OTT

After months of complaints from advertisers over their messages appearing alongside inappropriate or exploitative videos, YouTube has announced a new set of policies designed to improve how it vets content.

After spending years treating over-the-top video streaming as something to address in the far-off future, TV networks are actively shopping their streaming apps to marketers and technology companies at CES.

There’s a new over-the-top streaming service in town, but this one has a twist: it’s streaming over-the-air broadcast feeds of 13 New York City-area stations for free.

Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood doesn’t fit the image of your typical tech mogul. In person, he comes across as quiet and introverted. But judging by the company’s first earnings report in November, he’s a bona fide billionaire, controlling just over a quarter of outstanding common stock for a company whose share price more than tripled since its September IPO.

CBS All Access is joining Amazon Channels with a reduced-ad offering, becoming the first of the digital company’s 140 channels with a live, linear feed. The arrangement enables Prime members to add CBS for $9.99 a month.

David Bohrman, former Current TV president and former CNN Washington bureau chief and chief innovation officer at CNN Worldwide, is launching a new over-the-top video service that will cater to progressive Americans, called the Political Voices Network.

Cord-cutting is not just for millennials anymore. Fed up with high prices and bloated packages, millions of Americans cut the cord on cable TV in 2017, finding refuge with a growing number of streaming services, which deliver lower prices and a competitive channel lineup over the internet.

2018 is going to be another full year of OTT and streaming proliferation along with continued growth from the major players.

DirecTV Now has experienced frequent buffering and widespread outages for several consecutive nights, according to the service’s Twitter customer help page, and user comments at social media sites.

Capping a breakout year, Roku is promoting Scott Rosenberg from advertising chief to GM of its platform business in January in an executive restructuring. Steve Shannon, a five-year veteran who headed the content and services unit, will be leaving the company.

The glow from streaming services only brightened in a year of stellar programming. While network shows occasionally displayed admirable qualities in 2017 — the audacity of NBC’s The Good Place, the ambition of PBS’s The Vietnam War, the maturity of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live — they fell short of the standard set by newer, gutsier players that dominated my top 10.

2018 could be a breakthrough year for so-called “post-cable” networks, channels distributed via over-the-top streaming platforms rather than through the traditional pay-TV ecosystem.

The new agreements with cable operators means Newsy’s national news programming lineup is on track to be available in about 40 million U.S. homes by the end of 2018, according to owner E.W. Scripps.

Television has changed remarkably over the past few years. It might be time for your viewing habits to change as well. Unless you enjoy paying more than $100 a month for a cable or satellite subscription you only half-use, you’re likely considering joining the growing ranks of consumers who have “cut the cord” and are now getting their favorite TV shows, movies and even live sports through the internet and streaming services. Making this change requires some preparation, though. Here’s a step-by-step guide to the cord-cutting process.

Hulu has announced the addition of 61 second-city and small-town broadcast network affiliates to its virtual MVPD service. With the addition, Hulu Live now has access to 492 broadcast network O&Os and affiliates across its national footprint.

Cable TV cord-cutters expecting YouTube TV’s full app for Roku and Apple TV devices this year will have to wait a little longer.

Netflix will likely end 2017 having added nearly 10 million subscribers in the U.S. alone, pushing its global paid subscriber base well over 110 million (versus 94 million at the start of the year). Its continued growth is all the more impressive when you consider that its streaming rivals also did very well this year — at least in terms of burnishing their brands. The best performance by a streamer not named Netflix was from Hulu, which in 2017 finally established itself as a legit player in original programming thanks to The Handmaid’s Tale.

On Friday night, PlayStation Vue started to notify subscribers that Tribune’s Fox affiliates were being dropped from the OTT service after failing to “come to an agreement on terms” with the station group.

T-Mobile, the nation’s No. 3 wireless carrier, said today that it bought startup Layer3 TV to help it roll out a nationwide TV service next year. The service will target people who aren’t interested in traditional cable and satellite TV packages. T-Mobile didn’t disclose how much it paid for Layer3, which is available in five U.S. cities.

Star Wars’ value to the Burbank entertainment giant goes well beyond the box office. Aside from spawning new video games, toys and theme park attractions, the space opera franchise will play a pivotal role in Disney’s efforts to build an online destination that can rival Netflix when it debuts in 2019.

People with services like Sling TV and DirecTV Now may get access for the 2018 football season.

Creating and maintaining channel lineups for so-called skinny bundles, or virtual MVPDs, is proving to be a balancing act between quality content offerings and razor-thin profit margins. That dynamic played out on stage Thursday at the TV of Tomorrow Conference in New York, where Sling TV’s Andy LeCuyer participated in a panel alongside execs from OTT programmers seeking wider distribution and, in some cases, carriage fees.

In response to concerns about extremist and inappropriate content, YouTube plans to significantly increase its efforts to eliminate such content from its platforms, and to tighten its advertising rules around advertising.