It's Official, Cord-Cutting is No longer a Myth

Leichtman Research Group released its latest analysis of the pay-TV industry today. What did their findings uncover?  Their review of the 13 largest multichannel video providers in the U.S., representing 94% of the market, lost a combined 345,000 net video subs in the second quarter. That compares to the 325,000 subs those providers lost in the second quarter of 2012 and 2011.

In a separate report published this month by IHS, they identified that Internet pay TV is leaving cable and satellite providers in the dust.  From April to June, Verizon Fios and AT&T each boasted a 300,000 increase in subscribers, while cable and satellite providers lost a combined 750,000 subscribers. The report credits the decline to consumers' opting exclusively for over-the-top devices or services such as Netflix to watch TV.  Snip-Snip.... More: MCN - 08/19/13 Major U.S. Pay TV Providers Lost 345,000 Subs in Q2

Twitter Testing TV Trending Feature

As we have reported here on SMM before, Twitter is getting even more cozier with the television industry. The move is hardly a surprising one: In February, Twitter acquired social TV analytics firm Bluefin Labs, a sign the site is doubling down on its social TV efforts. Twitter also teamed up with Nielsen in December to create the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating for the fall 2013 season, which will provide a "common benchmark" from which to measure a TV program's engagement.  So what Twitters next big bet on the TV business, a new feature that would see currently-trending television shows appear prominently within the timelines of users.

According to reports across the blogosphere, the 'Trending TV' experiment is currently being tested on a small percentage of iOS app users who are seeing a show-specific box at the top of their timelines when they refresh their feeds. In its essence, the proposition seems quite similar to second-screen apps like GetGlue and Zeebox that already use Twitter data to generate virtual chat rooms where viewers discuss ongoing shows.  Combine this with last month’s launch of Twitter TV Ad Targeting, a new service designed to enable Twitter and TV ad campaigns to be synchronized and its easy to see who is quickly becoming the next 800 pound gorilla?

San Francisco Startup Stringwire Acquired by NBC

News gathering done at the source by Smartphone toting witnesses has been around for a while as the technology has grown and evolved. Twitter itself has become the go-to source for many kinds of widely witnessed breaking news, such as protests and plane crashes. Stepping up to the plate in support of this trend NBC News announced it has acquired the user-generated live video service Stringwire as part of an effort to beef up its newsgathering efforts. “Stringwire is at the leading edge of user-generated video products, with immediate value to our on-air and digital businesses,” explained Vivian Schiller, senior VP and chief digital Officer at NBC News. “You could get 30 people all feeding video, holding up their Smartphone’s and then we could look at that,” Schiller told the NY Times. “We’ll be able to publish and broadcast some of them.” For breaking news and stories, Stringwire has the ability to recruit and direct contributors based on geographical location via Twitter and then to instantly access their live footage. According to Schiller NBC will utilize Stringwire’s technology to provide its TV and digital platforms with new tools for newsgathering and for using eyewitness user-generated video content.

Nielsen: Tweets Actually Influences TV Viewing... Really!

No surprise but this week Nielsen released research that conclusively states that an increase in Twitter commentary about a TV show can increase viewership of that same show as it airs live.  By analyzing minute-to-minute trends in Nielsen’s live TV ratings and tweets for 221 broadcast primetime program episodes using Nielsen’s SocialGuide, the study found that live TV ratings had a meaningful impact in related tweets among 48% of the episodes sampled.  The results also showed that the volume of tweets caused significant changes in live TV ratings among 29% of the episodes.