TV Everywhere

ABC OTT affiliate deals now represent more than 90% of U.S. TV households. The company’s Clearinghouse initiative distribution partners include DirecTV Now, Sony PlayStation Vue, Google (YouTube TV) and CenturyLink.

Under the new deal, affiliate stations’ linear streams to run on over the top and TV Everywhere.

Commenting on the proposed $85.4 billion takeover of his company by AT&T, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes discussed the ability of the combined company to create innovative over-the-top products like the upcoming DirecTV Now. But in the process, Bewkes — who originally spearheaded the pay-TV industry’s TV Everywhere initiative back in 2009 — offered a tacit admission that the complexity of programming deals had fatally undermined traditional pay-TV’s plan to distribute content to mobile devices.

All episodes of ABC’s new series from the current 2016-17 season, along with several returning shows, will for the first time be available to “authenticated viewers” on digital platform. Prior to this, they could access only the trailing five episodes.

The two main topics of discussion at the network’s meeting Monday with its Affiliate Board of Governors were addressing problems with ABC’s primetime lineup (particularly at 10 p.m.) and the continuing development of TV Everywhere and OTT plans.

TV Everywhere and OTT technologies create new opportunities for broadcasters to reach viewers with tailored programming and commercials, augmenting their advertising and retrans revenue streams. But these new business opportunities do not come without technical challenges. One of the biggest is ad-blocking software, which has given heartburn to many online content publishers.

Consumers are continuing to increase their use of TV Everywhere,” even if they aren’t identifying the practice of streaming video content as such.

TV Everywhere, the great hope of media companies to hold their ground against the rise of streaming services like Netflix, has not gone much of anywhere. A report out Friday from Adobe Digital shows that just 13.6% of households that subscribed to pay TV in the third quarter used TV Everywhere sites or apps, which let users view television channels on mobile and set-top streaming devices so long as they can enter login information that proves they are pay TV subscribers. That represents growth of merely 8% over the same quarter last year.

Discovery Communications has been late to the TV Everywhere party, but the company is making up for lost time in a big way today: It has rolled up nine of its networks into a single app for authenticated cable subscribers.

According to Comcast-owned ad tech arm Freewheel, usage of operator-supplied TVE apps increased 176% year over year in the third quarter. This increase comes after Freewheel reported a 200% uptick in the second quarter.

Millennials might be more inclined to subscribe to pay television services if their current (or potential) providers were to make a more concerted effort to demonstrate how the services can be used anywhere, on any device, according to research from strategy consulting firm Altman Vilandrie & Co.

All Roku customers can now access NBC shows debuting this fall the day after they air. Those who are authenticated by a pay TV provider can also get returning shows.”We want our shows available where our viewers are watching content,” says NBC Entertainment Digital’s Rob Hayes.

TV Everywhere viewing — authenticated viewing of premium TV content on digital devices — was up 63% to 159 billion online video starts in the second quarter of 2015 over the same time period a year ago.

A new survey by Adobe finds that Apple devices already grab 61.9% of authenticated TV Everywhere viewers, an enviable place to be for a company just about to take a deep dive into the space with its own offering.

It’s now available via live streaming online to most TV subscribers, and able to deliver critical live coverage online during severe weather events.

Anvato, a TV Everywhere platform provider, today introduced a new live-to-VOD capability that lets content owners and programmers create video-on-demand files from their live linear streams and syndicate these files […]

The chairman of Liberty Media, which is Charter Communication’s biggest shareholder, said Tuesday that TV Everywhere — the cable industry’s answer to Netflix — is a flop. Malone shared his blunt assessment of the initiative — which allows cable customers to watch TV shows via the Web — as part of his pitch for Charter buying bigger rival Time Warner Cable.

While panelists couldn’t agree on how much it will cost stations to add streaming, they were unanimous in their conviction that such a move is inevitable. “We’re very, very bullish on the continued growth of more and more video content being consumed [via streaming],” said Disney’s J.R. Grant. “We want to put the content in front of as many eyeballs as we can.”

After listening to Ben Sherwood, Disney/ABC Television Group president, and other ABC execs, the affiliates are said to be “pleased” and “satisfied that whatever they do, it will be done with the affiliates.”

Anvato | Wynn Hotel | Website: www.anvato.com TV Everywhere platform provider Anvato has introduced Anvato Cloud DVR, a fully integrated, pure software cloud recording and storage solution for TVE. Expanding […]

When affiliate boards sit down with network executives at the NAB Show next week, they’ll be trying to figure out how they can make money from streaming their signals to smartphones and tablets either through TV Everywhere or OTT. In addition, all Fox affiliates at the convention will get a chance to celebrate the new signs of life in the network’s primetime schedule.

The general manager and executive VP of  NBCUniversal’s TV Everywhere initiative will speak at the Online Video Conference at April’s NAB Show.

One international TV study says TV Everywhere may have been misnamed. The study, conducted by Viacom International Media Networks, says that 51% viewers are not that concerned with the particular device they want to watch TV. It’s about “when” — not “where” or “how.” One suggestion, then, is to call TV Everywhere “TV Right Now.”

Apple and HBO announced a deal today. Starting in early April, the $14.99 monthly service HBO Now will let users stream HBO movies and TV shows on iPads, iPhones and Apple TV — without having to sign up for a cable subscription at all. This is the first time that HBO is allowing for standalone service.

The first deal with non-NBC O&Os lets Gray include the live linear simulcasts of its 24 NBC affiliates, including NBC network and local programming, as part of NBC’s TV Everywhere mobile and online platforms.

A little more than half of all premium long-form and live TV content comes through TV Everywhere-approved, advertising-based digital sites, according to a new report. FreeWheel, a Comcast-owned video advertising tech company, says 56% of all “video ad views on long-form and live content now come from behind authentication walls.” This is a near sixfold increase over a year ago.

DirecTV subs can at long last access WatchESPN — the sports programmer’s Internet streaming-video service, launched more than four years ago — along with other Disney and ABC digital-video services. The No. 1 satcaster’s activation of the TV Everywhere services follows the omnibus deal it reached with Disney/ESPN in December. The fact that DirecTV is just now adding WatchESPN, which debuted in October 2010, illustrates how slowly the gears churn in the pay TV biz.

In addition to licensing their content to streaming media providers, TV networks are responding to the shift for “on-demand” access to their content through TV Everywhere solutions available from cable MSOs and other MVPDS. And when it comes to accessing shows directly from the network, “there’s an app for that.” While there may be a few station owners who are ready to run for the exits with the FCC’s upcoming spectrum auction, there are many more television broadcasters who have long recognized their brand — and business model — isn’t limited by their linear TV audience.

TV Everywhere platform provider Anvato today announced that Hubbard Broadcasting, Heartland Media and Fort Myers Broadcasting Co. have selected Anvato’s Media Content Platform (MCP) to power their online and mobile […]

NBC announced today that Super Bowl Sunday will also be “Super Stream Sunday.” Starting at noon, the network will stream pre-game coverage, the game, the halftime show, and conclude 11 hours later with The Blacklist. The digital event is intended to promote NBC’s TV Everywhere program by letting sports fans stream all of the content without being prompted to log-in.

When 2014 started, there was a lot of handwringing over the progress of TV Everywhere. But with more TVE deals getting done, awareness and adoption has grown. A year ago, only 19% of consumers were aware they had TVE capability, with that up to 54% today, CTAM President-CEO John Lansing said (CTAM’s goal is to get that to 65% by the end of Jan).

TabletTV has beta launched in San Francisco, in partnership with Granite Broadcasting’s KOFY. Bay Area tablet owners can receive 50 digital broadcast network and local channels. Following the launch in San Francisco, which has a target audience of more than 7.4 million, TabletTV will roll out to major markets across the U.S. in 2015.