Category: subscription services

Et tu, Roku?

First, I apologize for being incommunicado these past many months, but – you know – life interferes sometimes. That being said…

I read this article this summer and have been wanting to comment on it based on a long-standing prediction I’ve had about the place of Roku in the streaming entertainment universe. Roku is akin to Amazon Fire and Google Chromecast in its ability to access the world of OTT (Over The Top) streaming entertainment, offering a simple installation at a reasonable price, especially when compared to traditional cable packages. This may account for the increase in the number of so-called “cord cutters” that are causing tumult in the cable industry.

I’ve been expecting Roku to eventually join the ranks of Amazon and Google in providing their own proprietary entertainment programming, so as to increase its leverage over competitors. Of course, it now has the benefit of being a non-threatening  provider of access to channels like Amazon Prime, Google TV, Netflix, Hulu, and others, but it would certainly be an enticement if there were programs that you could only get from Roku. And with the addition of terrestrial and cable broadcasters to the streaming universe, it is beginning to look a lot like the old “ala carte” future we were anticipating so many years ago. Before long, our entertainment programming costs may rival that of cable subscriptions, but with the difference being that you select what’s in the package.

So, again I reiterate my prediction that Roku will enter the ranks of streaming companies, as opposed to simply being a streaming enabler. Yes, you can get a Roku that will allow you to access the wide range of streaming entertainment providers, but I sincerely believe that the lure of being a producer will be too strong that Roku will have to begin producing its own content. It’s either that or become a acquisition target of a better-financed streaming/media company.

Hello, Disney or Sony?

Here they come… the inevitable march of digital assistants!

Apropos of my last post, I was reminded that Samsung has recently introduced “Bixby” on its Galaxy S8 – now, with an English version! – that portends yet another entrant into the digital assistant marketplace. More importantly, it will try to lure you into the Samsung ecosystem, as opposed to the Amazon, Google or Apple ones. In fact, I just received an email from Capital One with this little snippet:

Your Capital One® credit card comes with lots of great perks and benefits, and we’ve teamed up with Samsung Pay to reward you with a little something extra the next time you use your card in Samsung Pay.

Clearly, there are incentives being provided to draw you ever more into these respective ecosystems. From smartphones, to digital payments, to entertainment (media), to content, there are growing signs that we are facing a fractious technological future.

My big question is how Samsung will manifest Bixby into your digital life. Clearly, there is a trend toward having a separate device that stands alone in your home environment. Alexa (aka Echo) was first, with Google Home and Apple right behind. But will we see a standalone device – separate from the smartphone – which will incorporate Bixby’s functionality and permit voice commands to run appliances, televisions, and more (many of which Samsung manufactures)? Or could you simply have a stand for your phone that recharges it and also responds to voice commands?

It would appear that other home devices have distinguishing characteristics, from ultra-high quality speakers to screen touchpads. But I can envision Samsung having all these options contained in a dock or port of some sort, which will use the Galaxy smartphone as its core.

There are so many ways that things can go, and with power players like Amazon, Apple and Google behind them, it will be fascinating to observe which rise to the top, or fall to the wayside. Regardless, things continue to change at a rapid clip, and I believe the evolution of the home assistant will greatly determine how it proceed. Stay tuned!

p.s.  – Just saw this about Amazon and Sears getting into business (poor retail!), and it reinforces the growth of this tech giant into all sorts of business – data acquisition, entertainment, consumer goods, retail, and so much more. How will it get into social media? and where does Facebook figure in this whole new universe?

 

 

Where is this all heading?

I’ve been watching with deep interest the progress of various video platforms as they emerge and develop, from YouTube and Netflix to Twitter and DirecTV Now. Here’s a brief rundown of a few of them from eMarketer that should give you an appreciation for the current state of flux, as well as the huge potential for coming disruption in the marketplace.

It seems that first we had simple websites that provided a platform, notably YouTube and Vimeo. Then we saw the TV Everywhere approach from HBO Now, as well as non-cable providers like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. There’s a move to applications that can provide video content, from sports leagues to Twitter and Facebook. But it is such a tangled web that there is no clear indication as to where it will all shake out.

I suspect that a combination of advertising strength with high-demand content will drive this initially. Those platforms with which advertisers are comfortable (YouTube, Facebook, etc.), and content that is both timely and popular (primarily sports), will be the leaders in the transition that is currently underway. This is a chapter that is very much being written, and companies will rise and fall depending on their ability to forecast and anticipate the trends. But this much continues to be clear: Those who control the rights to this content (sports, awards) will control much of the destiny, and those who must pay for licensing  those rights will face increased price pressure in the coming days (witness ESPN’s effect on Disney stock).

Discuss…

The shake-and-bake state of the media landscape…

Increasingly, the means of digital content distribution are being revised, altered and shuffled. As this article reports, cable providers are facing reductions in subscribers, and the outlook is not good. So what does this indicate?

It seems that, with every passing day, there is another video platform, phone app, or HDMI plug-in device that promise to wean you off of the exorbitant cable fees that you pay every month. First, it was telecoms, then it was Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, then it was the Roku stick and Chromecast. We are seeing a rapid fragmentation of how we receive video content, and that bodes ill for the traditional distributors.

A few things have transpired recently that hammer this point home. AT&T acquiring DirecTV, ESPN being a drag on Disney stock, Netflix and others producing more original content, and Twitter getting into a content deal with the NBA. This doesn’t even take into consideration the growing popularity of live-streaming, altered-reality gaming, and real virtual reality. As old-timers like myself become less important to the subscriber bases of legacy providers, and advertisers scramble to reach the youth demographic, money and eyeballs will migrate to new means of content delivery.

This is just the end of the beginning, if that. Things are moving very fast in this segment of the media, and a new, transformational technology is likely just around the corner. For now, I’ll go back to my DirecTV and watch some reruns…

Programmatic Advertising – what exactly is it, and how does it work?

If you spend any time in the marketing world, you have undoubtedly encountered the phrase “programmatic advertising” and – if you’re like me – scratched your head and pretended to know what it is. In an effort to educate my comrades-in-arms, I present to you a fairly thorough – if a bit dense – article on what it is and how it works.

You may have read about the ongoing battle between publishers and ad blockers. Since subscriptions are still a qualified success, and only in specific circumstances, digital advertising will continue to be an important part of any marketers toolkit.

“Although subscription video on demand (SVOD) and transactional video on demand (TVOD) have been successful, ad-supported content isn’t going away anytime soon, no matter the viewing device.”

In essence, it is an automated way for advertisers to identify potential customers based on their publicly available demographics and past buying behavior to target appropriate ads. The potential market is too big and the amount of work to reach them is too complex.

“In the ideal programmatic transaction, a user clicks on a website, and her internet address and browsing history are packaged and whisked off to an auction site. On behalf of advertisers, software scrutinizes her profile (or an anonymized version of it) and determines whether to bid for the right to place an ad next to the media she is about to view. If you’re looking for affluent women between 30 and 35 who own houses and dogs in a specific ZIP code in Dallas, you may hit a premium price. If you take a broader view—say, all viewers between 30 and 35—your pricing may go down, and the supply of viewers could go up substantially.”

This just scratches the surface, and you will need to be a bit patient in reading the article, but you may find that it gives you just enough understanding that you won’t feel left out when it comes to discussions of programmatic ad buying.

Good luck!

What is your content tolerance?

There was a time when I would subscribe to HBO solely for seeing “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Deadwood,” but today’s crowded field of content providers means that you’ll likely be forking over cash for access to beloved content. You can access HBO through HBO Now, as well as offerings from Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and now, Fullscreen.

Assuming you’re an aficionado of Bret Easton Ellis or “Electra Woman & Dyna Girl,” and you can afford the $4.99-a-month subscription fee, you may be a Fullscreen customer. But this begs the question: With limited resources, how will you prioritize both your time and money to see certain programs? This will be the question many of us will face as the days of broadcast networks fade away in lieu of subscription fees become the norm. Already, the advent of cord-cutters have viewers getting the bulk of their content from the likes of the aforementioned content distributors.

There is a lot to be learned about how viewing habits are acclimating to this brave new world of media, and the days of channel surfing have given way to ordering from a menu, knowing that even the menu is limited by who owns what. Or will advertising-based content take over subscriptions because of the cost and time limitations?

Content is back to being king!

Media’s love affair with content has been in an ebb and flow for years. But as the means of distribution continue down the path of more choices for less cost, the value of owning content has returned to its throne of supremacy in this digital age. Increasingly, content consumers are choosing their online destination by virtue of where it can get the desired programming.

Once upon a time, the major studios would supply content to the highest bidder, even if that was a direct competitor. Indeed, it was common for Warner Brothers Television and others to supply the spectrum of broadcasters, without regard to who was distributing it. But in this age of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc., owning content takes on greater importance.

That is what makes this Ad Age article particularly enlightening. Clearly, Comcast is pursuing a strategy of owning as much of its content as possible, with its move to acquire DreamWorks Animation.

“Content owners have become increasingly valuable as of late and we could argue Comcast sees potential value in the library of franchises, characters that could be integrated,” said Eric Wold, a B. Riley & Co. analyst covering the entertainment industry.

It is likely that the success of Netflix has been largely a result of its being the sole source of programs like “House Of Cards” and “Orange Is The New Black.” And, apropos of the DreamWorks Animation news, Amazon Studios has been an avid producer of children’s programming.

This is good news for creators, but like everything in entertainment, conditions can change on a moment’s notice, so get while the getting is good, because it may not last. One scenario that I think may be a trend is the sourcing of content via app, as opposed to cable, satellite or SVOD (Subscription Video On Demand).

The game of chicken being played with programming

In what is becoming a common occurrence in the entertainment world, Dish Network avoided a blackout of all Viacom properties (Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV, BET, etc.) with a last-minute deal to secure this critical programming. This is just the latest in a long history of brinkmanship between cable and satellite providers, and the owners of programming.

It went to the bitter end, but Viacom needed a boost to its stock price, and Dish’s 14 million subscribers might make a meaningful dent in its advertiser rates, as well as setting a precedent that might come back and bite it in the you-know-what:

“News of the deal should give Viacom shareholders relief. The stock was up about 5% on Wednesday after Ergen’s comments and soared 9% ($3.41 per share) to $40.70 each in early trading Thursday. Analysts had feared that losing Dish for any length of time would affect future carriage deals with other distributors and set the stage for continued pushback against other content companies concerning the high cost of programming.”

Not that Dish was in the driver’s seat either:

“Dish was also incented to do a deal after losing about 23,000 pay TV customers in the first quarter, a loss that was tempered by gains in the Sling TV service. MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett estimated that Dish lost about 158,000 satellite TV customers in the quarter, offset by a gain of 135,000 Sling TV subscribers. Some analysts had predicted that losing Viacom could result in as many as one-third of Dish customers heading for alternative providers.”

This is further proof that there is significant pressure to produce and own programs to avoid these showdowns, and with the advent of new means of distribution, these battles will morph into different battles with new stakes.

The king is dead! Long live the king! And then there’s Louis CK…

And when I say king, I mean content… as in, content is king. In the halcyon days of multi-million dollars “overall” deals for show creators in network television, the idea was that major TV studios (WBTV, Twentieth Television, Carsey Werner, Castle Rock, etc.) were keeping folks like David Kelley, Stephen Bochco, Dick Wolf, and Angell, Casey & Lee, under their respective corporate umbrellas. The arrangement would go something like this: They would be guaranteed a few million dollars a year over the course of a few years, and anything they created would first be offered to the studio to develop. If they passed, then the creators could take it to other buyers (usually, but not always). If nothing resulted in a series that particular season, then they could either just sit and create for the next season, or might be placed on another of the studio’s shows to help.

After reading this item from Business Insider, I am increasingly convinced that we might be returning to those days. As network loyalty is becoming a quaint notion, the providers of digital media will simply auction their talents to the highest bidder. But this won’t be just a matter of dollars. As Kevin Spacey and David Fincher have demonstrated with “House Of Cards,” artists are willing to exchange some of the upfront money for a piece of the company or greater creative freedom. I recall some rather upset writers who were forced to acquiesce to the “network suits” of yesteryear.

I guess what I’m saying – and seeing – is the creative path will go one of two ways. One is to follow folks like Louis CK and create your own product and distribute it yourself. But as he’s learning, that path has its own challenges. The other is to ply your wares to the highest bidder, and that bid may be in the way of dollars, creative freedom or a piece of the action.

This sounds a lot like TV Land…

So, Fullscreen is introducing a subscription service, and in reviewing its offerings, I was struck by how much it sounds like another version of the cable network, TV Land.

The $4.99-per-month subscription will feature scripted and unscripted original content as well as movies and TV shows from the ’80s and ’90s like “Saved by the Bell,”…

My question is, will TV Land compete for these online viewers by simply taking its expertise from cable to the internet? And will this see the start of bidding war for access to old television shows and other content?

Ultimately, it does point to the need for every player to create their own unique content, much like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu are doing now.