streaming

At Sinclair’s new OTT service, online streaming is STIRRed and may be shaken. As GM of Sinclair’s newly launched streaming service STIRR, Adam Ware is hoping to inspire stations to binge on new production. If the plan works, it could touch off an explosion of innovation, creativity and original programming from local TV newsrooms.

One surprising new entrant is Vudu, the Walmart-owned streaming video company. Vudu has been ramping up its content offerings in a bid to directly take on Amazon Prime Video and other streaming offerings.

Hulu has hired two senior advertising executives who will head up two of four new sales units at the video streaming service — Jennifer Donohue and Tracie Maffei.

The service was supposed to be a high-growth live TV offering, but a sudden drop in subscribers is causing alarm as traditional cable companies scramble to offer Netflix-like streamers.

In the local news world, we’re good at chasing that shiny object. And sometimes that shiny object can take us down rabbit holes as we lose focus on our real goals and strategies. The latest shiny object is OTT – Over The Top. I applaud those who are investigating the opportunities, but I suggest you ask a few questions and do research before launching your efforts to conquer OTT.

Sunday night’s Super Bowl may not have broken any TV ratings records, but it broke new ground for consumers who preferred to stream the game online. CBS says the game drew an average minute audience (one of the closest digital metrics to the Nielsen average viewership standard) of 2.6 million viewers, up 31% from last year’s Super Bowl, and a new streaming record.

NBC Sports Group and golfer Rory McIlroy have teamed to launch Golfpass, a $10-a-month subscription package that bundles video streaming of golf tournaments and instruction with travel, shopping and tee-time benefits. The founders are calling it a “first-of-its-kind” direct-to-consumer initiative.

PBS, already offering programs on streaming outlets such as Amazon, Netflix and Roku, is considering additional agreements with Sling TV and YouTube TV. “We’ve been in discussions with them,” said PBS President Paula Kerger Saturday during the PBS portion of the annual winter press tour for TV writers. “I’m not making any announcements today, but stay tuned. … We think that’s certainly a place that our viewers would appreciate.”

FX Networks chief John Landgraf has long criticized Netflix’s quest to dominate television, and has advocated for the streaming giant’s shows to be evaluated, numbers-wise, in the same way that broadcast and cable series are.  But now that Netflix has finally begun selectively touting its’ audience, he’s labeling its claims as bogus.

The second season averaged 1.9 million viewers during its first seven days, according to Nielsen, which released an Amazon show’s figures for the first time.

CBC/Radio president Catherine Tait told Netflix’s Canadian lobbyist during an industry conference that the globally-expanding streaming giant reminded her of the former British and French empires.

Dish Network, which has blacked out several Univision-run channels after failing to reach a new distribution deal with the programmer, has lobbed a lawsuit at Univision claiming that the Spanish-language broadcaster is infringing a batch of patents tied to adaptive bit-rate streaming.

Movie studios often use the Super Bowl to drop trailers for their coming blockbusters. Since last year, a rival source of video entertainment has been doing the same. Amazon Prime Video will return to the Super Bowl this year, dropping a 60-second trailer in the third quarter for Hanna, a new drama centered on a powerful young girl who must thwart agents who want to take her down, along with her father. The commercial will show Amazon getting more aggressive in the realm of big-game promotion.

Fuse Media, a Latino-focused TV and digital company, is the latest media property to hit the wall. The company missed a $12.45 million interest payment due Jan. 1, putting it in technical default. Fuse has been given a 30-day grace period to come up with the payment to its bondholders. The company’s total debt is $240 million.

CBS All Access has seen double-digit growth during the past year, momentum that got a big boost earlier this month from the combination of the second season premiere of Star Trek: Discovery and the NFL’s AFC conference championship. Marc DeBevoise, president-COO of CBS Interactive, said Wednesday during the Television Critics Assciation press tour in Pasadena, Calif., that CBS All Access logged more than 50% growth in total subscribers as well as in total streams delivered and the amount of time users spent watching the service.

Among traditional media companies, no one is making a bigger bet on streaming than Walt Disney Co. It’s all part of Ceo Bob Iger’s master plan to corral many beloved brands, from “Avatar” to “Zootopia,” and deliver them to the millions of viewers who now stream TV via monthly subscriptions. But challenging Netflix, the online pioneer with almost 140 million subscribers worldwide, will cost big money, especially with Disney digesting Fox.

Apple is planning a subscription service for games, according to five people familiar with the matter. The service would function like Netflix for games, allowing users who pay a subscription fee to access a bundled list of titles. Apple began privately discussing a subscription service with game developers in the second half of 2018, said the people, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss unannounced plans.

A nonprofit called Locast, available in seven major U.S. cities, beams popular networks to phones, TVs and computers. It’s like the online version of a TV antenna, free and easy to use.  It’s like an app version of a $50 antenna you can get from Best Buy, and it’s free and easy to use.

Viacom’s $340 million bet on Pluto TV signals that the programming giant sees a bright future in free, ad-supported streaming. The move also speaks to a grander strategy as Viacom looks to stake its claim in a growing direct-to-consumer marketplace that has lured in just about every media company across the sector.

YouTube says the shift will affect only around 1% of all videos on the platform, though with more than 300 hours of video uploaded to the platform every minute, that may still represent a significant amount of video content.

Netflix has publicly revealed some fuzzy performance figures for a handful of projects. But these are the exceptions. Viewership for Netflix’s hundreds of other original series and movies remains a corporate secret. As Netflix continues to grow, this practice has become increasingly irksome to other studios as well as talent agencies, some of which feel that Netflix’s lack of transparency gives it an unfair competitive advantage.

WNET, the parent company of the New York PBS station of the same name, plus and WLIW Long Island and New Jersey’s NJTV, is launching All Arts, a free, 24-hour broadcast and streaming channel dedicated to dance, film, literature, music, theater and other art forms.

Amazon announced Thursday the veteran NFL announcing duo of Hannah Storm and Andrea Kremer will be back next season to call the Thursday night package on Amazon’s Prime video service.

While YouTube TV had been available in the country’s 100 largest TV markets, it will be available this week in 95 additional markets, bringing coverage to 98% of the U.S. YouTube says that “the remainder will follow shortly thereafter.”

Fox News will next week bring Hannity to the world of video-streaming, launching “Hannity on Air” on its new Fox Nation subscription broadband service. The program will give viewers a look at the opening monologue of his daily radio show, a segment that’s typically 15 minutes to 17 minutes in length. The program will debut on Wednesday, Jan. 30, and is expected to post most weekdays in the afternoon.