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TV / Media Research and Insights

Archive for SVOD

Posted by David Tice 
· July 18, 2019 
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Conference Summary: Mavericks of Media 2019

As guest-blogger for the 2019 edition of the Mavericks of Media conference (which is put on by knect365), I wrote up summaries of the keynotes and break-out session  I attended. You can find the daily summaries on the knect365 website:

Day 1 of the 2019 Mavericks of Media conference: Day 1 (July 10 2019)
Day 2 of the 2019 Mavericks of Media conference: Day 2 (July 11 2019)

Enjoy!

David Tice is the principal of TiceVision LLC, a media research consultancy.
– Don’t miss future posts by signing up for email notifications here .  
– Read my new book about TV, “The Genius Box”. Details here . 

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Categories : Conferences, Media devices and services, Pay TV, Streaming Video, SVOD, TV
Posted by David Tice 
· February 6, 2019 
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2019 MIE Conference Summaries

MIE Conference logoAs guest-blogger for the 2019 edition of the Media Insights & Engagement Conference (which is put on by knect365), I wrote up summaries of the keynotes and the break-out sessions I attended. You can find the daily summaries on the knect365 website:

Day 1 of the 2019 MIE conference: Day 1 (Jan 29 2019)
Day 2 of the 2019 MIE conference: Day 2 (Jan 30 2019)
Day 3 of the 2019 MIE conference: Day 3 (Jan 31 2019)

Also, read my three pre-conference posts here:

2019’s New SVOD Services: Blitzkrieg or War of Attrition?

Connected TVs: Corporate Connections as Important as Internet Connections

Does AVOD News Reveal a New Phase of SVOD?

 

David Tice is the principal of TiceVision LLC, a media research consultancy.
– Don’t miss future posts by signing up for email notifications here .  
– Read my new book about TV, “The Genius Box”. Details here . 

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Categories : Conferences, Media devices and services, Personal reflections, Research business, Streaming Video, SVOD, TV
Posted by David Tice 
· January 30, 2019 
· No Comments

Does AVOD News Reveal a New Phase of SVOD?

My third post as a guest-blogger for the 2019 edition of the Media Insights & Engagement Conference (which is put on by knect365) asks if the recent flurry of AVOD news shows a new phase of SVOD.

“Hot on the heels of Nielsen’s announcement that its Total Ad Ratings product now includes OTT and mobile viewing comes NBC Universal’s announcement that it will be launching a new ad-supported OTT (AVOD) service in 2020. Other reports cover entry into the AVOD market of Amazon’s IMDb Freedive and Sinclair Broadcasting’s STIRR. On top of all this, Viacom acquired Pluto TV. What’s causing this mini-land rush on AVOD?”
Read the rest of the post at the knect365 website here.

MIE Conference logo
Attend the MIE conference, January 29-31 in Los Angeles to hear industry thought leaders on this topic and many others. Details about the conference can be found here.

David Tice is the principal of TiceVision LLC, a media research consultancy.
– Don’t miss future posts by signing up for email notifications here .  
– Read my new book about TV, The Genius Box. Details here . 

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Categories : Media devices and services, Pay TV, Streaming Video, SVOD, TV
Posted by David Tice 
· January 3, 2019 
· No Comments

2019’s New SVOD Services: Blitzkrieg or War of Attrition?

I’m guest-blogging again for the upcoming 2019 edition of the Media Insights & Engagement Conference. My first post deals with legacy media giants finally jumping into the deep end of the OTT/SVOD pool in 2019.

“The last year of the Twenty-Teens will finally see the emergence of the legacy media’s competitors to Netflix. Coming out in 2019, they will be ready to do battle in the early Twenty-Twenties for America’s audience. Whether this will be a come-from-behind victory, or just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, should be clear relatively quickly.”
Read the rest of the post here.

 

MIE Conference logo
Attend the MIE conference, January 29-31 in Los Angeles to hear industry thought leaders on this topic and many others. Details for the conference can be found here.

David Tice is the principal of TiceVision LLC, a media research consultancy.
– Don’t miss future posts by signing up for email notifications here .  
– Read my new book about TV, The Genius Box. Details here . 

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Categories : Media devices and services, Streaming Video, SVOD, TV
Posted by David Tice 
· September 25, 2018 
· 4 Comments

My New Book, “The Genius Box”

The Genius Box coverAs a reader of my blog, I hope you will be as excited as I am about the publication of my first book, The Genius Box: How the “Idiot Box” Got Smart & Is Changing the Television Business – not by coincidence being launched during the debut week of the Fall broadcast season.

Put very briefly, the book explores the evolution of the TV set and of the relationship between viewers and their sets… and the impact of this evolution on various stakeholders in the TV ecosystem such as content creators, content distributors, advertisers, measurement companies, CE companies, and the government.

I’ve had this book in my head for several years and finally had the opportunity to tackle the task of writing the book in the months following my departure from the corporate research world last fall. We all know TV is being disrupted; I found out so too are books, thus I self-published this book – but more on that in a subsequent blog post.

The Genius Box is currently available in paperback or Kindle format at Amazon, or in e-book format at B&N and Apple iBooks. Over the coming weeks, it will become available at most major online book sellers.

More details on the book, and resources for the press or reviewers, can also be found on The Genius Box pages on the TiceVision website here.

David Tice is the principal of TiceVision LLC, a media research consultancy.
Get notifications of new posts – sign up at right or at bottom of this page.

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Categories : Advertising, Pay TV, SVOD, The Genius Box book, TV
Posted by David Tice 
· August 15, 2018 
· No Comments

Channels tuned or streams viewed – few watch it all

Nielsen logo
Nielsen just released their annual estimate of linear TV channels tuned by TV homes, and the proportion is down to a little more than 7 percent. This represents a decline of about half in the past decade (15% in 2006).

This trend would have been more useful with an accompanying trend in the denominator, channels received. Doing a little digging on Google, I found that in 2006 Nielsen reported TV homes received 88 channels. In 2016, the average number was a little over 200, so for the sake of argument I’ll use 200.

Let’s Do the Math

Not surprising for those in the know, this means that the average number of linear channels tuned has remained relatively constant. It was roughly 13 channels in 2006, compared with 15 in 2017. Neither the doubling of linear channels available, nor the massive increase in streaming options since 2006 (not accounted for here at all), seems to have had much impact on this average tuned number.

No doubt some will jump on Nielsen’s report as justification for moving to an “a la carte” pay TV subscription system or evidence of how pay TV offerings don’t address consumer wants. There is certainly an argument to be made that today’s TV network groups put out too many channels, in an attempt akin to CPG companies grabbing as much shelf space as they can command. But does the seemingly low proportion of channels viewed really mean consumers aren’t being served?

Let’s look at other subscribed media. Satellite radio? About five channels of the 100+ channels on SiriusXM take up 90% of my listening time. Newspaper? I might fully read one article per section. Magazines? This varies a lot. I read almost all of The Economist every week, but maybe one article out of the 25 in each month’s Road & Track; other magazines fall somewhere in between. SVOD services? I watch only a handful of their original series. While this is anecdotal, it is reasonable to assume most subscribers fully consume only a small portion of the content available.

Are Subscriptions Socialized Media?

The point here is that almost every medium that relies on a subscription model offers far more content than any one of its users either want or have time to consume. This bundling is a sort of social contract with your other subscribers – you each are subsidizing the other so that in total the overall costs are lower for everyone to get the content in which they are interested.

So the next time someone pulls out this share of TV channels in an argument, I’m going to ask what proportion of the 700 original Netflix series and movies produced in 2018 they watched. I’m guessing it’s not more than seven percent either.

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Categories : Pay TV, SVOD, TV
Posted by David Tice 
· August 8, 2018 
· No Comments

I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This, Disney-style

It was with some surprise that I read about Disney wanting to buy back the rights to Star Wars movies it had sold to Turner for broadcast on TBS and TNT. Not too surprised they wanted the rights back with the launch of the Disney streaming service in the next year, but surprised that someone at Disney – in 2016 – thought it was a good idea to sell those rights for an eight year period.

In today’s (or even 2016’s) TV/streaming environment, eight years is a lifetime. Even the agreement Disney signed with Netflix in 2012, which only kicked in as of 2016, was able to be terminated rather quickly (seemingly with one year’s notice) once Disney decided in 2017 to launch its own service.

Even more curious is that the Turner agreement was announced in September 2016, a month after Disney’s acquisition of MLBAM was announced (and presumably many months after that acquisition was put into play). MLBAM was projected by many at the time as being acquired to be the backbone for future ESPN and Disney streaming services. It certainly gives the appearance that Disney’s divisions were walking out of step in this case.

It does bring up the interesting issue for content owners in the future – do they try to pull all their premiere content back into their verticals to feed their own streaming services? While this would seem to make sense from a competitive point of view, it does bring up another question – is it serving their shareholders? Presumably licensing fees would be lower by avoiding a true marketplace auction for their content, and that could make media companies vulnerable to shareholder complaints or even legal action.

Of course, self-dealing is nothing new in television. It’s just taken on another wrinkle to navigate in this new world of streaming, frenemies, and consolidation.

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Categories : Streaming Video, SVOD, TV
Posted by David Tice 
· July 12, 2018 
· No Comments

Dave the Research Grouch: Variety and Cowan

Variety logoLast week, Variety (and multiple others) published a report on a new study from Cowan & Co. on Netflix use, and it’s hard to decide at whom to get grouchy. At Variety, for writing up an article with no context, or Cowan for dropping survey results without publishing any details about their study.

Let’s look at the headline first – “Netflix Is No. 1 Choice for TV Viewing, Beating Broadcast, Cable and YouTube (Study)”. What, according to the article, did the survey results actually say? That people self-reported they used Netflix (27%) “more often” to view than cable TV (20%) or broadcast TV (18%).

Let’s parse this out a bit. First, consider that Nielsen reported in Q1 2017 that 90% of viewing time is still on traditional TV networks. Sure, there are issues with Nielsen but even so it is reasonable to assume that it’s not too far off. This means that in terms of actual viewing time among the total population, Netflix is nowhere near the most-watched platform despite what people may say they “use most often.”

Second is the rather subjective decision to compare broadcast and cable separately against Netflix. It’s been my experience that people with a streaming agenda tend to also be the ones who say viewers can’t tell or don’t care about cable vs broadcast. But that would ruin the headline, because it would change to “Legacy TV Networks Are No. 1 Choice for TV Viewing [38%], Beating Netflix [27%] and YouTube.”

This point is emphasized further when the data for homes with pay TV are shown. Most trusted studies show that a majority of Netflix homes still have pay TV in some form, and here the difference is even more pronounced, with 45% choosing legacy broadcast or cable and 24% Netflix. No attention-getting, disruptive headline from that.

The Frowns are Awarded

Thus a big Research Grouch frown is aimed at Variety (and other sites) for publishing these data without any context at all – context one would hope the beat writers in this area would know enough to include.

Cowan doesn’t escape without a frown either, for my pet peeve – promoting a study without publishing anything about it on their own site. I could not find anything on their website or a press release with which to follow-up. I understand that we don’t need a dissertation, but if you’re going to promote research, then at least have some basic details available to read outside the lens of the press, who (from experience) are notoriously fast-and-loose with their interpretation of research results. What age was the sample? When was it fielded? How was it weighted?

David Tice is the principal of TiceVision LLC, a media research consultancy.
Get notifications of new posts – sign up at right or at bottom of this page.

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Categories : Dave the Research Grouch, Personal reflections, Research business, SVOD
Posted by David Tice 
· July 10, 2018 
· No Comments

Netflix muzzles viewer reaction to their algorithms

Netflix logoAn interesting thing happened on the way to Netflix’s world video dominance, driven by their inscrutable algorithms. The opinions of actual viewers have been tuned down or out by Netflix.

A year ago, their viewer rating system was neutered with a switch from a five-point rating scale to a simple thumbs up/thumbs down. This change was explained away as a way to improve user experience. But it may have had more to do with avoiding middling ratings for Netflix originals when viewers compared potential viewing choices. A less discrete measure evens things up.

This neutering is furthered this year by the closing of the viewer comment section on Netflix. Doubtless this is somewhat driven by the troll mentality found anywhere online comments are allowed. But it also means that Netflix users cannot now comment on their content – or see previous comments. This again could influence viewer choice and decisions.

Netflix may trying to deal with the reality that a firehose of content isn’t going to generate hit after hit, even with high-level data analytics. By reducing the context of a viewing decision, they can improve the chances of their less-successful originals to be picked.

Batting .350 Is a Success in TV, Too

Of course, there has always been the argument that if there was some way to analytically improve creative development, wouldn’t broadcast and cable networks have figured out some way in the past to improve their pipeline? In the 2009 through 2015 broadcast seasons, an average of 64% of new scripted broadcast programs were not renewed. And that “failure” proportion would be even higher if cancelled pilots and non-renewals after a second season are included. An improvement of even ten percentage points would have huge impact on networks – and still, half of programs would fail. But no secret formula – star, logline, or format – seemed to consistently explain success or failure.

There is no doubt that Netflix’s algorithms can identify many viewer segments to target. Data can help with green-lighting and marketing new series. But the bug in the machine is that television is a creative medium – and data crunching can’t help bad writing, directing, or casting. As Netflix seems to be heading towards premium pricing, the least they can do is let their viewers keep their say.

David Tice is the principal of TiceVision LLC, a media research consultancy.
Get notifications of new posts – sign up at right or at bottom of this page.

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Categories : Media devices and services, SVOD, TV
Posted by David Tice 
· February 27, 2018 
· No Comments

Streaming expansion leads to Fox News extension

Fox Nation logoIn a true sign that streaming has gone mainstream, even with the older generations, Fox News announced a new OTT service last week called Fox Nation. Without generalizing too broadly, the Fox News Channel (FNC) audience is typically older and are late-comers to the world of streaming – but recent years have seen the adoption of streaming accelerate in this cohort.

As happened with younger consumers, the increasing ease of configuring connected TVs, as well as signing up for and using streaming services, has seen adoption and usage among older consumers rapidly increase. Enabled by smart TVs (no need to worry about connecting other boxes to get internet content) and emboldened by use of Netflix or Amazon Prime (subscriptions given as birthday or holiday gifts), older viewers are entering prime time for OTT and SVOD services that cater to their interests.

For example, The Home Technology Monitor from GfK* showed that in the two years between Spring 2015 and Spring 2017, the proportion of homes with a householder age 50+ with an operational connected TV set increased by one fifth. And Nielsen’s Total Audience Report showed that usage by time of streaming video (not including smart TVs) among those age 50+ increased about 30 percent in the year between Q2 2016 and Q2 2017.

Smartly the new Fox Nation service doesn’t cannibalize the main network, which potential subscribers may watch all the time anyway. Fox Nation won’t feature simulcast or current programs shown on the FNC “mothership.” It will supposedly take deep dives via exclusive content and events, as well as offer over 20 years’ worth of FNC archive content.

Looking more broadly, the different demos within the older streaming crowd should be ripe for other OTT services marketed in a way that is friendly to the older viewer. Obviously the flip side of Fox Nation would be a liberal-oriented OTT service. PBS stations rolled out Passport in the past year, which offers exclusive streaming content to supporters of a certain donation level. The PBS crowd should also have an interest in services like Acorn or Britbox that offer a lot of programs from the UK not normally available on PBS or other outlets.

The age of affluence

As CBS’ David Poltrack has been pointing out for years, older viewers have a disposable income that is valuable – not just to OTT services looking for subscribers, but to the advertisers or sponsors on those services. Given the high average age of its audience, perhaps it’s no coincidence that CBS All Access was the first – and still only – stand-alone SVOD service offered by one of the Big Four broadcasters.

*Disclosure: the author ran The Home Technology Monitor between 1995 and 2017, and was employed by GfK until October 2017

David Tice is the principal of TiceVision LLC, a media research consultancy.
Get notifications of new posts – sign up at right or at bottom of this page.

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Categories : Media devices and services, Streaming Video, SVOD, TV
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