Tag / streaming

by Frank Maduri

Comcast Xfinity Announces Free Streaming Box

The cable television and media giant, Comcast Corp, announced on Thursday that they will be providing all their internet-only subscribers with a free streaming box. The box, known as Flex, will compete with streaming industry stalwarts Roku, Amazon Fire Stick, and Google’s Chromecast products.

The move is aimed at providing access to Comcast and their vast content library to a wider audience of viewers as the company has consistently lost cable TV subscribers. The Wall Street Journal reported that Comcast as well as Verizon Fios, and their other cable competitors have lost TV customers who are “cutting the cord” in favor of getting their content from streaming only services such as Netflix, Hulu, or YouTube.

The report continues that Comcast has lost subscribers for nine consecutive quarters. The move to provide the Flex streaming box comes one day after Comcast announced the launch of their own streaming platform called Peacock, after the iconic NBC logo. The application will be provided free of cost to all current Comcast Xfinity television subscribers to bolster their content offerings.

The Peacock streaming application will most likely be offered to non-Comcast TV subscribers for some sort of fee-based structure. The announcement was not clear on whether the Peacock application would be free of charge for Comcast internet subscribers. It will launch in April 2020.

The Flex streaming box is also looking to compete with DirecTV Now and that streaming service that leads the way in some consumer reports. The point of difference for the Flex box is that Comcast used the voice control technology that won Emmy awards in their X1 remote from the Xfinity platform.
The interface of the streaming box is also similar to the menus on the X1 platform. The move is set to have Comcast become a new player in a crowded landscape. The way of the future in home entertainment is the streaming services and clearly is also the development of a streaming application to control their exclusive content.

The other development in the space is the launch of the Disney+ in November and the loads of new content and older content that is sought after, that is added daily. The company announced some reboots of former series and the launch of a new Star Wars themed series, that is fueling anticipation for this upcoming launch.

Facebook will not be left out of the mix, the social media giant announced a new version of the Portal that has the ability to stream television and other digital media content. The product will build from the success of the first version.

The announcement by Comcast is just the latest in a series of trends that consumers can expect other media companies following suit as they try to stay in the game of providing video services (as it is now known). The anticipation is that Verizon Fios will announce a similar technology as well as Optimum and some other major regional cable companies as the pendulum swings sharply toward streaming content over the internet.

The Flex box couple with the Peacock application represent the latest methods used by Comcast to stay relevant in a rapidly changing media environment. The months ahead will prove whether it was a sound investment.

(Some background info courtesy of Wall Street Journal)

by Frank Maduri

Follow Up: All Cash Or All Stock – The Battle Between Disney & Comcast For 21st Century Fox Assets

In a follow up to an earlier full-length piece on this same subject, the bidding war between two media titans: Comcast and Disney have intensified with the assets of 21st Century FOX clearly in the crosshairs.

The business news media outlets were all buzzing on Tuesday morning with the news that Comcast is looking to attempt a move in mergers & acquisitions known as “crashing the gate”. This maneuver involves putting together, through a variety of ways, a huge amount of cash to put a premium level bid on the table which will change the valuation of the assets involved (in this case FOX assets) to sway those involved to go with that bid over a competitive bid.

The Disney bid which has been known to the public for a while now involves an all stock proposal for the FOX assets. The shareholders of FOX would get Disney stock shares at a level commensurate with their level of involvement in FOX stock ownership. There is a formula for all stock bids of this type which I will not go into further detail, plenty of other writers have covered that component of this deal and have done amazing work in that area.

My focus is two-fold: the bids for this deal as it relates to other media acquisitions and the impact on the media industry which also relates back to the consumers. This method of “crashing the gate” that Comcast is now seeking to employ in this merger is somewhat risky. In past M&A activity it has either worked very well, or failed in spectacular fashion.

The contrasting strategy by Disney, the all stock bid, is a more traditional approach; it is an “old school” method which has a more reliable historical track record. The bid by Disney is seen as a very important acquisition in terms of content ownership in an increasingly competitive landscape.

It should be noted that Fox prefers the Disney bid because the all stock approach would be more favorable for their shareholders. The Comcast bid being all cash would create a scenario where Fox shareholders would have to pay taxes on that in the short term, which is not a desirable position for a corporation to have to pass along a tax increase to shareholders.

The backdrop to this is the impending launch of the Disney streaming app service where the company spent an immense amount of money developing the app which will be a subscription based streaming service. Disney needs the consumers to enroll in their subscription- based app in massive numbers to “break even” on the outlay of dollars they sunk into the project.

The best way to ensure the enrollment of that scale and magnitude is to have a very broad based and extensive content collection. Disney plans to pull their content off of Netflix, with whom they had a partnership to exclusively stream Disney content prior to their own app being developed. The potential acquisition of the 21st Century Fox assets would provide a huge assortment of content for Disney to feature on their new streaming service.

Comcast is trying to also stay in prime position in the race for control of content in the new landscape of the television medium today. The efforts by Comcast to pull together a reported bid of $60 billion for the FOX assets is proof of their strategic importance to the media and cable TV giant.

However, according to Reuters and other outlets, the Comcast “crash the gate” strategy has one caveat that many find curious. Comcast will only pursue the full process of acquiring the FOX assets with an all cash bid if the banking and government entities involved in the AT&T bid for Time Warner allow that merger to take place.

Some found it strange that Comcast would make this request and would be that interested in the outcome of another merger within the industry. I thought about it and realized that Comcast is adding this caveat to the proposal because they want some legal precedent for a large scale merger of this type before they go “all in” on investing time and resources into taking it through the process.

The legal team for Comcast can use the decision in the AT&T / Time Warner merger to alleviate hurdles and a protracted legal suit with government ant-trust regulators if they have a precedent to utilize in their defense. The AT&T proposed merger with Time Warner has been tied up in courts for several months with significant costs to AT&T. Comcast does not want to fall victim to the same fate.

The case for Disney could be made because of the benefits of the all stock transaction but anti-trust oversight will be certainly a factor in either transaction whether it is Comcast or Disney with the winning bid.

However, in order to relieve some of that anti-trust scrutiny, Fox announced that they will take Fox News, Fox Business, and their cable sports division comprised of channels known as FS1 and FS2 ; and they will form a separate company that will be not part of this deal with either Disney or Comcast. The new company will be a spin-off of Fox and will have shares divided up among current Fox stockholders.

In my view, I was concerned about the cable news and cable sports divisions of the company being owned by either Disney (which owns ABC and ESPN) or Comcast (which owns NBC and NBC Sports). The major sports and news divisions would be run by one single entity if that spin-off company was not created. The impact on the viewer would have been significant and created concerns about the control of news and the cost of those cable subscriptions for both news and sports programming.

It remains to be seen what Comcast would plan to do with the content it could potentially wrestle control of from Disney that would represent the assets of the former 21st Century Fox properties. Comcast does not have a streaming app, but it could bolster the VOD (video on demand) offerings for their customers with such an acquisition.

The other industry rumor is that Comcast would seek to create a platform of channels that it could package out at lower rates to their subscribers as well as put together some sort of streaming package of channels like Hulu and YouTube have released recently.

Conversely, this brings about another potential issue with the Comcast bid, that it would benefit only the subscribers to Comcast cable services and not to the rest of the public. The same could be stated for Disney with their streaming app, but the argument could be made that everyone has the opportunity to join the app, but not everyone has the ability to become Comcast customers.

The precursor to the Disney app is the ESPN+ streaming app which just launched about a month ago. I was “grandfathered” into the ESPN+ membership because I held a subscription to MLS Live to watch all the soccer games from my days of covering the New York Red Bulls and the league.

The ESPN+ app is $4.99 per month and it is a tremendous value for a sports fan in my opinion. The amount of content on the app is robust and truly impressive. The ability to live stream games, watch archived games from earlier in a season, and the access to exclusive new programming is worth the cost. The average and the die hard sports fan would have several options and the addition of NHL hockey (which ESPN does not broadcast) streaming on the service is outstanding, especially with the Stanley Cup Playoff games currently ongoing.

A report from CNN later on Tuesday refuted some earlier reports saying that the Fox news and financial news assets would be spun off separately, but the sports division (FS1 and FS2) would go to the winning bid along with the other 21st Century Fox assets. That would be of interest to Disney to gain Fox Sports portfolio to bolster the ESPN+ app service even further.

The launch of the ESPN+ app was a smart business decision by Disney because if their streaming service is going to be on par or better than the ESPN+ service, then that could be a game changer for the industry, no pun intended.

The groundwork has been laid for a bidding war and it will be interesting to see what Disney will do and how they could counter this maneuver from Comcast. The viewers have a lot at stake as the cost that you pay for content could be impacted significantly but what transpires in the next several months.

by Frank Maduri

Return To Football & Media Companies Protection Of Live Sports Content

The NFL preseason is already three weeks old, and college football will begin traditionally on Labor Day weekend; football is back and for many Americans that means that they have something to watch on TV again. The excitement for the start of both a new college football season as well as a new NFL football season is tempered by the continued movement of media companies to protect live sports content.

The trend towards eliminating cable television service, or “cord-cutting”, is gaining momentum each year as Americans look to trim the monthly expenses in order to pay for rising costs for other services, such as healthcare. The “cord-cutting” trend has been aided by the prevalence of streaming television products and platforms available to the consumer.

However, the consumer that is looking to still utilize “live TV” can do so through a few different pathways: HD antenna, streaming devices, and hybrid streaming services. The HD antenna is very simple: it attaches next to your TV and provides the broadcast channels within the mileage range on the box. The antenna would provide CBS, NBC, FOX, ABC, CW, and PBS as well as a few more local stations.

The antenna would provide you access to live sports broadcast on the national networks, and would not include any games broadcast on cable television. This option would work very well for NFL football, and some college football games. It would be of little use to obtain access to any other major sports, other than an occasional game.

The local baseball, basketball, and hockey games are almost exclusively aired on cable regional sports networks or on national cable sports networks such as ESPN or NBC Sports Network. This leads us to option two: streaming devices.

The streaming device route or Smart TV route can provide access to a huge amount of live sports content, but most of that content is not free of charge. The NBA, NHL, and MLB all have streaming “apps” but they require a subscription to access. The streaming device route can also support “live streaming” of certain networks but most of that would require either a cable subscription or another type of payment arrangement to access that content.

The hybrid streaming device route would be a DirecTV now, Sling box, or a few other smaller services that allow for the content available on a very large package of channels to be viewed in other rooms in your home. This would require a subscription and at least one box connected from either a cable or satellite provider. This route may also require the purchase of additional equipment.

However, this setup would enable access to a significant amount of live sports content. The other service is through Hulu which will feature a package of channels for $40.00 per month which would allow for live streaming of network and cable television, including live sports.

The networks pay such a high premium for the live sporting events that it is, in some ways, understandable that they have put in place certain measures to make it more difficult to stream the content without a cable or satellite subscription. The challenge will be in adapting their content providing platforms to attract other audience/fan base demographics.

The younger generation is conditioned toward streaming versus watching any regular television programming. The advertising around some of the streaming services and apps can be a bit misleading. Some of the sports related streaming apps will give you access to certain content for free and require a fee or cable subscription for access to the most important content: the live game or archived game broadcasts.

The NFL has partnered with e-commerce giant, Amazon, to stream 10 games this year as part of the Thursday Night Football package. This exclusive opportunity with the NFL and their coveted live game content cost Amazon $50 million. The broadcasts are free for all those with an Amazon Prime membership which runs at $99.00 per year.

This agreement with Amazon is different than the agreement they had last year with Twitter for the Thursday night games because Twitter streamed them live for free to everyone with an account, Amazon requires a Prime membership for access. It will remain to be seen if that will have an impact on live stream viewership, either positively or negatively.

The future of sports content on TV, and other content on TV is trending more toward a structure where the consumer will pay to have all sorts of content streamed on a customized basis. The consumer access to a broad range of content will require membership to a wide range of services, similar to the premium channel cable TV subscriptions currently (HBO, Showtime, Starz, Encore). It is important to note that whatever service or method you use it is like the old adage: “there is no free lunch”.

A good example of this trend is the decision by Disney recently to end their partnership with Netflix to start their own streaming service. This translates into a scenario where in order to gain access to Disney content you will have to purchase their streaming service. I think that many other major media companies are going to follow suit.

The return to football means some exciting weekends relaxing with family and friends. It conjures up memories of past football weekends with the big college games on Saturday nights, and the CBS games at 4 o’clock on the East Coast with the aroma of a home cooked dinner in the background.

It is time for many of us to watch TV again, and I hope that this piece informed you on the best options that you have to access this content. I wish you all a happy and safe football season.