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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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From the Department of Schadenfreude, this news: Comedian Louis C.K. is “millions of dollars in debt” after self-financing a new directly-distributed TV show. We started talking about Louis CK (real name Louis Székely) when he first distributed a live stand-up recording directly to his fans back in 2011
and did — at least by stand-up industry standards — extremely well out of it. Fast-forward four years, and his more ambitious four-camera undertaking, Horace and Pete (co-starring Steve Buscemi), has not gone quite as well. The first exercise was held up as an example for others to follow, the current imbroglio (although adored by critics all over) is being cited as a warning. |
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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The music industry has been on the warpath
in recent weeks against the internet industry. (Now WHY would that happen?) A couple of weeks ago, the British music association BPI noted that in the past five years it has sent 200 million take-down requests to Google. BPI said it was too easy for deleted music to be re-uploaded, and called for replacing “notice and take-down” with “notice and stay-down,” and for removing pirate services from search results. Meanwhile,
similar notes were sounded by the RIAA in the USA. Katy Perry and other well-known recording artists asked for amendments in the DMCA copyright law, saying it “has become the all-purpose shield that tech companies hide behind while they threaten the livelihood of music creators.” And in an interview with Re/code, RIAA chief Cary Sherman was asked why the music industry doesn’t just accept the inevitability of music availability on YouTube, and in a memorable response said “We accept the inevitability of death. It doesn’t mean we have to like it.” |
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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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Netflix-watchers (as distinct from Netflix subscribers, if you know what I mean) can gorge on a lengthy Wired piece that goes behind the scenes of the company’s global launch and looks at infrastructure, global licensing deals, VPNs, and perhaps most bafflingly, global data & recommendation algorithms. Algorithms, it must be said, that sometimes lead to conspiracy theories
(a phenomenon that goes back at least to 2002, when TiVo was accused of “outing” its users). |
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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The analytics we get back about how News Views is read, strongly indicates that you like stories about Netflix. So in the spirit of ‘give the customer what they want’, I have collected a few interesting ones this week. Apparently, Netflix Is King of Paid Streaming, but Bruce Tuchman feels that they need to tailor their local services. The Curse of cancelled shows the downside of not getting through a full series.
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President, Programme
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“If you build it they will come” – Facebook have unveiled a design for a high-quality, production-ready 3D-360 hardware and software video camera system. By building it, the company hopes to encourage content producers and to create more 360-degree videos for the, as yet, niche virtual reality sector. The camera can capture videos in 360 degrees and can broadcast in 8K. Camera shots are automatically rendered through stitching and rendering software which drastically lessens production time. This means that content producers will no longer need to do the job manually, which can take several weeks. Videos can be streamed not only via Gear VR and Oculus Rift but also on the Facebook app. It is described as
the best camera of its kind…by Facebook, naturally. |
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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In Indonesia, the Kominfo ministry issued a circular letter, giving advance warning to OTT providers that they would have to obey the country’s laws, which means they’ll have to open in-country offices, pay taxes, etc. The Minister told the press that Blackberry, Twitter, Spotify and Google had all “expressed willingness to comply with the rules.”
The rules they are supposed to comply with include those on content filtering, censorship, and national payment gateway usage. It’ll be interesting to see how that works out……. |
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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Dim the lights… and here we go. American Idol was a massive winner for Fox, but the final finale has aired. There are so many good stories with so many takes on the show, heck, phenomenon. Click on the piece that grabs you. Fox Chief Talks Road Ahead After ‘American Idol’. American Idol and the Evolution of Criticism.
‘American Idol’ Finale Reminds Viewers Why the Show Mattered. Why American Idol Was Never the Same After Simon Cowell Left. I’ll close off with… (in my best Ryan Seacrest voice) “….and THAT…was American Idol.” Or maybe not, Why Fox Might Want to Rethink Ending ‘American Idol’. Lay….out. |
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President, Programme
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In a surprise move, Sling TV, the US streaming TV service has announced a new “multi-channel” starter package offering costing US$20
per month with optional “extra” premium content channels. Essentially the service has dropped ESPN and Disney in favour of Fox and the YES Sports Network. No word on why they didn’t just add FOX, FX, Fox Sports, and the YES Network to the existing package, which was only launched last year, or used the new channels as an add on package. The new offering includes the YES Network used for Yankees Major League Baseball games. As a side note Comcast stopped offering YES to the Eastern seaboard customer base at the start of the year so this seems more a realignment of the Sling TV package than any unbundling of channels. |
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Anjan Mitra
Executive Director, India
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Even though a school of thought within TRAI, the broadcast carriage regulator of India, feels that the regulatory body should start dropping archaic regulations creating ground for light-touch regulations, status quo-ists want more regulations. Interoperability of STBs is one such area where TRAI has waded into causing heartburns in the industry. What’s more, it is using selectively data given by industry, some industry insiders point out, to drum up public support in a country where socialism in various form still exists.
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