Roku gets Smart (TV)

Anthony Wood broke the news late Sunday prior to the CES show that Roku has decided to take another route to win the war for controlling your TV, soon Roku will be integrated into your new smartTV. Partnering with TCL and Hisense, the company plans to release the Roku TV later this year. This is a bold move from a company that has already positioned themselves as the leader in the OTT world. The field however is becoming crowded with existing and new entries all over at the 2014 CES show. This new strategy if carried out correctly could be the beginning of an entirely new era for connected TV's.
 MORE: Roku Blog - 01/05/14 Introducing Roku TV or WIRED - 01/06/14 Roku TV Is the First Smart TV Worth Using or

Malone's Liberty Global - Now the worlds largest cable TV provider

Yesterday U.S. cable pioneer John Malone's Liberty Global officially closed it acquisition of British cable provider Virgin Media for $24 billion cash and stock. The deal expands Liberty Global's total subscriber count to 25 million customers in 12 countries in Europe now bigger than Comcast Cable which counted 22.3 million subscribers at the end of the first quarter.

Malone, is also looking to boost profits from U.S. cable systems. In March, Liberty Media agreed to pay $2.62 billion for a 27.3 percent stake in Charter Communications. That deal also gave Malone and three of his Liberty lieutenant’s seats on Charter's board of directors. I sure it's also no coincidence that Charters top brass consists of some of the cable industries best and brightest and I have no doubt they will be jumping at the chance to drive consolidation in the U.S. cable industry. I’m sure it will not be long before we hear much more from Liberty and Mr. Malone in the future.

Yahoo eyes Hulu

Add Yahoo to the growing list of Hulu-suitors. According to reports, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Chief Operating Officer Henrique De Castro recently met with executives at Hulu, the premium video service whose owners have been considering selling it for some months. Hulu would make a powerful weapon to add and they also have mobile applications for their premium subscribers, making the company a natural fit. Mayer's drive into the mobile & digital content spaces seem to offer this deal synergies that could justify the enormous cost of this acquisition. She has made it no secret that her company has been looking to expand its video assets, recently acquiring the exclusive rights to all of SNL's classic clips from 1975 through 2012 while expanding their original exclusive programming. While speaking this past Tuesday during the Wired Business Conference, Mayer's stated that "video is important across all of the company's properties" and that Yahoo is becoming a "mobile-focused firm".

Hulu's board still has a lot of decisions to make and Yahoo has not made and offer. One thing does seem clear at this point and that is that if Yahoo is to pick up the video company, it will fundamentally change the online video landscape, and put Yahoo into competition with a host of new firms.

Reed Hastings - 10 Reasons why Internet TV will continue to gain popularity

After Netflix’s blockbuster earnings sent its stock soaring yet again earlier this week, Reed Hastings, the company’s CEO made a bold prediction: TV as we know it is coming to an end.  “As Internet TV grows from millions to billions, Netflix, HBO, and ESPN are leading the way,” Hastings wrote in an 11 page manifesto about Netflix’s future. “Internet TV will replace linear TV.”

He's obviously not sharing his perspective alone because numerous networks and stations have agreed with his views on the limitations of linear television and have launched their own apps. Although Hastings cites WatchESPN, HBO GO and the BBC iPlayer as leaders in this arena, we must also acknowledge the industry disrupters in streaming television technology; Aereo and the Dish's Hopper. Each of these also have huge potential to cause a dramatic shifts in the TV business as it heads into the future. Case in point at the opening of this year’s NAB when News Corp (FOX) COO Chase Carey threatened to take their programming off the broadcast airwaves and convert to cable channels. This was followed later by Univision and later CBS. While viewed largely as saber-rattling, the idea that the networks could be converted into cable channels gained attention in the television world because such a move would have wide-reaching implications for viewers and station owners. The point may be mute if Hastings predictions hold true and we move from broadcast and cable to an unbundled & streamed viewing environment.
Feel free to look at his letter to shareholders earlier this week and the 10 reasons he believes why Internet TV will continue to gain popularity, concluding that “over the coming decades and across the world, Internet TV will replace linear TV. Apps will replace channels, remote controls will disappear, and screens will proliferate”.

Let me share them with you here:

1. The Internet will get faster, more reliable and more available
2. Smart TV sales will increase and eventually every TV will have Wifi and apps
3. Smart TV adapters (Roku, AppleTV, etc.) will get less expensive and better
4. Tablet and smartphone viewing will increase
5. Tablets and smartphones will be used as touch interfaces for Internet TV
6. Internet TV apps will rapidly improve through competition and frequent updates
7. Streaming 4k video will happen long before linear TV supports 4k video
8. Internet video advertising will be personalized and relevant
9. TV Everywhere will provide a smooth economic transition for existing networks
10. New entrants like Netflix are innovating rapidly

Update 05/01 - A view from Michael Grotticelli at Broadcast Engineering - Netflix unveils plan to replace broadcast television

Intel's Pay-TV Service

Can Intel, best known for its computer processing chips succeed where Apple and Google couldn't? The company is said to be in discussions with Time Warner, NBC-Universal, News Corp, Viacom and others to obtain TV shows and films in preparation for the launch for its upcoming online pay-tv service. Intel’s Erik Huggers (see 2/16 post - Erik Hugger’s Intel Plans), well-known to European players for his work at the BBC, Microsoft and at Endemol, confirmed Intel’s overall plans in February and although he was vague about his programming plans it now seems that those discussions are advancing. He is betting that Intel can create a more flexible service (unbundled networks), delivered through consumers’ broadband accounts, that gives subscribers more choices over the channels they receive and offers an easier-to-use electronic programming guide. More power to them if they can do it. Perhaps the timing was just not right for their predecessors! 3/26 Bloomberg - Intel Said to Be Nearing Media Deals for Pay-TV Service 

Roku App Coming to the Second Screen

Streaming video provider Roku is currently testing a second-screen application for tablets that the company hopes to release in the "near term," according to Ed Lee, vice president of content acquisition for Roku. He stated in a presentation at this week's OTTCON conference that the company is "thinking about the second screen quite a bit." He declined to provide specifics on the Roku's plans for the product, but said it would work on Roku owners' tablets and allow them to obtain additional information on the content they watch via their Roku device.

“We're evaluating it right now,” Lee said of the tablet application. “It's certainly coming in the near term.

More at: Media-Saver Tech Blog - Roku planning second-screen tablet app

Betsy Morgan, President & Chief Strategy Officer TheBlaze

Betsy Morgan and I met back earlier in her career when she was SVP of CBS Interactive. She's built an outstanding track record and has experienced a lot since then spending the majority of her time in the "wild west" times of the digital age's new video landscape. Currently she is the president of TheBlaze (Glenn Beck's media company). A network that's "blazing" (pun intended) new trails in today's cross-media multi-platform world. Today there is no longer a one-size fits all model; rather what's needed is a flexible approach that serves consumers however and whenever they want to access content. She believes that the big problem with legacy media companies is that they’re trying to preserve audience. By choosing to protect particular businesses at the expense of experimenting with new models those content provider will ultimately be the ones that will ultimately lose.

This morning I ran across this insightful interview of her at NAPTE done by Will Richmond @ Videonuze.com. Take a look: Conversation with The Blaze's Betsy Morgan

UPDATE 05/02/13 - Cablevision, beginning late this month, will add Glenn Beck's online channel TheBlaze to its Optimum TV lineup. Cablevision, which has about 3 million customers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, is the biggest provider to program Beck's channel, which launched an effort in March to gain carriage on pay-TV systems. The New York Times - Cablevision Picks Up Glenn Beck’s Internet Channel by Brian Stelter

Erik Huggers on Intel's TV Plans

Since this year’s CES show in early January, Intel has been receiving a lot of press on it's up and coming Web TV service. In a recent conversation with Peter Kafka and Walt Mossberg at D: Dive Into Media, corporate VP of Intel Media Erik Huggers tried to make the case that yes, the hardware company can make a compelling case to market Web TV to consumers. Can they succeed where other industry giants like Apple and Google have not? Hugger's admits that it's an uphill battle. The Intel service will require consumers to purchase a new box (the name of which is yet to be announced), which is necessary to deliver what he deems “the full experience” that the company wants. "I think we can bring an incredible television experience via the Internet to consumers,” Huggers said. “What this is not about... is a value play.” Don't expect them to offer “a la carte” programming, either. In other words, expect bundles of programming like those offered with other major TV packages. But Huggers’s pitch is for a better bundle, smarter and more well-curated. “If bundles are bundled right … I think there is real value in that,” he said.
No doubt Intel’s most difficult sell with this new product/service will be with the integrated camera. According to Hugger, it watches your movements and TV viewing habits with the aim of personalizing the way your each member of the household watches television (not to mention it’s ability to highly target advertisements). Ultimately, he said, being able to identify an individual TV viewer will provide a better overall user experience. So in a nutshell, Huggers wants you to buy a great-looking box with a superior UI and potentially personalized content streams for roughly the same or more than you currently pay. From my perspective that’s going to be a difficult pitch, to say the least. Over the past five years I've worked with the majority of companies that are trying to carve out a share of this space. This is definitely one to keep an eye on. More on this to come!

See the interview on Aol: http://on.aol.com/video/erik-huggers-talks-up-intels-web-tv-service-517670867

Aereo: An Industry Disrupter!

Aereo, the ambitious New York start-up that pipes live broadcast television to mobile phones, tablets and Web browsers, has so far been available to customers only in its hometown. Now fresh off of their CES announcement from Chet Kanojia, Aereo’s founder and chief executive where they have recently closed a $38 million round of financing that will be used to roll out its service to 22 additional cities across the country, including Austin, Tex., Boston and Miami, beginning this spring. So how did Aereo strike deals with all of the networks, and every local station in each one of these markets? It seems like an impossible challenge, particularly for a startup but they had a clever solution: They didn’t bother. Instead, they erect an array containing thousands of micro-antennas (see below) in every city. Each Aereo subscriber has exclusive, private access to one antenna. Amazingly enough, this makes it all perfectly legal (from their perspective at least).

Obviously the company has its challenges from broadcasters who are eager to shut the company down, contending that it violates copyright law. We all realize it's a money thing and personally as a cable subscriber paying way too much for monthly service, I know a large amount of my bill goes to broadcasters who give their service away for free to those with an antenna. Why because I choose to have access to cable programming should I now also pay the broadcasters for theirs? They have [broadcast] spectrum. They are required to program in the public interest and to offer it widely for free. This is a David and Goliath fight for sure but for that, I highly respect scrappy Aereo, just for the sheer guts of the undertaking.

TechCrunch's video with Jordan Crook  as he talks to Chet Kanojia, Aereo's CEO and Founder, onstage at CES 2013