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In concert with its Made on YouTube event, YouTube unveiled a slew of innovations aimed at enhancing creators’, viewers’ and advertisers’ experiences. Potentially the most high impact is a revamp of its CTV app which will offer “immersive previews” of creator content, modeled on best practices of SVOD apps like Netflix. Creators will also be able to customize how they categorize and organize...
In a bold move, Disney has licensed 200 of its characters for use in OpenAI’s Sora. In today’s podcast we discuss the benefits and risks of the deal, which opens a new chapter of collaboration between rights holders and AI platforms. We like Disney’s openness to user-generated content to better compete with YouTube, but are cautious about the effectiveness of the proposed guardrails in...
YouTube said it had 17 million viewers for last Friday’s global livestream of the Chiefs-Chargers game from Brazil. YouTube said that was a new record for livestream. While the game was a one off license, the success of the livestream suggests YouTube’s appetite for more international streaming of NFL game could be whetted. And that the NFL will be further incented to create international...
This week we dissect the big news that Warner Bros. Discovery is going to split into two companies, one that will hold its global cable networks and the other that will hold the Warner Bros. and HBO/Max assets.
It has been a long, winding path for the Time Warner assets, starting with AT...
Colin attended the Connected TV World Summit in London this week and shares his observations about the CTV landscape in Europe and some of the challenges. First we discuss new research from Bango detailing strong adoption of Gen AI among younger users, and also new Gracenote research about the burgeoning market for FAST services.
Listen to the podcast to learn more (26 minutes, 55 seconds...
Starz will split off from Lionsgate in 2025 and on today’s podcast we discuss Starz’s streaming strategy, as outlined by CEO Jeffrey Hirsch in a presentation at the UBS Global Media...
Bloomberg’s Screentime 2024 conference in LA offered opportunities to hear directly from a variety of industry executives about their companies’ streaming initiatives and results (all video interviews here). Colin and I were especially interested in interviews with Comcast’s Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts and Amazon’s SVP of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios Mike Hopkins.
As we discuss, the...
On this week’s Inside the Stream Colin and I dig into Netflix’s first engagement report, released earlier this week. The report details what subscribers watched during the January-June 2023 period. It includes viewership of over 18,000 titles, which comprises 99% of all viewing on the service. Colin has used the data to make several calculations about Netflix’s overall business. Hopefully other...
On this week’s Inside the Stream Colin and I first discuss the trend toward SVOD services being bundled with one another. We agree the approach makes sense to cut churn and increase the lifetime value of subscribers. Next, Peacock has hit 30 million paying subscribers, which we believe is a healthy milestone for the three year-old service, though its losses are in the billions of dollars....
Charter and Disney settled their dispute and on this week’s podcast we discuss the outcome. Last week we discussed the broader implications of the impasse. Colin is on his way to IBC in Amsterdam and we catch up on Eluvio and its blockchain-based streaming platform. Also in the news this week was Gracenote’s new metadata solution for FASTs. Last, we discuss recent news that Comcast and Disney...