Posts for 'Podcast'

I'm pleased to present the 171st edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. Leading us off today, Colin digs into Nielsen's new "zero-TV" homes data, part of its Q4 '12 Cross-Platform report. When Colin crunches the numbers, he concludes that the  U.S. pay-TV industry may have lost 1.1 million subscribers last year, who moved into the zero-TV category.  That would be above other estimates, which range from flat to down about 500K.

Of course one of the industry's key initiatives to add value has been TV Everywhere, and on that front, there were refreshingly candid admissions this week from both David Levy, head of Turner's sales, distribution and sports, who said he was "embarrassed" at TV Everywhere's progress, and Lauren Zalaznick, NBCU's chairman, entertainment and digital networks, who said it's too confusing. Both are right, and there are other reasons as elaborated in the recent Ultimate Guide to TV Everywhere (free download).

Contributing to the pressure on pay-TV providers is the ever-expanding range of quality content available online, and 2 more efforts surfaced this week, Conde Nast's new digital video network, and VEVO TV, a 24x7 music video network.

Separate, Colin has released his excellent new white paper, "Second-Screen Apps for TV" (free download here)

And a reminder to sign up for "Sizing Up Apple TV" a free video webinar on April 2nd featuring Brightcove's Jeremy Allaire and me.
    
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I'm pleased to present the 170th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. First up today, Colin does a little trash talking of Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes. At a Deutsche Bank conference earlier this week, Bewkes said “We don’t think the multichannel bundle is becoming less of a good deal, we think it’s getting to be a better deal and we think it’s getting to be a better deal in the opinion of consumers,” Colin thinks this statement is complete baloney and cites specific research refuting Bewkes' assertions (more detail here).

We then shift gears to talk about online and mobile video advertising. It was a busy week on that front (more of what VideoNuze wrote is here). One that really caught my eye and I wrote about was from Extreme Reach. The company announced an innovative cross-media reporting suite that maps actual TV and online video ad impressions along with conversions. To my knowledge it's the first time such reporting has been possible, enabling buyers to have unprecedented insight into campaign ROI.

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I'm pleased to present the 168th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. Today we start by discussing Akamai's new Ad Integration Services, which enables cloud-based video ad insertion, in partnership with mDialog.

This approach has multiple benefits including improving the user experience which extends view times. Colin notes that recent data from Conviva, for example, shows that a 1% increase in buffering results in 8 minutes of lost viewing time, which in turn means a loss of 2 ad breaks. Conviva estimates in 2012 this adds up to $2.2 billion in lost ad revenue globally, and by 2017, it could be $20 billion. Clearly improving the viewer experience has a significant payoff.

We then transition to talking about improvements in video discovery. Colin shares takeaways from his interview this week with Jeremy Toeman, CEO of Dijit (Next Guide), which recently acquired Miso. And I share observations on the new web version of Fanhattan, which launched in beta yesterday.

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I'm pleased to present the 167th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. Today Colin and I assess the prospects for Intel Media's forthcoming over-the-top / pay-TV alternative service, which Erik Huggers described at this week's D: Dive Into Media conference.

Colin and I have very different perspectives on this. I believe that the ground rules of how major TV programmers negotiate their distribution deals (i.e. bundling disparate channels together) essentially eliminates the opportunity for pay-TV operators (or aspiring operators like Intel) to actually innovate with subscription packages. Further, by not addressing consumers' main problem with pay-TV, which is its high cost, Intel is going to have a hard time even getting 98% of consumers' attention in the first place.

Conversely, Colin believes that Erik wouldn't have been on stage at D unless he already had confidence he could get the kind of programming flexibility required to deliver on what he described. With that flexibility, Colin has faith that Intel can offer finer-grained packages, in turn delivering higher value to prospective consumers. However, absent more details, he's reluctant to be too optimistic.

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I'm pleased to present the 166th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. This week Cisco released its VNI Mobile Data Forecast, which Colin and I both wrote about (here and here). Each of us was particularly focused on the role of mobile video, which Cisco forecasts will account for 66% of all mobile data by '17.

Colin and I discuss the critical role of wireless carriers' tiered data plans as the big driver of what happens with mobile video adoption. To the extent that caps remain relatively low and plans quite expensive, video usage on carrier networks will be suppressed. However, users are already savvy about moving video usage to WiFi networks, typically within the home. As a result, "portable" video (as we think of it) - is soaring.

Both of us share a number of specific data points we're seeing and hearing about which support the shift to video viewing on smartphones and tablets. Although we agree it's still a bit of a murky picture, we both believe strongly that consumer behavior is clearly shifting to watching video on smartphones and tablets. Over which types of networks they will do so going forward is an issue to be tracked closely.

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I'm pleased to present the 164th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon, now heading his own firm nScreenMedia. This week we dig into Netflix's Q4 results, which were reported this week. As I wrote yesterday, Q4 was certainly the best quarter Netflix has had in a couple of years, and it's encouraging to see the company getting back on track. It is still quite early in understanding how the overall streaming market will shape up and what Netflix's adoption will be.

In the discussion, we explore key questions around the company's growth prospects, competitive landscape and international expansion. On the last topic in particular, Colin adds his observations of how Netflix is doing in certain international markets where he been doing research and traveling.

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I'm pleased to present the 163rd edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon. Before getting into today's topic, Colin shares exciting news that he has set up a new firm, nScreenMedia. Congrats to Colin!

This week we dive deeper into Smart TVs, focusing on the challenges they face, and what incremental improvements came out of CES (which Colin also wrote about earlier this week).

While we both agree that fragmentation and relatively low volumes are holding back app development, Colin sees the solution as a unified "app framework," while I believe what's really required is the equivalent of an underlying common operating system for Smart TVs. This OS would not only create baseline consistency among them, but would also be interoperable with other devices like smartphones and tablets. This is crucial for viewers to seamlessly move back and forth between all their devices.

Since I think the likelihood of something like this emerging any time soon is relatively low, I believe that the circumstances are ripe for Apple to extend its iOS to the living room by launching a full scale television (and an upgraded appliance as well). I wrote about this in detail earlier this week in "Post-CES, the Stage is Now Set for an Apple Television."

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I'm pleased to present the 162nd edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon, who is back from spending several days at CES. Though Colin concedes he didn't see anything that really "blew his socks off," he does share specific reactions to what he saw in second screen apps, UltraViolet, home gateways, Ultra High-Definition TVs, Google TV and incremental improvements in Smart TVs.

One thing that did get Colin jazzed was Near Field Communications (NFC), which allows devices to talk to each other, simply by touching. Colin describes it as "magic" and was quite impressed.

We then shift topics to discuss Aereo, which earlier this week announced a new $38 million financing and plans to expand to 22 metro areas in 2013. As I wrote, I think that as Aereo's awareness increases this year, it's going to challenge pay-TV because it effectively eliminates the broadcast TV reception element of pay-TV's value proposition. By "hollowing-out" this important feature, Aereo will cause many pay-TV subscribers to question whether they really need/value the myriad cable networks they don't really watch. Given pay-TV's escalating cost and Aereo as an alternative, many people could begin to scale back.


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I'm pleased to present the 159th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon, senior analyst at The Diffusion Group. Today we count down and explain our picks for the top 10 online video stories of 2012, with a bonus of naming our top "non-story" of the year.

2012 was an incredibly busy year in online video, so choosing the top 10 wasn't easy. No doubt you'll have your own selections, and we welcome your ideas in the comments section. Next week we'll do our last podcast of the year, in which we'll look ahead to 2013 and make a few predictions about what to expect.

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I'm pleased to present the 156th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon, senior analyst at The Diffusion Group. Google is all over the online video industry and today is an "all Google" podcast, as we focus on updates related to Google TV, Google Fiber and YouTube.

First up is Google TV, and Colin discusses new features including voice-based search, the PrimeTime TV/movies app and updated YouTube app, as well as a new AirPlay-like app that allows users to watch video through their Google TV that was discovered on their Android devices. Colin views all of these as the continued evolution of Google TV, which long-term he believes will become an interesting device.

Next up, the first installations of Google Fiber occurred this week in Kansas City. The much-hyped project promises to deliver 1 gig speeds for $70/month, though a profile of an early customer indicated actual speeds around 600-700 mbps. Still, that's a huge jump from typical broadband ISP service and Colin shares scenarios of what may happen when speeds and bandwidth caps are no longer constraints.

We finish up with YouTube, which this week revealed that it will re-invest in 30-40% of the original channels it helped launch, meaning 60-70% won't get additional funds. Like TV networks, YouTube is learning what works and what doesn't, and re-upping accordingly. It's also worth noting that the YouTube app launched on Nintendo Wii this week, further spreading YouTube's reach into the living room.

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I'm pleased to present the 154th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon, senior analyst at The Diffusion Group. This week finds Colin in Copenhagen, in the middle of the Nordic region which is seeing a lot of OTT activity from Netflix, HBO Nordic and others. Colin provides an update on what he's learned.

In addition, we discuss YouTube's declining market share, which in September stood at 33.2%, down from 53.1% as recently as July. I delved deeply into all of the year-over-year data this past Monday. Colin adds another dimension to the analysis, saying that this reflects a shift away from viewing short clips, toward longer-form viewing.  

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I'm pleased to present the 153rd edition of the VideoNuze-TDG podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon, senior analyst at The Diffusion Group. This week Colin and I review Netflix's Q3 '12 results and its bumpy path forward.

As I wrote earlier this week, by the end of 2012, Netflix will have lost 8 million, or half the DVD subscribers it had back in July '11. That loss of subscribers and cash flow come at an inopportune time, given Netflix's aggressive international expansion. Colin is slightly more optimistic about Netflix, citing its better-than-expected international subscriber results. We also share thoughts on where Netflix goes from here.

Unrelated to Netflix, Colin also just released a complimentary white paper called "Examining the Trend: From IPTV to Broadband IPTV, which is available for download here.

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Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group and I are back for the 152nd edition of the VideoNuze-TDG podcast. This week Colin and I first share our reactions to the launch of Boxee TV earlier this week. Colin is struck by Boxee TV's unlimited video recording feature, the first that either of us have seen. Colin also points out potential challenges with upstream bandwidth that could be a challenge for Boxee TV recording programs at HD quality. Overall though, Colin likes Boxee TV's direction and believes it's a better strategy for the company than the original Boxee Box.

As I wrote earlier this week, I see Boxee TV in the context of innovation happening with broadcast TV and DVR. Along with Simple.TV and Aereo, consumers are gaining more control of their broadcast TV experience. In addition, they're all overlapping to an extent with Hulu and Hulu Plus which already offer unprecedented access to broadcast TV programs. It's still too early to tell which of these approaches will succeed, but Colin and I share our predictions.

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Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group and I are back for the 151st edition of the VideoNuze-TDG podcast. This week Colin and I first discuss YouTube's curation plans which I wrote about yesterday. I've received a number of emails about my post, with most readers intrigued by the idea, and wanting to learn more. Colin likes YouTube's curation direction too, seeing it as a reminder of the value of programming.

Colin then walks us through some of the interesting reactions he got on a panel he moderated at the TV Next conference, "The Rise of the Next-Gen Operator." He asked the question - imagine its 2022, what does a pay-TV operator look like? Listen in to learn more.

Last but not least, Colin is moderating a session for Ooyala at next week's Digital Hollywood. Ooyala is offering complimentary admission to the conference in exchange for completing the form located here.

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Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group and I are back for the 150th (whoohoo!) edition of the weekly VideoNuze-TDG podcast. This week Colin and I talk about how on-demand viewing - through both DVRs and online - is changing the landscape for TV networks and advertisers.

First up, Colin shares some eye-opening numbers from the start of this year's TV season, as reported by the NY Times. Certain shows like NBC's "Revolution" and "The New Normal" plus CBS's "Hawaii Five-o" gained a whopping 40% more viewers due to DVR-based viewing in the 3 days following their premieres. This new viewing dynamic, particularly among the coveted 18-49 cohort, underscores the new reality of on-demand's importance in assessing a show's potential. Premiere night alone is no longer determinative (if it ever was!).

On-demand viewing is also a conundrum for advertisers and agencies when creating media plans. And that's why this week's announcement by Nielsen of its Cross-Platform Campaign Ratings solution is a big step forward in monetizing audiences across screens. Online has emerged alongside DVRs as a legitimate viewing alternative, and advertisers need to harness its potential. Colin and I discuss how Cross-Platform helps create a "common currency" measurement with TV, which will appeal to TV ad buyers, while helping content providers better value their online ad inventory. It's a complicated topic, but as Colin notes, the shift from "broadcaster-centric to consumer-centric" is causing huge ripple effects in the ecosystem.

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Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group and I are back for the 149th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG Report podcast. This week Colin kicks things off discussing zeebox's entry into the U.S. market, plus its new partnerships with Comcast, NBCU and HBO. Colin has used zeebox in the U.K. (where it has over 1.5 million users) and has been very impressed. zeebox falls into the general category of "second screen apps" but Colin notes its current focus on live TV was likely the hook for its new partners. With a sizable segment of viewers having shifted their viewing to on-demand, an app that helps drive some back to live would have lots of positives for TV networks.

We then shift to discuss new research released by NPD Group this week that 45% of consumers reported the TV as the main screen for viewing online video, up from 33% a year ago. Those identifying the PC as the main screen dropped from 48% to 31%. As I explain, this is noteworthy because it shows how online video is in fact moving to the living room, becoming a more mainstream behavior. As online video finds itself on more of an even footing with traditional TV, it raises the stakes for cord-cutting and shaving, along with shifting ad dollars from TV to online video.

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Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group and I are back for the 148th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG podcast.

First up this week we discuss Microsoft hiring former CBS Entertainment executive Nancy Tellem to develop original content for the Xbox platform and other devices. Colin thinks it's a odd choice because of the apparent mismatch between the type of programming CBS has excelled at vs. the type of programming that will likely resonate with Xbox owners. In particular, Colin notes that 40% of Xbox owners are age 18-24, whereas Nielsen has found that CBS's average viewer's age is 55. Clearly Microsoft is betting that Ms. Tellem can extend her significant programming skills to different formats, audiences and devices.

Speaking of confusing, we then turn our attention to comments that Time Warner Cable's COO Rob Marcus made this week in reference to the company potentially working with Apple on a set-top box. On the one hand he said that TWC is "open to giving up control of the user experience" to new devices, but on the other, that this does not mean it is willing "to give up the customer relationship." Both Colin and I find the two objectives at odds with one another, particularly when introducing a UI powerhouse like Apple into the living room. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, if cable operators partner with Apple and its set-top, it will be akin to allowing the fox into the henhouse. We know how that story ended.

Lastly, as frequent flyers, both of us were excited to read about Delta's new in-flight VOD plans, and JetBlue's forthcoming high-speed WiFI rollout. We discuss implications briefly.

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Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group and I are back for the 147th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG Report podcast. This week we start with Colin sharing his observations on a session that he attended at IBC in Amsterdam last week, "The Great Connected Television Debate: Will the Internet be the End of Television As We Know It." Colin comes down on the side that "yes, it will," and articulates how the conventional definition of television is melting away as behaviors shift and technology further develops.

Speaking of technology, we then discuss the impact of the iPhone 5 on mobile video. I argued yesterday that it will have a big impact, and although Colin believes iPhone 5 is a bit of a yawn, he agrees that it will push mobile video adoption and usage forward.

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After a week off for R&R, I'm pleased to be joined once again by Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group, for the 146th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG Report podcast. Colin is at the IBC conference in Amsterdam this week, so his audio isn't quite as good as usual. There, he attended a fascinating presentation by a Unilever executive on how the company is adapting its advertising to the realities of a multi-screen world. Colin shares his reactions, particularly to how Unilever is creating its own online content in order to engage its audience in ways not possible with traditional TV advertising.

Shifting gears, we then discuss Amazon's aggressive content licensing blitz that I wrote about earlier this week. Having spent hundreds of millions of dollars licensing premium content over the past 15 months in support of its Prime Instant Videos, I think it's pretty clear that Amazon has emerged as the strongest new competitor to Netflix. Colin agrees, but reminds us that although content parity is critical to competitiveness, user experience matter as well. On this front, we agree Amazon still has a lot of work to do to match Netflix. Listen in to learn more!


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I'm pleased to be joined once again by Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group, for the 145th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG Report podcast. In this week's podcast Colin and I talk about what resonates most for us about Aereo, based on my interview with its founder and CEO Chet Kanojia, earlier this week (Part 1 here and Part 2 here).

Foremost for both of us is Aereo's simplicity and ease of access. Aereo aligns with the expectations of digital natives, people who expect self-service offerings that have low entry barriers and commitment levels. Aereo capitalizes on key vulnerabilities of today's pay-TV services - not just that they are expensive, but that they are complicated, with various tiers, channels, fees, clunky set-top boxes and special offers tied to extended contracts, all of which are confusing and burdensome to many people, especially digital natives.

Embedded in Aereo's simplicity/convenience value proposition is its focus. Aereo is not trying to be all things to all people; rather it is starting by offering flexible broadcast TV reception, mainly for use on iPads, for a low daily cost. We were both struck by Chet's comparison of Aereo to the early days of cable TV. While their architectures are fundamentally different, their core initial offer of improving reception and access to broadcast TV programming, is similar.  In this respect, you gotta love the durability of broadcast TV as a value driver.

However, cable's early model of cleaning up broadcast signal delivery eventually gave way to retransmission consent fees. For both Colin and me, this is the area that remains murkiest for Aereo. While it won the first round in court, it faces a long journey of legal challenges ahead. In particular, Colin is not convinced of Chet's belief that should Aereo adversely impact retrans fees, cross ownership of broadcast assets would enable media conglomerates to remain whole by shifting around fees to cable assets.

Finally, we are both impressed with how Aereo is capitalizing on so many of today's key technology and consumer behavioral trends. These include the declining cost of IP video delivery, storage costs and processing power, along with the rise of cloud computing, mobile devices (namely the iPad) and the shift to on-demand viewing. Chet views Aereo as a "platform" that unites all of these into a compelling consumer offering. We agree. In particular, its low, "success-based" capex model means Aereo should be able to rollout quickly and inexpensively. I draw a contrast with Google's costly fiber buildout in Kansas City.

Chet downplays Aereo's disruptive impact, but Colin and I agree it's potentially significant. Time will tell.

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