Peter Litman
media consulting:cable|online|over-the-top
06 May 2022
Dish Network Subscriber Count Falls Below 8 Million
12 December 2020
HBO Max and Warner Brothers Collapsing the Theatrical Window
The big recent development in the media and entertainment world was the December 3 announcement by Warner Media that the Warner Brothers Studios' entire 2021 theatrical slate, 17 movies, would be released simultaneously on HBO Max and in movie theaters. Typically theatrical movies play in cinemas on an exclusive basis for a period of thirty to ninety days, then enter other "windows" of exhibition -- pay-per-view, premium television (e.g., HBO, Showtime, Starz), broadcast television, basic cable, etc. The metaphor used to describe this financial system is a "waterfall" -- from the highest price/best viewer experience ($12+ ticket, uncut, no commercials, giant screen and multi-speaker audio) down to "free" media with smaller screens, edited to be advertiser friendly, and interrupted by commercials.
The reaction from the people who worked on these movies was quick and unfavorable: the director of the upcoming Dune hated it, the director of the recent theatrical pandemic release Tenet hated it, the head of a huge talent agency hated it, the union of directors hated it, and the head of another huge talent agency hated it.
To my eye, there are six issues that have been raised:
- Movies are meant to be seen first in theaters on the big screen. These movies are meant to be enjoyed first that way and only that way.
- This is a poor strategy financially, as it devalues the first tier on the waterfall, and that may devalue the subsequent tiers, and the value of these movie franchises in the future.
- The compensation that participants will receive will be lower with this approach.
- We were not consulted about this change; it was presented to us without our participation and that shows a lack of respect.
- The contracts that we have give us approval rights on distribution strategy and choices and you have ignored those rights.
- By selling the movies to your co-owned HBO Max you have engaged in self-dealing, rather than seeking out whether other streaming services might be willing to pay more for those rights.
The first concern is the easiest one to dismiss. All of these movies are being released to theaters, so those who want the full cinematic experience can get it. A movie doesn't play any differently to a moviegoer in the theater because it is on a streaming service on the same day.
Whether the second concern is true seems to depend on how things actually play out. One thing is certain, if these movies were released with exclusive theatrical exhibition windows, there is little chance that they would attract cinema audiences the same size as they might have absent the pandemic. A movie available on HBO Max at the same time it is available in the cinema might be expected to be less of a draw at the box office, although one notes that's not true of professional sports -- TV exposure seems to promote the live event business. Depending on how and how much these movies are promoted in the media, they might do more or less business than they would as exclusives.
As to the third point and the subsequent points, the compensation of the participants is not a matter on which this writer can opine with public data available. If the participants will be getting less pie -- because the pie is smaller -- and the contracts they signed permit the studio to do this (which no one has contested yet), it seems like that's one of the issues talent face about having revenue or profit participation in the first place. If you don't want that kind of deal, negotiate for a flat fee.
I do understand that scoring things are more complicated without apples-to-apples theatrical grosses to look at. To that I can only say, welcome to the new digital world, movies -- Netflix shows don't get apples-to-apples Nielsen ratings with cable and cable Nielsen numbers aren't 100% comparable with broadcast numbers...and everyone in the ecosystem has figured out a way to work together without relying on the historical currency.
One participant beef that I am quite sympathetic to is that all of these arrangements contemplated a world where both sides had an incentive to maximize the theatrical window revenue. To the extent that Warners is now generating value for itself (via its ownership of the presumably more valuable HBO Max) and the talent don't get a piece of that, they have a fair concern, even if they may not have legal recourse via their contract (shame on their lawyers if the big fish didn't have it). The record labels shared the benefits they got in Spotify stock with their artists, whose work they licensed at lower prices than that work probably would have fetched without that "equity kicker".
That Neflix offered a big price for Dune, perhaps larger than what HBO Max will pay, is, to be charitable, not a good look for Warner Brothers living up to its fiduciary duty to its partners.
Regarding the lack of respect of unilaterally making such a change on their professional partners, I do understand it. Given that Warners probably knew this move would be controversial, they might have figured out that they had more chance to make such a bold move work this way than by having a lot of private conversations that would leak out. This follows the strategy of "better to ask forgiveness than permission", especially if you aren't going to be given permission. That said, I have little faith that AT&T is a particularly savvy understanding of Hollywood relationships or the value of distribution, given their substantial overpay for DirecTV.
The reaction to this news on the tech side was a lot more favorable. In its usual fashion, anything "disruptive" to "the old way of doing business" is good. I find that simplistic. Certainly, the movie studios didn't fully see Netflix streaming business model coming on as fast as it did. However, these studios aren't run by dopes. The system of windows that they have constructed may be frustrating to a viewer (where is that movie playing?), but it probably does a good job of maximizing revenue from the available buyers in the world of yesterday. If it didn't, it would have been jettisoned long ago as too complicated. That said, I'm less certain that's true for the world of tomorrow.
There are not a lot of other media products like big Hollywood movies. TV shows are windowed -- fetching one price for their initial network runs, then fetching another price in syndication. Most high profile books are windowed, released first in hardcover and later in less expensive paperbacks, but that's about it. Amazon doesn't complain that books are available free in public libraries. There have been a few examples of music that was released exclusively to one platform for a short amount of time, but generally that doesn't work well -- the industry is built around non-exclusive listening as a shared experience.
The film business has mistaken the future engine of growth for an existential threat before.
"'I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.' Jack Valenti [then head of the Motion Picture Association of America] said this in 1982 in testimony to the House of Representatives on why the VCR should be illegal. He also called the VCR an "avalanche" and a "tidal wave", and said it would make the film industry "bleed and bleed and hemorrhage".
It's not clear to me that the participants are going to be losers in this ultimately. First, it looks like the discussion about money hasn't happened yet and the participants have some cards to play in that negotiation. Second, it is unclear if the exposure the work will get via this release pattern will be better or worse than what would have happened otherwise. Some film franchises started on TV -- like Star Trek. If the participants in the theatrical revenue have the basis to make a legal claim (or lean on the relationship), they might get a bit more consideration than the minimum Warners might be able to get away with paying. It is often said that Hollywood is a relationship business. If that's still true, Warners will have to pay something more to fix/maintain/replace the talent relationships they have clearly injured.
Similarly, I'm not sure it is clear that the movie theaters are the losers with this change even though they think that they are and so does Wall Street. I'm not sure there were going to be any big movies for these theaters to show anytime soon, so they now have "access to product" and that's a plus at getting someone to come out of the house. And the cinemas are likely to get much more favorable splits of the COVID-diminished box office receipts because they don't have an exclusive window on these movies. With the growing competition from in-home entertainment options in general, the movie theater business looked challenging before "losing" its exclusive window...which is another way of saying that it was probably going to lose its exclusive window anyway. And, if theatrical exhibition exclusivity clearly makes the studios more money -- for example, if the vaccines are a success and everyone celebrates by going to the movies -- well, the empire can strike back as quickly as AT&T can fire its Warner Media executives (which it has already done a few times).
The big loser in this are the ones not being written about in the press coverage. The more attractive streaming services like HBO Max become, the worse basic cable TV packages look. Basic cable used to be a great consumer value for in-home entertainment -- it offered more choices and quality content that broadcasters didn't provide at a reasonable price. But has cable prices have risen over the last four decades, now the value isn't so great. The significant innovations of the DVR and HD are effectively replicated by streaming platforms at a far lower starting ticket price. The cable resisters of the 1990s were older people; the non-cabled households of today are young people.
Even before Warner Brothers' move, programming investment has been leaving the cable ecosystem for the streaming video ecosystem -- Disney has shifted programming investment from Disney Channel, ABC, and Freeform to Disney+ and so have all of the other big players in cable programming (NBC Universal to Peacock, Discovery to discovery+). If basic cable TV subscriptions are a declining business -- which they are, and have been for several years -- the basic cable TV channels could, probably will, become hollowed out services with less and less marquee original programming and more and more reruns (because they still have 168 hours to fill every week). Higher prices and less value could spell a death spiral.
20 May 2020
Since we were so rudely interrupted, a summary of the last year's developments
- movie theatres closed
- sports suspended at all levels
- lots of people at home
- much more online shopping
- nearly complete shutdown of typical professional television and movie production
- The continued ascension of non-linear Internet-delivered video
- The resultant continued demise of "cable TV" (a/k/a "pay TV" or multichannel subscription video) be it delivered by a cable, satellite, telco or "non-facilities-based" provider like Sling TV
- Perhaps the most interesting -- how the coronavirus lockdown has forced experimentation with new forms of video production
Streaming video
AT&T saw Disney's successful launch of Disney+ and looks to be following its playbook. It started with aggressive pre-launch pricing by HBO Max -- $11.99 per month for 12 months (versus typical retail of $14.99 per month for HBO alone). As noted in Multichannel News, this is $1 per month less than the most popular Netflix service package. It probably puts a lot of pressure on incumbent cable operators, as it offers more content than the cable version of HBO at what is in most cases a lower retail price. As we get closer to HBO Max's launch on May 27, we'll see if AT&T manages a programming splash as big as The Mandalorian. It doesn't look like any of their launch shows have that kind of profile and the shutdown of production due to the pandemic is probably part of that.
Part of the success of Netflix is that it has expanded the range of its offerings. It has had significant success expanding into unscripted entertainment - lowbrow, middlebrow, and high(ish)brow: Tiger King, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. As a Netflix subscription is a household subscription, having a greater variety of programming should lower churn, as dropping the service affects more people in the household (and/or the children away at college who use the household login).
Changes with cable TV subscriptions
Continued video subscriber losses by MVPDs (multichannel video programming distributors a/k/a cable and satellite TV providers). It is ugly. vMVPDs growth slows, then the leaders, DirecTV and Dish's Sling start losing subscribers. One analyst described the possibility of "a rapid death spiral for the category", with the category being "linear subscription TV".
What have we learned?
- Stock market valuations of streaming (i.e., Netflix) created huge economic incentive for Disney and others to get into streaming, even if it will cost significant short term profitability, the public markets will reward it.
- It is unlikely that net-net that Disney will come out ahead during this crisis since coronavirus may have a great negative impact on so many of its lines of business (theme parks, movies in cinemas, sports, and advertising). No other media and entertainment company may be hit on so many fronts, as Rich Greenfield of LightShed describes very well.
- Retransmission consent fees may be going up dramatically -- mostly from deals negotiated over the preceding years, but the decline in multichannel subs is a threat to that revenue stream
- Locast's free broadcast TV service is still operating and has expanded into new markets. It has also finally been sued by broadcasters and sued back. Its existential question remains: will it win its case or lose and suffer the fate of Aereo?
- full clip of Billie's performance is no longer available on YouTube, sadly
- full disclosure: that's my office chair that Ann Harada is sitting on in this clip
There will be a huge impact on commercial production as well. Given the upheaval in consumer's lives, the advertising messages suitable for before the coronavirus are often ill suited to our lives now (sometimes frighteningly so).
Producing new commercials without the usual camera and sound crew creates new challenges. One actor of my acquaintance shared that she was being asked to film herself at home -- for a national commercial with a DSLR or other similar high end, but decidedly consumer video equipment. (Having the performer supply more of the means of production, apologies to Karl Marx is nothing new -- newspaper reporters don't have to go into the office to type up their stories on the newsroom computer system, and many, perhaps most, audio books are made by voice artists working in home studios. The costs are much lower and the quality difference is much smaller than it once was. Workers' might be a step closer to...emancipation with this ownership.)
So, what's new with you?
29 April 2019
Financial Reporting Changes for AT&T, Comcast 1Q19
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No longer U-Verse and DirecTV subscribers, they are now "Entertainment Group premium TV" subscribers |
Comcast also eliminated one of its usually-reported cable video metrics this quarter. Alone among cable operators, Comcast reported "Advanced Services Customers" -- customers which had either an HD set-top box or a DVR or both. At least, Comcast had reported this number, which represented 70.4% of video subscribers at year end 2018. For 1Q19, this number is gone. Unlike the AT&T story, the Comcast change more likely highlights that the concept that HD is an "advanced service" is, to be kind, a little outdated and with the likes of YouTube TV bundling a somewhat-constrained DVR in its base consumer offering, a Comcast DVR is looking a lot less "advanced" than it once was.
09 February 2019
Google Fiber Retrenches
23 June 2018
What ESPN+ Says About the Multichannel Future
It is not hard to see why. after decades if growth, ESPN has lost household reach for many years from its peak in 2011,
driven by higher basic cable prices and over-the-top video services, led by Netflix, have had tremendous growth during the same period.
To remain "The Worldwide Leader in Sports" ESPN has to follow the people.
ESPN has had an over-the-top video service before, ESPN3 provides additional games and other comments to authenticated ESPN subscribers. That service is distributed in coordination with its distributors: facilities-based MVPDs (multichannel video programming distributors - cable, DBS, telco - e.g., DirecTV, Comcast, Verizon FiOS) and, later, virtual MVPDs (e.g., Sling, DirecTV Now).
ESPN had never created a service to address the non-MVPD marketplace. Instead of addressing this growing market directly, they looked to support what the MVPDs were doing to improve the value of the multichannel video subscription as its retail price kept rising. This lead to WatchESPN (its app which distributed its TV Everywhere service ESPN3), ESPN video-on-demand, the short-lived ESPN 3D, etc. That strategy made a lot of sense for a long time.
As the most expensive service by far in basic cable multichannel video, ESPN is the biggest beneficiary of the basic cable TV bundle. The primary benefits of being part of the basic cable package are (1) distribution to consumers and (2) low marketing costs. With the MVPD as the primary marketer of basic cable video subscriptions, ESPN gets a largely free ride. For a cable network, this greatly simplifies the sales process, one needed/needs to get a few dozen key distributors to roll out the network, not millions of individual consumers to buy. Distributors also were keenly focused on selling it. Until the past decade, basic cable was the most compelling offering from cable providers. Now it is not the first priority, eclipsed for cable operators by cable Internet service. [And slightly marginalized by "skinny bundles" of channels that lack ESPN.]
ESPN+ allows ESPN to establish its a direct-to-consumer distribution and is starting from scratch on marketing a video service to consumers. [ESPN does have direct-to-consumer marketing experience with ESPN The Magazine.] There are product, price, promotion, packaging, and distribution issues to sort out. Given its strategic importance, it is not surprising that ESPN decided to go aggressive on price -- at $4.99 per month ESPN+ is materially less expensive than Netflix and Hulu.
The other priority for ESPN is to keep the positive relationships with the MVPDs, because the amount of money coming in via basic cable distribution -- both in affiliate fees and advertising on the TV services -- will likely dwarf the amount of money coming in on ESPN+ for quite a while.
During ESPN's long growth period, adding value for the cable operators was very important. ESPN's affiliate fees, for a long time, increased by an astounding 20% per year. Now, with more typical single-digit rates of increase on affiliate fees, the MVPDs cannot reasonably have the same expectations for added value in ESPN3/WatchESPN.
ESPN has always heavily invested in sports content and then figured out a way to best utilize it to enhance the value of the business. In the 1990s, when ESPN faced little immediate competition on the cable dial and there was no direct-to-consumer Internet video business, ESPN would buy up rights to college football and air few of the games, instead "warehousing" them. The benefit to ESPN was protecting the franchise by not allowing a would-be sports competitor to use this programming to launch or enhance its network. Later, ESPN used additional games to support the TV Everywhere effort -- instead of letting Tennis Channel license extra early round matches of the US Open, ESPN would put them on ESPN3. Now, the best business use of those "extra rights" -- rights not needed to program ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, or ESPN's other cable services -- is to build out the appeal of ESPN+.
ESPN going direct-to-consumers is a difficult thing for the MVPD to swallow. MVPDs are used to being the 800 pound gorillas of TV distribution and dictating the key business terms. Historically, the MVPD's only real beef in their dealings with ESPN was its high price -- few questioned its programming or alignment with MVPD objectives. However, all around the multichannel industry, the groundwork has been laid for this moment. Three key over-the-top subscription service launches have led this change.
Since CBS All Access is completely under CBS's control, it does not need to work with joint venture partners to make changes to the service or experiment with it, as Hulu does. All Access can be expanded with additional programming and marketing if there is a return; can be scaled back or shut down if it is more profitable to distribute content through MVPDs or other distributors (e.g, Facebook, Apple). It can distribute a version through Amazon with no advertising. All Access is not yet financially material to CBS's business as a whole, but has significant strategic value in establishing a direct-to-consumer business and sorting out the technological, billing, marketing and other issues necessary to run that business should it be the horse that CBS wants to ride over the long haul.
Direct-to-consumer video streaming is the new world, but what does this mean for the basic cable bundle? The conventional wisdom is that sports is the only thing keeping the basic cable bundle afloat, the sports represents unique content that drives all households to subscribe. I'm not sure that is the whole truth.
It has been well documented that core sports fans represent about one-third of cable subscribers, the other two-thirds is casual fans and non-fans. In the UK, where most of the high value sports programming -- Premier League soccer -- is available in a separate subscription, about one-third of customers sign up for it. When NESN, the regional sports network owned by the Boston Red Sox and Boston Bruins, was distributed as an a la carte premium channel, its subscription levels were in the same ballpark (moving up and down with team performance as well).
With the rise of virtual MVPDs, some of the underserved market segments may get services better tailored to their needs. The households with little or no interest in sports are one of them. Historically, there was great fear among distributors in not offering ESPN -- it has been the goose that laid the golden egg. To my knowledge the virtual MVPD Philo TV is the first mainstream service to launch without any major sports. It is a very small player, 50,000 subs at year end 2017 or about 1% of the still modestly-sized virtual MVPD marketplace.
Sports is unique relative to other programming. It is live, unlike most entertainment programs, so it is usually watched live. Unlike the other big category of live programming, news, it is not a commodity -- the audience that watches the NFL does not accept other sports, like soccer or Ivy League football, as a pretty good substitute.
Only a growing market can support additional programming investment. Programming investment is moving off of linear television, which cannot support the cost. The market for basic cable video subscriptions is declining and the market for television advertising is not growing any faster than inflation. We've seen this impact already at ESPN, it is rarely the first choice of TV executives to lay off high profile talent.
Fundamentally, ESPN+ is the hedge to protect Disney for the future in the event that the multichannel bundle declines or collapses. Philosophically, Disney has always been platform agnostic. It has never been allied with an MVPD and would take its high quality content wherever the market led it be that DVD or PPV or something else. Disney sees that it is a strategic priority to develop a direct-to-consumer streaming video platform and is investing heavily to do so. Whether or not it makes a ton of money in the short term does not matter (and it looks like it is not making a ton). That's what a hedge is. Like CBS All Access, ESPN+ is offering more for superfans, but unlike CBS All Access, it isn't offering the the main course. As currently structured, ESPN+ is a complement to getting ESPN in a basic cable subscription, but a poor substitute for it.
My view is that ESPN+ will not be a big success until it is a closer substitute for ESPN and ESPN2 via basic cable.
23 January 2018
Starz Dropped from Altice - Premium Channels Not on Consignment
Given that Starz is available to all consumers directly through Starz's own over-the-top streaming service, we don't believe it makes sense to charge all of our customers for Starz programming, particularly when their viewership is declining and the majority of our customers don't watch Starz,” Altice said in its statement. “We believe it is in the best interest of all our customers to replace Starz and StarzEncore programming with alternative entertainment channels that will provide a robust content experience at a great value.Of course, all Altice customers do not pay for Starz. Starz is a premium channel and is usually sold a la carte or in higher level cable programming packages. It is not provided to all cable TV customers like a broadcast channel (e.g., ABC, PBS) or virtually all customers like a widely-distributed basic cable channel (e.g., CNN, USA, ESPN). So, Altice customers do not all pay for Starz.
What this means however, is that Starz licenses its channels to Altice on a per-basic-subscriber basis, not on a per-Starz-subscriber basis. Starz doesn't share in the revenue that Altice generates from its service; it has effectively a marketing guarantee from Altice, which then can package the service in the way that it feels most benefits Altice's business.
Such per-basic licensing of premium channels is hardly new to the pay TV business; I first saw such a deal in the early 1990s. Such deals can benefit the cable operator -- instead of having a $10 premium channel subscribed to by only 10% of customers for which it pays 50% of revenue ($5 wholesale), and generates $0.50/basic subscriber in margin, the MSO can provide this "$10 retail value service" in lots of packages for effectively a lot less than $10 -- it can provide more value to more consumers with that kind of packaging flexibility and upside.
However, the revenue upside of earlier cable is well in the rearview mirror now. Cable programming at the retail level is too expensive in today's competitive world.
That the third-tier premium provider (Starz is well behind HBO/Cinemax and Showtime/The Movie Channel/Flix in market share; this is not a commentary on the quality of its programming) is licensing its content on a per-basic guarantee really shows how inverted the pay TV business has become. With the competition among distributors, the winners have been the programmers who can require terms of the MSOs that they cannot get in the over-the-top world (when the programmers sell direct, they don't get a revenue guarantee). In the over-the-top world, the programmer has greater costs to market the service themselves, not via the cable operator, and greater control (uniform national pricing) but in that distribution channel, the programmer keeps the retail revenue, not just the wholesale, and also has control of the packaging -- no leaving the smaller channels out..
Update: Starz asks FCC to intervene in its dispute with Altice (Sara Fischer article at Axios)