by ·Comments Off on More Signs Of Cord-Cutting Acceleration

DirecTV Now slogan "The future of TV is now"AT&T’s traditional pay-TV services lost over 1 million subscribers last year, according to its quarterly earnings report, relayed by FierceCable’s Daniel Frankel. The company pointed to a roughly corresponding increase in customers for its over-the-top DirecTV Now service, but MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett wasn’t impressed. “That the company continues to grow its base of DirecTV Now subscribers isn’t helpful — AT&T loses money on them,” he said.

Meanwhile, Jon Fingas of Engadget tells us that the next generation of DirecTV Now interface is in the pipeline for full launch this springs. The new version will also include a cloud-based DVR and support for a third stream.

And in general, US broadband-only households are projected to nearly double in the next five years according to a guess projection by Kagan, a media research group within S&P Global Market Intelligence, quoted by Advanced Television. It said that Kagan expects 38.4 per cent of the combined residential cable and telco wireline broadband subscribers in 2022 to rely broadband and over-the-air TV. I guess we’ll see.

by ·Comments Off on Wednesday Notes

A wall of multi-colored sticky notesDarren Rovell at ESPN says that Fox bought the rights to the next five years’ worth of Thursday Night Football from the NFL for over $60 million per game. He points out that players hate playing on Thursdays because that doesn’t give them enough time to heal from the previous Sunday’s game, but NFL commissioner Goodell said, “We will continue to work with the NFLPA to make the shorter week more attractive in a way that is better for our players.” The obvious answer is to only play on a Thursday when it’s after a bye week. Anyway, it’s great to see some content stay freely available on over-the-air TV, unlike …

Star Trek: Discovery hasn’t driven enough subscribers to the CBS All Access OTT service, if you believe the numbers crunched by Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia (which isn’t a typo, honest). He points out that Discovery is the least-viewed Star Trek series ever, writing “CBS’s decision to release the show through All Access appears to have deprived it of most of its audience.” (Although with the general decline of OTA ratings since ST: Enterprise ended in May 2005, that might have been true even if it had stayed on CBS.) All Access seems unlikely to make its goal of 8 million subscribers by 2020.

Finally, Chris Johnston of BBC News wrote last week that pay-TV provider Sky was going to make all its channels and content available online. Despite the article’s title, “Sky signals the end of the satellite dish”, the company said it didn’t plan to stop broadcasting by satellite. And I would add, yet. Satellites are darned expensive compared to internet delivery, so if the latter improves, we might see less and less of the former.

by ·Comments Off on Wednesday Notes

A wall of multi-colored sticky notesI’ve signed up to attend the NAB Show, probably the biggest convention for free TV, this April 9-12. Paul McLane at Radio World wrote yesterday that there will be some significant changes this year. For the first time since I started attending them nine years ago, the main keynote speech won’t be in the ballroom of the adjacent Hilton / LVH / Westgate Hotel but in “a 1,000-seat new Mainstage area of the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center”. There are also changes designed to make conference sessions easier to attend, so you should go read it! Also, Radio World is giving out free exhibits passes if you sign up before March 2.

Speaking of the NAB, Broadcasting & Cable’s John Eggerton, the hardest working man in Washington, reported that it had sold its headquarters. Under terms of the deal, NAB will be leasing the current building until its new headquarters, just a couple of blocks from the Washington Nationals’ baseball stadium, is ready in late 2019.

And over at FierceCable, Ben Munson interviewed Philo CEO Andrew McCollum, who said that his mostly sports-less streaming service hopes to add more channels but has trouble pulling them away when their owners also offer news and sports networks. I never root for failure, but I can’t see the benefit of live entertainment channels to millennials who are used to watching content on demand. In my opinion, any supplement to broadcast TV and Netflix requires what they don’t offer so much – live news and sports.

by ·Comments Off on Tegna Buys A Piece Of Mobi TV
The Tubi TV home screen on Android

The Tubi TV home screen on Android

Tegna, which I still think of as the old Gannett TV, today announced a strategic investment in Tubi TV. The press release said that Premion, Tegna’s local ad network for OTT content, will expand its existing relationship with Tubi. Therefore Tubi, which picked up $20 million in funding last May, probably has a better chance of staying around awhile.

I must confess that when I’ve done roundups of free, ad-supported streaming services, I haven’t given Tubi full credit. The press releases it sends out call it “the industry’s leading free streaming and TV movie network,” and its library covers a lot of genres. Tubi also has apps for most of the usual streaming suspects, though I wish it would roll out an Android TV app to go with its app for other Android devices.

That press release had a lot more, including the kind of quotes you’d never hear in conversation. “Tubi and Tegna share a vision of the future of digital advertising, based on superior technology, targeting and premium content,” said Farhad Massoudi, founder and CEO of Tubi, Inc. “Together, we provide innovative ad solutions within an unparalleled mix of premium content. I look forward to our broader collaboration with Tegna.”

It all reminds me of two recurring themes I’ve been reading lately from the some know-a-little pundits. One is that streaming services are losing money because they can’t possibly afford to pay for the content they’re using. In fact, the kind of precisely targeted ads they can offer make that revenue stream a lot larger than for typical network ads. The second is that cord-cutters don’t account for internet service provider fees when considering TV subscription costs. Well yeah, and they aren’t accounting for the price of electricity or heat for their viewing room either. For the vast majority of US households, broadband internet is an automatic purchase like running water. For all of these viewers, Tubi TV is a pretty decent free service.

by ·Comments Off on Locast Quietly Adds Another NYC Station

Locast channel grid ending with WNETLocast.org, the non-profit service streaming New York City over-the-air TV stations on the internet, added another channel since its launch earlier this month. WNET, NYC’s primary PBS affiliate, joins WLIW, the secondary PBS station in town.

I noticed the addition in a Bloomberg Technology story that ran last Friday; it mentioned that Locast carried 15 channels. And the article led with the news, or non-news, that I find very interesting about this startup. “It’s been a week and we haven’t heard anything,” said David Goodfriend, head of Locast. “I don’t know how long that will last, but it’s been longer than I’d ever thought.”

Later, that Bloomberg article possibly explained what might trigger broadcasters’ lawsuits. It quoted Jack Goodman, a former general counsel for the NAB, who noted that the non-profit copyright loophole prevents Locast from benefiting from its retransmissions. In short, there will be trouble if it ever starts charging for subscriptions. And if it remains a free service, Goodman said, “I don’t know how they can afford to do it.”

(I know how they might afford to stay free, not even accounting for donations from grateful viewers. Already, Locast is funded by an anonymous, deep-pocketed benefactor. Since Goodfriend used to work for Dish Network, let’s hypothetically say that benefactor is Dish founder Charlie Ergen. What do you think it would be worth for Dish, in its next OTA retransmission impasse, to be able to tell its customers to flip over to the local Locast feed? Could Dish add Locast as a digital service alongside YouTube and Netflix? If the benefactor is connected to a cable TV giant, the same scenarios could play out. After all, as I wrote at Locast’s launch, Cablevision suggested something like this years ago.)

Locast remains geofenced, available only to devices that can prove they’re in New York City. The web site posted an apology to folks who live within the NYC media market but outside the city. “Unfortunately, as we grew rapidly during our first weekend we experienced some difficulties servicing those residing outside of the city limits. We apologize for this inconvenience but are working to get everyone their local content soon.” If those growing pains are the worst of Locast’s worries, it’s doing very well.