OTT + SVOD
Hulu’s OTT TV service has come to Microsoft’s Xbox 360. The revamped Xbox 360 Hulu app – the first to let Xbox users subscribe to the company’s TV service – also allows users to create as many as six viewing profiles. Each profile comes with personalized video recommendations. Hulu’s TV service debuted in beta back in May; it offers access to over 50 channels, and costs about $40 per month. Xbox users who don’t subscribe to the TV service can still use the new app to access Hulu’s basic SVOD product.
Looks like Disney isn’t cutting ties with all streaming platforms. The company has inked a new licensing deal with Asian SVOD service iflix. The pact will provide iflix with a slew of new titles, including Disney, Pixar, Marvel Studios, and Star Wars films. The content will reside in a new Channels feature, which will include branded channels for Disney-Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel and Disney. Films such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Finding Dory, and Captain America: Civil War – along with many others – will hit iflix in January of 2018. The deal will also cover a number of TV series from Disney’s various networks. None of this will do American audiences much good, of course; the service is only available in Asian and Middle Eastern markets such Indonesia, the Philippines, and Saudi Arabia, along with a number of others.
Las Vegas startup Poker Central announced a new partnership with the World Poker Tour. Under the pact, Poker Central’s PokerGO SVOD service will live-stream the final tables of the WPT Main Tour events in North America. The coverage starts with Season XVI WPT Legends of Poker on Thursday, August 31 and will continue through the rest of the WPT season.
PROGRAMMING
Snapchat just added a second daily news show. The Update, a new program from CNN, will feature breaking news from the network’s reporters and air each weekday at 6p. The app’s first daily news show, NBC’s Stay Tuned, appears to be doing fairly well for itself: Last week, Snapchat revealed that the series has drawn 29 million unique viewers since its July debut. The Snapchat Shows initiative features a lot more than just news programming; it now has over 25 different series.
CYNOPSIS SHORT FORM AWARDS
Submissions are now open for Cynopsis Short Form Video Awards! Winning videos will be screened at the Short Form Video Festival on March 7, 2018, along with thought-provoking panel discussions with producers, directors, actors, marketers, and more. Submit your video by October 20 and be a part of this recognition of outstanding short form video.
RESEARCH
Even as Facebook sits atop the social media ecosystem, one of its biggest concerns for some time has been an anticipated loss of its young audience. According to a new forecast from eMarketer, the social giant will have 14.5 million U.S. users age 12-17 using Facebook this year, a decline of 3.4% from 2016. This comes despite the fact that Facebook’s overall international growth has been downright mind-boggling, with over 2 billion users now using the platform. One bright spot for Facebook is that the company is picking up a lot of those young users elsewhere: eMarketer estimates that Instagram’s U.S. monthly use by 12-17-year-olds will increase by 8.8% in 2017. Snapchat, meanwhile, is projected to do best with the 18-24 age group, seeing a 19.2% increase in the U.S. this year. EMarketer estimates that, for the first time, Snapchat will surpass both Instagram and Facebook this year for total users aged 12-17 and 18-24.
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 (8/14/17 – 8/20/17)
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.
EXECUTIVE MOVES
Warner Bros. Pictures has nabbed Andrew Hotz from Google. Previously the tech giant’s Head of Industry, Media and Entertainment, Hotz will now serve as the film studio’s EVP of Worldwide Digital Marketing. At Google, Hotz worked on Google’s TV ads business and helped manage the company’s relationship with Procter & Gamble. He also helped managed the relationship between YouTube and NBCU. He’ll now oversee Warner Bros. Pictures’ domestic and international digital teams, working on digital campaigns to support Warner and New Line Cinema movie releases.
BuzzFeed News has changed up its news video division. Head of Live Video Jessica Naudziunas and Head of Video Henry Goldman are both leaving the company. “We will be moving from having a single, centralized video team to video groups more directly connected with parts of our news operation,” wrote BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith in a memo obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. THR also reports that the company plans to hire a new Head of Live Video. BuzzFeed says that the management changes don’t represent a change in overall company strategy.
TRIVIA
Brian Yorkey developed which streaming series? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company, city and state.)
Our Last Trivia Question: Hackers have been wreaking havoc on HBO this year. But when the most recent episode of Game of Thrones found its way to torrent sites last week, hackers had nothing to do with it. How did the episode leak? Answer: A third party vendor accidentally posted the episode on the HBO Spain and HBO Nordic platforms. Kudos to Andy Pittman-TAMU/TX, Matthew Wilson-RXR/NY, Lino Garcia-Amistad Entertainment/FL, David Westberg-SAG-AFTRA Federal Credit Union/CA, Anjali Desai-Departure Films/NY, and Tony Reyes-Stoopid Buddy Stoodios/CA
