Trends that will shape the industry include the ratcheting up of OTT streaming services, shuffled alliances between content companies, downsizing and consolidation among technology vendors, and ongoing adoption of IP, AI, advanced advertising and NextGen TV.
Liberty Media chairman John Malone believes that consolidation, which has swept through the traditional cable distribution business largely at his own hand, will come to streaming video as well, and that could be good news for traditional pay TV companies.
Changes in decades-old broadcasting rules, combined with new types of competition in news and entertainment, are creating a drama-filled free-for-all as local U.S. broadcasters consolidate. Consolidation will inevitably mean that fewer voices reach more people, but some in the industry argue it’s the only way local broadcasting will be able to compete with big tech.
Last month Comcast announced that it would buy Time Warner Cable, the largest provider of TV and broadband after Comcast, for around $45 billion. In the coming weeks the Department of Justice and FCC will begin to review the merger. They should be sceptical.
Speaking at the Goldman Sachs conference, DirecTV chairman and CEO Mike White said pay TV consolidation would be pro-consumer and pro-competition. “Content cost is a huge challenge for all the distributors,” he said.
