Karen Petruska's List: Ecosystem

• Might the ecosystem be witnessing the first meaningful sign that the cable bundle — a linchpin of television economics for two decades — is fraying?
• History shows that incumbents really don’t react to disruptive products and services until it’s too late. That’s because either the market is too small or there’s a risk of cannibalizing one’s own business.

• Longmire lives. The drama, which A&E axed in August despite strong viewership, is coming back for a fourth season on Netflix.
• A&E raised eyebrows when it pulled the plug on Longmire. It was the cable network's most-watched original scripted series. But Longmire's fan base skews old, and it was doing little to aid the scramble for advertiser-friendly adults 18-49. Advertising, of course, means nothing to Netflix.

• After filming pilot presentation Difficult People for USA Network, streaming service Hulu has picked up the comedy with a straight-to-series order, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

• Sony Corp. said Thursday that its long-awaited cloud-based TV service would start in a soft beta launch this month.
• PlayStation Vue and be accessible via PlayStation gaming consoles
• offer live TV and on-demand content
• The service will launch with 75 networks under deals with the likes of Viacom and CBS Corp., which have announced their participation, Fox, NBCUniversal and Discovery Communications.
• Not mentioned in Thursday's announcement were networks from the likes of the Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner.
• Pricing details weren't disclosed
• he company also said the service was "changing the rules for how people pay for subscription TV," with no contacts or installation charges and no hidden extra costs.
• He said Thursday's news "demonstrates what our company is capable of when we embrace disruption and stay true to gamers."
• "Once viewers tag a favorite show, they will automatically have access to episodes of that show for 28 days so that they can watch on their own time."

• Here is a look at the service's current network partners: 

   

  CBS: at launch, the service will offer signals from owned-and-operated CBS TV stations in selects markets along with on-demand primetime programming

   

  Discovery Communications: Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Investigation Discovery, Science, OWN, Discovery Family Channel, plus 11 others

   

  Fox: Fox's owned-and-operated TV stations, FX, FXX, National Geographic Channel, Nat Geo Wild, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, BTN, regional sports networks, including YES Network

   

  NBCUniversal: all local offerings from NBC, Telemundo and regional sports networks, Bravo, CNBC, E!, NBCSN, Oxygen, Sprout,  Syfy, USA, others

   

  Scripps Networks Interactive: HGTV, Food Network, Travel Channel, DIY Network, Cooking Channel
   
    Viacom: BET, CMT, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Palladia, Spike, VH1, others

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• In 1992 Congress realized that the then-nascent satellite industry would have a hard time competing because much cable programming was owned by cable companies who frequently kept it from competitors.  Congress mandated access to cable channels for satellite services, and competition flourished.  Today I am proposing to extend the same concept to the providers of linear, Internet-based services
• So-called linear channels, which offer the viewer a prescheduled lineup of programs, have been the largely exclusive purview of over-the-air broadcasting, cable, and satellite TV.  But these kinds of packages of programming are coming to the Web as well.  DISH has said that it intends to launch an online service that may include smaller programming bundles. And it has already begun offering foreign language channels online.  Sony, DIRECTV, and Verizon are also in the hunt
• The mantra “Competition, Competition, Competition” fits perfectly with consumers’ desires for video choices
• Specifically, I am asking the Commission to start a rulemaking proceeding in which we would modernize our interpretation of the term “multichannel video programming distributor” (MVPD) so that it is technology-neutral.
• A key component of rules that spur competition is assuring the FCC’s rules are technology-neutral.  That’s why the definition of an MVPD should turn on the services that a provider offers, not on how those services reach viewers
• This proposal recognizes that a cable system would continue to be regulated as a cable system, even if it migrates to IP delivery
• The Commission established in our January Tech Transitions Order that the best way to speed the adoption of new technologies is to assure consumers that enduring values will be protected, including competition.
• Taking advantage of this rule, new OTTs may offer smaller or specialized packages of video programming, so consumers will be able to mix-and-match to suit their tastes.  Aereo recently visited the Commission to make exactly this point – that updating the definition of an MVPD will provide consumers with new choices.
•   Those seeking to deploy new competitive broadband networks tell us that it’s hard to provide new high-speed Internet access without also being able to offer a competitive video package as well.  An updated definition of MVPD would permit a new broadband competitor to offer customers the ability to reach a variety of OTT video packages without necessarily having to enter the video business itself.

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• Among the studios, RBC found that CBS Studios has the biggest estimated SVOD syndication backlog, with six different series deals totaling $179 million for 2015. Warner Bros. TV was second with $106 million, followed by Lionsgate ($61 million), Sony Pictures TV ($43 million), 20th Century Fox ($40 million), ABC Studios ($40 million) and Universal TV ($22 million).
• While Universal may have come in last, that $22 million is estimated to have come entirely from its recent deal with “The Blacklist,” which Bank pegged as the most expensive individual syndication deal in SVOD.
• “This model, on some level, has enabled the major studios to make more of the ‘hit risk’ out of producing premium broadcast content,” Bank wrote.

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• The top SVOD companies — Netflix, Amazon (for its Prime Instant Video service), and Hulu — are expected to spend $6.8 billion on content in 2015, up from $5.2 billion this year, according to projections from David Bank of Wall Street research firm RBC Capital Markets
• Netflix is unsurprisingly expected to be the biggest spender, with an estimated spend of $3.3 billion in 2015, followed by Amazon with $1.7 billion and Hulu with $1.5 billion
• Roughly 10% of that spend goes to original content, which to-date has been produced by studio partners like Media Rights Capital (“House of Cards”), Gaumont (“Hemlock Grove,” “Narcos”), and Lionsgate (“Orange Is the New Black”).
• while digital beat broadcast syndication spending this year, according to Bank, it’s still dwarfed by cable, which will spend $18.4 billion for syndicated content in 2015.
• Overall, the studios are expected to make $29.5 billion from syndication next year.
• “In contrast to the traditional syndication models, some first-run shows are being sold into SVOD windows before they have even premiered in their first-run windows,” said Bank. “Some shows will be sold into SVOD somewhere between 20-40 episodes at substantial per-episode prices

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• The government agency in charge of TV regulation is looking to apply similar regulations to over-the-top (OTT) digital services
• “In 1992 Congress realized that the then-nascent satellite industry would have a hard time competing because much cable programming was owned by cable companies who frequently kept it from competitors.  Congress mandated access to cable channels for satellite services, and competition flourished.  Today I am proposing to extend the same concept to the providers of linear, Internet-based services

• For Lionsgate Television, Casual marks the company's second original series on Hulu and joins Deadbeat. The company also produces Netflix's Emmy darling Orange Is the New Black.
• For Hulu, Casual arrives a month after the streaming service picked up J.J. Abrams' Stephen King event series 11/22/63 with a straight-to-series order.

• YouTube is in the early stages of exploring new subscription services, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki told Re/code’s Peter Kafka and Liz Gannes at today’s Code/Mobile conference.
• uggested that one option could be an ad-free service.
• She compared the idea to apps where users can “either choose ads, or pay a fee, which is an interesting model. … We’re thinking about how to give users options.”
• In 2013, YouTube let individual content owners sell subscriptions to their stuff, but it has done little to promote that option since then.
• After taking the lead at YouTube, she told Kafka in an earlier interview, she focused on understanding the ecosystem of content creators on the site, and better promoting these creators so they can make money
• Wojcicki is no stranger to the ad business: Prior to YouTube, she led Google’s advertising and analytics team, overseeing products like AdSense, AdWords and DoubleClick. 
• Google doesn’t break out YouTube’s financials, but eMarketer has said the site generated $5.6 billion in ad revenue last year.
• One nugget that Wojcicki shared was that 50 percent of YouTube views are now coming from mobile devices.

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• that's a striking inversion of what's actually happening: TV is disrupting the Internet.
• While digital media was becoming overwhelmingly ad-supported — a mass-media model reminiscent of the three-network era — television gained a subscription revenue stream. Paid television — that is, cable subscriptions — became the most powerful growth driver in the media world
• Because of the glut of space, new automated ways of buying and reaching audiences in digital venues and persistent complaints about the caliber of digital attention, ad rates largely have continued to sink
• This downward trend now is moving almost every significant Internet platform and media site into the video business, with its higher ad rates and opportunities for user fees
• The digital worldview holds that seamless streaming platforms challenge television's basic business model and its relationship with its viewers — and digital is the way to cut the cable cord
• Yet it is the Netflix model that breaks from web formats and reverts to traditional premium TV. It charges subscription fees; it licenses content (largely TV content); and now it makes, a la HBO, highly regarded programming using top talent. Other than residing on the web or as an app, Netflix actually rejects the conventions of digital media. It is not user-generated; it is not social; it is not bite size; it is not free.
• Or is it that digital joins broadcast and cable as a third way the TV industry can deliver its product, actually strengthening it? That, in fact, the digital revolution is a digression, and television — the real video revolution that began in the 1950s — continues on.
• television always has been a different sort of media product, never one thing (broadcast, cable, syndicated, first-run, rerun, VHS, DVD, DVR, etc.) but ever transforming, protean.
• CBS' Leslie Moonves might be the totem of the old-media establishment, preserved in amber, all the more galling for not understanding — or certainly not seeming to care about — his throwback status. And yet, in 20 years of competition from digital media, he is more powerful (and more ebullient) than ever
• In the digital imagination, the key disruption is to create a wide menu of on-demand choices, undermining the media establishment's power to make the consumer buy dross as well as gold. Netflix, for instance, has to license lots of junk in order to get the good stuff.
• Unlike digital media, television is not a flattened, long-tail world. It's about the hits. Those unique moments of creative synchronicity that give you amazing power — and the wherewithal to bundle.
• TV product, available in myriad ways and through often competing distributors, has remained both carefully controlled and artfully profitable — now, with subscription and advertising revenue, more than ever.

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• The most striking development in Adobe’s new system is that it’s designed for comparing disparate kinds of content. The new ratings, Nielsen says, can rank an online video next to a podcast next to an article.
• The online rating system will combine Nielsen formulas with data from Adobe’s online traffic-measuring and internet TV software.
• the difficulty with a medium like the internet capable of delivering so many content types is how to compare those types to one another
• s popularity on the internet the number of clicks? Page views? Unique visitors? Length of time spent on a site? Distance scrolled on a page? Return visits? How many times a video is watched through to the end? How many times an ad turns into an online purchase? Such uncertainty is the source of deep unease across the media and entertainment worlds
• By pulling together data from online TV and video, games, audio, and text across all the devices used to consume all of that content, Nielsen and Adobe are looking for a way to take all of those fragments and piece them together to create a picture that makes sense the way old media did.

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• growth in the number who want to watch TV over a different set of pipes is surging, according to a new report from Adobe
• Adobe is in a position to know because its software runs the platform that nearly all US cable customers use to log into the online versions of their subscriptions
• otal TV viewing over the internet grew by 388 percent in mid-2014 compared to the same time a year earlier—a near-quintupling
• According to analyst Tamara Gaffney, three factors are drove this growth: more apps and sites for watching, more content to watch on those apps and sites, and the World Cup. Sports act as as kind of “appetizer” whetting viewers’ appetites for the flexibility and breadth of online TV,
• viewers have branched out so much that, for the first time, viewers watched more movies online than sports. The average was 4.5 movies per month, Adobe says, versus two a year ago.
• Adobe’s survey doesn’t include the main streaming services: Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu
• • wow--this is just TV Everywhere
• the gadgets that showed the greatest increase in their share of use for internet-TV watching were gaming consoles and over-the-top devices such as Apple TV and Roku. Where a year ago they accounted for just 3 percent of online TV viewing, they now account for 10 percent
• More than half (51 percent) of all online TV viewing happens on iOS apps, according to Adobe’s figures
• getting viewers habituated to the internet way of watching TV could hasten a less aggregated future, says Gaffney

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• The new “CBS All Access” service, costing $5.99 a month, is the first time that a traditional broadcaster will make a near-continuous live feed of its local stations available over the web to non-pay-TV subscribers.
• this new era of à la carte TV has suddenly arrived — all at once and more quickly than many industry executives, observers and television fans had expected. And with it, the virtual monopoly that cable, satellite and telecommunications companies have had over TV programming is dissipating.
• long with Netflix, a host of other insurgents like Amazon and Hulu now offer on-demand programming that can be watched anytime and anywhere on a laptop or a smartphone.
• Subscribers to “CBS All Access” will be able to watch local CBS television stations in 14 markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas and San Francisco. More affiliates are expected to join.
• In a notable carve-out, National Football League games will not be available on the service
• A similar service from Showtime, the premium cable network owned by CBS, is likely in the “not too distant future,” Mr. Moonves said.
• CBS and HBO are not the only two new web-only offerings. Sony is readying an Internet product that is expected to include live and on-demand programming from Viacom, the parent of MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central networks.
• The company held on to the digital rights for its programing so that it could build its own web and mobile offerings, such as the new “CBS All Access.” The service will be available on CBS.com and mobile apps beginning Thursday.
• He questioned whether it would offer something different from what was already available and whether it would cut into CBS’s business. “I am the old broadcasting guy here,” he said. “I continued to poke holes in it for the last year.”
• For the live stream, the ads will be the same as those on the traditional television broadcast. For the on-demand programming, the typical 12 to 16 minutes of ads an hour will be reduced 25 percent.

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• But ultimately, much of this doesn't really matter. Even if only five people are watching Transparent and they're all TV critics, the show is still a "success" for the site, because people are buzzing about it passionately, and that gets the idea of Amazon as a content provider out there in the public consciousness.