Posts for 'Podcast'

There was plenty of news in the TV/streaming industries this earnings week. First up we discuss Comcast raising the idea of spinning off its cable TV networks to shareholders. A move like this has been speculated about for years, as the networks are buffeted by cord-cutting. Comcast also said Peacock gained 3 million subscribers in Q3, benefiting from the Paris Olympics. 

Meanwhile Alphabet said that YouTube’s revenue for the past 12 months hit $50 billion, a first for the company. As we discuss, it’s likely that subscription services, which include YouTube TV, YouTube Music and Premium, Primetime Channels and Sunday Ticket, exceeded $15 billion. That would make YouTube one of the top 3 streaming subscription providers by size. 

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Four topics for this week’s podcast:

First, Disney+ and Hulu are no longer available for sign up in Apple’s App Store. As we discuss, this feels like a move by Disney to preserve margins, though at the expense of some of its subscribers losing the advantages of unified billing and integrated search/discovery. It also means less competition for Amazon, which is already the dominant distributor of third-party streaming services.

Next, IAB Tech Lab this week announced an initiative to help standardize emerging CTV ad formats. We’re confident it will help more advertisers move spending into the channel.

Third, Fubo is boldly offering premium services on a standalone basis, not requiring a base subscription plan. Fubo aims to be a “super aggregator” and is breaking from pay-TV operators’ traditional approach of enabling access to premium services only for subscribers. It’s a sign of the times, with viewers requiring flexibility and it seems like a savvy play by Fubo to keep viewers engaged with its app.

Last, a variety of streaming services are partnering with grocery chains and delivery apps, which both of us think makes a lot of sense to reduce churn and cost per acquisition. We expect to see more partnerships going forward.

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Bloomberg’s Screentime 2024 conference in LA offered opportunities to hear directly from a variety of industry executives about their companies’ streaming initiatives and results (all video interviews here). Colin and I were especially interested in interviews with Comcast’s Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts and Amazon’s SVP of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios Mike Hopkins.

As we discuss, the interviews highlight the companies’ divergent future as premium video distributors. Amazon is ascendant, having become by far the dominant distributor of third-party streaming services in the US. Meanwhile, Comcast, long the biggest cable TV operator in the US, has seen cord-cutting erode its subscriber base.

However, as Roberts articulates, Comcast is using its formidable broadband presence and Peacock to re-position the company for future success. Meanwhile Hopkins underscores how Amazon’s vast resources allow it to invest aggressively in technologies like AI to continually improve the viewer experience and partner value proposition.

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In August Google announced its new Google TV Streamer device along with feature updates for all Google TV devices. To learn more about all of this, Rob Caruso, who leads product management and user experience for Google TV, joins us for an in-depth Q&A.

Rob is especially excited about two features: smart home integration and deeper integration with Google Photos. The former is an extension of the controls in the Google Home app. The latter is part of a trend Rob describes as “ambient computing” with the opportunity to use Gen AI to create new imagery and collections of images on Google TVs.

In addition to these features, we also discussed Freeplay, its newly-named its FAST service, how AI is being used for personalized content recommendations and much more. As Rob describes, Google is in a position to both address mainstream user needs with smart TVs, while also pushing the boundaries to introduce new features and see what new use cases emerge.

It will be interesting to follow how these new features impact Google TV’s market share in smart TVs.

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We’re pleased to welcome Antenna’s CEO and co-founder Jonathan Carson back to Inside the Stream for an exclusive interview about the firm’s new State of Subscriptions research focused on specialty SVOD services.

Antenna’s research has become a key source of industry intelligence and we’re excited to share that Jonathan will be a regular quarterly guest on Inside the Stream going forward, providing exclusive insights and detail on the firm’s ongoing research.

For this week, Jonathan dives into why the specialty SVOD category, which is still much smaller than premium SVOD, is actually growing at a far faster rate. Speciality SVOD is a highly fragmented category, and Antenna is tracking the progress of over 100 different streaming services.

We discuss particular services like AMC+, Crunchyroll and Hallmark+ and specialty SVOD’s churn profile. We also explore the fact that 58% of specialty SVOD subscriptions happen through Amazon Channels and what the implications of that are. We also touch on the interplay between specialty SVOD and FAST services which are closely linked. And lots more…

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Four topics for this week’s podcast:

Both Google and Roku announced new streaming media devices this week, with Google launching its Google TV Streamer, which is positioned as the “next generation of Chromecast,” and Roku releasing an updated version of its Roku Ultra. As we discuss, these are two companies at far ends of the TV OS battle, with Google somewhat surprisingly still a laggard, and Roku still a leader.

Next up, Disney+ officially launched its paid sharing globally, following its announcement earlier this year. Disney+ is clearly hoping to emulate the success Netflix had following its rollout of paid sharing, though as we detail, there are important differences between how Disney+ is executing that could lead to much different results.  

Then we discuss a newly announced initiative by Whip Media to bring more transparency to FAST viewership across channels. While this would be a step forward, as Colin explains there are critical challenges to making this a reality.  

Finally, we circle back to a report last Friday about remarks from Netflix’s co-CEO Greg Peters concerning the possibility of the company leaning into live sports. Peters said “never say never” about live sports and with nearly 280 million global subscribers, Netflix would have an immediate impact.

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In concert with its Made on YouTube event, YouTube unveiled a slew of innovations aimed at enhancing creators’, viewers’ and advertisers’ experiences. Potentially the most high impact is a revamp of its CTV app which will offer “immersive previews” of creator content, modeled on best practices of SVOD apps like Netflix. Creators will also be able to customize how they categorize and organize their episodes in the app. With CTV accounting for at least 40% of YouTube’s views, optimizing the CTV app is critical.

YouTube also updated a number of relatively new AI-powered tools, including “Dream Screen,” which generates backgrounds in YouTube Shorts and a 6-second clip generator, both using Veo, which is DeepMind’s video AI technology, plus a refreshed Inspiration Tab to help brainstorm new video ideas.

Also new is the launch of Communities which allows engagment within the creator’s channel, pulling into YouTube discussions already happening in other social platforms. The feature builds on commenting, which has long been available in YouTube.

YouTube also confirmed broad availability of Pause ads, long in use by others like Hulu, which are likely to get a strong reception.

Many of the features are described in this post.   

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Four topics for this week’s podcast:

Last week IAB released its new 2024 advertising outlook report based on a survey of media professionals. CTV advertising was at the top of expected gains, revised upward from a 14.5% lift vs. 2023 in IAB’s prior report to 18.4% now. It’s another positive sign for CTV ads and we discuss how big a role political ad spending is playing.

Next up, Comcast’s president shared insights about NBCU’s position in movies and PVOD which were relatively upbeat. While NBCU has had a strong year, as we review, movies still face stiff headwinds.

Third, Charter and AMC signed a new distribution deal that gives many Charter TV subscribers access to the ad-supported version of AMC+. While the deal averts a blackout like the one happening with DIRECTV and Disney currently, Colin and I question whether the deal is sufficiently forward-looking for AMC.

Finally, Colin explains the significance of Amazon introducing TVs that support the NextGen TV standard.

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Last weekend Disney blacked out all of its networks on DIRECTV as the carriage agreement between the two companies expired without a new one being reached. These types of disputes are common in the pay-TV industry, and there’s always a lot of jawboning and finger-pointing, making it difficult to understand the exact proposals and counter-proposals.

What seems indisputable is that Disney is pushing for a continuation of its longstanding approach to bundling all of its networks together, perhaps with some additional flexibility for DIRECTV. With ESPN’s high cost, that means the bundle price to DIRECTV is elevated, even as cord-cutting accelerates. It also means DIRECTV would keep paying for a bunch of smaller channels most of its subscribers don’t watch. None of this is especially friendly to viewers.

The irony of course is that even as Disney is pushing for bundling with traditional distributors like DIRECTV, Disney is separately part of the Venu Sports JV which unbundles its (and Fox’s and Warner Bros. Discovery’s) sports networks and packages them into a new streaming offering. Venu’s launch is now up in the air due to Fubo TV winning a preliminary injunction against it.

Stepping back, as we observe, Disney is also pursuing a variety of other moves that also suggest reduced customer focus. The primary example of this is the latest round of Disney+ price increases that this time are coupled with a crackdown on password sharing - an approach completely counter to how Netflix wisely executed its password limit. Even though Disney eked out a profit in its DTC segment in the latest quarter, Colin and I believe these moves will put a lot of pressure on Disney+ subscriber numbers in the coming quarters.

(Outside of the streaming space, Disney also recently and embarrassingly insisted, and then reversed, its position in the case of a woman who died from an allergic reaction to food at Disney World, with Disney initially insisting her husband lost his rights to sue the company because he signed up for Disney+.)

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Viewers’ shifting consumption from linear TV to streaming is well-documented, but multibillion-dollar write downs in Q2 ’24 at Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount helped quantify just how costly the shift has been to big media companies.

In today’s podcast we discuss the write downs and the broader industry context. When Discovery acquired WarnerMedia, it made a bet-the-company wager on the resiliency of linear TV that has gone completely wrong. Wall Street has ruthlessly punished WBD, knocking its stock down from a high of $77 in March, 2021 to just $7 recently, valuing the company at approximately $17 billion. To put that in context, Netflix’s market cap is now over $290 billion, over 42x WBD’s.

It’s hard to see any near-term positive catalysts for WBD, and if anything, TNT’s loss of NBA rights following this season will create even more pressure. As we detail, Internet economics have come to the TV industry, wiping out the artificial economics of the pay-TV world, and exposing the true current value of legacy cable TV networks. It’s a very unsettling picture.

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Disney reported a $47 million operating profit in its direct-to-consumer (DTC) segment in its fiscal third quarter 2024. The profit comes one quarter earlier than Disney had forecast. The $47 million profit reverses a $517 million loss in the year ago quarter.

While the optics of the profit are indeed positive, in this week’s podcast Colin and I do a deep dive into the profit’s true quality and sustainability. Doing so reveals a fragile picture. First, there are issues about how much of Disney+’s recent subscriber gains are in fact due to the Charter deal, which by some accounts hasn’t been terribly successful in driving active subscribers. Meanwhile, Hulu’s been moving sideways for a while, and there’s no longer transparency about ESPN+’s subscriber count.

Another issue is Disney+’s falling average monthly revenue per paid subscriber which declined further in Q3. It’s noteworthy because Disney’s CFO ascribed it partially to Disney+’s lower-priced ad tier. Yet Hulu actually reported higher average monthly revenue per paid subscriber due to higher ad revenue. So there are some contradictory signals.

Meanwhile, Disney’s aggressive bundling, at deep discounts, may bode well as a longer-term churn-buster, but will almost certainly pressure near-term DTC profitability. Then there’s Disney+’s price increase, which will kick in soon, concurrent with a broad rollout on limiting password sharing. This double whammy is likely to lead to some subscriber losses.

From analyzing the the Q3 financial statement, it’s clear Disney+ and Hulu were still unprofitable in the quarter. It was actually ESPN+ that turned the DTC segment green. But as I detail, further analysis reveals an unusual jump in ESPN+’s quarterly profit level and profit margin vs. a year ago, suggesting Disney may have done a one-time reallocation of expenses from ESPN+ to ESPN that cannot be replicated in future quarters. Speaking of one-time events, Disney may still owe Comcast another $5 billion for the Hulu buyout (it’s not clear if that would hit the DTC line or another).

Finally, and at the risk of piling on, just over the horizon in fiscal ’25 loom big payments for Disney to the NBA for its new rights deal and an earnings drag as the new Venu Sports JV (potentially) ramps up. Note, an early Venu write-off is equally likely.

Add it all up and it’s clear to us that the quality and sustainability of Disney’s first quarterly DTC profit are quite fragile.

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Early returns show Olympics viewership is up strongly so far. But while many devoted fans watch the full-length events, many other more casual fans consume just the highlight clips - often after they search for them subsequent to hearing about a particularly exciting moment (e.g. the clutch pommel horse performance, the long match-ending runback in rugby sevens, etc.). Watching highlights can also help drive casual fans to watch full length. 

All this means that for a long duration event like the Olympics, solid strategy/execution highlight clips distribution is imperative. In today’s podcast Colin and I discuss how we’ve been impressed so far with NBC’s Olympics highlight clips distribution across Peacock and YouTube. We’re able to compare and contrast experiences because Colin’s only been watching on the former and I’ve only been watching on the latter.

We discuss NBC’s balancing act of seeking to build value in Peacock, its owned and operated property, while also recognizing and respecting the reality that YouTube is the number one video search destination for hundreds of millions of users, so it simply can’t be ignored. Finally we discuss the business model benefits of distributing on Peacock and YouTube. 

Overall NBC’s Paris Olympics clips execution is far superior to the last games, and provides lessons for others. Still, we see still further room to optimize, which we review toward the end. 

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Comcast reported Q2 ’24 results this week, including an update on Peacock, which cut its loss to $348 million in the quarter from $639 million a year ago. Peacock’s subscriber count increased from 24 million in Q2 ’23 to 33 million at the end of Q2 ’24, but that was actually down a million from the end of Q1 ’24. 

In this week’s podcast we discuss whether and when Peacock will turn the corner and become a scaled, profitable streaming service. Peacock is betting big on expensive sports to deliver, with the Olympics kicking off tonight, and a new multi-billion dollar NBA deal to be announced soon, validating our call for Peacock to "Go Big or Go Home" back in November, 2021.

Peacock was a very late entry to the streaming game, and according to MoffettNathanson, has lost at least $8 billion over the past 14 quarters. Colin and I explain why we aren’t convinced sports can carry the weight of Peacock’s turnaround, and agree that only time will tell. 

We then switch gears to discuss Netflix’s Q2 earnings and the company’s lagging ad-tier performance, which surprises both of us a bit. Veteran podcast listeners will recall that back in October, 2022 Colin and I expressed our optimism about the pending impact of paid sharing and the ad-tier. The former has been a monster success for Netflix, based at least partly on the expert execution of its rollout. The ad tier remains a work in progress but we remain confident Netflix will figure it out. 

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Antenna’s research has become a go-to source for streaming industry executives trying to understand the fast-evolving landscape. In this exclusive interview, Antenna’s Co-Founder and CEO Jonathan Carson discusses details behind the firm’s recently-released “State of the Subscriptions” report. Jonathan is an ad industry veteran with particular expertise in research and monetization, as well as a longtime friend.

Three weeks ago Colin and I did a podcast on the publicly available report, and Antenna itself did a short webinar about it two weeks ago. But this interview explores data that hasn’t been publicly released, so listeners gain access to brand new insights and data that Antenna hasn’t previously shared.

The interview provides a fascinating window into four drivers in streaming today: the shift to adoption of ad-supported SVOD tiers, the role of bundling, the anemic penetration of annual SVOD subscriptions and consumers’ acceptance to date of SVOD price increases. We finish up with Jonathan sharing his views of the industry going forward.

The interview with Jonathan is a must-listen for all industry participants. Together with our interview with leading Wall Street analyst Michael Nathanson two weeks ago, they are a blockbuster doubleheader of insights, helping all of us truly understand what’s happening in the streaming industry today.

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We’re excited to have top Wall Street media analyst Michael Nathanson join us this week. Michael and his partner Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson are the “one-two punch” of the TV, streaming and broadband industries. Their analyses and insights are widely considered best in class. Michael is an old friend, and we’re so pleased to have him join us in this exclusive, must-listen interview.

Among the many topics we cover: the recent decline in CTV CPMs due to Amazon’s market entry and why the new inventory will be digested, the competitive dynamics in the broader CTV/AVOD market, YouTube’s massive scale and Michael’s prediction that YouTube TV will be the pay-TV market leader in two years with 10 million subscribers, FAST’s potential, legacy media’s abysmal $30B cumulative loss on DTC services in the past 5 years, why streaming’s future will be driven by advertising and why the “unit value” of advertising is poised to soar due to AI and finally, the biggest potential surprise in the next year.

Anyone who wants to understand what’s really happening in the TV/streaming industries will find this exclusive interview invaluable.

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This week we interview Roku’s Head of Ad Marketing Jordan Rost and MAGNA’s EVP, Intelligence Solutions Kara Manatt, about their companies’ new research - "From Power On to Power Off" - about viewers’ content discovery journeys and the role of CTV Home Screen advertising. A key takeaway of the research is that almost half (44%) of streaming sessions begin with the viewer browsing, rather than knowing what they want to watch.

That opens up a huge content discovery opportunity on the home page, which dovetails with advertisers (especially streaming services) desire to gain awareness and action. We discuss this dynamic and other findings from the research about viewers’ mindsets and receptivity to ads along with how home page ads are already being executed.

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New research from Inscape analyzing the viewing behavior of 23 million opted-in VIZIO smart TV owners reveals streaming’s ascendance. In Q1 ’24, fully 58% of these viewers only streamed content, up 3 percentage points since Q4 ’23. 38% watched both streaming and pay-TV (cable, satellite and OTA), and just 3% only watched pay-TV. The streaming-only group has increased from 45% in Q4 ’21. We discuss these and other key findings.

Then we turn our attention to Max’s immediate rate increase, announced this week. Of note, only the two ad-free tiers are getting $1 per month increases, while the “Max With Ads” tier will remain $10 per month. As we discuss, this is the latest evidence of how traditionally ad-free streaming services (e.g. Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video) are incenting subscribers to take ad-supported plans - and why CTV advertising is poised to become more valuable than ever.

Last up we review new research from the American Customer Satisfaction Index showing record-high satisfaction levels for streaming services. Neither of us are surprised, given the strength of streaming’s value proposition. This year Amazon Prime Video topped the satisfaction list, but all streamers perfumed well and were tightly clustered.

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Memorial Day weekend was a disaster for Hollywood, with approximately $128 million in box office, down 36% from 2023’s total, and the worst in decades. There are some specific reasons, such as the steep underperformance of “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.” But as we discuss, any poor box office performance these days must always be viewed in the context of streaming’s myriad choices for viewers. Compounding matters for the box office are streaming’s inexpensive new bundles; on last week’s podcast we noted that Xfinity subscribers in particular can now access 6 top streaming services for just $30 per month.  

Next we return to bundling topic, in light of new research from Antenna showing subscriber loyalty to top streaming services. No surprise, Netflix has the highest loyalty, which in turn begs the question: how does Netflix benefit from participating in discounted bundles? We offer our thoughts.

Also on our radar this week is FreeWheel’s latest research from its Viewer Experience Lab, focusing on factors that diminish the viewer’s ad-supported experience. The testing found that viewers were most bothered by slow or buffering ads (78%), ads that unnaturally interrupt the programming (71%) and “we’ll be right back” slates (33%). The research is important because as CTV advertising becomes an ever more critical revenue stream, delivering top-notch ad experiences will be essential for optimizing monetization.

Last up, we review new research from Horowitz Research which found that of sports viewers, 58% of 18-34 year-olds and 57% of 35-49 year-olds say they’re likely or very likely to subscribe to the new Venu Sports streaming service for $35-$40 per month. While the research validates basic interest in Venu, it still feels early to accurately estimate true demand for Venu. A big looming question for Venu’s value proposition is whether TNT is able to renew its NBA package.

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Earlier this week Comcast took the wraps off StreamSaver, its new streaming bundle available for Xfinity subscribers. For $15 per month, StreamSaver bundles Peacock Premium, Netflix Standard with ads and Apple TV+. If subscribed to separately the combined total would be $25 per month, as of July 1st when Peacock Premium’s price will rise to $8 per month. That means StreamSaver provides a bundled discount of $10 per month, or 40% off the standalone rates.

As Colin and I discuss, StreamSaver’s discount is in the same range as Disney’s Duo and Trio bundles, which fall between 35% and 44%. It also means that if Xfinity subscribers took both bundles, they would get 6 top streaming services - Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Apple TV+, Peacock and ESPN+ for $30 per month, or an average of $5 per month per service.

From our standpoint, all this seems really appealing, especially to budget-conscious consumers. Think for a moment about the vast selection of entertainment and sports programming across these 6 services - all for $30 per month, which is far less than it would cost to take a family of 4 to a single movie, for just 2 hours of entertainment.

But as we also discuss, these discounted bundles need to perform their critical function of reducing churn and extending subscriber lifetime value. With so many different decisions required by viewers about what bundle (if any) to choose, it’s gong to be challenging to pinpoint causalities and correlations, making the elusive goal of streaming profitability ever more opaque.

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[UPDATED]

Netflix revealed at its Upfront this week that it now has 40 million monthly active users on its lower-priced ad-supported tier. It’s not clear how monthly active users and subscribers relate to each other. But I think it’s probably fair to assume that closer to around 10% of Netflix’s 270 million global subscribers are now ad-tier subscribers (Colin and I will clarify this further on next week's podcast). Not too shabby since the ad tier only officially launched in November, 2022. No surprise, Netflix is also creating its own ad-tech stack with partners.

In addition Hub Research released survey data showing that 15% of respondents cited Netflix as the brand that would most likely make them sign up for a bundle (Amazon followed with 12%, followed by AT&T with 10%).

As Colin and I discuss, all of this nicely positions Netflix to play a lead role in the “streaming bundles” age that has already begun (note that Comcast announced a Netflix-Peacock-Apple TV+ bundle this week, pricing TBD). And with the Netflix app ubiquitously available, it could be a key “on ramp” to targeted streaming bundles, based on viewers’ demonstrated interests. Given Netflix’s newfound scale in CTV ads, a bundling play could also find Netflix with a lead role in selling/managing ads across bundled services.

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