Studios have fallen into “lockstep pursuit down the subscription streaming dream,” said CEO John Calkins from transactional over-the-top video platform company Row8. The current direct-to-consumer trend, driven by theater closures during the pandemic, “is a profit deal” for media companies, said Wedbush's Michael Pachter. Also speaking Wednesday at the virtual Digital Entertainment Group Expo, the analyst compared the rush to D2C services to the Steve Martin movie, The Jerk: “It’s all about giving away a bunch of crap and hoping people will pay for it.” Calkins said “everybody’s feeling like they’ve got a shot at that brass ring.” He questioned whether the model is valid or sustainable long term. When the “newness of subscription streaming wears off,” there could be a “day of reckoning,” he said. Pachter said most TV content doesn’t have to be viewed live, aside from sports and certain shows where immediacy is important. The analyst believes virtual MVPD services such as YouTube Red or fuboTV “will take over, and cable is doomed.” Pachter blamed the cable industry for allowing Netflix deals, saying it “cut its own throat.” Consumers “have been trained that you can just watch anything you want on demand,” he said. “People are pissed” when they have to wait a week to watch the next episode of a show like WandaVision from broadcast TV “because we’ve all been trained to expect to binge it.” NCTA didn’t comment Thursday. Calkins noted “some stall” in vMVPD subscriptions and that prices keep “creeping up,” making the streaming model not much different from traditional pay-TV. On what will drive success for vMVPDs, Pachter said content owners should “get religion and decide they can’t afford to give content away” and “just withhold it from all these people.” Also at the event, Pachter took aim at AT&T (see 2103250063).

Qobuz is the first music streaming service to deliver 24-bit high-resolution audio content for playback on Sonos speakers compatible with the S2 operating system and controller app, said the companies Wednesday. Qobuz was available to Sonos customers in 16-bit FLAC streaming since 2013.

AT&T's DirecTV and U-verse are challenged by the rise of online video distribution and the decline of MVPDs, and a New DirecTV spinoff with more autonomy will be in a better position to improve technology, optimize marketing and fortify "the overall value proposition for ... customers," said AT&T in an FCC International Bureau application Monday. It seeks approval of transfer of control of a variety of its satellite, earth station and private land mobile radio licenses as part of the planned $7.8 billion spinoff of its video distribution business (see 2102240046). It said the deal will give New DirecTV the dedicated management focus needed to deal with changing consumer preferences and investment capital aimed solely at improved tech and marketing. AT&T TV "will be rolled out more broadly and marketed more consistently and evenly," it said. It said the deal raises no horizontal or vertical competitive concerns, as investment firm TPG, which will have a minority stake in New DirecTV, is under contract to relinquish control of its only pay-TV business interest -- Astound, a cable overbuilder with video subscribers in 10 states and Washington, D.C.

Beginning April 6, Sony 360 Reality Audio content can be streamed on Amazon Music HD by customers in North America using Alexa Cast, Sony announced Monday. Sony's coming $699 high-resolution wireless speaker is compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant devices.

Amazon’s getting NFL long-term media rights distribution agreements is a “big win” for the tech giant, LightShed Partners wrote investors Friday. The long-term media distribution rights agreements with Amazon, CBS, ESPN/ABC, Fox and NBC cover 2023 through 2033, said the NFL Thursday. Amazon will be the “exclusive home of Thursday Night Football across hundreds of compatible digital devices,” said the league. LightShed called it “the day the multichannel TV bundle died.” The trajectory is clear, the analysts said, “and the proverbial ‘floor’ on multichannel video subscribers is far lower" than the 40 million-50 million LightShed had predicted due to the NFL. That’s now closer to 20 million, “as more and more marquee sports content (especially NFL content) becomes available outside the legacy multichannel bundle,” analysts said. With games on Amazon Prime Video, ESPN+, Paramount+, Peacock and Fox digital platforms -- in addition to NFL Mobile and digital platforms -- NFL games “are now available in more places and on more devices than ever before,” said the league. It said it continues to be “the only sports league that delivers all of its games" on free, over-the-air TV, while noting increased flexibility to watch Sunday and Monday night games. The pact sets the stage for Fox, the only major network without a subscription VOD service, to launch a subscription tier on Tubi that includes NFL programming, LightShed said. Citing the acceleration of cord cutting and legacy media’s “urgency to build their own streaming services and connected TV advertising presence,” LightShed expects all media companies to employ their simulcast streaming rights “sooner than later.” MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson agrees the distribution deals could accelerate cord cutting, he wrote investors Friday. He said the NFL is likely receiving about $10 billion a year, a sharp step up from the $5.6 billion now for the U.S. rights, with those higher NFL costs will likely mean higher affiliate fees being charged to distributors and local affiliates, leading to higher consumer prices. ACA Connects deems the distribution agreements bad news for cable subscribers, it said Friday. Broadcast networks and TV station owners will use NFL games and the threat of blackouts as leverage to drive up retransmission consent fees, it said, It applauded the reintroduction of the Modern Television Act by Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La. (see 2103110064). The bill would repeal parts of the 1992 Cable Act, including retransmission rules.

Estimates of lost subscription VOD revenue due to password sharing are exaggerated, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Wednesday. The idea everyone would subscribe is "a very big if" since the vast majority of passwords shared are within families, he said. Cracking down will make "a good proportion of subscribers angry."

Subscriptions to online video services grew 26% in 2020 to 1.1 billion globally, said MPA Thursday. They helped offset an overall revenue decline of 18% in theatrical and home/mobile entertainment, amid widespread theater closures due to COVID-19. The global box office market was $12 billion in 2020, including $2.2 billion in the U.S. and Canada. U.S. online video subscriptions grew 32% to 308.6 million, reaching $30 billion. The global home/mobile entertainment market grew 23% to $68.8 billion.

Entertainment trends accelerated by COVID-19 could speed sports viewership declines, just as the industry's nascent focus on e-betting micro-wagering on in-progress professional games requires better technology, LightShed analysts wrote Tuesday (login required). With more competition for attention, “historically resilient sports TV viewership has been hard hit,” even as “most consumers were stuck at home.” So "with viewership fading and linear TV demographics aging up fast, the pace of advertising dollars shifting away from TV toward digital will undoubtedly accelerate," analysts noted. States legalizing sports wagering expands the market by making it easier to bet, especially on mobile devices, analysts said. More engagement with linear sports TV would be positive for ads and boost long-term values of sports rights, even as cord cutting accelerates, they said. But technology isn’t there yet due to latency, said LightShed. It cited a “significant delay” between broadcast TV over MVPDs vs. over-the-top video streaming, “on top of a delay between what is happening on the field and the broadcast feed."

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave NCTA a Thursday deadline for a sur reply on whether the industry group meets the legal criteria for standing in the appeal of the FCC's cable local franchise authority order, if the agency and the petitioners, mostly localities, jointly move to dismiss the petition in the appeal. That's in a docket 19-4162 letter (in Pacer). Pending before the court is an FCC request for an abeyance of the appeal as the order might be reevaluated by the agency (see 2103110023).

Technicolor CEO Richard Moat doubts other studios will replicate AT&T’s “interesting move” to funnel WarnerMedia’s 2021 slate of feature film releases direct to streaming (see 2012030053), he said Thursday on a Q4 call. “I don't see that as being a fundamental shift in the industry paradigm.” AT&T’s motive “was obviously to try to drive up subscriptions on HBO Max,” said Moat. “They were taking a big bet there in terms of the number of incremental customers” they would gain. “It remains to be seen whether that was a sensible financial bet,” he said. “Under normal circumstances, the studios are going to make a lot more money from pushing the product out into cinemas than they are through going exclusively to a streaming platform.” AT&T declined comment Friday. Connected home “delivered a strong year” for Technicolor in 2020, “exceeding the original targets” set before the pandemic, said Moat. “Increased demand from cable customers in North America drove revenues, but we were hit by a slowdown and supply constraints in Eurasia. Latin America was negatively impacted by the difficult macroeconomic situation in the region.” The strong consumer demand for upscale set-top boxes is driving “very high sales amongst our major cable and telco customers,” said Moat. Comcast picked Technicolor as the supplier for its latest-generation XB8 box, he said. Comcast referred our request for comment about the XB8 to Technicolor, whose spokesperson told us Moat "made a misstatement," and he meant to refer to Comcast orders for the XB7. She said the XB7 is a "gateway" device, not a set-top box, as Moat mistakenly called it. “Traditional video” will continue “to be on the decline” the next few years, “despite a transitional rebound” expected in 2021, said Moat. “Multi-gig broadband access markets and streaming Android TV are on the rise with solid growth. In 2021, the market will continue to be driven by the expansion of fiber and the adoption of Wi-Fi 6.” The electronics supply chain will continue “to be stretched by excess demand” for semiconductors, he said.