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Streaming service wars news and trends
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523 posts in this topic

On 10/22/2019 at 10:26 AM, Bosco685 said:

The war is getting financially serious now.

 

I wouldn't read too much into this.

Of all the services out there now (and the ones still to come) which one has the highest probability of blowing through a plan's data caps because Little Susie wants to watch Frozen for the eleventy-millionth time?
Verizon will more than make up the cost of the service (discounted, I'm sure) with people upgrading their plans.

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Peacock, the streaming service being rolled out by NBCUniversal and Comcast, will arrive April 15 on Comcast’s Xfinity X1 and Flex video platforms before a national launch on July 15.

 

It will come in three versions:

  • a free, ad-supported one
  • a more robust, ad-supported one that will be free to Comcast and Cox Cable subscribers, and $5 for everyone else
  • an offering with no ads that is $5 for Comcast and Cox subscribers and $10 for everyone else

 

The service will have an “early bird” launch in April for subscribers of X1 and Flex, which account for a majority of total subscribers to the No. 1 U.S. cable operator. The national rollout comes just before the July 24 start of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, which offers the company a large promotional megaphone. A bundled arrangement with Comcast and Cox Cable will also kick in at that time, making Peacock available in 24 million homes.

 

Edited by Bosco685
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Here’s everything Peacock users will be able to stream (note that not all of the programming below will be available at launch):

 

TV ACQUISITIONS

  • 30 Rock
  • Bates Motel
  • Battlestar Galactica
  • Brooklyn Nine-Nine
  • Cheers
  • Chicago Fire
  • Chicago P.D.
  • Chicago Med
  • Chrisley Knows Best
  • Covert Affairs
  • Downton Abbey
  • Everybody Loves Raymond
  • Frasier
  • Friday Night Lights
  • The George Lopez Show
  • House
  • Keeping Up with the Kardashians
  • King of Queens
  • Law and Order
  • Law and Order: SVU
  • Law and Order: Criminal Intent
  • Married…With Children
  • Monk
  • The Office
  • Parks and Recreation
  • Parenthood
  • Psych
  • Royal Pains
  • Saturday Night Live
  • Superstore
  • Two and a Half Men
  • Will & Grace
  • Yellowstone

 

PEACOCK ORIGINALS

Newly announced series
Hart to Heart: An interview show starring Kevin Hart.
Girls5Eva: Tina Fey-produced comedy about a one-hit-wonder girl group from the ’90s that reunites to give their pop star dreams one more shot.

The Capture: a drama thriller that aired on the BBC in the UK
Lady Parts: a comedy that launching on Channel 4 in the U.K.
Intelligence: a drama from Sky Studios starring David Schwimmer
Code 404: a drama from Sky Studios
Hitmen: a racing series from Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Sky Studios
Untitled USA Basketball Docuseries: a behind-the-scenes look at USA Basketball superstars on their journey to Tokyo, produced in partnership with the NBA

 

Previously announced comedies

Rutherford Falls
Saved by the Bell
A.P. Bio
Punky Brewster

 

Previously announced dramas
Dr. Death
Battlestar Galactica
Brave New World
Angelyne
Armas de Mujer

 

Previously announced movie
Psych 2: Lassie Come Home

 

Late Night Early

Starting in July on Peacock Premium, NBC’s late night talk shows will be streaming on Peacock beginning at 8 p.m. ET with The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, followed by Late Night with Seth Meyers at 9 p.m. ET.

 

SPORTS

Tokyo Olympic Games

Live coverage of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies before they air on NBC in primetime.

Three daily Olympics shows: Tokyo Live, with live coverage of one of the day’s most exciting events; Tokyo Daily Digest, with midday highlights of the Games; and Tokyo Tonight, a complement to the primetime show that will help audiences catch up on the day’s events.

Live stream of more than 1,000 hours of exclusive coverage from the Tokyo Paralympics.

The Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA, 24/7, 365, featuring live coverage and other content as America’s best athletes prepare for the 2022 Winter Olympics and beyond.

 

Premier League & Ryder Cup

Beginning in August, 2,000 hours of Premier League coverage, including more than 140 matches that aren’t available on television as well as clips and replays.

The Ryder Cup golf tournament will be coming to the service in September with featured groups of Europe’s and America’s best pairings.

They are definitely trying to pack the pipeline early on.

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The GWW has learned that all Netflix-distributed ‘Star Trek’ titles will now join ‘Star Trek: Picard’ on Amazon Prime Video.

 

Amazon, Netflix, and CBS have been in talks about this deal for a while now. Discussion started back in March 2019, but it didn’t enter advance stages until [insert date]. The deal has been finalized. You can expect ‘Star Trek’ titles to disappear from Netflix’s library soon and be available on Amazon Prime Video. These series include:

 

  • ‘Star Trek’ (1966): In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets.
  • ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’: Set almost 100 years after Captain Kirk’s five-year mission, a new generation of Starfleet officers set off in the U.S.S. Enterprise-D on their own mission to go where no one has gone before.
  • ‘Star Trek: Voyager’: Pulled to the far side of the galaxy, where the Federation is seventy-five years away at maximum warp speed, a Starfleet ship must cooperate with Maquis rebels to find a way home.
  • ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’: A century before Captain Kirk’s five-year mission, Jonathan Archer captains the United Earth ship Enterprise during the early years of Starfleet, leading up to the Earth-Romulan War and the formation of the Federation.
  • ‘Star Trek: Discovery’: Ten years before Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise, the USS Discovery discovers new worlds and lifeforms as one Starfleet officer learns to understand all things alien.

 

The franchise is based on the science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry. ‘Star Trek’ has been a cult phenomenon for decades. There is also a wide range of spin-offs including games, figurines, novels, toys, and comics. As of July 2016, the franchise had generated $10 billion in revenue, making ‘Star Trek’ one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.

 

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  • Apple, Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, Disney and Netflix may be a new "Big 6" among global media companies.
  • MGM has held preliminary talks with Apple, Netflix and other larger media companies about an acquisition as the biggest streaming companies consider strengthening their content libraries.
  • ViacomCBS and Discovery are in limbo: They are potentially big enough to hang with the Big 6, but too small in their current form to compete effectively.

 

The second is major consolidation — Disney buying Fox, Comcast acquiring Sky, AT&T purchasing Time Warner and Viacom merging with CBS — that has put media companies with enterprise valuations under $50 billion at a severe disadvantage to their peers.

 

MGM, in particular, seems like a logical candidate to sell this year. Its owners include Anchorage Capital, Highland Capital and Solus Alternative Asset Management, hedge funds that acquired the company out of bankruptcy in 2010. The funds have made a brilliant decision to sit on their asset for nearly a decade, turning a bankrupt content library into an asset likely worth more than $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. And unlike family-owned media companies like AMC (the Dolan family) or ViacomCBS (the Redstone family), the company's owners are probably less likely to be deterred from selling.

 

MGM has held preliminary talks with a number of companies, including Apple and Netflix, to gauge their interest in an acquisition, two of the people said. MGM owns the James Bond catalog and its studio has made several current hit shows including "The Handmaid's Tale," which streams on Hulu, and "Live PD," a reality police show that has frequently been the most watched show on cable TV and airs on A&E. It also owns premium cable network Epix. MGM had revenue of more than $1 billion for the first nine months of the year consisting primarily of about $600 million in TV and film licensing revenue and $300 million from Epix subscriptions. For the nine months ended September 30, 2019, MGM reported adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $123 million.

 

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ViacomCBS has revealed more details about its digital future with plans to expand CBS All Access by launching a “House of Brands” product.

 

The company said it would look to “accelerate momentum in streaming” after laying out a strategic update as part of its fourth-quarter fiscal 2019 results, the first since it closed the merger between the two companies on December 4.

 

It has unveiled a three-pronged approach, one of which is launching a “House of Brands” products that will expand CBS All Access.

 

The company noted that it is planning to complement its AVOD service Pluto TV and its premium pay Showtime OTT offerings by adding a broad pay offering.

 

It said it would add the company’s “scaled assets” in film and TV” to CBS All Access and would expand its entertainment offering through on-demand and live experiences both in the U.S. and internationally. It added that it plans to partner with both traditional and new distributors, domestically and internationally going forward.

 

“Offerings in free, broad pay and premium pay provides opportunity to serve largest potential consumer market while providing benefits in subscriber acquisition, churn and lifetime value,” it noted.

 

More details are expect when CEO Bob Bakish and his colleagues speak on the investor call later this morning. He is expected to reveal how it will bring its CBS All Access service together with its Viacom assets that include Nickelodeon, BET, MTV and Comedy Central.

 

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AT&T’s WarnerMedia has expanded a distribution deal with YouTube TV to include upcoming streaming service HBO Max when it launches this spring.

 

YouTube’s OTT platform will also add HBO and Cinemax to its lineup for the first time, and continue to carry WarnerMedia’s TBS, TNT, truTV, CNN, HLN, Turner Classic Movies, Adult Swim and Cartoon Network.

 

YouTube TV launched in 2017 and went nationwide in January. Earlier this month, parent Alphabet revealed the service has more than 2 million paid subscribers.

 

“As consumers’ media consumption habits continually evolve and the landscape becomes more and more dynamic, our goal remains constant, and that is to make the portfolio of WarnerMedia networks available as widely as possible,” said Rich Warren, president of WarnerMedia Distribution.

 

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AT&T said starting tomorrow it will offer premium video content for free to subscribers that don’t have channels like Starz, Epix, HBO and Cinemax. The move comes as AT&T’s WarnerMedia, where these networks live, is set to launch new streaming service HBO Max on a still unspecified date in May. It has been counting on substantial uptake early on by current subscribers to AT&T’s array of services.

 

AT&T also said it’s shifted adverting campaigns to launch a new one called #ConnectedTogether.

 

Starting March 26, it will offer the premium content on a staggered basis to customers of DirecTV, U-Verse, AT&T TV and AT&T TV Now who don’t already receive the channels as part of their subscription, including Season 3 of Westworld, Season 5 of Outlander and the premiere of the new Epix original, Belgravia.

 

Starz will be available from March 26 to April 4 (to DirecTV and U-Verse packages only). Epix can be viewed from April 4 to April 16 and HBO and Cinemax from April 17 to April 20.

 

TV and video programmers and distributors have stepped up in the coronavirus, shelter-at-home era. Yesterday, CBS All Access announced a free month for its most popular series, Star Trek: Picard. Showtime is offering a free month to new subscribers. Amazon Prime has added free videos and shows for kids, to name a few.

 

As for advertising, the #ConnectedTogether Campaign is selection of commercials and digital advertising “that reinforce the power of connectivity during times of fear and division,” AT&T said. Brands everywhere are also having to rethink their ad campaigns as the pandemic is top of mind for worried viewers and consumers.

 

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NBCUniversal said Monday that Capital One, L’Oreal, Molson Coors, Subaru and Verizon have signed up as launch sponsors for the new streaming service Peacock when it debuts this week.

 

Peacock hits nationwide on Wednesday, April 15, free for customers of parent company Comcast, and three months later for everyone else with a price range from free to $10 a month. It’s the latest entrant in the streaming wars following Quibi’s launch April 6 and ahead of  HBO Max, set to unspool in May. Together with previously announced sponsors including Apartments.com, State Farm, Target, and Unilever, the group of companies “will help define the Peacock advertising experience,” NBCUniversal said in a statement.

 

NBC Universal said Peacock will have five minutes of ad loads per hour or less. New options pioneered for Peacock include Trending, Solo, Curator, Explore and On-Command ads. They will join previously available features like Shoppable TV and Prime Pods. It said Peacock also reps the next phase of NBCUniversal’s ‘One Platform’ offering that lets marketers reach audiences across the NBCUniversal ecosystem as broadly or narrowly as they want.

 

New opportunities for marketers are crucial, the company said, as the coronavirus pandemic has people sheltering at home watching more television than ever even as much of the economy grinds to a halt.

 

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All the streaming services including Disney have a long way to go to catch up to Netflix. As of today, none of them even come close. Disney will certainly be a contender within a year. Apple TV isn’t even on the map. The only thing I’m  looking forward to seeing there is the next WWII installment from Spielberg/Hanks following Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Apple will have to partner or buy another media outlet to compete. Disney just needs to add their complete archive plus all Marvel movies and up their original programming with more original Star Wars series at the level and quality of The Mandalorian. Right now, I have Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney. Those three will probably be all I need. I’m looking forward to the inevitable bundle wars as more services start upping the ante.

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Old Disney vs New Disney, the times they are a-changin.

Fans Can't Believe Disney+ Edited Brief Nudity Out of Splash

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n the decades since Disney began releasing films, our culture has evolved in a variety of ways, resulting in the studio making changes to their films over the years. Their 1946 film Song of the South, for example, has never earned an official home video release due to a number of racist depictions and stereotypes being embraced, while the animated Lilo & Stitch has also seen modifications, changing a scene in which Lilo hides in a dryer to her hiding in a cubby as to prevent young viewers from potentially replicating the dangerous stunt.

 

Fans have recently noticed that the 1984 romantic comedy Splash is the latest to earn editing, due to brief nudity.

 

 

The film sees Tom Hanks' character falling in love with a woman who is secretly a mermaid, played by Daryl Hannah. One scene saw Hannah's character run nude into the ocean, with a fan noticing that Disney used CGI to extend her hair to cover her backside.

 

Given how little nudity is actually seen in the film, and this scene largely lacking any sexual context, fans are shocked that Disney would go to such lengths to censor the film.

 

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