Cordkillers 120 – Where’s Your ALF, HBO?

Cordkillers / May 10th, 2016

Ad money is flooding towards digital but will the networks get flooded out? Plus Hulu and YouTube build online cable services and Mohu turns cable boxes into antennas.

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CordKillers: Ep. 120 – Where’s Your ALF, HBO?
Recorded:  May 9 2016
Guest: None

Intro Video

  • Brian’s Dad talks “civil war”

Primary Target

  • The TV business isn’t dead, far from it really
    – Wired’s Julia Greenberg has an excellent writeup on the health of TV (not cable, but broadcasters)
    – This month, CBS, Fox and Time Warner all reported advertising revenue growth
    – CNN and Fox reported higher ratings (election)
    – Digital ad spending rising but TV spending staying strong
    – Advertisers consider Hulu, apps etc “digital spend” separate budget from linear TV.
  • YouTube says its primetime audience is bigger than the top 10 TV networks combined
    – YT CEO Susan Wojcicki
    – “Today, I’m happy to announce that on mobile alone YouTube now reaches more 18–49-year-olds than any network — broadcast or cable. In fact, we reach more 18–49-year-olds during primetime than the top 10 TV shows combined” – Numbers from Nielsen study.
    – 21 million watched Coachella on YouTube. 2x American Idol finale
  • Coming, broadcast TV’s big comeuppance
    – TV ad rates rising even if ratings falling
    – Major ad-buyer Magna Global (Coke, Johnson & Johnson moving $250 mm from TV to YouTube.
    – Online ad spending can be diluted
    – Primetime is down 7 percent this season among adults 18-34s, according to Nielsen, about a quarter lower than 4 years ago.

Signal Intelligence

  • Hulu grows to 12 million subscribers, prepares new interactive ads for living room TVs
    – Hulu had lots to say at its NewFront event for advertisers in New York.
    – Hulu has grown 33% over the past year to 12 million subscribers.
    – Hours per viewer is up 30% too.
    – Hulu will bring interactive ads to big screen versions of the service and collaborate with Nielsen on campaign level ratings for advertisers.
    – Contentwise the Path and Mindy Project are renweed for next season and Ron Howard’s Beatles documentary Eight Days A Week will come to Hulu’s new Documentary Films this autumn.
    – CEO Mike Hopkins confirmed that the company plans to bring a live sports news and events service to customers in 2017. 
  • YouTube Said to Plan ‘Unplugged’ Online TV Service for 2017
    – Bloomberg reports its sources tell it YouTube is planning another subscription based streaming service called Unplugged that would include network and cable channels. YouTube has supposedly been working on the product since 2012 and plans to launch in 2017 at around $35 a month with add-ons available, although it has yet to strike any deals.

Gear Up

Front Lines

  • Spotify is working on 12 new original video series
    – Spotify announced it will bring out 12 original TV series about music and pop culture. Episodes will be less than 15 minutes long for iOS and Android in US, UK, Germany and Sweden. Among the shows will be Rush Hour from Russell Simmons, Landmark a doc series based on the music history podcast and Trading Playlists. 
  • Disney wants to write a very big check to buy part of MLB’s video streaming company
    – Sources tell ReCode that Disney would like to acquire 1/3 of BAM Tech, formerly known as MLB Advanced Media, the backend for MLB, ESPN and HBO Now among others. MLB is looking to spin the company out and is talking to other potential buyers as well. 
  • Ellen Degeneres launches a network with YouTube, Snapchat stars
    – Ellen Degeneres in partnership with Warner Bros. is launching the Ellen Digital Network with YouTube star Tyler Oakley making shows for Web and TV and the folks behind “Damn Daniel” building an original series for Snapchat. 
  • Amazon offers NBC’s Seeso comedy service as a streaming add-on
    – NBC’s streaming comedy service called Seeso is available as an add-on for Amazon Prime. It’s the same $3.99 you’d pay if you bought it on its own. 
  • Netflix now lets you adjust streaming quality over cell connections
    – Netflix’s latest app for iOS and Android allows users to chose what quality of video it streams when using cellular data connections. Netflix admitted in March that it automatically limits video quality for AT&T and Verizon customers on cell data. It will continue to do so but customers can override the choice. Settings are described by the number of hours that stream per gigabyte. Connections are unaffected over WiFi. 
  • Netflix’s CEO is skeptical of VR because you can’t binge-watch
    – Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told VentureBeat he thinks VR will be great for gaming but not for lean-back TV shows. “You’re exhausted after 20 minutes.” Chief content officer Ted Sarandos said, “I can’t imagine putting on a VR headset while sitting on the couch with my wife for two hours and just disappearing.” Of course the market isn’t near big enough yet either.  

Under Surveillance

Dispatches from the Front
Congrats to Big Cable on phony impressive growth! In this past quarter we dumped U-Verse at $165 a month for Xnfinity for Internet and PlayStation Vue. No phone sales pitch. Just online it was $50 for Internet with a 20 channel package and one nonDVR set top box or MORE for just Internet. 

The cable box is still on my desk in shrink wrap. Don’t want it. Won’t use it. But I count as a new TV subscriber. Cord killing is not dead yet!

– Scott

 

Hey Tom and Brian,

This week I’m going to call Comcast and cancel cable. My wife and I have been paying for cable, Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime (mostly for the shipping) for a while now and we find ourselves using the cable box less and less. One of the things that have hindered us from cancelling cable has been those few shows like The Walking Dead and Better Call Saul, etc… that we just can’t get on those other three streaming services without paying extra to buy the whole season of a show which we really don’t care about owning and watching again. I know there are options through Sling TV and Sony PlayStation Vue that might help with this but that’s just adding even more services we don’t want, and they have their own issues with dropping out or freezing up as we’ve heard Brian and Tom.

This past weekend while Tom was in town for SF Night Attack Live, we spoke this and he helped me realize that by paying for a few seasons of shows a year, even if you never watch it again, you still come out ahead. 

So, I did some math. Let’s assume you pay $100 a month for cable and 2 cable boxes. That’s $1,200 a year you’re spending on cable. Looking at Amazon Video, a season of a TV show costs between $25 and $42. Using the worst case scenario, you could buy 28 full seasons of shows a year for $1200. If there are 6 shows you just can’t live without, and you buy them on Amazon Video at $42 each, that’s $252. That means if you cancel cable at $1200 a year and spend $252 at Amazon on those 6 shows you end up saving $948 a year.  So who cares if you never watch them again.\

In my opinion, if you haven’t cancelled cable yet, you should. Of course, if it’s working for you and you’re happy then enjoy watching what you want, when you want. on whatever damn cable or dish device you want to.

Just some thoughts an a family about to cancel cable.

Thanks and love Cord Killers and all the shows you do.

– Preston (AKA Biocow)”

 

Links

www.patreon.com/cordkillers

2016 Summer Movie Draft

Cordkillers 118 – Steam’s Stream Dream (w/ Jaime Ruiz-Avila)

Cordkillers / April 26th, 2016

How the FCC helped cablecos explain why they resist innovation, Apple might make its own original TV shows, HBO NOW FINALLY gets popular.

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CordKillers: Ep. 118 – Steam’s Stream Dream
Recorded: April 25 2016
Guest: Jaime Ruiz-Avila

Intro Video

Primary Target

  • Comcast will bring its Xfinity app to Roku and Samsung Smart TVs this year
    – Comcast announced its HTML5 Xfinity app is coming to Samsung Smart TVs
    – A custom app is coming to Roku.
    – Subscribers to Comcast’s Xfinity cable service can access the channel guide, cloud DVR, and live and on -demand TV.
    Comcast believes this shows the FCC does not need to mandate set-top box compatibility.
    – The FCC told the Verge the new app does not “integrate or search across Comcast content as well as other content consumers subscribe to.” 
  • Disney, CBS, Viacom worry FCC cable box proposal would do to TV what iTunes did to music
    – Several companies inl. Disney, CBS, Fox, A&E, Time Warner, Scripps and Viacom filed feedback to the FCC’s proposed rules to require MVNOs to support third-party cable boxes
    – Companies object that they would lose revenue if they can no longer control the order in which channels appear
    – particularly concerned that these new set-top boxes will offer up shows individually, instead of presenting entire channels as cable boxes
    – Worry about “commitments to secure and protect content”
    – Comcast made a separate filing
    – Added arguments are technical burdens to support the new boxes, might require more bandwidth
    – “In any event, at a minimum, the [FCC’s proposal] vastly understates the level of work, and associated costs, that would be necessary to implement its Set-Top Box Mandate,” it writes.

Signal Intelligence

  • Apple talking original content
    – Feature by Nicole Laporte on Fast Company
    – Apple held a private dinner at Sundance and heard pitches in LA in the weeks that followed.
    – Fast Company says it would be for an “exclusives” app on Apple TV
    – Two “lanes”
    – 1. Beats-driven programming meant to promote music
    – 2. Multiple original series.
    – Alibaba Pictures set up in Pasadena.
    – Run by Zhang Wei, former talk show host and Harvard MBA

Gear Up

Front Lines

Under Surveillance

Dispatches from the Front

Hey guys,

Just listened to last week’s show and was wondering if either of you have tried the Xbox One for its media options.

I am not sure how common this set up is for everybody but an Xbox with kinect, HDMI pass through for a cable box and a harmony remote let’s me easily access anything I want using the Xbox – One Guide.

The One Guide lays out suggestions for movies to rent or purchase, what is popular in most video apps like Netflix, Hulu, YouTube or if you chose to look at your cable provider’s channel guide will list categories such as live TV shows trending on Twitter.

What has really surprised me is that I recently realized how easy it is to be able to say “”””Xbox on”””” which will wake it up and turn on the TV and follow it with “”””watch ESPN”””” and it just finds the channel for me.  (No need to memorize #s) Or I can use a remote, a game pad or cell phone to control everything.

I know one of the features (that admittedly might bother some) is that the kinect will recognize when I’m sitting in front of the TV and have favorites/suggestions loaded based on my profile and the same based on my wife’s profile if she is watching TV.

If you guys have tried it out would love to hear your thoughts.

Cheers!
– Byron

 

 

Hi Brian, Tom, Bryce and guest,

I know they are several months away but I was thinking about how I was going to be able to watch this summer’s Olympics. Since I cut the cord I have found ways to get some of the live TV I was missing but sports has been the hardest to find. This will be the first Olympics since ditching cable TV so I was wondering if you know if NBC makes the Olympics available to those of us without a cable box.

Thank you for making my commute enjoyable and educational. I’m happy to say I am one of your bosses.

– Jennifer, Stuck in traffic on the Mass Pike

 

 

 

Hey gentlemen got to say something……. YOU JJEERRRRKKKKKSSSSS. You guys just had to say Animaniacs was on Netflix didn’t ya. I was dumb enough to watch the first episode AND NOW I CANT GET THE DAM ANIMANIACS THEME OUT OF MY HEAD AND WANT TO BINGE ON EVERY EPISODE phffft 😛 Jerks 😉 . Even after all these years I remembered the theme word for word, I missed that show. Keep up the awesome work

– Robert E from Oklahoma  

The love affair is over. The sling streaming beta blacked out the blues Blackhawks game. I had to prove where I lived to get the channel. Sling is saying they are subject to the same blackout rules as everyone else. This is a lie since local dish and cable subscribers can watch. I got to watch the game earlier this week on Fox sports Midwest without issue. Maybe Playstation view is right for me. 

– Sean

 

Bryce asked about netflix country availability:

http://moreflicks.com

That will do more than what you want, but it will do what you were talking about.

– Kurt

Links
www.patreon.com/cordkillers

2016 Summer Movie Draft

Hatting The System

Tootz the Unicorn

Cordkillers 116 – The Moose in the Room (w/ Chris Mancini and Fraser Cain)

Cordkillers / April 11th, 2016

Canada cuts the cord because its cable is cheaper, NFL comes to Twitter, and is Tom Waits a stunt casting? With special guests Chris Mancini and Fraser Cain.

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CordKillers: Ep. 116 – The Moose in the Room
Recorded:  April 11 2016
Guests: Fraser Cain, Chris Mancini

Intro Video

Primary Target

  • Cord-cutting soars in Canada
    – Convergence Consulting Group report
    – 190,000 Canadians dropped traditional TV in 2015 +80% yoy
    – Cable subs last grew in Canada in 2012
    – Canada decline 1.5% bigger than 1% decline in US
    – Majority HH still subscribe ti TV (11 mm)
    – Netflix subs in Canada rose 58% from 2013-2015 (4.9 mm)
    – Canadians pay less on average for cable but more for Internet than US

Signal Intelligence

  • Twitter reportedly wins streaming rights for NFL’s Thursday Night Football
    – Twitter will stream 10 Thursday Night Football games “to a global audience” in 2016 for free without authentication.
    – Paid around $10 million acc. Bloomberg’s source (beating out Verizon, Yahoo, Amazon)
    – NFL evp media said didn’t take highest bidder.
    – Twitter gets a small portion of ad inventory
    – CBS and NBC paid $225mm for 5 Thursday games each — Verizon has rights to stream to wireless phones
    – Twitter video will be embeddable. Include pregame Periscope streams from players and teams
    – Available on Xbox app and possibly partnered w/ Google and Yahoo
    – Twitter CFO Anthony Noto (formerly of the NFL) told Bloomberg wants to do other sports, politics and entertainment.
    – Twitter claims 800mm audience when counting non0logged-in people
    – Thursday night games attracted 17 million viewers last season.
    – NFL’s biggest broadcast contracts end in 2021
    – Yahoo streamed Oct. 25 game from London (paid $20mm)

Gear Up

  • Roku’s new $50 stick fits a quad-core CPU in a smaller frame
    – Roku introduced an updated $50 Streaming Stick.
    – Quad-core CPU, dual-band MIMO antenna, and the ability to stream audio over Wi-Fi to a smartphone.
    – Does not support 4k video only 1080p.
    – The stick is available for purchase and will ship near the end of the month.
    – Roku is also rolling out OS 7.1 today available on all devices within 6 to 8 weeks. 

Front Lines

  • It’s going to cost you more to ‘Netflix and Chill’ from next month
    – Netflix will raise all subscribers prices to $9.99. Netflix guaranteed the original pricing plan for customers in May 2014. Netflix users in the UK will begin to see an increase of 50p later this month, with prices going up to £7.49.
  • Starz launches $8.99 per month streaming service
    – Starz is making an app for iOS and Android and selling access for $8.99 a month. The same app will be accessible to existing subscribers. Users can get “virtually unlimited” downloads of shows and movies. The premiere of Outlander will come on the app April 7 two days before the premiere. 
  • Hulu is now a channel on Optimum cable boxes
    – Cablevision’s Optimum TV service has added Hulu to channel 605. Customers can subscribe through Hulu or Cablevision. 
  • Layer3 TV’s Crazy Plan to Take on Comcast and Reinvent Cable
    – A company called Layer3 plans to compete with cable companies by offering traditional cable but with better tech. The company will deliver a better picture by using fiber and HEVC (H.265) video, and one hour appointment windows. It’s set-top box will be simple to install and include Internet options like Amazon and Netflix. The channel guide prioritizes channels based on your interests not channel numbers. Level3 is coming to Chicago first in the next few months for $80-$150.
  • Verizon Buys More Mobile Video by Investing in DreamWorks’ AwesomenessTV
    – Verizon has purchased a 24.5% stake in Awesomeness TV, which is majority owned by Dreamworks. Hearst also owns 24.5%. It looks like Verizon will use Awesomeness content for its G090 mobile video service in a new subscription tier. AwesomenessTV runs YouTube channels for itself, Dreamworks and Seventeen magazine, and produces a sketch comedy series on Nickelodeon. Parents ask your kids. 
  • Plex on the web gets smarter with media searches
    – Plex updated its Web interface. Search finds everything across multiple categories as you type. Improved navigation includes more prominent discovery features and better mouse and touch controls.
  • HDR is TV’s next big format war, and Samsung and Sony could find themselves on the losing side
    – CNET has a great explainer up on the latest video format war. This time its two implentation of High Dynamic Range or HDR video in 4K.  Here’s the short version. There are two HDR implementations, HDR10 and Dolby Vision. Samsung and Sony support HDR10. LG and Vizio support both. Amazon and Netflix stream in both. 

Under Surveillance

Dispatches from the Front

HighTechBill tweeted us about this excellent Cord-cutting guide from ChannelMaster!
 

 

Before Star Wars Episode VII came out to own, I decided I would just buy it digitally until the new box set comes out after episode 9. There wasn’t a need to have a physical DVD when I could own it through Amazon or Google. However, I recently replaced my laptop and iPad with a Surface Pro 4. I love to watch movies on the plane when traveling. However, what I found is that neither Amazon nor Google will let me download a movie I own onto my Surface, because it is a computer and they don’t have apps like they do for the iPad where they can control the content. This being said, I opted to buy the physical DVD + Blue Ray + Digital HD version of the movie. I wanted to share this story because this was a rare occasion for me where the physical DVD was the better option for me and fortunately it comes with a digital copy. I am getting to watch what I want, where I want, and sort of on the device I want – but it’s not completely there yet. Would love to hear of any better suggestions for this scenario or any similar frustrations!

Love listening to the show every week!

-Kristen

 

 

Hi,
I have the feeling that I emailed you about this before but possibly not for this podcast.
Anytime people talk about users agents, bots or digital butlers automatically doing useful things for you, I am reminded about Hyperland an early 90s TV show written and presented by the late great Douglas Adams.
It is a bit too pre-internet and there’s too much “CD-Roms will fix everything!” which makes it feel out of date. However Douglas Adams makes some interesting predictions especially about how you will be able to get additional information about shows and skip between interesting things.
He is joined in the show by a digital assistant played by Tom Baker. They previously worked together when Douglas Adams wrote for the classic series of Doctor Who (the Douglas Adams co-written story, City of Death is a wonderful intro to classic series).

You can find Hyperland on YouTube (Tom’s wife works for YouTube) and while you are there look up the South Bank Show profile of Douglas Adams from 1992 and feel sad.

– Tim

 

 

re: redbox: Think you guys might have missed the point about them going digital. If they bring the same price wars to digital as they did against brick and mortar it could shake things up quite a bit.
Brian seems to think that the reason redbox customers use them is for the physical content. I use them for the incredible price point. Why spend 5$ on Google play when redbox costs a buck? I recently spent 5$ on a YouTube rental for Spotlight because the vending machine only has so many titles. I’m guessing digital could erase that problem as well.
Thanks for the show!!

– Erick

 

Links

www.patreon.com/cordkillers

2016 Summer Movie Draft