Analysts bemoaned the streamer “leaving money on the table” while spending billions on pricey content, but new surveys find that there’s a limit to how much consumers will pay.
Alda, 83, best known by far for his 11 seasons as Hawkeye Pierce on CBS’s M*A*S*H from 1972 to 1983, has continued to work despite a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, and said it’s a more vital time than ever to be acting, with its search “to see life through another person’s point of view.”
The Amazon series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel won the first three awards handed out Sunday, sweeping the comedy series awards. It won best ensemble in a comedy series, as well as individual honors for Rachel Brosnahan and Tony Shalhoub, whose win was a surprise in a category that included Bill Hader (Barry) and Michael Douglas (The Kominsky Method).
How WXTV Superserves Audience With WhatsApp
When Univision announced expanded local news apps for seven of its top markets this week, one of the platforms for “integrated social media sharing capabilities” was a channel you won’t usually see in similar English-language-station releases. It’s WhatsApp, the world’s most popular messaging app, but one that’s little-used by U.S. newsrooms.
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.
Exclusives
The Weather Channel is a locomotive in Entertainment Studios’ portfolio of businesses generating sizable cash-flow profit, enlarging entrée to advertisers because of its heft and, in what is often unappreciated by outsiders, serving as a media-technology engine. To keep the Weather Channel cable network relevant in an era when information is readily available online and via personal devices, the linear basic cable network jazzes up its presentation with flashy media tech.
Pay TV still dominates the sports landscape, but audiences are increasingly shifting to digital video platforms. Additionally, companies like Amazon, Facebook and Twitter are bidding for highly prized US streaming rights for games.
WBBM Alums Sudberry, Baskerville Start Podcast
In the era of fake news, a cottage industry of startups is competing to turn media credibility into a booming business. Do we really want that?
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 Launches Broadcast/Streamer All Arts
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.
CNN’s Brian Stelter: “I used to think the transparency of Twitter helped improve trust in media. I think that’s true around the edges. But I’m leaning toward the Silicon Valley exec’s view that the incessant tweeting undermines trust. ‘You guys are down in the mud with the bots and the bad faith actors,’ the tech exec said.”
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.
Hulu with Live TV, a cable-like package with CNN, ESPN and a few dozen other channels over the internet, will cost $45 a month starting Feb. 26, as Hulu seeks to make that service more profitable. Its basic video-on-demand service itself will now cost $6 a month, down from $8, when bought without Live TV. An ad-free version stays at $12.
Gray Television’s OTT strategy extends to its newly-acquired Raycom stations. With this expansion, SBTV reaches 102 DMAs, including 41 of the top 100 markets across all station groups, reaching 30% of the US population.
Two weeks after word first surfaced that Viacom had been holding acquisition talks with ad-supported streaming services, it has acquired Pluto TV for $340 million in cash. Founded in 2013, Pluto TV offers more than 100 channels and thousands of hours of on-demand content.
NBC will showcase puck and player tracking as part of its broadcast of the NHL’s All-Star skills competition Friday night and then as the centerpiece of a digital-only broadcast of the All-Star 3-on-3 tournament Saturday night. It’ll be the first chance for American hockey fans to get an up-close look at the system that could be in place as soon as next season.
The new apps will include livestream so mobile users can watch local newscasts in real time.
It would appear that Amazon has not given up the idea of launching a competitor to YouTube, Google’s massively-popular video sharing site. Amazon last week filed a trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the name, FireTube. While Amazon does not mention YouTube in its application, the lengthy description for FireTube bares an interesting similarity to YouTube’s main features.
