Comcast confirms: Yes, we’re encrypting basic cable now
Comcast is getting ready to encrypt its basic cable channels. Consumers affected by the change need to get another box to keep watching. Read more »
NBC’s piracy takedowns skyrocket: Wait, wasn’t file sharing supposed to be dead?
photo: Steenbergs
File sharing is exploding, and the studios are barely keeping up fighting the pirates: That’s the gist of a WSJ story detailing NBC’s anti-piracy work. But is it really that simple? Read more »
Comcast buys the rest of NBCUniversal for $16.7 billion
photo: Shutterstock / Cedric Weber
Comcast’s purchase of the 49 percent of NBCUniversal that it didn’t already own was expected to take several years, but the cable provider said Tuesday it has bought the rest of the company for $16.7 billion. Read more »
Liberty buys Virgin, creating largest broadband company outside China
The combined operation will have 25 million customers in 14 countries. It will also take John Malone’s Liberty Global head-to-head with Rupert Murdoch and BSkyB. Read more »
Pay TV stops growing: Top 4 services all lost video users in Q2
photo: Shutterstock / artenot
With satellite carrier DirecTV reporting its first-ever net quarterly loss of subscribers, the Big Four pay TV services collectively lost 407,000 U.S. video customers in Q2. This was not offset by gains of 322,000 net video users reported by telco services AT&T U-Verse and Verizon FiOS. Read more »
For Comcast, broadband subscribers are up, but video subs are down
Comcast posted Q2 2012 revenues of $15.21 billion, $3.08 billion in operating income and 50 cents in earnings per share. While Comcast continued to rack up new broadband subscribers, it is still losing basic video subscribers quite fast — both to cord cutters and satellite/phone company rivals. Read more at GigaOM »
So far, even the Olympics can’t budge our outdated TV models
photo: Shutterstock / Padmayogini
Frustration with a lack of access, editing and the overall confusion about who can see what of the Olympics shows how frustrated consumers are about our outdated TV, but NBC has paid $1.18 billion to broadcast the games. Who is the consumer here? Read more at GigaOM »
paidContent turns 10: A brief history of digital media
Remember when Friendster was the hot social network, publishers doubted that ebooks would ever sell, and Netflix thought DVDs in red envelopes was the future? We do — that was that state of digital media when paidContent launched in 2002. Read more »
Comcast: VOD ad impressions set to increase “tenfold”
Speaking at a Mulitchannel News conference Wednesday, a Comcast executive predicted that on-demand viewing of basic cable programming is about to grow into a lucrative advertising business. Read more »
Comcast crushes porn owner’s “shakedown” of subscribers
photo: Ryan Jorgenson
In a victory for Comcast, a federal judge in Chicago quashed four subpoenas that would have let a porn studio identify hundreds of subscribers accused of using torrent technology to share videos. Read more »
DoJ to investigate cable companies; will cord cutters get a respite?
The Department of Justice is looking into the power that cable providers have over how and where consumers can access television content via the Internet. It’s a step that acknowledges the vertical integration of cable as well as their control over the last mile. Read more at GigaOM »
What are you paying for when you buy TV?
photo: Shutterstock / Angela Waye
Traditional cable is no longer about choice; it’s about access. As an access provider for content, cable has the widest depth of content right now, but it also costs the most. So how long can it keep content and customers? Read more at GigaOM »
DirecTV: Apple TV won’t “obsolete our technology”
While we in tech land tried to read the tea leaves of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s recent cryptic comments on the future of Apple TV, the media world saw the uncertainty around his statements as, “causing a boatload of angst and anticipation,” according to Variety. Read more »
Here’s what our web addiction looks like in 2016
We’re on pace to send 1.3 zettabytes of data in 2016, about 4 times more than we send today according to data out from Cisco. To put that in perspective, that’s more than 38 million DVDs sent per hour. It’s a 1 followed by 21 zeros. Read more »
Netflix to Comcast: Raising the cap is not enough
Netflix isn’t satisfied with Comcast’s announcement that the broadband provider is going to raise its bandwidth cap from 250GB to 300GB per month. The real issue, the video service said, is Comcast’s unwillingness to count its own Xfinity.tv service as part of that cap. Read more »
Comcast capitulates on data cap, but dodges net neutrality
Comcast plans to raise its broadband cap to 300 GB per month as it trials two new types of caps. The move is welcome one, but it neglects to address some of the net neutrality complaints that have arisen in the last few weeks about Comcast. Read more »
WatchESPN goes live for Comcast Xfinifty subs
photo: Comcast
Five months after it was announced, Comcast’s Xfinity TV subs finally have access to a key part of the TV Everywhere promise — WatchESPN, the ESPN gateway to live streaming sports and news. It’s iOS only for now, but Android is “coming soon.” Read more »
Is Cablevision about to launch a Netflix competitor, too?
With chief James Dolan mentioning unspecified software investments during Cablevision’s first-quarter earnings report Thursday morning, BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield believes the company is on the cusp of announcing a subscription video-on-demand service similar to Comcast’s Streampix. Read more »
For Comcast, data equals big dollars
Comcast, the largest broadband provider in the US is getting bigger and bigger. During the first quarter of 2012, the company added 439,000 net new high-speed Internet customers to bring the final tally to 18.58 million and had broadband revenues of $2.32 billion. Read more »
Women from Twitter, Gilt, One Kings Lane join NBCU’s new digital advisory board
photo: Shutterstock / Mehmet Dilsiz
Women at NBCU, NBCUniversal’s female-targeted ad sales, marketing and research initiative, is launching a new digital advisory board called Women@NBCU. Members include Google’s Marissa Mayer, Twitter’s Chloe Sladden and One Kings Lane’s Alison Pincus. Read more »
Research analyst: Are Disney & News Corp. trying to sabotage Hulu?
Bernstein Research wonders if the decision by Providence Equity Partners to pull its minority stake out of Hulu is a signal that the entertainment conglomerates who own most of the streaming service — and who wish to uphold TV’s multichannel model — don’t want it to grow. Read more »
Want to see how close TV and broadband are? Check out this chart.
Congress, along with many in the content industry, are wondering about the fate of television in an Internet Age. I think the future is broadband, and I’d like to offer this chart from Sandvine, showing that the future is already here. Read more »
The future of TV isn’t TV, it’s broadband.
As government strives to keep up with the broadband age, the Senate held a hearing covering the future of television, but midway through I realized that the Senate has it all wrong. The future of TV isn’t found in deregulation, it’s found on the Internet. Read more at GigaOM »
May 23: Talking content and its future at paidContent 2012
“Content” is an industry that is going through a renaissance.Despite the current challenges and there are opportunities. All these threats and opportunities will be part of the discourse at paidContent 2012, which will be held on May 23, 2012, at the TimesCenter in New York City. Read more at GigaOM »
The cable industry isn’t stupid, right?
A new study predicts $200 bills for the pay-TV portion of your cable bill by 2020. Here’s how the cable companies are using both a carrot and a stick to keep pay TV necessary in an IP age. Can government or consumers stop them? Read more »
Behind the Netflix PAC: a broadband power play
Netflix has formed its own political action committee called Flixpac, and my sources indicate that the biggest issues it plans to tackle will be how to let folks share their movies on social networks and the more nuanced issues of broadband competition and network neutrality. Read more at GigaOM »
Fandango To Become Online Ticket Seller For Yahoo Movies
Fandango will be an online and mobile movie-ticket seller for Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Movies, according to a new partnership between the two comp… Read more »
TV Everywhere Has Come To Xbox Live, But Who Will Let You See It?
With HBO’s new video teaser for the April 1 launch of its HBO Go service on Xbox Live, the big question is: Which of the top cable, satellit… Read more »
Why Aren't More People Cutting The Cord? Regional Sports Networks
This week, Major League Soccer introduced updated apps that let fans stream 230 live pro soccer games next season on iOS and Android mobile… Read more »
Cord Cutting Can Wait: Subscription TV Added 343,000 Subs in Q4
photo: Shutterstock / artenot
Correction: A previous version of this story reported an increase of 343 million subs. We apologize for the error.
With the rise of Netflix… Read more »
Why Canoe Abandoned Ship With Interactive TV Ads
photo: Shutterstock / Oleg Zabielin
An ambitious effort by the cable industry to create unified standards for targeted and interactive television advertising has failed, the vi… Read more »
Comcast Gives Subscribers One More Reason To Quit Netflix
photo: Comcast
Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) is rolling out a new streaming on-demand offering called Xfinity Streampix, which will bring more library content to s… Read more »
Comcast’s 17,000 Lost Cable Subs In Q4 Is Its Lowest Drop In 5 Years
photo: AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac
The bleeding has finally slowed for Comcast’s cable business. Reporting its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings Wednesday, the Philadelphi… Read more »
Stub Rub: Does Exclusivity Hinder Sales Of Movie Tickets Online?
Besides the typical $1 to $2 broker fee, one of the factors limiting the growth of the online movie-ticket selling business has been its com… Read more »
Carriers Have Only Around 100 Million Pay-TV Users, Less Than 60% Via IPTV
photo: Shutterstock / alexmillos
Some numbers out today that underscore the challenge telecoms operators have had in attracting customers to their pay-TV platforms, includin… Read more »
Cuban Teams With Seacrest, AEG To Relaunch HDNet as 'ESPN For Pop Culture'
photo: Flickr / Staci D. Kramer
Struggling for leverage with cable distributors as the operator of an independent network, Mark Cuban may have found a way forward for one o… Read more »
After Starting Streaming Race, Starz Now Lags Behind HBO And Showtime
The evolution of premium cable TV beyond the living room took another step this week, with Showtime introducing a streaming app to rival HBO… Read more »
Comcast Starts Live In-Home Streaming; Requires New 'AnyPlay' Device
photo: Xfinity
Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) has started in-home streaming but it’s not quite live video Valhalla. Streaming access to the Xfinity TV linear lineup… Read more »
Disney, Comcast And Why TV Everywhere Alone Is Not Enough
photo: Shutterstock / Angela Waye
Yesterday’s press release from Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA), announcing a comprehensive new ten-year distribution agreement… Read more »
Disney-Comcast Strike Broad Cross-Platform Content Deal
photo: Disney's Mickey Mouse Clubhouse
Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) Xfinity TV subscribers stymied by the lack of access to iPad app WatchESPN have relief in sight: a new multi-year, cro… Read more »
