Verizon has a streaming media app. It’s true! It’s called Go90, for marketing-related ~reasons~, and they spent a lot of time and money making it happen. And since the conventional wisdom still says live sports is the key to getting people to sign up for your TV thing, Verizon’s gonna try that. Because goodness knows, nothing else has done it. [More]
streaming tv
Verizon Partners: Go90 A “Huge Dud,” “Far, Far Worse” Than Expected
By 9.9.16
Exactly one year ago, Verizon announced that it was jumping hard into the streaming-media biz, with a mobile-friendly service designed for the giant consumer base everyone apparently loves to hate, millennials. The company called it “go90,” helpfully reminding everyone that to watch TV on your phone, you need to turn it 90 degrees to the horizontal. But skeptics wondered: is this really going to, y’know, work? Will anyone watch? Will anyone care? And a year on, we seem to have our answer: nope. [More]
Final FCC Set-Top Box Proposal: Free Apps And Integrated Search For All
By 9.8.16
Remember how earlier this week the rumor mill had it that the FCC’s long-awaited final set-top box proposal was due out this week? The gossips were right; chairman Tom Wheeler’s office circulated it today. [More]
We’re All Watching Digital Video, But Most Of Us Aren’t Buying Any
By 8.24.16
When you just want to watch something, you probably look for it first on Netflix or Amazon. When you really treasure something and want to make it part of your library, you might buy the disc. But when do you buy a digital copy of a TV episode or a movie? Basically never, right? Yeah, and that’s the problem for the whole industry, because you’re not alone. [More]
Hulu Kills Off Free Streaming Service, Goes Subscription Only
By 8.8.16
Once upon a time, TV was mostly a thing you watched for free, over an antenna. Commercials and corporate sponsorships made up the cost for networks. Then TV became cable. Then cable became your internet, and TV was once again briefly free, through streaming services with commercials. But then came subscription internet TV, and that’s where we are today, with Hulu finally pulling the plug on its non-subscription service. [More]
Time Warner Joining The Hulu Crowd, Buying 10% Of The Streaming Service
By 8.3.16
In an era when everybody and their grandmother seems to be launching their own proprietary subscription streaming service, something about Hulu seems almost quaint. The platform is jointly owned by three giant media companies, and therefore is almost a pre-bundled service that actually carries programming from all of them. And eventually — but not quite yet — you can make that four. [More]
Verizon Kind Of Wants To Be Your New Netflix, But With More Ads
By 8.2.16
If it feels like the media and technology worlds of late are constantly going through this weird, ebbing, flowing, overlapping process, well, you’re not wrong. Jumping into the fray most recently is Verizon, which not only has its own streaming service but also now wants to sell you on original content… that it can, of course, stuff with advertising for your eyeballs. [More]
Comcast’s Still Not Sure There’s Any Money In This Whole “Streaming” Thing
By 7.28.16
You might have heard that it’s 2016, and streaming your TV via the internet is all the rage. And yet despite being just as susceptible to cord-cutters as anyone (everyone) else, Comcast is still not thinking the whole streaming-TV thing is a moneymaker. [More]
NFL Network, RedZone Joining PlayStation Vue Lineup
By 7.26.16
Conventional wisdom still says that sports are the key to cable: people will stream their comedies and dramas, but will pay for their sports coverage, because Americans sure love their sports. So it is unsurprising, then, that over-the-top cable-alternative streaming services are lining up to add more sports channels to their programming, including PlayStation Vue. [More]
Report: Disney To Buy Part Of MLB.tv
By 7.1.16
Baseball is already brought to you by Disney, if it’s a game on ESPN. But now Disney wants to bring you all the baseball… at least if you stream it online. [More]
NBC Exec: Viewers Always Come Back From Binges, Netflix Not A “Consistent” Threat
By 1.15.16
There’s obviously some disruption afoot in the TV marketplace of late. Broadcast and cable networks continue to think that they represent TV. Netflix, Amazon, and an up-and-coming generation of cord-cutters seem to disagree. And yet for all money the young whippersnapper businesses seem to get from the young whippersnapper audiences, at least one member of the old guard thinks it’s all so much chaff in the wind. [More]
Want To Watch ESPN Without Cable? Buy A PlayStation
By 11.5.15
Live sports — the supposed killer app that keeps people subscribing to cable when otherwise they might cut the cord — is, well, going cordless. Disney today announced a deal with Sony that will bring all of their programming, including ESPN, to a streaming service near you. At least, if you live in the right area. [More]
Walmart’s Streaming Video Service VUDU Discounts All Of This Year’s Emmy-Nominated Shows To $.67
By 9.25.15
For folks who might enjoy, say, Game of Thrones and Veep, but not enough to pay for HBO or HBO Now just for those two shows, or someone who wants to watch House of Cards without getting a Netflix subscription, Walmart’s streaming service VUDU might make sense: it charges per episode for TV shows, instead of requiring an upfront subscription fee for access to its libraries. VUDU is now sweetening the deal on some shows, knocking the per-episode price of all 2015 Emmy nominees and winners down to $0.67. [More]
Netflix Knows The Exact Moment You Get Hooked On A TV Show
By 9.23.15
“I know, it starts out slow, but if you can just get through a few episodes, I swear, it’s totally worth it and you will be addicted. Just trust me.” We’ve all heard something like that before, and now Netflix is repeating it, with a list that pinpoints the exact episode its users get hooked on a TV show. [More]
Dish CEO: “Netflix Is The Most Powerful Content Aggregator In The World Today”
By 8.5.15
The first half of 2015 brought us the launch of a whole bunch of new over-the-top streaming TV services, including HBO Now and Dish’s Sling. Now, at the midpoint of the year, all of those earnings reports and investor calls are rolling in and we can start to find out just how popular those services are. Or we could… if executives would talk. Instead, they hem and haw and hedge and make only two things clear. One: cord-cutters are real. And two: when it comes to streaming, Netflix is still the biggest elephant in the room. [More]
Showtime’s New Streaming Service Will Be Available On Roku, PlayStation Vue
By 6.8.15
With Apple’s big developer conference getting underway this morning, we expect to hear more news of Apple exclusives. But fans of Penny Dreadful and Homeland who aren’t into the whole Apple ecosystem thing get a nice bonus this morning, as we find out that something isn’t actually locked only to Apple’s world. [More]
Survey Says: Everyone Still Hates Comcast’s, TWC’s Customer Service
By 6.1.15
Comcast keeps promising that this is the year their legendarily bad customer service gets an overhaul, but consumers don’t seem to be buying it. A national survey asking consumers about cable and internet companies has, once again, dropped Comcast and Time Warner Cable right at the very bottom of the heap. [More]
New Ratings Service Claims To Know Which Netflix Originals Are Most Popular
By 4.28.15
Netflix is a very data-driven company. They no doubt have clear internal metrics not only on just how many people are watching Orange Is The New Black, House of Cards, and Daredevil, but on how many episodes they’re watching in a single sitting, what part of the country they’re watching from, what time of day they’re doing it, and which bits, if any, they fast-forward. And they keep them all secret. Super duper secret. [More]
