Posts for 'Satellite'

Music services are omnipresent, but pay-TV operators haven’t had much of a role. Seeking to change that, data provider Gracenote, a subsidiary of Tribune Media Company, has announced a suite of music data and services to enable pay-TV operators to launch their own music video channels and services, identify music on TV and search for artists’ on linear and on-demand programming.

Noting that 72% of YouTube viewership is music videos (according to Statista), Gracenote believes pay-TV operators have an opportunity to launch various services that bring music videos to HDTVs and home media environments.

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Major pay-TV operators made it through another quarter without any substantial acceleration in cord-cutting, according to industry data tallied by analysts MoffettNathanson. In Q2 ’16, pay-TV operators lost an estimated 757K subscribers, compared with a loss of 683K subscribers in Q2 ’15. Note also that the second quarter is always the seasonally weakest. When estimated Sling TV subscribers are added in, the loss declines to 708K in Q2 ’16 vs. 613K lost in Q2 ’15.

In a continuing trend, cable operators again picked up market share at the expense of telcos and satellite providers. Cable’s loss in Q2 ’16 declined to 242K subscribers from 404K lost in Q2 ’15, while telcos swung from a gain of 5K subscribers in Q2 ’15 to a loss of 526K subscribers in Q2 ’15. AT&T accounted for the vast majority of that loss (minus 391K) as it transitioned U-Verse subscribers to DirecTV. Verizon had a loss 41K vs. a gain of 26K a year earlier as it experienced an employee work stoppage.

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Cord-cutting remains one of the industry most-talked about themes, but it still appears relatively muted. According to Leichtman Research Group’s calculations, the 13 biggest pay-TV operators, which account for about 95% of the industry, lost approximately 385K subscribers in 2015. While that’s up from a 150K loss in ’14 and 100K loss in ’13, it still represents a minuscule .4% subscriber contraction, hardly the free fall many observers have long been predicting.

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I'm pleased to present the 312th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week we explore the prospects for DIRECTV Now, the new OTT pay-TV service that AT&T announced this week. Though it didn’t share a lot of details, AT&T emphasized affordability and value, which led me to conclude it will be similar to Sling TV as a skinny bundle, and therefore will encounter the same challenges.

However, it’s worth noting that John Stankey, CEO of AT&T Entertainment Group, later said (perhaps based on the media’s reaction), “It is a rich bundle of content; it’s not a skinny bundle of content” and went on to say DIRECTV Now “is about getting that middle road” somewhere between a skinny bundle and a full pay-TV lineup. Exactly what that means is hard to say at this point.

Colin is more sanguine about both Sling TV and also about the prospects for DIRECTV Now. Colin shares how he uses Sling TV currently and whom it might appeal to. I’m still skeptical about the skinny bundle approach (as is Stankey, who also said “We think skinny bundles have a very small application in the market over time”).   

DIRECTV Now won’t launch until later this year, so it will be a while until we find out exactly what it is.

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AT&T has partnered with video ad tech provider Videology to enable advertisers to buy ads on linear TV across over 130 different cable TV networks in 26 million DirecTV and U-Verse homes. At Videology’s Full Frontal Video event in NYC this morning, I did an on-stage interview with Jason Brown, VP, National Advertising Sales for AT&T AdWorks about the new initiative and how it will be implemented.

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Skinny bundle service Sling TV got a lot of press last week as parent company Dish Network reported its Q4 ’15 and full year results. Based on a lot of assumptions, analysts MoffettNathanson estimated that Sling TV ended the year with 523K subscribers. Meanwhile, the WSJ cited unnamed sources estimating Sling TV now has more than 600K subscribers.

Once again, Dish Network provided no detailed breakout on Sling TV’s subscriber growth. As many analysts have observed, that’s a deliberate strategy to obscure the subscriber losses occurring in Dish’s core direct satellite service. On the earnings call, Sling TV’s CEO Roger Lynch only said that the vast majority of Sling TV subscribers are not currently pay-TV subscribers, noting they were either cord-nevers or cord-cutters.

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It’s been a rough few weeks for all companies in the TV and pay-TV industries as cord-cutting and advertising shifts have taken center stage. Stock market sentiment has turned bearish as investors have extrapolated that the long-stable days of TV and pay-TV are officially over.

But a more granular analysis of actual video and broadband subscriber data for Q2, as well as a clearer understanding of what’s driving the market forward, suggests that such a broad brush approach to all players is misplaced. In reality, big cable operators had a standout second quarter in both video and broadband and should be poised for even further gains going forward as OTT becomes the single biggest industry influence.

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Netflix released its Q2 ’15 earnings late yesterday, adding 3.28 million subscribers globally, almost twice as many as the 1.69 million it added in Q2 ’14. Everyone knows that Netflix has been expanding fast internationally, but what was most intriguing about the Q2 report was that Netflix added 900K subscribers in the U.S. vs. its forecast of 600K. The 900K compares with 570K U.S. adds in Q2 ’14, 630K in Q2 ’13 and 530K in Q2 ’12.

In other words, in Q2 ’15 Netflix significantly broke out of a relatively narrow growth range it had been in over the past 3 years in the seasonally-weak second quarter. The 900K add is even more noteworthy because Netflix has almost twice as many U.S. subscribers (42.3 million) now than it did 3 years ago (23.9 million). The law of large numbers suggests the bigger a company gets, the harder it is to achieve even comparable unit growth, much less greater growth.

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U.S. pay-TV operators lost 31K video subscribers in Q1 '15, compared to a gain of 271K in Q1 '14, according to analysts MoffettNathanson. The loss was the first time the industry has ever lost subscribers in a first quarter, and signals an acceleration of cord-cutting (or cord-nevering, since it's hard to pull the two apart), contributing to a .5% industry contraction over the past 4 quarters (461K subscribers).

MoffettNathanson has always tried to put pay-TV results in context with both occupied housing net additions and new household net additions. In Q1, the former declined by 407K, but the latter increased by 1.3 million, suggesting around 900K households were added in the U.S. Despite the gain the industry still lost subscribers.

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Despite all the talk of massive cord-cutting being just around the corner, evidence continues to demonstrate that the U.S. pay-TV business remains relatively healthy. The latest, from Leichtman Research Group, shows that the 13 largest U.S. pay-TV operators, which together account for 95% of the market, lost just 125K subscribers in 2014. That was basically even with the 95K they lost in 2013 (see chart below).

LRG president and principal analyst Bruce Leichtman noted that the 220K subscribers lost over the past 2 years represents just about .2% of the operators' total subscriber base. Of course no business ever wants to lose customers, but given the dramatic rise in OTT usage and subscriber levels, along with the vast array of viewing options, losing just .2% over 2 years seems like a pretty good level of stability (consider that Netflix alone added 5.7 million U.S. subscribers in '14).

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I'm pleased to present the 255th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week we assess the prospects for Dish Network's upcoming Sling TV OTT service, which Colin and I each wrote about earlier this week (here and here). We both see Sling TV's slim programming selection as its biggest challenge. Dish is confronting the challenge that both broadcast and cable TV networks are very expensive to carry and so, to the extent Dish wants to keep Sling TV as affordable as possible, it must severely limit what's included.

We then recap some of the news out of CES that caught our attention including several announcements around 4K TV, the Cisco-Charter partnership for cloud delivery/security and FCC chairman Tom Wheeler's plan to regulate broadband under Title II.

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Dish Network has finally announced its OTT virtual pay-TV operator ("vPop") service, dubbed "Sling TV," priced at $20/month and available in Q1 '15 on multiple connected and mobile devices.

Sling TV includes 12 linear cable TV networks from Disney (ESPN, ESPN2, Disney Channel and ABC Family, plus a feed of Maker Studios' videos), Turner (Cartoon Network, CNN, TBS, TNT and Adult Swim) and Scripps (Food Network, HGTV and Travel Channel). Beyond the obvious missing cable TV networks, none of the big 4 broadcast TV networks are included.

In addition to the $20/month tier, Sling TV is also offering two $5/month packages - one for kids (with Disney Junior, Disney XD, Boomerang, Baby TV and Duck TV) and one with news and information (with HLN, Cooking Channel, DIY and Bloomberg TV).

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With time ticking away to December 31st, it's looking increasingly questionable whether Dish Network is going to meet its self-imposed year-end deadline to launch its $30/month virtual pay-TV service ("vPop"). Dish's chairman Charlie Ergen, reiterated the company's commitment to the year-end deadline in his Q3 '14 earnings call comments.

But he also lowered expectations for the new service, citing numerous technical and operational challenges. I think it's fair to add to that list significant programming challenges, which always existed and have no doubt only increased given Dish's recent and current skirmishes with big TV networks.

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I'm pleased to present the 253rd edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Colin gets us started this week, discussing the new CBS-Dish Network deal, highlighting that OTT rights were excluded. This is noteworthy because of Dish's plans to launch a $30/month OTT service soon (dubbed "NuTV"), so it's not clear if or how CBS will fit in (CBS has recently launched its own "All Access" OTT service).

There have been previous reports Dish isn't planning to include broadcast networks in NuTV, instead requiring a surcharge. All of this continues to make me skeptical about NuTV's prospects. Note that even CEO Charlie Ergen has tamped down expectations for NuTV.

We then turn our attention to HBO's decision to outsource its OTT backend to MLBAM, as disclosed by Fortune this week. On Wednesday, I wrote that while MLBAM's solution is first rate, and it's a short-term win for HBO to get to market quickly, I still see the decision as a long-term competitive disadvantage for HBO. In my view, HBO needs to develop its own tech DNA to fully compete with Netflix and other OTT players, particularly in leveraging data, which I believe is the new king. Colin disagrees and thinks HBO made the right call.

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Dish Network has been very public about its interest in launching an over-the-top pay-TV service (a virtual pay-TV operator or "vPop") this year. But on Dish's Q3 '14 earnings call yesterday, company chairman Charlie Ergen provided an update on its progress, tamping down short-term expectations for the vPop service and its likely market impact. More importantly, as I explain below, Ergen's comments highlight some of the vPop's conflicting goals and significant challenges.

Following are Ergen's initial comments on the call about the vPop service (from the transcript at Seeking Alpha), in which he speaks candidly about the complexity and uncertainty involved with the launch:

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Between HBO's OTT announcement yesterday and CBS's this morning, there're intensifying buzz that the demise of pay-TV, with its expensive multichannel bundles, may finally be upon us. But here's a contrarian thought: what if all of the SVOD activity we're already seeing - plus more that's sure to come - is actually very good news for pay-TV? Before you scoff at me as a head-in-the-sand pay-TV defender, stop and consider the following.

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Lately there's been a lot of talk about so-called "virtual pay-TV operators," (vPops as my partner Colin Dixon at nScreenMedia likes to call them), which are also called "virtual MVPDs" (multichannel video programming distributors). These are companies that will deliver linear and on-demand broadcast/cable TV network bundles from the cloud, over broadband to connected/mobile devices, offering an alternative to traditional pay-TV services.

Sony, Verizon and Dish Network have all publicly stated their interest in launching vPop services in either 2014 or 2015. Though it's still early and much is yet to be known about their actual offerings, there are already many reasons to be skeptical that they'll achieve any material success.

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Late yesterday, the NFL announced it renewed its "Sunday Ticket" deal with DirecTV for a reported 8 years at $1.5 billion per year, a 50% increase over their prior deal. Going back about a year, there were rampant rumors that the Sunday Ticket package could go to an OTT player, with Google being the name most often mentioned.

In reality, though, there was virtually no chance Sunday Ticket was going to go to OTT, and so the DirecTV renewal comes as no surprise. As I wrote over a year ago, there were at least 5 big challenges to a Google-NFL deal in particular. These essentially boil down to a combination of online video not being mature enough yet to exclusively handle marquee sports broadcasts and the incumbent TV ecosystem desperately needing to retain marquee sports broadcasts like Sunday Ticket.

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Interest in cord-cutting remains relatively muted according to new data from Frank N. Magid Associates. The firm, which has been surveying consumers' attitudes towards cord-cutting each of the past 4 years, found 2.9% of respondents agreeing they're "very likely" to cancel their pay-TV service in the year ahead, a slight uptick from 2.7% found in 2013, 2.2% in 2012 and 1.9% in 2011.

Magid noted that the "very likely" level jumped to 4.9% for 25-34 year-olds, but dropped to 1.4% for those identifying themselves as ESPN viewers (live sports are widely believed to be the most formidable bulwark against cord-cutting).

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