As streaming services like HBO Max, Netflix and Disney+ plus vie for subscription dollars and YouTube, Xumo, Kanopy, Tubi TV, Vudu and Pluto TV try to take more ad revenue from traditional television, entertainment for kids — and the tech tools that manage their screen time — are becoming more important.
On the streaming side, Netflix has been marshaling its resources for months, poaching talent like Chris Nee, creator of the “Doc Mcstuffins” Disney Channel series, Naketha Mattocks (“The Descendants”) and Kenny Ortega (“High School Musical”) — to join its stable of creative talent. HBO Max locked in several years of “Sesame Street” shows, which will be available when its service launches in May. Finally, there’s Disney+, which has racked up 28.6 million subscribers for its service as of February 3.
Recognizing the threat, ad-supported platforms are coming up with their own responses. Some of these platforms also stream the same programs that are available on the subscription services, but as exclusivity becomes more important, audiences and entertainers can expect platforms like YouTube, Facebook and others to spend more heavily on original shows that attract younger audiences.
At times, it can be hard to tell exactly who “Locke & Key” was made for.
Adapted from a comic book series written by Joe Hill and illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez, the show tells the story of the Locke family after they move into the mysterious Keyhouse, where they soon discover hidden keys that can be used for a variety of magical purposes.
With its emphasis on adolescent romance and magical powers, “Locke & Key” often feels like a young adult adaptation, but it also strays into darker territory, with plenty of horror, as well as a persuasive focus on the family’s ongoing trauma following the violent death of husband/father Rendell Locke.
Despite some quibbles, your Original Content podcast hosts agree that the show manages to balance these different elements effectively, with surprising plot twists, creepy visuals and a particularly compelling sibling relationship between the two teenaged Lockes, Tyler (played by Connor Jessup) and Kinsey (Emilia Jones).
In addition to reviewing the show, we also discuss the announcement that Netflix has acquired Adam McKay’s next film, “Don’t Look Up,” which will star Jennifer Lawrence. We had less to say about the movie itself and more about our respective attitudes towards a potential asteroid apocalypse.
You can listen in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)
And if you want to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:
0:00 Intro
0:35 “Don’t Look Up” discussion
14:19 “Locke and Key” spoiler-free review
29:48 “Locke and Key” spoiler discussion
Quibi, the mobile-only streaming service from Jeffrey Katzenberg, is now open for pre-orders. The company declined to fully show off its app only a month ago during demos of its “TurnStyle” technology at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but it appears the app is ready nonetheless. Quibi is now listed on both Apple’s App Store and Google Play where it’s been given a pre-order date of April 6, 2020 — the date Quibi’s new service goes live.
The app was actually published to the app stores in January, according to data from Sensor Tower and App Annie, but wasn’t open for pre-registrations until now. That means the app wouldn’t have been visible to App Store users until today — even if you directly searched for it by name.
Apple first introduced pre-order functionality for apps and games in late 2017, allowing interested consumers to have a new app or game automatically download to their device on launch day. And in the case of paid apps, customers aren’t charged until the app becomes available.
Since launch, the pre-order system has largely been used with mobile games. Apple even devotes a section of its iOS App Store to a “Coming Soon” section where you can find upcoming games for pre-order.
It’s far less common for non-games to utilize a pre-order system. By doing so, it’s a signal that the company plans to do a significant marketing push ahead of the app’s release, likely in hopes of achieving a higher number of day-one downloads that it would otherwise.
That’s important in Quibi’s case given the competition that awaits it. Disney+, for example, blew past expectations to reach nearly 29 million subscribers in less than 3 months after its U.S. debut. Quibi, meanwhile, will arrive in the spring, just ahead of when WarnerMedia’s HBO Max and NBCU’s Peacock also begin rolling out. Quibi can’t wait until the market is even more crowded to start pushing users to download its app — it needs to capture users’ attention now.
With Quibi’s app store listings now live, we also have our first glimpse of the streaming service’s user interface.
Much has been made about Quibi’s potential to reimagine TV by taking advantage of mobile technology in new ways, but the app itself looks much like any other streaming service, save for its last screen showing off its TurnStyle technology.
The app appears to favor a dark theme common to streaming apps, like Netflix and Prime Video, with just four main navigation buttons at the bottom.
The first is a personalized For You page, where you’re presented feed where you’ll discover new things Quibi thinks you’ll like.
A Search tab will point you towards trending shows and it will allow you to search by show titles, genre or even mood.
The Following tab helps you keep track of your favorite shows and a Downloads tab keeps track of those you’ve made available for offline viewing.
Otherwise, Quibi’s interface is fairly simple. Shows are displayed with big images that you flip through either vertically on your home feed or both horizontally and vertically as you move through the Browse section.
The company does promote its TurnStyle viewing technology in its app store description, though it doesn’t reference the technology by name. Instead, it describes it as a viewing experience that puts you in full control. “No matter how you hold your phone, everything is framed to fit your screen,” it says.
In vertical viewing mode, it also introduces controls that appear on either the left or right side the screen — you choose, based on whether you’re left or right-handed.
Quibi hasn’t formally announced the app is open for pre-order and has yet to respond to a request for comment.
Katzenberg explained at CES that every great innovation in Hollywood has been driven by new technology, but today’s streaming services haven’t fully capitalized on the way many people consume content — meaning, on their phone. Quibi plans to make its service mobile-first, with TurnStyle for better viewing. And later, by using the phone’s other sensors and features to create different types of stories, like a horror show you can only watch at night or interactive fitness programs that can track your steps, among other things.
But Quibi could easily come across as gimmicky if it doesn’t get the experience right with quality content, too. Even if Quibi doesn’t pan out as a standalone streamer, it could license its TurnStyle tech to others in the streaming space — that would make Quibi one of the most expensive demo apps of all time.
“The Mandalorian” was a pretty good show. On that most people seem to agree. But while a successful live-action Star Wars TV series is important in its own right, the way this particular show was made represents a far greater change, perhaps the most important since the green screen. The cutting edge tech (literally) behind “The Mandalorian” creates a new standard and paradigm for media — and the audience will none the wiser.
What is this magical new technology? It’s an evolution of a technique that’s been in use for nearly a century in one form or another: displaying a live image behind the actors. But the advance is not in the idea but the execution: a confluence of technologies that redefines “virtual production” and will empower a new generation of creators.
As detailed in an extensive report in American Cinematographer Magazine (I’ve been chasing this story for some time but suspected this venerable trade publication would get the drop on me), the production process of “The Mandalorian” is completely unlike any before, and it’s hard to imagine any major film production not using the technology going forward.
“So what the hell is it?” I hear you asking.
Meet “The Volume.”
Formally called Stagecraft, it’s 20 feet tall, 270 degrees around, and 75 feet across — the largest and most sophisticated virtual filmmaking environment yet made. ILM just today publicly released a behind-the-scenes video of the system in use as well as a number of new details about it.
It’s not easy being green
In filmmaking terms, a “volume” generally refers to a space where motion capture and compositing take place. Some volumes are big and built into sets, as you might have seen in behind-the-scenes footage of Marvel or Star Wars movies. Some are smaller, plainer affairs where the motions of the actors behind CG characters play out their roles.
But they generally have one thing in common: They’re static. Giant, bright green, blank expanses.
Does that look like fun to shoot in?
One of the most difficult things for an actor in modern filmmaking is getting into character while surrounded by green walls, foam blocks indicating obstacles to be painted in later, and people with mocap dots on their face and suits with ping-pong balls attached. Not to mention everything has green reflections that need to be lit or colored out.
Advances some time ago (think prequels-era Star Wars) enabled cameras to display a rough pre-visualization of what the final film would look like, instantly substituting CG backgrounds and characters onto monitors. Sure, that helps with composition and camera movement, but the world of the film isn’t there, the way it is with practical sets and on-site shoots.
Practical effects were a deliberate choice for “The Child” (AKA Baby Yoda) as well.
What’s more, because of the limitations in rendering CG content, the movements of the camera are often restricted to a dolly track or a few pre-selected shots for which the content (and lighting, as we’ll see) has been prepared.
This particular volume, called Stagecraft by ILM, the company that put it together, is not static. The background is a set of enormous LED screens such as you might have seen on stage at conferences and concerts. The Stagecraft volume is bigger than any of those — but more importantly, it’s smarter.
See, it’s not enough to just show an image behind the actors. Filmmakers have been doing that with projected backgrounds since the silent era! And that’s fine if you just want to have a fake view out of a studio window or fake a location behind a static shot. The problem arises when you want to do anything more fancy than that, like move the camera. Because when the camera moves, it immediately becomes clear that the background is a flat image.
The innovation in Stagecraft and other, smaller LED walls (the more general term for these backgrounds) is not only that the image shown is generated live in photorealistic 3D by powerful GPUs, but that 3D scene is directly affected by the movements and settings of the camera. If the camera moves to the right, the image alters just as if it was a real scene.
This is remarkably hard to achieve. In order for it to work the camera must send its real-time position and orientation to, essentially, a beast of a gaming PC, since this and other setups like it generally run on the Unreal engine. This must take that movement and render it exactly in the 3D environment, with attendant changes to perspective, lighting, distortion, depth of field and so on — all fast enough so that those changes can be shown on the giant wall a fraction of a second later. After all, if the movement lagged even by a few frames it would be noticeable to even the most naive viewer.
Yet fully half of the scenes in The Mandalorian were shot within Stagecraft, and my guess is no one had any idea. Interior, exterior, alien worlds or spaceship cockpits, all used this giant volume for one purpose or another.
[gallery ids="1949115,1949123,1949122,1949124"]
There are innumerable technological advances that have contributed to this; The Mandalorian could not have been made as it was five years ago. The walls weren’t ready; The rendering tech wasn’t ready; The tracking wasn’t ready — nothing was ready. But it’s ready now.
It must be mentioned that Jon Favreau has been a driving force behind this filmmaking method for years now; Films like remake of The Lion King were in some ways tech tryouts for The Mandalorian. Combined with advances made by James Cameron in virtual filmmaking and of course the indefatigable Andy Serkis’s work in motion capture, this kind of production is only just now becoming realistic due to a confluence of circumstances.
Not just for SFX
Of course Stagecraft is probably also the most expensive and complex production environments ever used. But what it adds in technological overhead (and there’s a lot) it more than pays back in all kinds of benefits.
For one thing, it nearly eliminates on-location shooting, which is phenomenally expensive and time-consuming. Instead of going to Tunisia to get those wide-open desert shots, you can build a sandy set and put a photorealistic desert behind the actors. You can even combine these ideas for the best of both worlds: Send a team to scout locations in Tunisia and capture them in high-definition 3D to be used as a virtual background.
This last option produces an amazing secondary benefit: Reshoots are way easier. If you filmed at a bar in Santa Monica and changes to the dialogue mean you have to shoot the scene over again, no need to wrangle permits and painstakingly light the bar again. Instead, the first time you’re there, you carefully capture the whole scene with the exact lighting and props you had there the first time and use that as a virtual background for the reshoots.
The fact that many effects and backgrounds can be rendered ahead of time and shot in-camera rather than composited in later saves a lot of time and money. It also streamlines the creative process, with decisions able to be made on the spot by the filmmakers and actors, since the volume is reactive to their needs, not vice versa.
Lighting is another thing that is vastly simplified, in some ways at least, by something like Stagecraft. The bright LED wall can provide a ton of illumination, and because it actually represents the scene, that illumination is accurate to the needs of that scene. A red-lit interior of a space station, and the usual falling sparks and so on, shows red on the faces and of course the highly reflective helmet of the Mandalorian himself. Yet the team can also tweak it, for instance sticking a bright white line high on the LED wall out of sight of the camera but which creates a pleasing highlight on the helmet.
Naturally there are some trade-offs. At 20 feet tall, the volume is large but not so large that wide shots won’t capture the top of it, above which you’d see cameras and a different type of LED (the ceiling is also a display, though not as powerful). This necessitates some rotoscoping and post-production, or limits the angles and lenses one can shoot with — but that’s true of any soundstage or volume.
A shot like this would need a little massaging in post, obviously.
The size of the LEDs, that is of the pixels themselves, also limits how close the camera can get to them, and of course you can’t zoom in on an object for closer inspection. If you’re not careful you’ll end up with Moiré patterns, those stripes you often see on images of screens.
Stagecraft is not the first application of LED walls — they’ve been used for years at smaller scales — but it is certainly by far the most high-profile and The Mandalorian is the first real demonstration of what’s possible using this technology. And believe me, it’s not a one-off.
I’ve been told that nearly every production house is building or experimenting with LED walls of various sizes and types — the benefits are that obvious. TV productions can save money but look just as good. Movies can be shot on more flexible schedules. Actors who hate working in front of green screens may find this more palatable. And you better believe commercials are going to find a way to use these as well.
In short, a few years from now it’s going to be uncommon to find a production that doesn’t use an LED wall in some form or another. This is the new standard.
This is only a general overview of the technology that ILM, Disney, and their many partners and suppliers are working on. In a follow-up article I’ll be sharing more detailed technical information directly from the production team and technologists who created Stagecraft and its attendant systems.
WarnerMedia and YouTube TV today announced a distribution deal that will bring HBO and Cinemax to the Google-owned live TV streaming service for the first time as well as, notably, WarnerMedia’s new service HBO Max, set to launch this spring.
That means that YouTube TV customers will have the option to add-on either HBO or Cinemax to their current subscription, as they can today on other streaming services like Hulu. Alternately, they’ll be able to opt for HBO Max’s expanded streaming service instead.
The new agreement will also allow YouTube TV to continue to carry the WarnerMedia networks TBS, TNT, truTV, CNN, HLN, Turner Classic Movies, Adult Swim and Cartoon Network, which have been available to YouTube TV since 2018.
“As consumers’ media consumption habits continually evolve and the landscape becomes more and more dynamic, our goal remains constant, and that is to make the portfolio of WarnerMedia networks available as widely as possible,” said Rich Warren, president of WarnerMedia Distribution, in a statement. “YouTube has been a valued partner for a number of years, and we’re pleased to not only extend our existing agreement, but also make HBO and Cinemax – and soon HBO Max – available to YouTube TV customers for the first time.”
HBO Max is WarnerMedia’s previously announced direct-to-consumer streaming service which includes the HBO library as well as films from Warner Bros., third-party licensed programs, and 31 Max Originals. Combined with HBO series, HBO Max will stream 69 originals in its first year.
The company says the service will debut in May with 10,000 hours of film and TV, but will continue to grow over time. It is set to cost $14.99 per month.
With the additions of HBO, YouTube TV viewers can gain access to shows like Watchmen, Big Little Lies and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Succession, Westworld,The Outsider, Barry, Insecure,Curb Your Enthusiasm, as well as classics like Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, The Wire and Sex and the City. Upcoming HBO releases will include High Maintenance, My Brilliant Friend,The Plot Against America, The Undoing and I Know This Much Is True.
Meanwhile, Cinemax brings its own slate of originals including Strike Back, Trackers, and Gangs of London, as well as movies like Boy Erased, First Man, and Bad Times at the El Royale.
While HBO and Cinemax are offered to cord-cutters as over-the-top subscriptions in a number of places, WarnerMedia’s distribution plans for HBO Max are only now starting to be revealed. It makes sense that WarnerMedia would look to grow its distribution partnerships in the wake of the increased streaming competition arriving this year, including NBCU’s Peacock and an expanded CBS All Access, announced today by ViacomCBS.
Twitch, the Amazon-owned streaming service for gamers, is poised to surpass 40 million monthly active viewers in the U.S. as of next year, according to a new forecast from eMarketer out on Thursday. By 2023, it will reach 47 million viewers. Currently, the analyst firm estimates Twitch has 37.5 million viewers in the U.S. who tune in to watch at least once per month.
Officially, Twitch reports it has over 3 million active monthly creators and over 15 million average daily streamers, per its own website. But it focuses on metrics like minutes watched and concurrent viewers to paint a picture of its size and growth.
While Twitch continues to gain new viewers in the U.S., the new forecast indicates Twitch’s growth is slowing due to increased competition from YouTube, Microsoft’s Mixer, and Facebook Gaming. This backs up findings from a separate report released last month, which found that Twitch’s loss of top streaming talent had began to impact hours watched and streamed on its site in Q4 2019.
While none of the defections knocked out Twitch from its number one position, it is starting to slow down its growth across a number of key metrics.
Last year, for example, Twitch lost top streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek to Mixer, plus Jack “CouRage” Dunlop to YouTube, and Jeremy “Disguised Toast” Wang and Gonzalo “ZeRo” Barrios to Facebook Gaming. Corinna Kopf, a member of David Dobrik’s “Vlog Squad,” also left Twitch for Facebook at the very end of December.
The defections continued in Q1 2020, with Ronda Rousey moving exclusively to Facebook Gaming earlier this month.
Despite these losses, eMarketer says Twitch will still see double-digit growth in the U.S. this year, up 14.3% from 2019. However, that’s down from 23.5% growth last year. And in the following years, growth will continue to slow, dropping to 6.3% by 2023.
The report stresses that Twitch needs to find ways to retain its gaming talent going forward, instead of losing them to better deals offered by rivals. It will also likely continue to invest in its expansion beyond gaming, as non-gaming traffic drove significant viewership in 2019. Twitch’s “Just Chatting” category, for instance, was watched more than any game on the site in December and was No. 2 in January, according to StreamElements.
“[Twitch’s] platform is designed for live streaming video and streamer/viewer interaction; these features are certainly intriguing to content creators outside of gaming,” noted eMarketer forecasting analyst Peter Vahle.
This is the first time the analyst firm has estimated the number of people watching Twitch on a regular basis — a decision it likely made because of how large Twitch has become.
“Twitch,” said Vahle, “…is now too big for the internet giants to ignore. The big platforms, owned by the likes of Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, are competing to sign big deals with popular streamers and esports leagues. Twitch will have to find ways to encourage streamers — and viewers and advertisers — to stay on its platform now that other attractive options exist,” he added.
Another possible way for Twitch to boost viewership — and one not mentioned in eMarketer’s report — is to lean on its ties to parent company Amazon.
“Last year was actually our biggest year ever in terms of growth of Twitch on Fire TV,” Amazon’s Fire TV head Marc Whitten told TechCrunch in January, when talking about Fire TV’s 2020 plans.
CBS All Access, the streaming service now owned by ViacomCBS following the merger, is expanding. Announced today as part of the company’s otherwise underwhelming Q4 earnings, the plan is to launch a new “broad pay” streaming service that will include CBS All Access content along with other ViacomCBS assets in film and TV to complement the company’s existing free streaming service Pluto TV and premium network Showtime.
The company believes this three-tiered strategy of free, broad pay, and premium content will help it to better acquire market share in the increasingly crowded streaming space, while also helping improve metrics around subscription acquisition, churn, and lifetime value by offering promotions and bundles.
The new “House of Brands” product, as ViacomCBS is referring to this CBS All Access expansion, will go to market by partnering with both traditional and new distributors, including those outside the U.S.
Today, CBS All Access offers a mix of live TV, including streaming news and local broadcast stations, plus sports, and on-demand video. It’s also home to a growing number of original series, including now two Star Trek series that bring in a dedicated fan base. The newer of these, Star Trek: Picard, has so far done particularly well for the company, having broken internal records for total streams and subscriber signups following its January launch.
CBS All Access will retain its existing content in the refreshed service, but the overall library will expand to include more TV and movies from across the ViacomCBS portfolio. This includes content from brands like Nickelodeon, MTV, BET, Comedy Central, Smithsonian, and Paramount. In total, it’s adding 30,000 TV episodes and up to 1,000 films to the service, the company says.
"We will add significant content from @Nickelodeon, @ComedyCentral, @MTV, @BET, and @SmithsonianChan – in addition to popular films from the @ParamountPics library. And we will do this at scale — to the tune of approximately 30,000 episodes of TV & up to 1,000 movies.” -BB $VIAC
ViacomCBS’ expansion plans in streaming were reported earlier this month by Variety, but only officially confirmed today.
The company ended 2019 with 11.2 million streaming subscribers across CBS All Access and Showtime –higher than the 10 million subscribers announced in January — and up 56% year-over-year. The company estimates it will reach 16 million subscribers in 2020 and plans to further expand the service internationally. (It’s already live in Canada and Australia, outside the U.S.)
Domestic streaming and digital video revenue, which includes both the streaming subscriptions and digital video advertising, reached $1.6 billion in Q4 2019, up 60% year-over-year.
Meanwhile, free streaming service Pluto TV now has 22.4 million monthly active users, up 75% year-over-year. The service is live today in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and is launching in Latin America in March.
"Our streaming foundation is not just usage. It is also financial. In 2019, our domestic streaming & digital video business – which includes subscription revenue & digital video advertising – had approximately $1.6BN in revenue." – BB $VIACpic.twitter.com/wX6VyOiaWc
This was the first earnings since the Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp. merger finalized in December. The newly combined company missed Wall. St’s estimates with $6.871 billion in revenue vs. $7.36 billion estimated, and earnings per share of $0.97 vs. $1.44 forecast. The company also reported a net loss of $258 million in Q4, a soft box office, and was impacted by cord-cutting trends.
“In less than three months since completing our merger, we have made significant progress integrating and transforming ViacomCBS,” said President and CEO Bob Bakish, in a statement. “We see incredible opportunity to realize the full power of our position as one of the largest content producers and providers in the world. This is an exciting and valuable place to be at a time when demand for content has never been higher, and we will use our strength across genres, formats, demos and geographies to serve the largest addressable audience, on our own platforms and others,” he said.
“In 2020, our priorities are maximizing the power of our content, unlocking more value from our biggest revenue lines and accelerating our momentum in streaming,” Baksih continued. “With this as a backdrop, we’ve set clear targets for the year and are providing increased transparency around our business to demonstrate ViacomCBS’ ability to create shareholder value today, as we continue evolving and growing our business for tomorrow,” he said.
Yellow, the accelerator program launched by Snap in 2018, has selected ten companies to join its latest cohort.
The new batch of startups coming from across the U.S. and international cities like London, Mexico City, Seoul and Vilnius are building professional social networks for black professionals and blue collar workers, fashion labels, educational tools in augmented reality, kids entertainment, and an interactive entertainment production company.
The list of new companies include:
Brightly— an Oakland, Calif.-based media company angling to be the conscious consumer’s answer to Refinery29.
Charli Cohen — a London-based fashion and lifestyle brand.
Hardworkers — a Cambridge, Mass.-based professional digital community built for blue-collar workers.
Mogul Millennial — this Dallas-based company is a digital media platform for black entrepreneurs and corporate leaders.
Nuggetverse — Los Angeles-based Nuggetverse is creating a children’s media business based on its marquee character, Tubby Nugget.
SketchAR — this Lithuanian company is developing an AI-based mobile app for teaching drawing using augmented reality.
Stipop — a Seoul-based sticker API developer with a library of over 100,000 stickers created by 5,000 artists.
TRASH — using this machine learning-based video editing toolkit, users can quickly create and edit high-quality, short-form video. The company is backed by none other than the National Science Foundation and based in Los Angeles.
Veam — another Seoul-based social networking company, Veam uses Airdrop as a way to create persistent chats with nearby users as a geolocated social network.
Wabisabi Design, Inc. — hailing from Mexico City, this startup makes mini games in augmented reality for brands and advertisers.
Since launching the platform in 2018, startups from the Snap accelerator have gone on to acquisition (like Stop, Breathe, and Think, which was bought by Meredith Corp.) and to raise bigger rounds of funding (like the voiceover video production toolkit, MuzeTV, and the animation studio Toonstar).
Every company in the Yellow portfolio will receive $150,000 mentorship from industry veterans in and out of Snap, creative office space in Los Angeles and commercial support and partnerships — including Snapchat distribution.
“Building from the momentum of our first two Yellow programs, this new class approaches mobile creativity through the diverse lenses of augmented reality, platforms, commerce and media, yet each company has a clear vision to bring their products to life,” said Mike Su, Director of Yellow. “This class shows us that there’s no shortage of innovation at the intersection of creativity and technology, and we’re excited to be part of each company’s journey.”
Netflix announced today that it has acquired “Don’t Look Up,” a comedy written and directed by Adam McKay, with Jennifer Lawrence attached to star.
The story sounds like a funhouse reflection of one of today’s other headlines, focusing on two “low-level astronomers” who try to warn the world about the dangers of an asteroid that’s approaching Earth. Netflix has an aggressive timeline in place, with shooting scheduled to start in April, followed by a planned release later this year.
While McKay started his career as a “Saturday Night Live” writer and then the director of Will Ferrell comedies like “Anchorman” (he and Ferrell also co-founded Funny or Die), the focus of his recent work has shifted to business and politics. He wrote (or co-wrote) and directed “The Big Short” and “Vice,” and he’s also an executive producer and director on “Succession.”
“I’m so thrilled to make this movie with Jen Lawrence,” McKay said. “She’s what folks in the 17th century used to call ‘a dynamite act’. And the fact that Netflix sees this movie as a worldwide comedy sets the bar high for me and my team in an exciting and motivating way.”
Increased competition from competitors like Hulu and YouTube TV and even Netflix has finally taken its toll on Dish’s live TV streaming service, Sling TV. This week, the company reported its first-ever decline in Sling TV subscribers, with a drop of 94,000 customers in the fourth quarter. In the year-ago Q4, Sling TV had gained 50,000 subscribers, for comparison. The streaming service ended the year with 2.59 million total subscribers, Dish says.
In prior quarters, Sling TV’s gains have helped to offset some of the losses from Dish’s traditional pay-TV business. But in the fourth quarter of 2019, both sides of Dish’s business appear to be in jeopardy. On the pay-TV front, the company lost around 100,000 subscribers, in addition to 94,000 it lost from Sling TV.
By year-end 2019, Dish had 11.99 million total subscribers compared with the 12.32 million it reported at the end of 2018.
Although five-year-old Sling TV was one of the first TV streaming services to hit the market, in the years since it’s battled for cord cutters’ dollars against a growing number of alternatives. In addition to YouTube TV and Hulu with Live TV, Sling TV has also had to compete against niche live TV services like Philo and sports-focused fuboTV.
But Sling TV also today faces competition from other streamers, even if they’re not squarely aimed at cord-cutters who want access to live TV. After all, consumers have only so much money in the budget for entertainment — and today, there are so many options for streaming TV besides Netflix. CBS, for example, streams news, TV and sports via its CBS All Access service; premium channels like HBO, Cinemax, Starz, and Showtime offer their own over-the-top subscriptions; Amazon Prime Video is wrapped into Amazon’s expensive annual membership; and now new services from Disney and Apple have also arrived.
In the months ahead, the market will expand even further as new streaming services Peacock (NBCU), HBO Max (WarnerMedia/AT&T), and Quibi prepare to launch.
Sling TV’s drop in subscribers follows a price hike announced in December which raised prices of its two tiers from $25 each to $30, or $45 for both. It also follows a number of programming changes to the Sling TV lineup, the company noted.
“This decrease in net Sling TV subscriber additions is primarily related to increased competition, including competition from other OTT service providers, and to a higher number of customer disconnects on a larger Sling TV subscriber base, including the impact from Univision, AT&T and Fox RSNs’ removal of certain of their channels from our programming lineup.”
In June and November 2018, Univision removed channels from the Sling TV lineup, some of which were restored with a March 2019 agreement. In October 2018, AT&T removed HBO and Cinemax channels from the Sling TV lineup, which have not been restored. And in July 2019, Fox Regional Sports Networks removed its channels from the Sling TV lineup. The channels have since been acquired by Sinclair.
With programming in a constant state of flux, while subscription prices increase, many consumers don’t see the value in over-the-top television — especially when there’s so much to watch elsewhere and for much less.
In addition, Sling TV’s app isn’t as well-designed as those from rivals like Hulu with Live TV and YouTube TV, or as innovative when it comes to the roll out new features or personalization technology. Hulu, for example, customizes recommendations based on viewer behavior and now, explicit signals from new Like and Dislike buttons. Sling TV, meanwhile, didn’t bother with personalized recommendations until last year.
Dish is already diversifying, in light of the bad news ahead for pay-TV. As a part of its deal with T-Mobile and Sprint ahead of their merger, Dish is acquiring Sprint’s prepaid business, including Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile, plus all of Sprint’s 800 MHz spectrum. Dish will utilize T-Mobile and Sprint’s cell sites to run its own wireless business for seven years, while it builds its own 5G network, the agreement said. The company may also look for strategic partners as it grows its wireless business, the company noted on the earnings call today.
