17 January, 2014

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Jan 17th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!

Christopher Slaughter CEO	It’s the start of a new year, and that means pundits across the planet have been getting their crystal balls out and polishing them up. I’ve always liked the slightly snarky counter-prediction prediction pieces, myself, but there are plenty more straight-forward prediction lists out there… including one from CASBAA member Bengt Jonsson of Irdeto…!
Desmond Chung Associate Director, PR & Communications	Time Warner Cable recently shot down an acquisition offer from Charter Communications with CEO Rob Marcus stating: “Here’s what happened: We didn’t put our house up for sale, and we got a knock on the door and someone made a low-ball offer.” You know…I couldn’t have said that any better myself!
Jill Grinda Executive Vice President	Sigh….how romance changes… for couples split by distance, two screens blink as one…lovers once took solace in sharing the same big sky and now they take it in sharing a little screen kilometers apart. Couples still want to watch TV together. And of course, where there are shared viewing experiences, there are commitments, and the merest brush with an unwatched episode is adultery. Then I defy you, stars!
John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	At the recent Consumer Electronics Show in the USA, there was a lot of discussion of the pros and cons of the “app economy.” Content providers and pay-TV platforms have overlapping and sometimes competing interests when it comes to apps, but this article doesn’t even mention the elephant in the room — apps that deliver pirated program streams!
Sara Madera Director, Member Relations & Marketing	Is Netflix a vision of the future or a sign of the past? If you are talking about potentially streaming or developing 4K content, then they may be shaping the industry…but only if they can get the rights. Many Netflix customers are frustrated by the lack of streaming movies now available, and now they have to wait for selected DVDs to be mailed, yet again. With less companies willing to sell rights to the once online-start-up-now-giant, this Bloomberg Opinion piece wonders if the good days of streaming are behind us.
Jill Grinda Executive Vice President	Are we on the edge of a mass exodus from pay-TV services to online substitutes? Apparently not, according to recent research undertaken by The Diffusion Group in the US. The research concludes that 88% of adult broadband users subscribe to an incumbent pay-TV service. However it’s important that pay-TV operators execute on their promises to deliver the types of video experiences desired by millennials.
Jane Buckthought Advertising Consultant	Happy New Year! What better way to start 2014 than with a new buzz word for something we have all been trying to achieve – finding the perfect way “to get a brand in front of consumers?” Getting reach means ever-more competition for space, while achieving a depth of engagement means being interesting or relevant enough for the audience to be bothered to look.
John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	The business model of online piracy is discussed in a fascinating pair of interviews on the torrentfreak website with an admitted (but anonymous) pirate uploader. Of course he disingenuously blames piracy on the content company “dinosaurs” – the fact that people like Kim Dotcom make big money from piracy has nothing to do with its spread…
	Discovery Communications has promoted JB Perrette to the role of president of Discovery Networks International. Watch his session from the CASBAA Convention 2013, here.