OTT

With the explosion of streaming services in Hollywood, agents and executives have more options than ever when it comes to where they take their TV shows. And now that Apple is the newest entrant in the increasingly competitive arms race for prestige programming, they have yet another attractive (and deep-pocketed) buyer. Here, the town’s top sellers weigh in on the perks, the digs and what each of these tech companies wants most from Hollywood.

With a veteran television exec, talent like Demi Lovato and Google’s $86 billion in cash, the platform known for skateboarding videos and tween vloggers wants to join the battle to become a prestige TV player. “I want our shows to resonate in a big way with audiences,” says content head Susanne Daniels. “And once that happens, we’ll be on that list — like it or not.”

YouTube TV will be the first “presenting sponsor” of the World Series, with regular TV commercials during the event as well as digital exposure on MLB.com sites and in-stadium promotion.

Pay-TV subscribers in the United States are growing increasingly satisfied with over-the-top streaming TV services vs. traditional cable TV, but they also are spending nearly an hour more a week watching regularly scheduled television programming than they did two years ago. That increasingly complex consumer relationship with streaming and cable television is explored in detail in a trio of new J.D. Power studies.

Shares of video streaming firm Roku Inc. rose more than 67% in their market debut on Thursday, giving the U.S. IPO market a much-needed shot in the arm. Roku ended trading on the Nasdaq with a share price of $23.50, giving it a market capitalization of about $2.23 billion.

Shares of Roku Inc., a Fox-backed video streaming firm, rose as much as 16.6% in their market debut on Thursday, giving the U.S. IPO market a much-needed shot in the arm.

Roku, the emerging tech player whose streaming technology has helped power the TV industry’s great re-bundling, is planning an initial public offering it hopes will raise more than $200 million. At that price, the company is valued at about $1.3 billion.

Comcast would rather you buy a lot of TV from them, not a little. But if you want to buy a little, they’ll sell you that, too: The biggest pay TV provider in the country is starting to sell an $18-a-month “skinny bundle” which gives you a handful of TV channels, primarily the big broadcasters. Comcast is marketing this one to a subset of its customers — those who use it for internet but aren’t paying it for TV.

The new offering is designed to help TV advertisers target viewers more precisely across the spectrum of video platforms including broadcast, satellite and cable TV and the array of video-on-demand offerings tied to those channels; over-the-top providers and game consoles, all combined for scale.

Which means Netflix and Amazon have to make more of their own shows. Fox, like other big studios/networks, has been making noise about reclaiming its old shows from other people — namely, Netflix — and it is starting to do that: If you want to watch old Fox shows, you increasingly have to watch them on Fox properties (or Hulu, partly owned by Fox).

DirecTV Now, the AT&T-owned live streaming service which has experienced recurring technical issues since its debut, suffered another major meltdown last night while viewers were watching Sunday Night Football and other primetime programming.

Sunday’s premiere of Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access drove a record number of single day sign-ups for CBS’ digital streaming subscription service. While no specific numbers were reported, the network claims that today’s record outstrips the previous one spurred by the 2017 Grammy Awards back in February.

Entertainment Studios Inc. has unveiled a new, direct-to-consumer global streaming OTT subscription platform, SPORTS.TV. The company projects 50 million subs over the next five years. 

“When ESPN announces that they’re losing subs, or Comcast announces they’re losing subs — that’s a good thing for CBS,” the CBS chief said Thursday morning at Goldman Sachs Communicopia. “These cord-cutters — they’re not disappearing. They’re not… cutting their cord and going into the woods and avoiding television. They’re just going to other services.” “For CBS, this is positive news,” Moonves explained.

There’s a growing push by traditional TV companies to launch direct-to-consumer apps and services, with Disney the latest to announce plans. The subscriber numbers for these services are growing nicely, but the contribution they’re making to overall revenues for their parent companies are still pretty marginal — for now.

Agama Technologies, a specialist in video service quality and customer experience, and VisualOn Inc., a multimedia software company that enables scalable, cross-platform media playback for global streaming media brands, are […]

Streamroot, a developer of OTT video optimization technologies, has secured an additional $3.2 million in funding from existing and new partners, bringing the company’s total financing to $6 million.

American consumers are cancelling traditional pay-TV service at a much faster rate than previously expected, according to research firm eMarketer. In 2017, a total of 22.2 million U.S. adults will have cut the cord on cable, satellite or telco TV service to date — up 33% from 16.7 million in 2016 — the researcher now predicts. That’s significantly higher than eMarketer’s prior estimate of 15.4 million cord-cutters as of the end of this year. Meanwhile, the number of “cord-nevers” (consumers who have never subscribed to pay TV) will rise 5.8% this year, to 34.4 million.

Viaccess-Orca | Stand 1.A51 | http://www.viaccess-orca.com   Viaccess-Orca, a global provider of OTT and TV platforms, content protection, and advanced data solutions, will showcase its new audience measurement service, VO Audience […]

Amagi | Stand 2.B19 | www.amagi.com  Amagi, a provider of cloud-based broadcast infrastructure, and targeted TV and OTT advertising, says its CLOUDPORT multichannel cloud playout platform can now be deployed […]

FuboTV announced today the launch of a new, national marketing endeavor that includes the company’s first TV commercials, premiering at the start of the new NFL season and introducing viewers to “Fubo […]

The Wall Street Journal reports that people who are tired of paying for TV sports channels they don’t watch will soon have a new option. Cable channels owned by Discovery Communications, Viacom, AMC Networks, A+E Networks and Scripps Networks Interactive will be part of a new streaming service expected to have a “soft launch” in coming weeks, people familiar with the situation say. Subscriptions will cost less than $20 a month. Journal subscribers can read the full story here.

TV networks are ceding valuable ad time to new competitors who use the commercial breaks to tell viewers, essentially, to use their remotes to watch something interesting on one of their services. A shift in policy highlights the new world of video content.

Social networks have steadily and inexorably taken control of the broader internet, so it’s not surprising to see social begin to influence the programming agendas of conferences like IBC, which are steeped in internet video. Indeed, IBC 2017 attendees will be able to feel Facebook’s gravity right when they walk in this year, with Daniel Danker, product director for the social networking giant, tentpoling the keynote opening panel event, “Fans, Friends and the Future of Broadcasting.”

DirecTV Now has started adding local CBS affiliates, just in time for the first slate of National Football League games on Sunday. AT&T, which owns the live streaming service, announced last month that it had struck a deal with CBS to offer its local affiliates in 25 markets as well as the CBS-owned Showtime, CBS Sports Network, Pop and the CW. However, the telco did not reveal a launch date at the time of the announcement.

Plex Live TV and DVR is now available on Amazon Fire TV, along with support for live TV on Plex for Web. Plex says that Amazon users will also get a new user experience since Amazon Fire TV is powerful enough to run the new Plex Android TV interface.

Disney’s Star Wars and Marvel comic-book movies will be included in the upcoming service, making it the only way to stream those movies on demand in the U.S. as part of a monthly subscription. (So, not on Netflix.) A price hasn’t been announced yet. The service is expected in late 2019 after Disney’s current deal with Netflix expires.

Live streaming TV service Fubo.TV is adding more NFL programming in time for the kick-off of the 2017-18 season.  Through a new carriage agreement with NFL Media, NFL Network and NFL […]

Rev’n, Luken Communications’ automotive multicast network, has further expanded its over-the-top availability by launching its channel on the Roku streaming platform. The new channel, available for free in the Roku channel […]

Verizon Digital Media Services | Stand 7.C11 | Website: www.verizondigitalmedia.com Verizon Digital Media Services will feature its Smartplay by Verizon technology, a one-to-one session-management system that enables content owners to […]