from the advertiser/buy side and another from the content provider/sell side.

The advertiser/buy side session included Larry Allen (SVP, Business Development, Xaxis), Jim Caruso (VP, Product Strategy, Varick Media Management), Neeraj Kochhar (Managing Director, Buy-Side Platforms, Tremor Video), Troels Smit (Head of Demand Sales, LiveRail), with Gain Dunaway (Senior Editor, AdMonsters) moderating.

The content provider/sell side session included Doug Fleming (Director of Programmatic, Hulu), Manny Puentes (Chief Technology Officer, Altitude Digital), Sorosh Tavakoli (SVP, AdTech, Ooyala), Tim Trevathan (SVP, Publisher Solutions, Defy Media), with Ashley Swartz (CEO and Founder, Furious Corp.) moderating.

The session videos are included below. Taken together they provide a wealth of insights about where programmatic video advertising is today, the key opportunities and challenges for advertisers and content providers, what’s ahead, plus lots more.

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I'm pleased to present the 279th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Change is everywhere in the video and TV industries and this week 6 different news items hit our radar, which Colin and I think illustrate how quickly things are moving. In today's podcast we discuss each of them and why we think they're significant.

The items include continued falling linear TV ratings as measured by Nielsen, Hulu distributing Showtime, new research showing that Netflix's audience is size larger than those of broadcast TV networks, Tennis Channel's converged TV Everywhere-OTT model, HBO premiering 2 new shows on Facebook and Ooyala's new data showing that 42% of video views are now on mobile.

(note: Colin wanted to clarify one point - when citing Netflix viewership, he said it was 10 million hours streamed per quarter when it's actually 10 billion hours)

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I'm pleased to present the 272nd edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

At INTX (the re-branded Cable Show) in Chicago this week, Comcast announced a blizzard of innovation, showcasing how its heavy technology investments are resulting in new products and features (see here and here for roundup). In today's podcast, Colin and I discuss the range of announcements Comcast made, which impact its video, broadband and home services.

Importantly, Comcast also announced a new "customer experience transformation" plan, which includes the hiring of 5,500 new customer and technical service staff. The renewed emphasis on customer experience is ironic, because, as I asserted on Monday, had the company done this 5 years ago, and transformed itself into a "most admired" company, it may well have gotten approval for the Time Warner Cable deal. NCTA head Michael Powell seemed to agree with my assessment.

Colin attended INTX and also shares thoughts on his session and broader trends of how pay-TV operators are evolving into broadband service providers and how OTT services fit in. For example, Comcast revealed this week that it now has more broadband subscribers than video subscribers, an important milestone for the industry.

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Hulu has announced that it has distribution deals with 5 small-to-mid-sized U.S. pay-TV operators: Armstrong, Atlantic Broadband, Mediacom, Midcontinent and WideOpenWest (WOW!). The deals follow last week's news that Hulu has signed up Cablevision as the first U.S. pay-TV operator to distribute its service.

Like the Cablevision deal, there weren't a lot of specific details shared about pricing or packaging. The 5 operators will be able to offer Hulu's content on their advanced set-top boxes. While the set-tops aren't identified, a number of these operators use TiVo DVRs as their advanced set-tops to offer integrated OTT/pay-TV/VOD experiences.

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Hulu held its NewFront on Wednesday, highlighting its growth, which includes approaching 9 million subscribers, up 50% vs. 2014, with 700 million hours of video streamed in Q1 '15, up 83% vs. Q1 '14. Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins said that 61% of Hulu's viewers no longer watch on a computer. 82% of Hulu's audience is in the 18-49 year-old age range, with a median age of 33 years-old.

I have long wondered whether Hulu was going to be the odd man out, sandwiched between Netflix, OTT's 800-pound gorilla, and Amazon, with its unlimited resources. But Hulu is clearly investing heavily in both licensed and original content, and seemingly carving out its place in the OTT landscape.

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Today Cablevision announced a first of its kind distribution deal with Hulu. The deal follows the introduction of Cablevision's new low-cost "cord-cutter" package (broadband plus a free OTA antenna) last week and its agreement to promote the new HBO Now OTT service. Given all of this I think it is now virtually guaranteed that Cablevision will soon announce that it will also distribute/promote Netflix.

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Yesterday Viacom announced Noggin, a new $5.99/month ad-free, mobile-centric OTT service for preschoolers that will launch on March 5th. Viacom said that Noggin's content will be solely library-based, making it distinct from what's already available on-air on Nick Jr. Noggin will include programs such as "Blue's Clues," "Little Bear" and "Ni Hao, Kari-lan," plus others. In addition to the OTT offering, Viacom said it's talking to pay-TV operators about Noggin being a premium offer for authenticated subscribers.

Noggin is the latest response by TV networks to the dramatic market changes currently playing out. As I recently described, disruption has been particularly acute in the kids' space, where kids' cable TV networks' ratings are plunging as OTT services have avidly built out their kids offerings. Just since writing that piece 2 weeks ago, YouTube has launched a kids-focused app, Netflix has added 5 new kids series and Amazon has renewed 4 others, all amping up the pressure on kids TV networks even further.

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