Universal Electronics Inc. signed Instreamatic’s AI-based voice dialog marketing platform for set-top boxes and smart TVs, it said Thursday. Conversational advertisements have been largely limited to mobile; UEI wants to bring them to smart TVs and MVPDs with personalized context.
The video services market is in a “historic state of disruption and disarray,” said Parks Associates analyst Paul Erickson Thursday, saying 45% of U.S. broadband households with traditional pay-TV service are likely to switch to a virtual MVPD in the next 12 months. A Q3 Parks survey found 29% of MVPD subscribers were unhappy with the price and value of their service, and vMVPDs are targeting the segment with different bundles and value propositions, said Erickson. An “unprecedented acceleration of consumer interest in aggregators and vMVPDs” occurred in 2020, “and there’s still a lot of room to grow viewership” through content discovery, said Nic Wilson, TiVo head-customer success, who's scheduled as a panelist on Parks' virtual Parks Future of Video conference Wednesday.
Comcast agreed to modify some wireless advertising claims that were challenged by T-Mobile, the Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Division said Thursday. NAD said Comcast's claim about possibly saving money when switching to Xfinity Mobile was reasonable, but it should disclose the basis of the claim. NAD said Comcast should modify some savings claims, and the company modified marketing about its 5G service after NAD raised the issue. Comcast didn't comment.
Comcast will target $1 billion over the next decade, including in-kind investments, toward closing the digital divide, like supporting its Lift Zone initiative of creating more than 1,000 Wi-Fi-connected community centers by year-end. It said Wednesday it will invest in grants for nonprofit community organizations and in its Internet Essentials program.
Some 70% of U.S. households have a smart device, said Menno Koopmans, Universal Electronics Inc. senior vice president-global sales and marketing. They tend to be in different categories, creating a “fragmented” market, she told a Friday event. The key to the smart home succeeding is interoperability, Koopmans said: It's the next frontier for UEI. The company developed an Apple TV program for MVPDs built around that streaming player, and it wants to do more, said Koopmans. Colliers analyst Steven Frankel wrote investors Monday that the company is positioned to benefit from new offerings such as its Apple TV 4K remote.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied, without comment, the FCC's request to postpone the April 15 oral argument in a challenge to its cable TV local franchise authority order and put the appeal in abeyance, in a docket 19-4161 order (in Pacer) Friday. The agency didn't comment.
Discovery and monetization are challenges that streaming sports services face in the post-pandemic world, a Brightcove webinar was told Thursday. Even as fans turned to watching shows about sports in the absence of live sports, streamers, too, had a decline in time spent watching sports content, said Brightcove analyst Jim O’Neill. As live sports reemerged in the second half of 2020, more viewers turned to streaming, while traditional sports TV ratings flagged. “Traditional delivery of content, including sports, is being challenged" by desires to cut pay-TV costs and rising adoption of over-the-top video services, he said. The pandemic forced golf's U.S. Open from its familiar June slot to September, where it competed with other professional sports. “Nobody wants to go up against the NFL,” said Amanda Weiner, U.S. Golf Association senior director-digital media and ticketing. USGA's biggest challenge last year was losing the “at-work audience” that would sneak a second screen at work to watch, Weiner said. USGA launched its streaming app on Roku and Apple TV, adding Amazon Fire TV last year, to reach people "where they were," said Weiner. She said more is in the works. Livestreaming has become a critical way for USA Volleyball to reach fans amid spectator restrictions, said Chief Marketing Officer Kassidi Gilgenast. It’s a big change “to get our fans to the small screen,” said Gilgenast. USA Volleyball tried its hand at in-house streaming a few years ago but realized it needed partners, Gilgenast said. By providing a link that takes people directly to a match livestream, "we’re much more likely to convert that user, especially on the social side, to a viewer.”
The number of Americans who watch TV via cable or satellite plunged from 76% in 2015 to 56% this year, said a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults fielded Jan. 25-Feb. 18. Some 27% are cord-cutters, and 17% have never had a pay-TV subscription, it said. Seventy-one percent of those who don’t use cable or satellite TV services say they can access the content they want online; 69% say the cost of pay-TV is too high; 45% say they don’t watch TV often. The drop in pay-TV subscribers reflects the "changing landscape of connectivity and media," said Pew Wednesday, with internet streaming services like Netflix and Hulu growing in popularity, a trend accelerated by the pandemic. Demographics play a role, Pew noted, with 34% of respondents ages 18-29 getting TV through cable or satellite, down 31 points from 2015. Of the 30-49 age group, 46% get TV that way, a 27-point drop. Among those ages 50-64, 66% are pay-TV subscribers, down 14 points for the period; 81% of Americans 65 and older are pay-TV customers, down 5 points. About 53% of nonsubscribers 18-29 don’t have pay TV at home because they don’t watch TV often; for 30-49-year-olds, it's 47%, a third for 50-plus. Nearly 80% of nonsubscribers 50 and older gave cost as the reason, 72% of the 30-49 group and 57% for ages 18-29.
Comments are due March 26, replies April 2, in docket 21-69 on Cable One's planned buy of Hargray, per an FCC Wireline Bureau public notice in Monday's Daily Digest. Cable One hopes to close on the $2.2 billion transaction in Q2 (see 2102160014).
Cox unveiled a web-based remote control that, when tied into customers' assistive technologies, lets people with disabilities control their TVs with their eyes. It said Thursday its Accessible Web Remote for Contour works with customers' eye gaze hardware and software, switch controls, and "sip-and-puff" systems. Cox said for the past three years it has worked with disability accessibility organizations to ensure accessible design and development of its offerings.