Apple TV Needs To Get Off The Couch

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Earlier this month Apple poached Timothy Twerdahl from Amazon, where he had headed up the Fire TV unit, to serve as VP in charge of Apple TV product marketing, raising hopes that Apple is gearing up for another try at transforming Apple TV from a hobby into a meaningful product line. But if so the transformation won’t be immediate.

Apple is reportedly testing the next iteration of the Apple TV set-top box, which could be released later this year. But early indications are that it will be another study in incrementalism, adding support for 4K streaming but no groundbreaking new functionality.

Apple is also rolling out two new original TV series, a long-form version of James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke segments from the “Late Late Show,” and reality TV-type series called “Planet of the Apps.” But neither series is being launched under the Apple TV banner. Instead, as Apple content chief Eddy Cue explained at the Code Media conference this week, both will be made available through Apple Music in a bid to boost subscriptions to the music streaming service. Read More »

The Great Re-bundling: The Wireless Future of Music and Video

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Bundled media services are becoming table stakes in the wireless business. With plain old wireless service (POWS?) at or close to the saturation point in the U.S., wireless operators are increasingly fighting over slices of a fixed pie, and feel a growing need to differentiate from their competitors in pursuit of market share.

With the costly build-out of 5G networks looming, operators also need to increase ARPU by adding services.

Thus, it was no big surprise this week when Softbank-owned Sprint snapped up a 33 percent stake in Jay-Z’s Tidal music streaming service. Sprint already had a partnership with Tidal, but as MIDiA Research analyst Mark Mulligan noted in a blog post,  the bundling game has changed for wireless operators, and meaningful differentiation increasingly means having your own skin in it.

“The original thinking behind telco bundles was differentiation, but when every telco has got a music bundle there’s no differentiation anymore,” he wrote. “Additionally, if you are a top tier telco and you haven’t got Apple or Spotify, then partnering with one of the rest risks brand damage by appearing to be stuck with an also-ran. By making a high profile investment in Tidal, Sprint has thus transformed its forthcoming bundle from this scenario into something it can build real differentiation around.” Read More »

While FCC Dithers, Google Ditches The Box

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To hear the pay-TV industry tell it, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler’s original proposal to “unlock” the set-top box was essentially a sop to Google, a company many in the industry see as having effectively captured the agency, if not the entire Obama administration, and as coveting the incumbent operators’ position in the TV business.

Those suspicions were only strengthened when Google began offering members of Congress demos of a set-top box that fit remarkably with the sort of navigation device envisioned by Wheeler’s proposal, just days after the proposal was unveiled.

fccwheelergettyoffledeAlarmed, cable operators rushed out its own proposal to “ditch” the set-top box altogether and make their services available, essentially as is, via apps that could run on third-party devices — an idea Google opposed because it would leave the cable operators in control of the user interface and the bundling of channels.

The industry’s move was effective, inasmuch as it forced Wheeler to retreat from his original proposal, and come up with a new plan loosely modeled on the industry’s app-based approach. While Google said it could live with the new proposal, the industry still found much not to like, and an all-out lobby blitz again forced Wheeler to postpone a planned vote on the measure. Read More »

The Coming Wireless Video Wars

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Having dropped $48 billion and change last year to acquire DirecTV, AT&T is now earmarking tens of billions more over the next 3 to 5 years to acquire media companies, according to a report this week by Bloomberg. Citing “people familiar with the plans,” the report said AT&T is targeting acquisitions ranging from $2 billion to $50 billion, with an eye toward “owning some of the content it distributes.”

It likely won’t be distributing it through DirecTV, however, at least not via satellite. According to an earlier Bloomberg report, AT&T will begin phasing out DirecTV’s randallstephensonsatellite platform within the same 3 to 5-year window, with any eye toward making internet streaming its primary TV platform by 2020. The company has lately been lining up carriage deals ahead of its planned launch of its DirecTV Now over-the-top service later this year. And it has been aggressively steering its wireless customers toward DirecTV by bundling unlimited wireless data plans with a DirecTV subscription, which so far has been taken up by some 5 million of its wireless subscribers.

DirecTV Now will also be “zero-rated” for AT&T wireless customers, meaning it won’t count against their monthly data cap. Read More »

Verizon Completes It’s Web 1.0 Roll-up, But May Not Stop There

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With its $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo this week, coming a year and two months after its $4.4 billion acquisition of AOL, Verizon now owns the two dominant players in the web ecosystem — circa 1999. But at least it got them cheap.

Yahoo once had a market cap of $125 billion; AOL’s reached $224 billion in the immediate wake of its January 2000 acquisition of Time Warner — roughly the same as Verizon’s market cap today. So, scooping up both for less  $10 billion could be considered a steal.

YAHOO_headquartersThe question is, why bother? Neither AOL nor Yahoo is exactly dominant in its market today. In Yahoo’s case, it isn’t even clear what that market is. Even in announcing the sale to employees, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer could barely articulate a coherent description of what it is Verizon was buying, let alone why.

At best, Verizon is getting, in AOL and Yahoo, a disconnected assortment of online media properties and a pair of online advertising businesses built around display, rather than search, social, or mobile — the dominant modes of digital advertising today. While Verizon’s distribution reach in mobile may be able to breathe some new life into some of those media assets it has a long, long way to go before it could seriously challenge Facebook and Google, the dominant players it today’s digital media distribution and advertising ecosystem, if that’s really its goal. Read More »