OTT

Digital Nirvana | Booth SU10410 | Website: www.digital-nirvana.com At NAB 2016 (April 16-21 at the Las Vegas Convention Center), Digital Nirvana, developers of a media management platform for content capture, […]

Scrambling to keep pace with consumer trends, established media companies are accelerating their push into the Internet video streaming business. The trend was highlighted this week by a flurry of deals announced by major media companies, including Sony, Disney, Time Warner’s HBO and AT&T.

Sony announced last November plans to offer Disney channels on the service and today it said the PlayStation Vue lineup in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco will expand to include local ABC stations, ESPN and Disney Channel. Customers there will also get a $10 a month price cut.

“I’m not sure [OTT] will be a bigger thing in five years than it is today,” the broadcast group CEO says. He adds that he’s focused on providing marketing services in all forms to local business. “At our base, we are a local service business,” he said. “Local businesses are crying out for help here” and Nexstar wants “a larger share of their wallet than just their ad dollars.” Read full coverage of the Borrell Local Online Ad Conference here.

CBS All Access, the broadcaster’s online-only service that lets subscribers stream its live programming for $5.99 a month, may launch an ad-free option at a higher rate, the company’s CEO Les Moonves said Monday.

This is Wall Street’s biggest concern about Big Media: If the pace of cord cutting and other strategies to pay less for TV is accelerating, then prospects for programmers, networks and distributors become dreary. But while analysts differ about the trends, some who follow pay TV distributors say it’s time to relax, based on 4Q subscription numbers

Move over Netflix. Mexican media giant Televisa is pitting itself against the leading OTT in the region with the launch Monday of Blim, its new streaming video-on-demand service available across Mexico and Latin America, with the exception of Portuguese-speaking Brazil.

The TV news app aggregates and curates videos from a wide variety of sources and also provides a continuous and personalized headline news channel for consumers. The videos can be viewed on mobile devices, as well as on connected TVs.

ESPN is negotiating with streaming services to make its channel available over the Web as it does with Sling TV. “A number of people have expressed interest and we’re in discussions with a large number of people,” John Skipper, the network’s president, said.

CBS has made a first-ever deal with Cablevision Systems, in which the cable operator will provide live streaming of CBS programming. The deal means Cablevision TV customers can access CBS.com and the CBS App, streaming CBS live programming online and on mobile devices.

The gains in the standalone online service in the eight months since its launch last year didn’t seem to wow investors. Stifel analyst Benjamin Mogil said the 3.2% gain in HBO subscriber revenue came below the 4.7% Wall Street expected.

Streaming TV has gotten popular as several online services such as Netflix make past seasons of TV shows available for binge-watching, while Hulu offers episodes from the current season. Now, some television companies are balking at giving viewers timely access to shows. The big worry: Making streaming TV too pleasant might encourage viewers to cut back or drop their cable service.

Anvato’s Media Content Platform (MCP) has been deployed by MHz Networks for the relaunch of its MHz Choice over-the-top (OTT) video subscription service. Now available to viewers in the United […]

The over-the-top video news service from Scripps also announces the premiere of Buying Democracy, an interactive video experience that invites viewers to explore the links between big-money donors and candidates in 2016’s race for the White House.

ComScore says the network’s main social accounts grew 60% year-over-year in fans, adding 4 million to its social footprint.

With the inclusion of the Sinclair stations, the national service providing local news via app has grown to approximately 150 stations in 100 markets covering 80% of the U.S.

TalkCenterAmerica (TCA), a video programming platform backed by proprietary technology from digital media startup The Video Call Center, will launch a new OTT television network on Jan. 20 with a […]

That’s how Showtime’s president-CEO, David Nevins, referred to his subscribers while discussing the evolution of his premium cable network at the winter press tour. “Today’s audiences are cord cobblers, individuals and households who creatively manage their content consumption with an assortment of subscriptions that work uniquely for their needs.” Because of the availability of its stand-alone streaming service on iTunes, Roku and Android devices, and as add-on subscriptions for Hulu, Amazon Prime and PlayStation Vue, Showtime has “availability and visibility wherever those cord cobblers reside,” he said.

Traditional cable providers are launching TV packages that don’t require cable boxes — good for you because you save on monthly equipment fees and don’t need a technician to come install it for you. Here’s a breakdown of what’s good and what’s not:

Dish’s Sling TV and Sony’s PlayStation Vue paved the way with innovative online services nearly a year ago. Last fall, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and its buyer-in-waiting, Charter Communications, followed suit with their own online bundles. These now represent the latest gambit from the quasi-monopolistic cable industry, which continues to shed TV customers as more people watch online video from a variety of new outlets.

CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. have discussed creating a paid streaming service for their jointly owned CW network to generate more income from the young fans who already watch shows like Jane the Virgin online, two people with knowledge of the matter say.

After previously insisting that it was “far away” from developing a stand-alone service to reach viewers without a cable subscription, Starz has reversed course. The premium cable network is now following HBO and Showtime’s lead in preparing its own OTT app.

Sony plans to launch a 4K streaming service in the U.S. aimed at providing purchasers of its 4K Bravia TVs with some content to play on them. The transactional service will provide users of Sony’s new HDR TVs streams in the high-resolution Ultra HD format, complemented by High Dynamic Range (HDR) technology.

TV Everywhere and OTT technologies create new opportunities for broadcasters to reach viewers with tailored programming and commercials, augmenting their advertising and retrans revenue streams. But these new business opportunities do not come without technical challenges. One of the biggest is ad-blocking software, which has given heartburn to many online content publishers.

A panel of 300 media and advertising experts convened by Borrell Associates has some pretty radical prognostications for media in 2016: a massive shift of prime-time TV to streaming video; seeing the death of seven-day newspapers and print coupons; and most local media companies absorbing TV, newspaper and radio in their portfolios.

Disruption will meet velocity in 2016, when trends like OTT and distributed publishing that have already shown their face will now accelerate with dramatic force. NetNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp looks at six media dynamics that will change the game in 2016.

Consumers are continuing to increase their use of TV Everywhere,” even if they aren’t identifying the practice of streaming video content as such.

“Don’t be overly cautious,” says Steve Hsu, director of product development for ABC News, referring to trying new platforms. The data that comes back from those platforms is one way to immediately start improving, say NewsTECHForum panelists, adding that the risks of not experimenting on those platforms outweigh any failed tries news organizations make on them.

TV Everywhere, the great hope of media companies to hold their ground against the rise of streaming services like Netflix, has not gone much of anywhere. A report out Friday from Adobe Digital shows that just 13.6% of households that subscribed to pay TV in the third quarter used TV Everywhere sites or apps, which let users view television channels on mobile and set-top streaming devices so long as they can enter login information that proves they are pay TV subscribers. That represents growth of merely 8% over the same quarter last year.

Newsy has added Capitol Broadcasting to its roster of partners, the millennial-focused news organization said Thursday. Newsy content will now appear on WRAL.com, WRALSportsFan.com and HighSchoolIOT.com.

CBS Corp. chief Leslie Moonves floated the possibility of an advertising-free version of CBS All Access and poured cold water on Apple TV’s plans to launch a cable-like channel package during his appearance Tuesday at the Business Insider conference in New York.

Pistols are drawn across the OTT landscape: now AT&T’s CEO says the company will launch its own streaming service in January. Having aggressively pursued rights for an OTT bundle, the company plans a package that will feature “mobile stacked content together with a really robust wireless asset,” CEO Randall Stephenson said today.

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon is beefing up Prime by letting customers of the $99-a-year loyalty service buy access to the premium TV channels Showtime and Starz. Those channels will […]

TiVo’s analytics unit Digitalsmiths released its 3Q Video Trend Report Wednesday, which surveyed more than 3,000 consumers 18+ across the U.S. and Canada. The research found 76.7% of respondents would like the ability to pay for only the channels they watch. The survey presented respondents interested in an à la carte service with a list of over 75 popular channels that are typically included in pay TV packages and asked them to pick their desired channel lineup.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that television’s various stakeholders — the studios that finance shows, the networks that air them and the talent that produces and stars in them — are fighting to protect their interests in the emerging on-demand TV economy. WSJ subscribers can read the full story here.