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Probably because all the cool kids run pay-TV services, T-Mobile will acquire Level3 TV, as recounted by Jeff Baumgartner of Multichannel News. T-Mobile said it will “launch a disruptive new TV service in 2018.” With all the other over-the-top services in place, I can’t imagine a niche in which T-Mobile would outperform the incumbents. But I’ve been wrong before.

In a similar vein, Stephanie Prange at Home Media Magazine described the relaunch of Redbox on Demand. It won’t be like the service that it shut down in 2014, instead providing options that remind me a lot of Vudu’s – short-term rentals or digital purchases. Redbox doesn’t have Vudu’s head start, but it’s got plenty of existing kiosk customers. But if your customers already rent new DVDs for less than $2 at kiosks, then how do you pitch the idea that they should stay home and pay $4 to rent the same movies online?

And Bloomberg’s Kyle Stock examines why it’s so hard to find Christmas classic films on streaming services. It’s because they’re not the fresh content that pay services crave and they’re not the long-tail losers that a studio might be willing to license on the cheap. “Of the 25 greatest holiday movies as ranked by American Movie Classics, only five are available for streaming on Amazon.com, Hulu or Netflix this season.” That’s one reason my holiday tradition is the cartoon Christmas Comes But Once a Year. It’s always free at the Internet Archive.

by ·Comments Off on NFL Opens Door To More Phone Streamers

NFL logoAs reported by Variety, FierceCable, and plenty of other outlets, Verizon announced today that it will pay the NFL more than $2 billion for another five years of streaming rights through the 2022-23 season. It’s a hefty increase over its current $1 billion four-year deal, yet Verizon will no longer be the exclusive source of streaming games on smartphones, although it can offer them on its other properties such as Yahoo Sports, AOL, and Go90. Also, Go90 still exists.

The only games that aren’t covered are out-of-market Sunday afternoon games, which will continue to be the big, expensive carrot dangled by DirecTV for at least a few more seasons.

The best part of the deal, from my perspective, is the end of the goofy no-phone rules by which I could watch a game on NFL Network on Sling on my tablet but not my phone, or watch Monday Night Football on the Watch ESPN app on my AirTV but not my phone. You get the idea. It seems like a win-win – the league gets more viewers and we get to watch our paid services where we want. Let’s hope when the details emerge that it works out that way.

by ·Comments Off on Tuesday Is Break The Internet Day

Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, and Free Press are organizing one last-ditch effort to fight the FCC’s coming vote to kill net neutrality. On Tuesday, Dec. 12, dozens of web sites (including this one) will display banners suggesting what the future will be like if internet service providers are allowed to pick winners and losers. The Break the Internet project directs visitors to call their Congressional representatives to pressure the FCC to hold off on making that change.

A few years ago, this tactic worked great to stop SOPA by threatening anyone who would face re-election. The difficulty this time is that the FCC commissioners don’t have to worry about being voted out by the public, so pressure is necessarily indirect. (There’s also the problem of the Republican majority at the FCC in favor of dropping Title II protection and Republican control of both houses of Congress.)

Will this online protest do any good? I doubt it, but I’ve been wrong before.

by ·Comments Off on Pluto TV: A Cord-Cutter’s Dream Come True

Pluto TV guide screenInventing free TV packages on paper was something I used to do a lot. In the glory days of free-to-air satellite TV, the idea was to put together enough free (or dirt cheap), attractive, useful channels on one transponder to get viewers to buy and install Ku-band equipment, and then the size of the audience would attract other channels and so forth.

I’m reminded of those big ideas when I fire up Pluto TV, an amazing collection of live channels and video on demand. It’s all free, mostly ad-supported, and it makes a wonderful supplement for cord-cutters who rely on over-the-air broadcast TV.

My top two categories of typically neglected genres on OTA TV are news (most of the day) and sports (most of the week). Pluto has news covered, with NBC News, CBS News, The Weather Network, Bloomberg, and much more. And Pluto has a bit of sports, with Stadium, Big Sky Conference schools, and a couple of other Pluto-originated catchalls. There are also several live movie channels and plenty of alternative entertainment channels. The lineup changes now and then, but you can download a list (pdf). And like my imaginary satellite service, it’s asking for more channels to join its lineup.

(Lately my guilty pleasure has been Slow TV, with long, uninterrupted videos of Norwegian train rides. As with NatureVision TV, it’s a soothing background for any other activity. And for the holidays, there’s also a fireplace to “watch”. Such peaceful enjoyment!)

Pluto also offers a lot of free ad-supported on-demand movies and TV shows. Vudu’s Movies On Us is a similar free program, but I wonder whether Pluto’s inventory is larger.

Viewing platforms are not a problem. I can watch Pluto on just about anything: smartphone, tablet, Windows desktop, Roku, AirTV, and more. It’s a big reason why I’m looking forward to seeing Channel Master’s new receiver next month; if it’s based on Android TV, it’ll run the Pluto TV app. If anyone can combine a good OTA DVR (like CM’s DVR+) and Pluto TV in the same box, they’d have a great combo for cord-cutters.

 

 

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If you read nothing else, check out today’s article in Wired about the origins of Net Neutrality, written by the guy who coined the term, Tim Wu. The concept that bridges, railroads, and other common carriers shouldn’t discriminate based on traffic type goes back hundreds of years, and the telecommunication version goes back to the early 1970s. Wu also offers a bit of hope from the court system. “The Supreme Court requires that an agency demonstrate its action was not ‘arbitrary’ or ‘capricious’; it must ‘examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action.'” he wrote. “And when it changes course dramatically, as the FCC has, the agency must explain why it ‘now reject[s] the considerations that led it to adopt that initial policy.’”

Joel Espelien of TDG Research wrote that despites its denials, Amazon is prepping a skinny bundle of pay-TV channels to launch in the first half of 2018 as an Amazon Prime benefit. As he pointed out, for folks who subscribe to Prime mainly for the free shipping, everything else is gravy; it “feels like it’s free.” Amazon doesn’t need to make money on TV in the short term, and getting customers hooked on a “free” set of channels might be a great opportunity to upsell them on some premiums.

And Parks Associates released a report on Smart TVs and The User Experience, as reported on today by Broadband TV News and others. It said that viewers want easy navigation and discovery in their TV interfaces. I’d add that curation underpins that discovery component, and that ease of use is paramount. When Roku first came out, I wondered why anyone would choose it over a connected, dedicated Windows PC, which could access everything the Roku could and then some. Now I know better.