Roku

Following a data breach earlier this year affecting 15,000 user accounts, Roku has revealed a much larger security episode. In a blog post Friday, the streaming giant said 576,000 user accounts had been affected in the second breach. Roku noted that its investigation had found that it was not responsible for the breach, which it said occurred via third-party websites. The company, which has more than 80 million active accounts, said its systems were not compromised.

Roku has filed for a new patent that will allow it to show ads while TVs powered by its operating system are paused, event if the television is under the control of a different device ecosystem connected to it via HDMI. The scheme would allow Roku to expand its advertising business, even to those engaging with other TVOS platforms, say Apple TV, on Roku-powered TVs.

The CW, Roku Originals and Australian streaming service Stan have teamed up on the scripted  Good Cop/Bad Cop, with Leighton Meester, Luke Cook and Clancy Brown in the cast. The CW calls the show a “procedural dramedy” and eight episodes have been ordered. Created by John Quaintance, Good Cop/Bad Cop is set to premiere next year. It will stream on The Roku Channel in the U.S. and Stan in Australia.

The racing league and streaming tech company aim to grow the sport by, in part, pointing to other’s outlets broadcasting the events.

Backed by Simon Cowell, Kylie Minogue and Sheryl Crow, the streaming service looks to supplant smart speakers.

The integration makes Comscore an approved measurement vendor in Roku’s Measurement Partner Program and allows Comscore’s agency and advertiser clients to access Roku-specific co-viewing data across ad campaigns on the Roku platform, including The Roku Channel.

Roku is laying off around 10% of staff as it “performs a strategic review of [its] content portfolio.” The media company will be hit with a restructuring charge of around $45 million to $65 million following the redundancy process, which will hit around 300 staffers. The redundancies and charges should have concluded by the end of this year, Roku said.

NBCUniversal and Roku are expanding their streaming relationship, adding to the roster of classic and nostalgia TV titles available on the Roku Channel. The NBCU Global Distribution Studio library is backing a number of new channels launching today, including dedicated ones for Murder, She Wrote, Little House on the Prairie, Saved By The Bell and Bad Girls Club. The Universal Crime channel offers a rotation including Columbo, Kojak and The Rockford Files, while Teen NBC packages the likes of Punky Brewster, Major Dad and Hang Time.

Roku beat Wall Street expectations for the second quarter of 2023 after reporting a smaller than expected net loss of $107.6 million, or 76 cents per share. Analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research were expecting a loss of $1.28 per share.

Several of the country’s biggest entertainment and streaming companies are teaming up to fight hundreds of local broadcasters over a years-old provision that would determine whether they are forced to negotiate directly with those local stations for distribution deals.  The Preserve Viewer Choice Coalition, which launched Wednesday, is made up of major entertainment companies and their broadcast networks, including Disney/ABC, Paramount/CBS, Fox Corp./Fox, NBCUniversal/NBC/Telemundo, Warner Bros. Discovery, Univision and Roku.

Roku has partnered with Shopify to allow Roku streaming device users to purchase products from Shopify merchants directly from their TV screens, via Roku Action Ads. This is the first commerce integration for independent Shopify merchants on TV streaming, and an extension of the two companies’ existing commerce relationship.

Exclusive live sports are coming to Roku, as the streaming platform plants a flag in the ground in the uber-competitive space that has traditionally been dominated by legacy TV networks.

Roku shares traded higher after-hours on Wednesday after the company posted a smaller-than-expected loss for its first quarter on 2023 and beat Wall Street expectations on revenue. The streamer reported revenue of $741 million Wednesday, up 1% from the same period a year ago, following a warning by company leaders that sales would be wobbly heading into 2023. Platform revenue for the quarter, which is largely based on advertising sales and a subscription revenues split with partners, was $635 million, down 1% year-over-year, while device revenue was $106 million, up 18% year over year.

Roku said it will eliminate 200 employees, or about 6% of the company’s workforce as part of a new restructuring plan. The restructuring will result in a nonrecurring charge of $30 million-$35 million, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company said it will stop using and sublease some of its office facilities.

The biggest bank failure since the financial crisis more than 15 years ago has hit streaming giant Roku. In an SEC filing Friday, the company disclosed that 26% of its cash was held at Silicon Valley Bank, and the funds were “largely uninsured.” The 16th largest bank in the U.S., with more than $200 billion in assets, SVB collapsed earlier in the day and was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. It ranks as the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history after Washington Mutual in 2008. Roku’s filing says the FDIC has told those with insured funds at the bank that they will have full access to their insured deposits no later than Monday morning.

Roku has found its new CFO, Dan Jedda, a veteran Amazon executive who most recently served as chief financial officer of online apparel company Stitch Fix. He replaces veteran Roku CFO Steve Louden, who served in the position since 2015 and announced his imminent departure back in December, pending the hiring of his successor.

Routinely pounded by Wall Street after every earnings report going back six quarters, Roku finally won one Wednesday when it reported a better-than-expected 5% year-over-year surge in fourth-quarter ad revenue to $731.3 million. The consensus forecasts of equity analysts pegged Roku’s overall revenue to come in at around $803 million, but Roku delivered total 4Q sales of $867.1 million, roughly flat with the fourth quarter of 2021.

As the television industry looks for better ways to measure viewers, NBCUniversal wants the audience metrics used to buy and sell advertising to take into account the quality of the video and how much it engages consumers. NBCU on Wednesday is holding its annual pre-upfront presentation highlighting its data and technology capabilities for advertisers. This year’s event is called One23.

Roku leadership is experiencing its first big shakeup under new chief Charlie Collier, with current vice president of programming Rob Holmes deciding to leave the company in March after six years, and head of originals, David Eilenberg, being promoted to head of content across all of Roku Media.

A Vizio executive says the company is not overly concerned with competition from Roku after the streaming platform announced its intention to design and make its own smart TVs. Speaking at the 25th annual Needham Growth Conference on Tuesday, Vizio Chief Revenue and Strategic Growth Officer Mike O’Donnell said his electronics company has been in the television space for more than two decades, and competition from other companies “is nothing new for us.”

Since September 2022, Wyoming-based Rightway LLC has operated numerous channels on Roku chock full of QAnon-inspired misinformation and extremist political propaganda, in obvious violation of the platform’s distribution policies.

Roku says it has passed 70 million active accounts worldwide, up from 60.1 million at the end of 2021. The secular shift of viewing from linear to streaming is continuing apace, with total streaming hours via Roku’s interface increasing 19% in 2022. Globally, streaming hours reached 23.9 billion in the fourth quarter, and 87.4 billion in all of 2022, a 19% year-over-year gain.

After entering the smart-TV sector years ago by licensing its interface and brand, Roku now plans to design and manufacture its own line of TV sets. The streaming company today said the Roku Select and Roku Plus Series TVs, with 11 models ranging from 24 to 75 inches, will be available this spring. Retail prices will range from $119 to $999.

Telemundo Stations’ Regional News Channels are now available on The Roku Channel with additional FAST channels — Dateline 24/7, Today All Day and Sky News International — arriving by early 2023. Also, the deal for NBC News NOW on The Roku Channel has been renewed.

The media-measurement giant has entered into a pact with streaming portal Roku that calls for Nielsen to track viewership across traditional and connected TV watching, desktop usage and mobile screens. Advertisers who use Roku can get data on the reach of their commercials among Roku users that will rely on so-called “deduplicated” audiences, or people who aren’t seeing the same content on different viewing platforms.

Bally Sports+, the direct-to-consumer regional sports networks streaming service from Sinclair Broadcast subsidiary Diamond Sports Group, officially launched Monday with Roku as a new distribution partner. The Bally Sports+ service had a soft launch in June, debuting in five regions. Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley said in August that the company was “very pleased” at results so far, with early subscription volumes that were “better than we expected.”

Fox Entertainment CEO Charlie Collier is leaving the linear network to join Roku. He joins as President, Roku Media, effective in late October, based in New York. The surprising move is a major statement of intent from Roku. Collier will oversee advertising and content at the digital streaming company. He will run Roku Media globally, managing its ad platform business as well as content for Roku’s owned and operated channels, including the Roku Channel.

The streaming media device company wants to attract more viewers and advertisers to its channel. A coming biopic of “Weird Al” Yankovic is its most ambitious project to date.