VideoNuze Posts

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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On today’s podcast, Colin and I discuss last Friday’s decision by U.S. District Court Judge Margaret Garnett, ruling in favor of Fubo by issuing a preliminary injunction preventing the launch of Venu Sports. Venu is a joint venture of Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery that includes 14 of the companies’ linear TV sports networks, plus on-demand content, for $43 per month. The companies filed an appeal on Monday.

As is evident from the ruling (thanks to the LightShed team for posting), Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery have created a “gilded cage” for themselves by - up until Venu - only including their sports networks in pay-TV’s multichannel bundle. Disaggregating these networks exclusively for Venu would create a torrent of cord-cutting, as live sports have become a mainstay for those still committed to pay-TV subscriptions. Judge Garnett agreed Venu would cause an immediate negative impact on Fubo (it would for other pay-TV operators too).

It’s not clear to either of us how specifically the JV partners will address the detailed points Judge Garnett articulated in her ruling, nor how persuasive they’ll be in lifting the injunction, especially given that the criteria for a judge to issue an injunction like this is in the first place is the presumption that an eventual trial would arrive at the same conclusion. All of this leaves Venu’s future highly uncertain.

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