VideoNuze Posts

When Google drops $3.2 billion in cash on an acquisition, as it did yesterday with Nest Labs, maker of the Nest self-learning thermostat, you know there are some big, long-term visions playing in the background.

Most of the reviews I've read involve the companies capitalizing on the still nascent "Internet of things," where all devices are intelligently connected, exchanging valuable information that improves our lives. Even though Google and Nest were pretty vague in their joint announcement, I more or less buy into this rationale for the acquisition.

But, looking at the deal through my video-centric prism, I can also see some interesting possibilities coming from a tight integration between Nest and Chromecast, Google's hot-selling connected TV device.

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Free, short-form mobile video news is becoming a hot area of focus for established media companies. The latest evidence is this morning's announcement by NBCUniversal News Group of a minority investment in NowThis News as part of a broader content development collaboration involving all of NBC's news brands.

The investment follows the December acquisition of leading short-form mobile video news creator Newsy by E.W. Scripps for $35 million. That deal followed the launch by the New York Times, in late November, of the "New York Times Minute," a 3 times per day 1 minute video compilation of 3 top news stories of the moment which itself came on top of many other new video offerings from the Times. Meanwhile, in late December News Corp. acquired Storyful for $25 million to accelerate the use of short user-generated video in its and others' reporting.

And all of these follow numerous clip-oriented video news initiatives by a wide range of established and earlier-stage news organizations across both general and vertical subject areas (e.g. sports, entertainment, travel, etc.).

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A new study from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) released yesterday at CES, revealed that it is still very early days for second screen usage in conjunction with TV programs. The study estimates that 44% of the general population has ever accessed TV program related content on a second screen. This is the group that was surveyed.

Of this group, 42% (or about 18% of the general population) accessed "synchronous" content, which is meant to be consumed with the TV program, such as polls, contests, Twitter feeds, chats, etc.), and 91% (or about 40% of the general population) accessed "asynchronous" content which is meant to be consumed before or after the TV program such as actor or behind-the-scenes info, trivia, webisode viewing and Twitter/Facebook activity.

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I'm pleased to present the 209th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Colin was at CES this week and I've been avidly following all of the news coming out of Las Vegas, so on this week's podcast we share some of our top observations. On the list are 4K TVs, Smart TVs, Roku TV, Sony's cloud-based pay-TV service, Aereo's new $34 million financing and AT&T's "Sponsored Data" initiative among others.  

Listen in to learn more!

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At CES this week, Sony announced an ambitious over-the-top pay-TV service that will launch sometime in 2014, making it the latest company to try competing with entrenched pay-TV operators. While Sony brings more assets to the table than did Intel (whose OnCue service never even got to market), the odds of Sony succeeding still seem extremely low to me.

To be fair, Sony's installed base of 25 million PlayStations, its early success with the PS4 and a broader base of connected TVs and Blu-ray players (which Sony says all total to 70 million in the U.S.) give the company a presence in homes that Intel didn't have. Sony also has both studio and TV production operations, plus a sizable back catalog, none of which Intel has. Importantly, Sony also has a well-recognized consumer brand (even if it's not exactly synonymous with innovation as, say, Apple's and Google's are), something Intel also didn't have.

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Akamai and NBC Sports announced this morning that Akamai will be powering video streaming, site performance and security services for the 2014 Winter Olympics on NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports Live Extra app. The Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia will run from February 6-23.

NBC Sports plans to stream over 1,000 hours of Olympics content, double what it did 4 years ago from Vancouver. Streaming will include all 15 sports across 98 different events, plus lots of exclusive content such as interviews, athlete profiles and backstories that have become standard Olympics fare.

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Aereo announced late yesterday that it has raised  $34 million in Series C financing. Adding to the $20.5 million in its Series A and $38 million in its Series B, Aereo has now raised a total of $92.5 million. The new funding will support Aereo's ongoing regional rollouts, plus new hiring and technology. Of note, the new financing includes Gordon Crawford, a well-known media investor, whose involvement certainly gives Aereo further credibility.

Aereo is currently live in 10 markets, and said yesterday it plans to be live in 15 by the end of Q1. That's a downward revision from its expansion plan announced a year ago, which was to be in 22 cities by the end of 2013. Last September Aereo announced technical issues delayed its Chicago launch and hasn't updated when that area will go live.

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Mobile video is one of the hottest trends around. But the reality is that mobile video, is in fact, not very mobile. As I wrote last May, research firm Leichtman Research Group found that of people who watched video on their phone, 63% usually do so at home; for tablets, it's a whopping 89%.  One of the big contributing factors to this is the availability of WiFi at home, which allows viewers to avoid using expensive wireless data plans when using their mobile device for video.

That's why a new plan announced yesterday by AT&T, dubbed "Sponsored Data," could have very interesting implications for moving mobile video outside the home, and potentially unleashing totally new mobile video use cases. With Sponsored Data, the content provider pays AT&T for the cost of the data consumed, rather than it counting against the user's monthly data cap. Sponsored Data would have the highest impact on video because it is by far the most data-intensive media format.

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