OTT + SVOD
YouTube TV, Google’s OTT-based TV service, is now available in 14 new U.S. markets, including, Baltimore, Las Vegas, and Boston. With the expansion, YouTube says the service is now available in about 50% of U.S. homes. In other news, the service is adding two new channels to its lineup: Newsy, the digital news service from E.W. Scripps, and the Tennis Channel. Boston subscribers will also gain access to NESN, the regional sports net best known for covering the Red Sox. The service will still cost $35 per month.
Sports-heavy OTT TV service fuboTV now offers CBS content. That includes access to local CBS stations in select markets, as well as Pop, CBS Sports Network, and CBSN. It also includes nationwide access to on-demand CBS shows, and access to CBS’s TV Everywhere apps.
Turner is moving to launch an OTT sports platform. The company announced a three-year multi-platform agreement with the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League. Starting with the 2018–19 season, Turner will hold the exclusive U.S. presentation rights to over 340 soccer matches. In addition to airing many of those matches on its linear channels, Turner says it will launch a new stand-alone sports streaming service, with UEFA soccer standing as the central attraction. The service will debut in 2018, timed to the start of the UEFA agreement.
Multi-platform network Vibrant TV has been added as a charter TV network for the upcoming VIDGO streaming service. VIDGO is expected to launch this fall.
PROGRAMMING
Twitter’s latest live-streaming sports deal is with NASCAR. The league will use the social platform to live-stream in-car camera feeds for all ten of its NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs races this year. The streams will be accessible through NASCAR’s official Twitter handle, and at nascar.twitter.com. The new deal gets underway with the September 17 race at Chicagoland Speedway. The NASCAR pact is only the latest entry in Twitter’s push to load its platform with live content; in Q2 alone, Twitter live-streamed 625 events.
RESEARCH
Cord-cutting isn’t slowing down. Linear pay-TV services lost 976,000 customers in Q2, according to research company SNL Kagan. All told, SNL Kagan says that traditional cable, satellite and telco MVPD services have lost 1.8 million users this year. There are 96.1 million pay-TV homes in the U.S., the firm says. The SNL Kagan tally doesn’t include numbers for virtual MVPD services – though the research firm added that AT&T’s DirecTV Now and Dish Network’s Sling TV no have about 1.9 million subscribers between them. The SNL Kagan numbers were first reported by Multichannel News.
EXECUTIVE MOVES
YouTube added some new firepower. The company has hired Angela Courtin, formerly the Chief Marketing Officer of Fox Broadcasting, and Jon Wax, formerly the scripted programming chief for WGN America and Tribune Studios. Wax will oversee drama, scripted, and current programming for the YouTube Red streaming service. Courtin, meanwhile, will serve as Global Head of YouTube TV & Originals Marketing. Courtin will report to Jodi Ropert, YouTube’s subscription marketing chief, while Wax will report to Susanne Daniels, YouTube’s Global Head of Original Content.
TRIVIA
Actress Michaela Watkins stars on which Hulu series? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company, city and state.)
Our Last Trivia Question: Laura Linney’s first television credit came in a made-for-TV movie about the American civil war. Executive produced by Steven Spielberg, it aired on ABC in 1993. What was it called? Answer: Class of ’61. Kudos to David Westberg-SAG-AFTRA Federal Credit Union/CA, Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/CA, Lorrie Shilling/CA, Andrew Bellamy-Producers Guild of America/NY, and Jeffrey Wank-BGM/CA
