streaming

With Walt Disney Co. theme park operations limited due to the coronavirus pandemic, investors watching the company report earnings on Thursday are expected to zero in on its fast growth into streaming TV. During the January to March quarter, the Disney+ streaming service was aided by box office heavyweight Marvel Studios. The producer of blockbuster superhero films released its first TV series, WandaVision, in January followed by The Falcon and the Winter Soldier in late March.

YouTube TV has developed a new technical workaround as the dispute between the streaming TV service and Roku shows no signs of coming to a quick resolution. The new feature, introduced Friday, May 7, provides access to the YouTube TV service from within the core YouTube app. Users can access it by clicking on a “Go to YouTube TV” button on the main YouTube app.

The multibillion-dollar market for sports broadcasting rights is wreaking havoc in Europe, where soccer teams are suffering heavy losses due to pandemic-shuttered stadiums as new media players enter the field. In Italy, billionaire Leonard Blavatnik’s live sports streaming service DAZN, with backing from local telco streamer Telecom Italia, plunked down more than $1 billion per season for a three-year contract for the bulk of Italian Serie A soccer rights, displacing Comcast-owned pay TV operator Sky. The deal marked the first time a streamer has nabbed exclusive rights to a major domestic league in its native territory.

The unprecedented number of TV outlets in need of shows and growing pressure for inclusive fare is a one-two punch that’s creating opportunities for overlooked writers and ignored perspectives.

The Melissa McCarthy buddy comedy almost gathered a billion minutes of U.S. streaming during the week of April 5-11, according to Nielsen’s weekly SVOD top 10 ranking list.

Roku kept rolling in the first quarter, reporting a 35% rise in active accounts, to 53.6 million, along with stronger-than-expected financial results. Revenue grew 79% compared with the same quarter a year ago, hitting $574.2 million, far higher than the consensus forecast by Wall Street analysts for $490.6 million.

NBCUniversal’s new TV boss discusses the excitement and uncharted waters around her expansive role as she readies the company’s post-COVID upfront presentation. (Damon Casarez photo)

Tegna offered a pitch to advertisers at IAB 2021 NewFronts that amounted to: Trust us, because our viewers already do. The station group — among the first-time presenters at IAB’s annual gathering — emphasized how its local roots intertwined with a renewed interest among Americans in their local communities.

ViacomCBS exceeded Wall Street earnings expectations in the first quarter, paced by the addition of 6 million global streaming subscribers. Revenue came in at $7.4 billion for the period ending March 31, ahead of analysts’ consensus forecast for $7.2 billion. Earnings per share of $1.42 also cleared the bar and rose 75% from the year-earlier quarter.

Twitter stressed live content and real-time connection in its presentation at the 2021 Digital NewFronts on Wednesday. The company also announced a slate of new and expanded video-based content partnerships. “Twitter is not only a second screen, but it’s also the first scroll when anything is happening in the world,” said Jen Prince, Twitter’s global head of content, in a recent interview.

Spanish-language programmer Estrella Media said it is launching a third free, ad supported streaming TV channel, Estrella Games. The new channel is part of the “Experience Estrella. Everywhere” strategy the company unveiled at its NewFront presentation on Wednesday and during virtual upfront meetings with advertisers and media buyers.

Telemundo is forming a new studio that will exclusively cater to the growing need for Spanish-language content on streaming platforms, including the in-house Peacock. The Miami-based Telemundo Streaming Studios will be under Telemundo Global Studios, led by president Marcos Santana. Santana will oversee all scripted programming for the Telemundo linear TV network as well as streaming development.

It’s not every day that television gets a new ad category. It’s even less common for a new category to become a golden goose. Taboo until a 2018 Supreme Court verdict, online sports betting isn’t technically a new ad category, but with just over two years of a track record, few would challenge its advertising status as a golden goose, especially within the local TV industry.

Among new original show announcements for ad-supported video platform YouTube, its connected TV ads will now offer new functions for advertisers. Viewers can click to go to a brand’s website while still watching a video. The announcement came during YouTube’s IAB NewFronts presentation on Tuesday.

Tegna’s NewFronts presentation showcases the power of local media for reaching audiences at scale in a trusted, brand-safe environment.

Last year, Amazon’s IMDb TV was the surprise winner of Judy Sheindlin’s follow-up court TV series. While no premiere date has been set, IMDb TV executives are hopeful the new show will be able to premiere sometime this year.

Locast is now available in the Tri-Cities market, which includes Bristol, Johnson City and Kingsport in Tennessee as well as surrounding rural areas in Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky.  Locast says it will make available more than two dozen local TV channels to the area’s nearly 700,000 residents.

Tara Lachapelle: “It’s hard to imagine Discovery+ surviving the streaming wars as a stand-alone product. But its immense library would improve the value proposition of any of the leading apps faster than the occasional big-budget movie can.”

Thursday Night Football is coming to Amazon Prime exclusively a year earlier than planned. This coming season will be the last under the league’s “tri-cast” model, which saw games carried across Fox, NFL Network and Amazon. Starting with the 2022 season, TNF will be exclusive to Amazon (with TV stations in the participating teams’ home markets airing those games as well). Amazon is paying more than $1 billion for the rights.

One month after the 2021 Major League Baseball regular season threw out its first pitch, virtual multichannel video programming distributors YouTube TV, Hulu Plus Live TV and Fubo TV are still without Sinclair Broadcast Group’s regional sports networks, now rebranded as Bally Sports Networks. Pricing appears to be the reason for the decision to do without the channels, and apparently there has been little movement on either side regarding negotiations.

Roku has followed through on its threat to remove streaming bundle YouTube TV from its platform, in a dispute it has characterized as more about principle than dollars. The streaming provider had warned on Monday that it would unplug YouTube TV unless the Google-owned streaming outlet agreed to certain curbs on search and data use. It charges that YouTube has leveraged Google’s massive resources to manipulate search results in a way that compromises Roku users’ experience and hoards sensitive customer data.

The Parents Television and Media Council has reached out to the top streaming platforms to talk about coming up with a “clear, uniform commitment to protecting children from age-inappropriate content.” PTC has changed the focus of its advocacy from content on broadcast (and cable) TV to streaming video, given the rise of those platforms, driven in part by the pandemic.

As NBCUniversal turns off the lights on its sports network, expect other Hollywood giants to cull their sprawling linear offerings as they prioritize billions of dollars toward direct-to-consumer platforms.

The fight between broadcasters (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) and Locast is nearing its day in court, but the lawyers representing the broadcasters (plaintiffs) have filed a request for summary judgement with the U.S. District Court in New York as they do not believe, and provide reasoning, as to why Locast is not a nonprofit entity and therefore cannot rebroadcast their signals.