Dear friend of Wavefront TV,
Disney+ and Discovery+ have been dominating the news in the last few week in a demonstration that Bill Gates was as correct in 1994 when he famously said “Content is king.” But if content is king, then a content bundle is Queen – and we all know where the true power lies. In order to compete with the 800lb Mandalorian, platforms are leaning into bundles – AVOD with SVOD, FAST with local, Hulu with Showtime, Roku with HBO Max, aggregators aggregating other aggregators….when it comes to growing audience, more is more.
This week in the news: Amazon, Disney, YouTube, Peacock, AT&T, ViacomCBS, Pluto TV, Showtime, Haystack, Redbox, and more.
Wavefront TV’s take: Sports and streaming will become the norm in 2021 and beyond.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/12/06/amazon-exclusive-sports-broadcast-cable-tv-woes/
Wavefront TV’s take: This article does a good job of summarizing the scope of the shift underway across the entire media landscape, driven by (or impacted by) streaming.
Wavefront TV’s take: This is the first of many moves and challenges as local content moves into the CTV ecosystem.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/dec/6/carriage-dispute-between-tegna-t-impacts-nfl-viewe/
https://thestreamable.com/news/hulu-live-tv-may-lose-sinclair-owned-cbs-affiliates
Wavefront TV’s take: Content traditionally available in SVOD becoming available in AVOD (to keep costs lower and increase subscriber counts) might become more and more commonplace:
Wavefront TV’s take: Peacock is already at 26M subscribers and climbing:
https://thestreamable.com/news/peacock-reaches-26-million-sign-ups-up-from-22-million-at-end-of-q3
Misc Platform News:
https://www.mediaplaynews.com/redbox-launches-avod-platform/
https://www.mediaplaynews.com/haystack-news-adds-abc-news-live-cbsn-to-avod-platform/
Wavefront TV’s take: ViacomCBS/Pluto… a growing giant: