OTT

Traditional pay TV distributors witnessed some of the steepest declines in fourth-quarter 2016 — but adding in new “virtual” pay TV providers trimmed those drops. For many, this means cord-cutting has arrived. MoffettNathanson Research says there was a 1.7% decline in traditional cable, satellite, and telco TV distributors — losing 319,000 to total 96.499 million U.S. subscribers.

Dish Chairman-CEO made a rhetorical pivot by billing virtual MVPD services like Sling TV as replacements for traditional pay-TV platforms and not merely competition. Ergen’s comments exist in direct opposition from Dish’s brand position on products like Sling TV, dating back more than two years.

YouTube on Tuesday introduced YouTube TV, which the company describes as “live TV designed for the YouTube generation — those who want to watch what they want, when they want, how they want, without commitments.” It features live TV streaming from ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN, regional sports networks and dozens of cable networks; a cloud DVR, with no storage limits; and YouTube Red originals. It costs $35 and month and comes with six accounts.

Yes, really. While the median cable network lost 2.3% of its subscribers, the Big Five saw gains of 1.7%. But that doesn’t necessarily mean their ratings will rise.

Providers of streaming services such as DirecTV Now and Sling TV typically try to calm the fears of programmers that like the lucrative traditional pay TV bundle by saying that they aim to supplement, not replace, it. But Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen doesn’t buy that anymore.

DIirecTV Now, the live streaming service from AT&T,was hit with another outage on Sunday morning with dozens of channels blacked out. Since its debut on Nov. 30, 2016, DirecTV Now has been riddled with errors, and at least four major outages that blacked out the entire service. This outage now makes five.

The company is testing a new Apple TV capable of streaming ultra-high-definition 4K. It may not be enough to take on Amazon and Roku.

Streaming-video viewing of reality television programming is on the rise, according to a new study by 7Park Data. The firm’s newest study of OTT viewership found that reality TV viewing is up 10.3% from one year ago on Hulu and up 28.3% on Netflix — making reality one of the biggest growth genres for the two services.

Showtime’s internet-only subscriber base has climbed to 1.5 million, while CBS All Access — the broadcaster’s live and on-demand paid streaming service — is nearing the same number of subs, according to CBS CEO Leslie Moonves.

Another ambitious premium content digital venture that had brought in top-level TV executives is folding before launch. Verizon and AwesomenessTV have scrapped plans for their announced premium content service, with Samie Falvey, chief creative officer, leaving and her team, led by creative SVP Russell Rothberg, disbanded.

Sling TV said it would expand availability of its cloud DVR trial to users of Amazon Fire TV and Android devices, with Apple TV users gaining access sometime afterward.

The milestone news came from Time Warner chief executive Jeff Bewkes today during an investors call for quarterly earnings. That’s up from about 800,000 U.S. subscribers at the end of 2015.

Churn rates for OTT video services are 19% of U.S. broadband households, according to a new Parks Associates report, suggesting that about one in five households have cancelled an OTT service in the past 12 months. Overall churn rate for OTT services has been stable for the past year, with major OTT video providers Netflix, Amazon,and Hulu all reducing their churn rates.

The e-commerce giant’s video subscription service drew more eyeballs last year thanks to series like Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle.

As consumer interest in OTT streaming services grows, it’s crucial that TV stations be included to maintain OTA TV’s big advantage over cable and satellite: complete coverage. But carriage deals with streamers have become entangled in network-affiliate disagreements over control and how to split the revenue. This is an updated version of a story that originally appeared in TVNewsCheck’s magazine Executive Outlook last month.

In a tax-free exchange, Dish gets EchoStar’s technologies group, its OTT development group and its 10% stake in Sling TV.

CBS is looking at a new marketing design, bridging traditional linear TV show marketing and a digital media platform — this for its upcoming The Good Fight to air on CBS All Access. CBS is taking its high awareness program brand, The Good Wife — which ended last season — to spin off The Good Fight.

Nearly a third of 18-34s eschew pay TV services. Many of them subscribe to the top SVOD services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and YouTube, but they’re also gobbling up content from lesser-known digital video sites.

AT&T said Wednesday that it has attracted more than 200,000 customers for its recently launched video streaming service, DirecTV Now, as the television industry races to keep up with dramatic changes in consumer behavior.

IPG Mediabrands’ Magna unit has made an “industry-first” deal with Roku, the digital streaming device/platform, to deliver improved advertising targeting and measurement to marketers.

That’s 0.7%, according to a new eMarketer report, which also says cord cutting will increase in three of the next four years and pay TV will lose 5% from 2015 to 2020. Bill Cromwell notes that means 4.7 million cancelled subscriptions.

The glitchy, twitchy DirecTV Now streaming service has its early customers twisting in outrage, but Sarah Perez reports that owner AT&T has no plans to offer refunds as yet. What’s worse, beyond venting in online chat forums, “customers found the only way to get help was through a hard-to-find chat feature,” where refund talk is squashed by reps.

Problems that have beset AT&T’s DirecTV Now streaming service since its launch have continued unabated, so much so that some subscribers see the service as “simply unusable.” The problems include being unable to watch shows, frequent interruptions, missing features and billing issues.

Here are three, starting with the fact that the field is dominated by four players: Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and YouTube, though Amazon is emerging as the real revenue-generating juggernaut among the lot. Sahil Patel notes that TV networks are also finding it worth their while to go directly to consumers now.

DirecTV Now’s $35 a month price for 100-plus channels — which some analysts thought was too good, or foolish, to be true — soon will be history. AT&T says that on Jan. 9 the introductory offer will expire, and the streaming service’s “Go Big” package will cost $60.

Pay TV cord-cutting seems to be declining for the  TV industry — although new digital multi-TV-channel distributors are apparently adding back positive trends for traditional platforms/networks.

The yin and yang of consumer electronics and the broadcast TV industry means CES 2017 is the place to be in January for broadcasters who want a perspective on what will be on the minds and in the hands of their viewers in 2017. One look at this year’s CES schedule reveals just how big OTT and mobile are in content distribution and just how important the next-gen TV standard is to keeping TV broadcasters in the game.

 A new Air TV set-top box from Dish’s Sling TV combines an ability to stream Sling and other OTT platforms like Netflix with live over-the-air channels. The company revealed the device, possibly by accident, on Tuesday.

AT&T is still working to reconcile the rights complexities of NFL football with the technological execution of DirecTV Now, with users of the virtual platform still complaining that they’re being improperly blacked out of local NFL games.

More people plan to buy a pay TV plan next year than this year, finds a new survey. Why? People are embracing skinny bundles and using SVOD sites as extras, not replacements.

Sami Main highlights the dynamics including a subscription boom following the post-election, post-truth wave, the fake news explosion and the acceleration of cord cutting.

CBS is probably not the first company that comes to mind if you had to name a digitally savvy entertainment brand. Yet it has surprised rivals with the success of its CBS All Access streaming service. A lot of the development of the broadcast network’s digital savvy can be traced back to its decision not to invest in Hulu. It has stocked up All Access with the complete set of catch-up episodes for such shows as Blue Bloods.