streaming

The British broadcasters are collaborating on a landmark free TV service that will deliver live television over broadband. Freely is being organized by Everyone TV, the organization that runs Freeview in the U.K. and is jointly owned by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5.

Public affairs broadcaster C-SPAN has launched a new app for connected TV users. C-SPAN Select will first be available to 12 million customers of Comcast Xfinity’s X1 service. Plans are also in place for the app to be available via Xfinity’s XFlex, and Xumo platforms this fall. The channel’s leaders say they hope to make the service available via other cable providers in addition to Xfinity in the coming months.

Cable companies have started to figure out a way to stay in the TV game: Reselling streaming services.

Consumers are most loyal to the sources they go to first, and SVODs and smart TV apps are showing rapid gains as the default launching point, according to a new Hub study.

Catching a game now often means navigating a multitude of services and apps. “Cord-cutting was supposed to be simple.”

Sofia Chang has been appointed executive vice president, chief distribution officer at Starz, announced Alison Hoffman, Starz’s president of domestic networks, on Tuesday. Chang will oversee all of the streaming platform’s sales activities with multichannel video and digital distributors in the U.S. She’ll be based out of the New York office and will report to Hoffman.

Data can help streaming services reach customers and lapsed subscribers.

The lack of viewership numbers used to feel like freedom, but as streaming evolves to look more like traditional television, creators want to peek behind the curtain.

The new bundles are coming, according to Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav. Speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference Wednesday, the executive said that his company has had discussions with other companies in the content space about developing new bundles to create a better “consumer experience.” Those conversations have picked up “in the last few months,” Zaslav said.

Viewing of FAST channels up 70%.

The streamer is hoping younger, more affluent viewer demos and ad customization will give it an edge on the field against its broadcast competition.

When the Kansas City Chiefs face the Detroit Lions on Thursday, football fans will have the option of watching the game on NFL+. But in future seasons, subscribing to the league’s streaming service might be a requirement to watch select matchups.

Dueling coalitions — the affiliate-led Coalition for Local News and O&O-led Preserve Viewer Choice Coalition — have raised the temperature on a long-simmering argument over who should be able to negotiate retransmission rights with vMVPDs. The growing size of the vMVPD revenue pot in an awful year for spot TV may have a lot to do with the timing.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max streaming service will be adding a number of series from AMC Networks for two months starting Sept. 1. The shows will pop up on as AMC Plus PIcks on Max and will be available to subscribers to both the ad-free and ad-light tiers of Mxs in the United States.

A new Nielsen study highlights the reality of content choice fatigue, finding viewers on average are spending more than 10 minutes to sift through an increasing array of options, sometimes without success. The sea of choices is so vast that 20% of viewers, or 1 in 5, say they weren’t sure what to watch and couldn’t find something from browsing, so opted to ditch their viewing session altogether and do something other than watch TV instead.

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has reportedly made up his mind about who will replace Chris Licht as the next chairman of CNN. Zaslav has been trying to convince former New York Times boss Mark Thompson to take the reins at Hudson Yards, according to the news site Puck.

Amazon has had early talks with Disney about working on the streaming version of ESPN it is developing, said people familiar with the matter. The tech giant could offer the service through one of its streaming offerings, helping to expand its distribution, while possibly also taking a minority stake in ESPN. Such an arrangement could shore up ESPN’s status as the biggest force in sports media, even as declining TV viewership and advertising, combined with rising sports programming costs, have squeezed the sports channel and Disney, its majority owner. It could also reposition the tech behemoth, which has been trying to make a dent in sports streaming, as more friend than foe to ESPN. And it could weaken the sports leagues’ bargaining power.

The return of Futurama found a place on the streaming charts for the final week of July. Suits spent another week as the overall No. 1, though it declined (slightly) for the first time since it hit the charts in late June.

Warner Bros. Discovery is planning to launch new original programs from CNN that will stream on its Max streaming service, according to three people familiar with the matter. Jim Sciutto, Bianna Golodryga, Rahel Solomon and Christiane Amanpour are among the CNN journalists who have been tapped to take part in the effort, according to two of these people.