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TV Everywhere On Track for 30-50 Million Homes By End of 2010: Turner Exec
TV Everywhere services will be available to 30-50 million U.S. homes by the end of this year, according to Jeremy Legg, SVP of Business Development and Multi-Platform Distribution at Turner Broadcasting whom I spoke to last week. Jeremy characterized the 30 million number as "realistic" and 50 million as "plausible." Turner is part of Time Warner, which has been the most significant proponent among content providers of TV Everywhere services; Jeremy is the point person at Turner for its efforts.
I've thought TV Everywhere was a smart concept since it was unveiled last summer, in a high-profile news conference with Time Warner's CEO Jeff Bewkes and Comcast's CEO Brian Roberts. Since then though, pay-TV distributors in the U.S. have been relatively quiet about their TV Everywhere rollout milestones, leading me to grow skeptical about whether they're putting enough muscle behind their efforts. As I argued recently, the stakes for TV Everywhere success have grown considerably as Netflix in particular has ramped up its online offerings, getting closer and closer to pay-TV players' traditional turf.
Jeremy contends however, that there is a lot more TV Everywhere activity happening behind the scenes than has been announced, both among distributors and content providers. On the distributor side, Jeremy says that trials are continuing and even though there are a lot of moving pieces, key technology solutions have matured, allowing more templatized rollouts. Jeremy wouldn't provide detail on which distributors are in his count of 30-50 million homes. Time Warner has announced TV Everywhere deals with Comcast and Verizon. Comcast itself has been reticent to announce progress with its Fancast Xfinity TV service as it maintains its focus on completing its NBCU deal.
Obviously TV Everywhere services' appeal is largely tied to what specific content is available, leading to the other sticky issue of content providers' willingness to participate. Here Jeremy said that contributing concerns centered around determining ad loads, measurement, rights/windows, delivery logistics, security and economics. Jeremy said Turner got started addressing these items earlier than most others, positioning them to be an early proponent.
Though it's a long list of considerations, Jeremy sees progress such as Nielsen soon extending its C3 measurement to online viewing. As well, some networks have been finishing up negotiations for linear channel carriage, which impacts their TV Everywhere participation (one recent example is CBS-Comcast). And strategies around windowing are starting to coalesce. Still, given the multiple approaches to rolling out TV Everywhere, there is no magical switch to be flipped, making all programs currently delivered to the living room accessible online at once.
Taken together, it seems like the pace has increased on multiple fronts which should lead to more public updates in the Fall plus real progress on the ground. While there is little current evidence that consumers are cutting the cord, the entire pay-TV industry is in a day-to-day PR battle with upstarts like Netflix, YouTube, Hulu and others, which are vying for consumer attention. And as the recent Netflix-Epix deal showed, very real options for getting similar programs for lower costs are cropping up. All of this means pay-TV providers must stay sharp and push hard on technology-focused solutions like TV Everywhere that enhance their services.
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Categories: Cable Networks, Cable TV Operators, Satellite, Telcos
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