Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Apr 24th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!
Christopher SlaughterCEO |
Comcast is reportedly dropping its bid to merge with Time Warner Cable, after a series of meetings with US government officials made it clear just how serious the political opposition to the deal was. The FCC was reportedly going to call for an administrative hearing to review the deal, six US senators wrote another open letter to go on the record again as opposing to the merger, last week Bloomberg reported that the Justice Department was also taking a negative view, and a former FCC commissioner weighed in, saying the merger plan had “monopoly written all over it.” |
John MedeirosChief Policy Officer |
Netflix arrived legally in Australia, and promptly zoomed up as a bandwidth gobbler – one telco reported Netflix was 25% of consumption and rising fast. At a conference in Sydney, the CTO of the National Broadband Network expressed optimism that, with some additional investment , Australia’s HFC cable network was up to the task of delivering Netflix to consumers. But in some ways the more interesting numbers were in the Telstra COO’s remarks; she said that video was already half of Aussie internet consumption, and said “Rapid growth in the quantity and quality of video needs investment to meet that increasing demand.” She warned that consumers could expect to pay more for the added capacity required. Speakers also noted that consumers had increasingly high expectations of their online viewing experience; soon they will want 4K online. The chief media strategist of Akkamai said “Consumers expect a broadcast-like experience online. It’s no longer enough to separate the two as different things.” |
Mark LayVice President, Singapore |
When the head of a company talks, I always wonder how much is truth and how much are they just talking their book. Reed Hastings has recently hit it out of the park with Netflix’s Q1 Earnings so he’s got my ear. And what he says resonates, “We’ve had 80 years of linear TV, and it’s been amazing, and in its day the fax machine was amazing,” … “The next 20 years will be this transformation from linear TV to Internet TV.” He also says, “I predict HBO will do the best creative work of their lives in the next 10 years because they are on war footing.” How many of our organizations are on war footing? |
Anjan MitraExecutive Director, India |
And in India, the Net Neutrality debate continued. Fortunately, there were some voices of reason. I liked these two commentaries: this one, by economists at a noted economic think-tank, points out that “the standard narrative in favor of net neutrality takes…as a given that the infrastructure exists to enable participation and access,” and in India that’s not the case. Clearly, “the crux is really how to best manage India’s limited internet access resources and to embed incentives for expanding it.” This one, on the other hand, takes a slightly more….um….polemical approach. But I did chuckle at this line: “the form of net neutrality the Indian Twitterati are espousing is an impractical answer to a largely imagined problem.” CASBAA’s own submission to the TRAI took a similar economic perspective: we said broadcasters need capable communications networks to get their programming to consumers, and massive investments are needed to develop those networks in India. |
Jane BuckthoughtAdvertising Consultant |
A new piece of research from Mobile & Online TV & Video: OTT, IPTV & Connected Markets 2015-2019, observes that OTT services are seeing a rapid uptake by consumers who want to view content, when and where it suits them. The report argues that traditional broadcasters are facing increased competition as more services go over-the-top of pay TV incumbents, allowing distributors such as Sling TV to provide customers with a cheaper, tailored alternative to cable TV, driving the trend for ‘cord-cutting’. The report suggests that continued growth in the established markets of West Europe and North America, along with the emergence of key OTT players in the Far East and Asia Pacific, will bring a surge in the uptake of OTT subscriptions over the next four years. |
John MedeirosChief Policy Officer |
Verizon’s announcement of a “light” pay-TV package system in the US brought a lot of commentary, and a public protest by ESPN that their contract didn’t permit use of their channels in that way. Oh, this process of “de-bundling” will be interesting to watch! On a related note, the definition of “schadenfreude” is enjoyment derived from the troubles of others. But I have to confess that’s what I felt when reading this commentary, complaining that unbundled cable programming is going to cost more than the bundle . It turns out that a significant number of people, including the writer, have been enjoying large cable bundles for years that were subsidized by the mass of people who paid for stuff they didn’t consume. They begged for an end to the big cable bundle, and now they’ve got it… which means the days of cross-subsidies are ending. |
Kevin JenningsProgramme Director |
Interesting news from the granddaddy of online video YouTube which has announced that it will be closing down its custom apps on a number of aging devices this week. The move will affect the second-generation Apple TV and its predecessor, as well as iOS devices running iOS 6 and below. Time to upgrade those old devices… again |