OTT + SVOD
Sports-centric OTT TV service fuboTV recently announced that it’s partnering with the National Cable Television Cooperative. The deal will let the NCTC’s 850-plus member companies provide fuboTV’s OTT streaming TV bundle to their customers. “In a rapidly changing competitive landscape, our partnership with the NCTC provides its members with a turn key OTT solution for passionate sports fans, anchored by a strong broadband experience,” Joel Armijo, fuboTV’s Chief Financial Officer, told Cynopsis Digital.
PROGRAMMING
Matt Groening, welcome to Netflix. The legendary animator, best known for creating The Simpsons and Futurama, is bringing a new show called Disenchantment to the service. The series centers on a “hard-drinking young princess,” her “feisty elf companion,” and her “personal demon,” according to a release. Netflix has ordered 20 episodes.
ABC News announced a new partnership with digital media company ATTN:. The companies will work to develop new original news videos, distributing them across social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. While the videos will be largely targeted toward viewers who don’t consume news via traditional broadcasts, the footage will repurpose content from existing ABC News properties like Good Morning America and Nightline.
VIRTUAL + AUGMENTED REALITY
Facebook Live just upped the quality of its 360-degree video streams. Users can now stream such videos in 4K, viewable via the Samsung Gear VR headset. Facebook has also begun a new camera certification program, allowing electronic companies to list their cameras as “Live 360 Ready.” Certified cameras include the Insta 360 Air, Giroptic IO, Nokia Ozo, and ION 360U. YouTube had already beaten Facebook to the punch, announcing support for 4K 360-degree video live-streams in November of 2016.
PLATFORMS + APPS
Live-streaming service Live.me has added a new monetization feature to Shorts, its recently launched video-sharing platform. (Somewhat similar to the now-defunct Vine, Shorts lets users share pre-recorded clips that run between 7 and 17 seconds in length.) The new system allows viewers to convert money into “Coins,” a virtual currency that they can then use to buy “Gifts” for individual streamers. “Gifts” are worth a certain number of “Diamonds,” which creators can then convert into real cash.
Facebook may be planning to leap into the smart speaker business, according to DigiTimes. The east-Asian trade pub reports that Facebook has been building a 15-inch speaker with a touch screen. DigiTimes says that Chinese iPhone maker Pegatron has been building the device for Facebook, with plans for a launch in Q1 of next year. The speaker was reportedly designed by Facebook hardware lab Building 8. If the report proves accurate, Facebook will wind up competing against Amazon and Google in what’s shaping up to be a highly competitive space.
RESEARCH
You’d better believe that HBO is dreading the day when Game of Thrones leaves the air. According to data from app measurement specialist App Annie, the fantasy epic has been driving huge growth across HBO’s digital platforms. Standalone streaming service HBO Now saw its Android and iOS downloads more than quadruple on July 16, the day of Thrones’ season 7 premiere. And in the week following the premiere, HBO Now was downloaded over 500,000 times across Google Play and the Apple App Store. Meanwhile, HBO Go – the networks’ TV Everywhere service for authenticated pay TV subs – saw its downloads more than triple on the day of the season 7 premiere and the two days following it (as compared to the previous 30-day average). And compared with the previous thirty days’ average, HBO tripled the revenue it generated from in-app revenue on the day of the show’s premiere.
MEASURING UP
The ListenFirst Television Interest (TVI) Rating (TM) is a standardized measurement of the most buzzed-about TV programs on linear TV and streaming services. A complement to ListenFirst’s other syndicated data products (such as the ListenFirst Digital Audience Rating – TV), the metrics included in the rating capture organic actions that are largely unaffected by paid media. Programs that surface on the TVI leaderboards are the most hashtagged on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Tumblr, as well as most searched for on Wikipedia (used as a proxy for organic search volume).
Streaming Series (7/17/17 – 7/23/17)
Source: ListenFirst. The TVI Rating aggregates metrics that measure organically generated activity by fans of the TV show. The metric includes total volume of official hashtag mentions on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Tumblr, along with Wikipedia page views (as a proxy for organic search volume) for a show as a percentage of the total volume of the same activities for all shows.
TRIVIA
Our Last Trivia Question: Actress Gretchen Mol appears on which Hulu series? Answer: Chance. Kudos to Andy Pittman-TAMU/TX, Louis Lewow-Lewow Media/GA, Susan Nessanbaum-Goldberg-M and S Entertainment/NY, Mathew Tombers-Intermat/NY, Dino Alexander-SpectrumOne.net/NC, Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/CA, David Westberg-SAG-AFTRA Federal Credit Union/CA, and Shawn Abramowitz-KDFX/CA
Comedian Tig Notaro co-created the Amazon original series One Mississippi. The other co-creator is an Oscar-winning writer and producer; who is it? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company, city and state.)
