Another rundown on streaming profitability
https://jacobsmedia.com/has-streaming-turned-out-to-be-fools-gold/
https://jacobsmedia.com/has-streaming-turned-out-to-be-fools-gold/
*** STREAMING INDUSTRY THREAD ***
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Last: 1 mo ago by TCTTS
ABC has had the NBA for 20 years and that whole time they haven't been able to put together as good a presentation as NBC had. Bring back the NBA on NBC. Bring back Roundball Rock!superunknown said:
Bump for this..
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/13/nbc-sports-prepared-to-make-nba-bid.html
Article is mostly talking NBCU throwing in on NBA rights after 20+ years away but as you could imagine, there's a lot of streaming talk.
Picking out a few interesting quotes..Quote:
NBCUniversal executives have informed the NBA of their interest, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. NBC Sports wants a package that would include playoff games to air on NBC's broadcast network, two of the people said. Some regular season games could be exclusive to NBCUniversal's streaming service, Peacock. The NBA could also decide to force media companies to simulcast all games on streaming to increase reach, the people said.
Apple and Amazon have also expressed interest to the NBA in buying carved-out streaming packages, said people familiar with the matter. Amazon currently has a deal with the NBA allowing it to stream games in Brazil.
Regarding my edited post upthread that just said "nevermind" ... it was somewhat related to this. I happen to know a couple of people involved in Amazon's ventures into live programming. I feel pretty confident in saying that Amazon isn't messing around...that couple of people I know are involved know everything there is to know about delivering ads in live sports programming.Quote:
It's possible NBCUniversal will be directly competing with Warner Bros. Discovery to be the league's second traditional TV partner, along with ESPN. NBCUniversal can offer a broadcast network (NBC) to air NBA games if pay TV providers begin dropping cable networks, such as TNT and TBS, that run mostly reruns of scripted programming when sports aren't on. Comcast also owns Sky, which could give the NBA another international broadcast outlet.
"What you have today is programmers selling us content at increasingly higher prices and asking us to distribute that to largely all of our customers, and at the same time, selling that exact same content either into streaming platforms or creating a direct-to-consumer product themselves at a much lower cost," said Chris Winfrey, CEO of Charter, the second largest U.S. cable provider, in comments published by CNBC last week. "Our willingness to continue to fund that for programmers when that content is available for free elsewhere is declining. That means within the linear video construct, you'll see an increasing number of distributors deciding it no longer makes sense to carry certain content."
So...this quote. Is Winfrey basically threatening to pull content that's also available via streaming? Or is this a negotiation tactic? Nobody's subscribing to Charter (Spectrum/BrightHouse/Time Warner Cable all roll up to Charter) to see Spectrum News and Circle TV.
It's weird, I like Turner's studio show. It may be the best of all time in all sports. Erneh, Charles, Kenny and Shaq. So damn good. It's as great as ESPNs studio show is terrible. I like ESPN/ABC's play by play crew and commentary teams. Kevin Harlan is also great. Roundball Rock is the best theme, though. Weird hearing it on random fs1 type Pac 12 basketball or whatever it is.
Gimme Roundball Rock theme, Mike Breen or Kevin Harlan on the call. JVG on color (would also take Hubie Brown even today and he's 164 years old) and Doris Burke on the sideline. Thats my dream team.
Gimme Roundball Rock theme, Mike Breen or Kevin Harlan on the call. JVG on color (would also take Hubie Brown even today and he's 164 years old) and Doris Burke on the sideline. Thats my dream team.
NBA/MLB related. Bally's/Diamond Sports Group is preparing for bankruptcy, allowing leagues to end relationship.
MLB may takeover and end the blackout restrictions.
MLB may takeover and end the blackout restrictions.
Warner Bros. Discovery and HBO Max's merged streaming service reportedly sets pricing.https://t.co/5nwdmlcYza
— Collider (@Collider) March 10, 2023
TCTTS said:Warner Bros. Discovery and HBO Max's merged streaming service reportedly sets pricing.https://t.co/5nwdmlcYza
— Collider (@Collider) March 10, 2023
From that article...
Quote:
Although no name has been officially picked for the relaunched platform, reports say that Max is still being strongly considered. Whatever the name is, the HBO branding will almost certainly be scrubbed from the title. The Wrap recently confirmed a report that insiders at Warner Bros. Discovery were concerned that the HBO name was a turnoff to potential new customers.
Why the hell would the HBO name be a turnoff to anybody? IMO HBO has more or less been at the top of the mountain for quality original content since The Sopranos aired. Meanwhile, what has the Discovery channel been putting out? Dr. Pimplepopper...90 Day Fiance? The minds at Discovery/WB can't be that dense, can they?
I've been seeing people on Twitter dunk on that quote all day long. It's so stupid.
Guessing at this but maybe it's the older reputation of HBO being the provider of late night erotic movies. Or maybe it's a reputation of something only rich pretentious people had.
It's definitely not the late night erotic movie thing. Also, HBO/HBO Max has 75+ million global users, which sure would be a lot of rich pretentious people.
TCTTS said:
I've been seeing people on Twitter dunk on that quote all day long. It's so stupid.
So, maybe this is naive of me to ask, but I see a lot of "anonymous leaks" in the entertainment industry regarding possible changes that are being considered. For example, potential name changes like this, or movie/tv shows in consideration for development, or movie release lineup changes, etc.
What are the odds those are intentional leaks to gauge the public's reaction to these ideas?
It makes no sense at all. HBO is a huge brand that is recognized world wide and synonymous with great content. Why would you ever ditch that, especially in a currently flooded market with stupid little streaming companies that everyone immediately disses when they launchFL_Ag1998 said:TCTTS said:Warner Bros. Discovery and HBO Max's merged streaming service reportedly sets pricing.https://t.co/5nwdmlcYza
— Collider (@Collider) March 10, 2023
From that article...Quote:
Although no name has been officially picked for the relaunched platform, reports say that Max is still being strongly considered. Whatever the name is, the HBO branding will almost certainly be scrubbed from the title. The Wrap recently confirmed a report that insiders at Warner Bros. Discovery were concerned that the HBO name was a turnoff to potential new customers.
Why the hell would the HBO name be a turnoff to anybody? IMO HBO has more or less been at the top of the mountain for quality original content since The Sopranos aired. Meanwhile, what has the Discovery channel been putting out? Dr. Pimplepopper...90 Day Fiance? The minds at Discovery/WB can't be that dense, can they?
For things like a name change, user features/experience, etc, yeah I've seen that kind of stuff leaked to gauge reactions. But as for actual film/TV projects being considered, casting ideas, release date changes, etc, I really can't think of any instances where that kind of info has been purposefully leaked with the goal of garnering audience opinions. Studios *will* leak casting info sometimes in order to force an actor's hand, though. Like, if they want some big name to sign they'll leak that they're looking at another name, as a negotiating tactic, but that's about it. Otherwise, studios pretty much know what they're doing and have their methods/reasoning for that kind of stuff.
TCTTS said:
It's definitely not the late night erotic movie thing. Also, HBO/HBO Max has 75+ million global users, which sure would be a lot of rich pretentious people.
I was talking about the reputation before streaming existed. That stuff sucks around with the older crowd.
TCTTS said:
For things like a name change, user features/experience, etc, yeah I've seen that kind of stuff leaked to gauge reactions. But as for actual film/TV projects being considered, casting ideas, release date changes, etc, I really can't think of any instances where that kind of info has been purposefully leaked with the goal of garnering audience opinions. Studios *will* leak casting info sometimes in order to force an actors' hand, though. Like, if they want some big name to sign they'll leak that they're looking at another name, as a negotiating tactic, but that's about it. Otherwise, studios pretty much know what they're doing and have their methods/reasoning for that kind of stuff.
Gotcha. And yeah, potential casting info is a big one I notice all the time but forgot to mention. I guess I've always just assumed there had to be something behind that particular stuff getting leaked. Thanks!
streaming has been such a catastrophic failure it's not only cannibalized theatrical business and coached audiences to "just wait for streaming," we've now got Bob Iger looking to the classic theatrical rollout + physical media strategy that dominated the market for decades https://t.co/mIHT5xRHgd
— Brendan Hodges (@metaplexmovies) March 11, 2023
Wow so trading DVD dollars for negative digital pennies was a bad call, weird, who could’ve guessed. https://t.co/kfHsQc81ow
— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) March 11, 2023
Interesting quote there at the end "everything will eventually go to streaming, but not yet"
I wonder what he's sees that he is waiting for? What change enables all streaming if we aren't there yet?
I wonder what he's sees that he is waiting for? What change enables all streaming if we aren't there yet?
It kind of blows my mind that Disney and others aren't doing traditional media and streaming at the same time. Mandolorian and other Disney+ shows would probably do better than whatever ABC is airing these days. Also a 4K Mandolorian Blu-Ray release with a ton of extras would probably sell a ton too.
Quad Dog said:
Interesting quote there at the end "everything will eventually go to streaming, but not yet"
I wonder what he's sees that he is waiting for? What change enables all streaming if we aren't there yet?
My guess would be when streaming is finally, truly profitable. Basically, when streaming finally comes full circle and is essentially "cable" again; after all the consolidation shakes out over the next couple of years, when someone like Apple is able to bundle all the remaining streamers together, it's easier to navigate between different apps, more streamers are offering sports (which are the holy grail), etc. There will also come a point when the studios have figured out exactly what to keep on their own platforms and for how long, and then what/when to lease to other platforms (much like how syndication works on cable). In short, we still have another two or three year of growing pains, but it's becoming more and more obvious how perfect the cable model was, and how everyone profited from it, and we're basically heading toward a digital, streaming version of something close to that same model.
If Disney that owns ABC, ESPN, Hulu, Marvel, National Graphic,Pixar, FX, Freeform, and Fox can't figure it out then no one has a chance.
I hear what you're saying and unfortunately you're likely right. But while cable may have been the perfect model for the cable companies, and maybe some consumers who watch a ton of TV, for most consumers it was time for a much needed revamping of the system. Streaming just provided the push to get it started.
Yes, anybody who put some thought into what was happening as streaming took off realized they needed to be careful what they wished for. It was obvious that suddenly we'd have to start paying a lot of individual monthly bills, and we'd have to pay more to get all the channels we got before.
But that's just it - most of us didn't want all of the channels being forced into those bundles. There were so many crap channels that wouldn't have survived without being able to leach onto those bundles. And even a big boy like ESPN was actually an emperor with no clothes - it was only able to afford the rights to sports leagues because it was being artificially propped up by cable bundles.
I hope that if monolithic entities like Apple, Netflix, Amazon and Discovery/WB start consolidating everything again and offering bundles, then at least they try to rethink the paradigm. For example, offer a la carte bundles of 5, 10, 15, etc streaming services that I get to choose from like a menu. Don't force ESPN or Bravo on me just so I can get HBOMax.
Yes, anybody who put some thought into what was happening as streaming took off realized they needed to be careful what they wished for. It was obvious that suddenly we'd have to start paying a lot of individual monthly bills, and we'd have to pay more to get all the channels we got before.
But that's just it - most of us didn't want all of the channels being forced into those bundles. There were so many crap channels that wouldn't have survived without being able to leach onto those bundles. And even a big boy like ESPN was actually an emperor with no clothes - it was only able to afford the rights to sports leagues because it was being artificially propped up by cable bundles.
I hope that if monolithic entities like Apple, Netflix, Amazon and Discovery/WB start consolidating everything again and offering bundles, then at least they try to rethink the paradigm. For example, offer a la carte bundles of 5, 10, 15, etc streaming services that I get to choose from like a menu. Don't force ESPN or Bravo on me just so I can get HBOMax.
FL_Ag1998 said:
I hear what you're saying and unfortunately you're likely right. But while cable may have been the perfect model for the cable companies, and maybe some consumers who watch a ton of TV, for most consumers it was time for a much needed revamping of the system. Streaming just provided the push to get it started.
Yes, anybody who put some thought into what was happening as streaming took off realized they needed to be careful what they wished for. It was obvious that suddenly we'd have to start paying a lot of individual monthly bills, and we'd have to pay more to get all the channels we got before.
But that's just it - most of us didn't want all of the channels being forced into those bundles. There were so many crap channels that wouldn't have survived without being able to leach onto those bundles. And even a big boy like ESPN was actually an emperor with no clothes - it was only able to afford the rights to sports leagues because it was being artificially propped up by cable bundles.
I hope that if monolithic entities like Apple, Netflix, Amazon and Discovery/WB start consolidating everything again and offering bundles, then at least they try to rethink the paradigm. For example, offer a la carte bundles of 5, 10, 15, etc streaming services that I get to choose from like a menu. Don't force ESPN or Bravo on me just so I can get HBOMax.
Yeah, I don't think we're going back to bloated packages, year-long contracts, or forcing crap on us that we don't want, etc. I think we'll basically just get a discount for bundling any number of streamers as opposed to paying for each of those streamers individually. And when more streamers are carrying sports, even more people will cut the cord, make the leap, and buy whatever bundle of streamers allows them to watch their two or three favorite sports. Then, finally, when Apple or whoever refines a platform that basically allows for a "guide" of sorts, where users can easily switch between games/shows on different streamers, it'll not only *feel* like cable again, but you'd be more inclined to bundle as well, in order to get your favorite sports. So, yeah, you might be "stuck" with some streamer you wouldn't otherwise watch, same as being stuck with QVC, OWN, and a bunch Hallmark channels you'd never watch in the traditional cable model. But when we're talking only five or six main streamers after this consolidation period over the next couple of years, I don't think it'll be that big of a deal, and chances are there will be things outside of sports on all five or six of those streamers that you'll want to watch.
Seeing this on top of 2022 and Q4 reporting in my business....yeah it makes me feel a little better about my assessment on page 1.
We have no clue how to monetize streaming. None. Apples to apples the ad rate for streams is fractions of pennies to dollars for OTA. Everyone loves the new shiny thing and we're in the "let's grab market share and sort out the rest later" mode. Only we've been in that mode for 5+ years. C suite is tired of the bullsh and they want profit or else. We've been pushing all things digital and it's definitely grown but if we grow that at the detriment to our main rev streams...what's the point? If you're strictly in the digital department you love the growth but if revenue is stagnant you're just moving money on your balance sheet into different buckets and thats not gonna be enough for the C suite.
On the national level, more agencies are scared af and don't want to spend a lot (some are...the auto biz is warming back up) but oddly enough local advertising is staying fairly consistent. We may be talking ourselves into a recession somehow. It's a strange time.
We have no clue how to monetize streaming. None. Apples to apples the ad rate for streams is fractions of pennies to dollars for OTA. Everyone loves the new shiny thing and we're in the "let's grab market share and sort out the rest later" mode. Only we've been in that mode for 5+ years. C suite is tired of the bullsh and they want profit or else. We've been pushing all things digital and it's definitely grown but if we grow that at the detriment to our main rev streams...what's the point? If you're strictly in the digital department you love the growth but if revenue is stagnant you're just moving money on your balance sheet into different buckets and thats not gonna be enough for the C suite.
On the national level, more agencies are scared af and don't want to spend a lot (some are...the auto biz is warming back up) but oddly enough local advertising is staying fairly consistent. We may be talking ourselves into a recession somehow. It's a strange time.
What does "in the digital depth" mean? And what's a C suite?
it is the suite found between the B and D suites.double aught said:
What does "in the digital depth" mean? And what's a C suite?
or
it is a reference to the executive team of a company. CEO, CIO, CBO, CTO, CSO, Margaret CHO
take your pick..
Quad Dog said:TCTTS said:
It's definitely not the late night erotic movie thing. Also, HBO/HBO Max has 75+ million global users, which sure would be a lot of rich pretentious people.
I was talking about the reputation before streaming existed. That stuff sucks around with the older crowd.
I would think the "Max" part, and not the HBO part would be what could associate it with that crowd.
I am surprised that would go away from the HBO name since it has such a strong connection with premium television.
Anyone gotten slapped yet?
My bookie was taking prop bets for this and other Oscars-related bets
My bookie was taking prop bets for this and other Oscars-related bets
as in SkinemaxIowaggie said:Quad Dog said:TCTTS said:
It's definitely not the late night erotic movie thing. Also, HBO/HBO Max has 75+ million global users, which sure would be a lot of rich pretentious people.
I was talking about the reputation before streaming existed. That stuff sucks around with the older crowd.
I would think the "Max" part, and not the HBO part would be what could associate it with that crowd.
I am surprised that would go away from the HBO name since it has such a strong connection with premium television.
Oh boy, here we again with Little Mermaid
wrong thread, genius.Ghost of Bisbee said:
Anyone gotten slapped yet?
My bookie was taking prop bets for this and other Oscars-related bets
This is the streaming platforms thread, guys. I don't know where some of these posts are coming from.
What's with hot dog fingers?
double aught said:
What does "in the digital depth" mean? And what's a C suite?
My bad, that was a typo. Meant digital department.
C suite just meant the CEO and the various top level execs. For example, in my company, my boss is a VP that reports to an SVP who reports to the CEO. We have maybe 8-10 SVPs, I think. As much as I try
Maybe a month ago my boss sends a group of people to me to conjure a way to make it easy for our digital folks to put in sales orders. I give them a couple of moderately terrible options and they picked one. The reason they were both terrible is because we haven't been able to get our fulfillment software perfectly integrated with our digital services. There's all kinds of nonsense from Google analytics and another service provider and we're having an issue getting all these systems lining up properly for billing and proof of performance metrics. So now we're talking many different parties to the conversation...us, the software provider (who I used to work for, which is why boss passed this along to me) the digital service provider, and God knows who else. Meanwhile our sales staff out in the markets we sell in have NO clue how to execute it. They're just told to go sell and hit their sales numbers.
Sometimes I get super curious and want to run company-wide revenue reports to see how much of this digital push is paying off. I always wind up thinking...yeah I'd rather not know. I'd be very very shocked if it's more than 10% of our revenue. Part of me is old school enough to think "if it don't make dollars, it don't make sense" the way Bob Iger apparently is feeling about streaming. Having said that, it's incredibly hard to walk money out the door and tell a client "uh yeah sorry we can't do that" because we don't want them to take their ad spend away from us.
It's really easy to get down on the future if you're in media...its increasingly splintered and you're always looking over your shoulder. It's tough being somewhat tech savvy because you're thinking my God who watches traditional broadcast TV any more? Who's using am/fm radio? And we've seen newspapers and print get absolutely annihilated by online in the last 10-20 years. Just imagine how much the "pivot to video" mess of a few years ago gutted a lot of the print types all because Zuck cooked some Facebook numbers. Journalism at most levels is dead. There's just more money in feeding people what they're asking for. Old media is having to square up against VC-fueled stuff like Spotify and we're having to compete against flashy tech with seemingly unlimited pockets or brands like Apple/Amazon with also basically unlimited pockets. All the attention is on the new and flashy but broadcast TV and radio still have insane penetration and use.
Hey, at least we're not connected to SVB. At least that's something.
Was watching some Tubi and now that several of these premium platforms are running commercials, the value for these premium platforms is less than it used to be.
I'm not saying Tubi or crackle would be anybody's main streaming platform, but I think that there is less of a reason to maintain several premium platforms at a time.
I'm not saying Tubi or crackle would be anybody's main streaming platform, but I think that there is less of a reason to maintain several premium platforms at a time.
Big fan of Pluto TV (paramounts Tubi equivalent) and they've been showing ads for a while. I believe Crackle is Sony's product...for a while in the early days you could catch Seinfeld on there. My guess is that someone at Fox decided if they could make some pennies by throwing ads on there, they should do it. Or maybe a big spender threatened to take their money elsewhere so Fox decided to throw some "added value" onto Tubi to mollify them.
As much as I wish there was a giant plan on all of this I think if you're a traditional media company you're playing a lot of catch up with the companies who started streaming/online originally or were one of the first adopters. I had a flashback to 2009ish when the company I was with decided to make a big client happy...the solution was this...how about we make you the only advertiser on this stream + associated HD2 channel? (HD2 for radio is similar to those subchannels you see like MeTV or whatever that's a sub channel of a TV station...so you may have the regular ABC on channel 3, but 3.1 is MeTV. 3.2 is AccuWeather, and so on.)
That was the deal pitched and the client took it and we went to work taking what had formerly been 100% commercial free and slapping an advertiser on it. On the back end, this necessitated the creation of a billing/scheduling entity to represent that newly commercialized feed, which meant for all intents and purposes, this was a brand new radio station. That cost us $25,000 to set up. We tested it all out with a run of commercials the day before and literally within 2 hours, people were contacting us incredibly irate because they preferred it commercial free.
We pissed off listeners AND paid handsomely for the privilege of keeping a big client happy. Gotta love that!
As much as I wish there was a giant plan on all of this I think if you're a traditional media company you're playing a lot of catch up with the companies who started streaming/online originally or were one of the first adopters. I had a flashback to 2009ish when the company I was with decided to make a big client happy...the solution was this...how about we make you the only advertiser on this stream + associated HD2 channel? (HD2 for radio is similar to those subchannels you see like MeTV or whatever that's a sub channel of a TV station...so you may have the regular ABC on channel 3, but 3.1 is MeTV. 3.2 is AccuWeather, and so on.)
That was the deal pitched and the client took it and we went to work taking what had formerly been 100% commercial free and slapping an advertiser on it. On the back end, this necessitated the creation of a billing/scheduling entity to represent that newly commercialized feed, which meant for all intents and purposes, this was a brand new radio station. That cost us $25,000 to set up. We tested it all out with a run of commercials the day before and literally within 2 hours, people were contacting us incredibly irate because they preferred it commercial free.
We pissed off listeners AND paid handsomely for the privilege of keeping a big client happy. Gotta love that!
Granted the source is biased but this was kind of sad and amusing. Another footnote to my "we don't know wtf we're doing" in the world of digital.
https://www.insideradio.com/free/advertisers-wasted-close-to-1-billion-on-digital-ads-without-sound-or-prominent-branding-in/article_f4dfb900-d41c-11ed-ab02-17cb39e348a8.html
https://www.insideradio.com/free/advertisers-wasted-close-to-1-billion-on-digital-ads-without-sound-or-prominent-branding-in/article_f4dfb900-d41c-11ed-ab02-17cb39e348a8.html
Quote:
Conducted by creative analytics company CreativeX, the analysis of the creative quality of more than two million paid ads across platforms such as Meta/Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok and Russian social network VK, representing nearly $2 billion of media spend, found that nearly 70% of that spend was on ads that did not meet basic platform standards.
As a result, CreativeX's report says, nearly $1 billion was invested in ads that did not meet basic creative best practices for Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Amazon. That translates to approximately 55% of media budgets wasted on under-optimized creative ads during 2022.
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