streaming

Apple has hiked the price of its Apple TV+ streaming service for the second time in a year. The tech giant updated the pricing info for Apple TV+, along with its Apple Arcade and Apple News+ subscription services and Apple One bundles, on its website Wednesday. The new price of Apple TV+ is $9.99/month in the U.S., up from $6.99 previously. The annual price is increasing from $69 to $99 per year. Existing subscribers will see the price increases 30 days later, on their next billing renewal date.

Paramount is restructuring its streaming operations. The company is combining its product and tech teams leading to the departure of Rob Gelick, who was chief product officer and “played a critical role” of the company’s streaming services. Insiders indicated a few others, mostly junior staffers, are exiting along with Gelick.

How CNN Max could be as sticky for SVOD as it’s been for pay TV.

Platforms do a better job of delivering the right content than some other categories, panelists say.

Crunchyroll said it reached an agreement with Amazon to distribute Crunchyroll’s subscription anime service on Prime Video Channels in the U.S., Canada, Sweden and the U.K., beginning Tuesday. Prime users can choose from $7.99 or $9.99 a month packages.

The music streaming company’s shares dipped 2.5% in premarket trading as its Q4 revenue forecast fell short of Wall Street views.

So-called “pause ads” — they only turn up a few seconds after a viewer has decided to halt the programming, and not every time one does — are seeing new movement in the streaming world, with the format appearing more frequently on Hulu since July. Pause ads are also in motion in venues such as NBCUniversal’s Peacock and Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max.

The premium plan is set to launch in Australia, Canada, Brazil and Mexico on Nov. 16, the entertainment conglomerate said Monday. Premium subscribers can use four concurrent streams and view content in premium quality formats, including 4K UHD, HDR10, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. “Additional markets will follow,” Paramount said.

TikTok is testing the ability for users to upload 15 minute videos, the company confirmed Monday. The social media giant said the new upload limit is being tested in select regions with a limited group of users, but declined to share specifics. The new option increases the video upload limit on the app from 10 minutes to 15 minutes. TikTok initially gained fame for being the most popular short-form video platform, but has slowly been embracing long-form content.

Filmmaker and media mogul Tyler Perry has a new, multi-year, first-look deal with Netflix that will see him write, direct and produce features for the streamer. News of the creative partnership comes following Perry’s pact with Amazon Studios in November 2022 to write, direct and produce four features for Prime Video. Perry comes to it after working extensively with Netflix in recent years, including on the forthcoming features Six Triple Eight and Mea Culpa.

The global TV and streaming market is estimated to be worth $700 billion globally in 2023, with $164 billion earmarked for investment in programming, according to a Mipcom presentation last Wednesday by Omdia research analyst Tim Westcott. The $700 billion figure is based on combined revenues from advertising, subscription and public revenue, Westcott told audiences gathered at the TV conference. The figure is up 77% from $394 billion total in 2010.

Eight separate companies have been on the receiving end of patent lawsuits filed in federal court by pay TV provider Dish. The lawsuits were all filed within the past two months and share a common allegation: Dish believes the services are violating its patents that are connected to adaptive bitrate technology, which improves or decreases the video quality of an online stream based on a user’s connection speed and other factors.

Netflix on Wednesday disclosed summertime subscriber gains that surpassed industry analysts’ projections, signaling the video streaming service’s crackdown on password sharing is converting former freeloaders into paying customers. In an effort to bring in even more revenue, Netflix also announced it’s raising the price for its most expensive streaming service by $2 to $23 per month in the U.S. — a 10% increase — and its lowest-priced, ad-free streaming plan to $12 — another $2 bump.

A lot has been said about how cord-cutting decimates traditional linear television’s viewership.
But according to Inscape, the data division of Vizio, many of the people who haven’t cut the cord have also reduced their viewing of satellite and cable TV. In its Q2 2023 TV Market Trends report about 5% of U.S. pay TV households have stopped viewing content via cable and satellite. That’s up from 4% in Q4 2022. Others have cut back significantly.

The death of cable TV as you know it seems to be here. Earlier this month, Spectrum and Comcast announced a new streaming player that will let you watch your TV subscription from Spectrum streaming online alongside other services like Netflix. Now Spectrum has announced that new customers will only receive the streaming-only option.

Local stations need to question their assumptions about traditional revenue sources and set aside ample time for short- and long-range planning and developing multiple budget scenarios.

Streaming viewership fell for the second-straight month in September as football season gave broadcast a big boost, according to Nielsen’s monthly summary. Netflix viewing was down 5%. Paramount Plus and Peacock showed similar declines. In contrast, broadcast gained viewing for the second consecutive month. Volume was up 13%, raising over-the-air TV’s share of total viewing to 23%, up from 20.4% in August.

The third Republican presidential debate is set for Nov. 8 in Miami. NBC News, which will produce the debate for its linear TV, streaming and digital platforms, takes over from Fox News and Fox Business, which hosted the first two Republican primary debates. The third tangle between GOP candidates organized by the Republican National Committee will be held at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County from 8 to 10 p.m. on Nov. 8.

The streamer will put a greater emphasis on developing games based on its popular programming, including Squid Game, Wednesday and Black Mirror.

Netflix is staffing up its unscripted division. Sahara Bushue, who was previously head of unscripted at Will Smith’s Westbrook Studios and more notably spent nearly 13 years at NBC, has joined Brandon Riegg’s team. She is a director of unscripted series.Bushue had been consulting for the streamer for many months but recently closed a deal to join the company on a permanent basis.

Comcast and Disney have hired investment banks to value Hulu, the next step in what’s been a nearly five-year process to put the streaming service under one owner. Comcast, which owns one-third of Hulu, has hired Morgan Stanley, and Disney, which owns the other two-thirds, has hired JPMorgan Chase. Each bank is tasked with providing a fair value for Hulu — a condition of an agreement set up in 2019 that allows either Disney or Comcast to trigger an option forcing Disney to buy Comcast’s 33% stake.