Speaker 1 0:02

Welcome to this week's edition of the Dan Rayburn podcast, the show that curates the streaming media industry news that matters most, unvarnished, unscripted and providing you with the factual data you need to know, without any of the hype, the pulse of the streaming media industry.

Speaker 2 0:20

Welcome to the Dan Rayburn podcast. I am Dan Rayburn with Coalus Mark Donigan. Back for another episode this week. We're recording here, friday, march 22nd, three weeks away from the NEB show streaming summit. Mark and I did record a little preview of the show so you can check that out online as well, where we cover some of the speakers and topics.

Speaker 2 0:40

But, mark, let's jump into some of the news that came out this week. Let's do it. You know the news this week was more just some interesting comments from some executives in the space, which actually was kind of detailed, which we don't typically get. But let's start with just a few pieces of news about some OTT streaming services. So we know that Warner Bros Discovery is really looking to push Max out internationally over the next 18 months.

Speaker 2 1:10

They announced that Max will launch in the first European countries beginning May 21st. So it's going to be across a bunch of countries, regions, nordics, iberia I don't know where that is, I'd have to look up that one on the map Central and Eastern Europe, and then it's going to also roll out into Poland and Netherlands, france and Belgium. France and Belgium are the first new countries where Max will launch the streaming service in over two years. So once they get these launches out, max says, or Warner Bros, discovery says that Max will then be available in 25 countries in Europe and 65 countries and territories worldwide. So they are growing. It's also going to launch in Latin America and Caribbean, or did earlier this year. So definitely pushing hard, not surprising. Also, the launch of Max in Europe is marked by the return of the House of Dragons series, which I've never seen, but obviously is very popular A lot of people have.

Speaker 2 2:16

It's going to premiere June 17th in Europe. It's going to double the amount of content currently available on Max in Europe, so that'll be interesting. Also, for those that don't know, max is the only place where you can stream the Olympic Games Paris in 25 European countries where Max will be available Because, remember, peacock has the rights in the US. So the other thing that Warner Bros Discovery announced was that all the content from Paris Olympics will be included in all subscription plans, because there are obviously different tiered plans.

Speaker 3 2:57

Yeah exactly.

Speaker 2 2:58

That said, they did not announce pricing, which I thought was interesting. So pricing will be announced in the coming weeks. No surprise, it's going to vary by country. They did give out a few details, though that for every single plan, users will be able to stream content on two devices simultaneously. Also, the most expensive plan will support 4K Not surprising, costs more money for that. And then the final piece on that in the Netherlands and Belgium the service will not be called Max, it will be called HBO Max, and I miss this initially, but the reason for this is the local broadcaster boy. I don't know how to even say this but I believe it's.

Speaker 2 3:45

Omrope. It's called Omrope Max. Sorry for those in Netherlands and Belgium for me not pronouncing that right, but they actually hold the rights to the name Max and basically said they considered taking legal action if HBO Max used the name in the Netherlands. So in one region of the world it will be called HBO.

Speaker 3 4:07

Max and not Max.

Speaker 2 4:11

Moving on to some information here in the joint venture between Fox Disney WBD around sports. This is probably old news to most people, but they now have a CEO for the JV, pete Distad, who worked from Apple from 2013 to 2023. His job at Apple recently was he was responsible for business operations and global distribution for video and sports for Apple TV. So he's been named CEO. He's going to take over everything strategy, distribution, marketing, sales. Everybody will report to him. That's all we've heard in terms of the new JV service as of yet.

Speaker 2 4:50

But tying into this, it was interesting, mark. So NFL's chief business officer, brian Brollap, was at the Washington Post Future Summit this week and in a video interview they did with him, he commented on how the new JV sports bundle is missing more than half of all NFL games and said he doesn't really understand the proposition in the market. So what he said here and let me quote him when he was asked like hey, were you surprised that they announced this? He said quote, we were a bit surprised, but I don't think it affects anything we're doing. They position it as the ultimate sports bundle, but it's missing more than half of the NFL football which we just got done saying is 93 of the top 100 telecasts.

Speaker 2 5:38

I don't understand how a sports fan is going to look at that and say that's a better value than, say, for $20 more a month I could buy YouTube TV and have all of the NFL and then actually have access to Sunday ticket, which is of course they're out of market package on Sunday afternoons. He then goes on to say, quote so I'm a bit confused personally by the value proposition. They clearly see something, maybe that we don't at the time, but I do know our partners, which we do like, are leaning in and trying to figure this out, figure this new world, and you can say that it's not a bold step. He says it certainly is and that it'll probably have ramifications as a bit to the pay TV world. But we'll have to see how it plays out. And quote so I Don't disagree, we've raised that I mean when we first covered this.

Speaker 3 6:29

You may correct almost exact statement. I will say and I've never met Brian roll up, but wow, what an amazing political answer he gave there to basically say we're not happy about this, but you know you know, I didn't take it that way.

Speaker 2 6:50

I don't know that it's not happy. I Think they're more confused in the sense that they weren't giving a heads up, so maybe feeling a little slighted, sure, sure but also Fair enough. As you can see, he's questioning like many of us have in the industries.

Speaker 3 7:02

Yeah, who is this really targeting and what's the point? You know, which is who is a?

Speaker 2 7:08

demographic here. So we'll have to keep an eye on that. Let's move on to some more sports here. Tied to sports news antenna, as to put out a chart, they estimate that Paramount plus two, three point four million signups over Super Bowl weekend and this is number they put out before. But they're saying Many assume that the majority of those who signed up will quickly cancel.

Speaker 3 7:35

Yeah.

Speaker 2 7:36

Their data, they're saying, shows by the end of February, nearly seven weeks after the FC wildcard weekend, only 29% had canceled their subscription to peacock amazing. So they're saying peacocks, one month survival rate across all 2023 signups was 78%. I don't trust the data personally. Their methodology is is too high level vague.

Speaker 3 8:03

Is it all survey bait? It must be survey based, no. No, it's not all survey based, no it's.

Speaker 2 8:08

They're pulling information from credit card transactions, some other things, but what they're not saying is the size of the pool. Their methodology is is yeah, also excluding certain things. So, for instance, they do say paramount plus estimates do not include iTunes distribution.

Speaker 3 8:27

Yeah.

Speaker 2 8:29

So it's, it's limited, but they're saying 65% of those that signed up Remain subscribed or had converted from their free trial to a paid trial, which I don't know why they combine those two. Those are two very different things. One is your your paid and you haven't canceled. One is you try to free subscription and you've converted to pay. Why are those in the same number? And those are some of the things I don't like about numbers like this from antenna and others is those are two different types of Potential users in terms of how they got in and how they canceled or why they canceled or what they signed up for. So it's just, it's a little too vague. We have to wait until we actually get numbers from Comcast, which, realistically, if we think about when we're gonna get those numbers, it's really at the end of Q2 and Q2 earnings. We won't get until About August and a July August, so we still have a long ways to go. Let's go on to some news about Paramount Global. Wall Street Journal reported that PE private equity firm Apollo Global Management Made an 11 billion dollar offered by Paramount Global's film a TV studio. But note, this doesn't include all of Paramount, it excludes national amusements. National amusements operates more than 1500 movie screens and they are the controlling shareholder for Paramount Global. Now, that was, I think, two days ago mark. Today the Financial Times reported that Sherry Redstone prefers to sell Paramount as a whole company as opposed to breaking it out and selling it in pieces. So there's also a deal that potentially could take place with Skydance Media, and it was also reported that Skydance Media, if this works out in terms of acquiring Paramount Global, would bring in NBC Universal, former executive CEO Jeff Scholl and former CNN head Jeff Zucker, to run the cable and broadcast networks. So interesting to see their names Disclosed or talked about. But I think it's important to note here that Skydance is still conducting due diligence On the business and it's being reported in multiple outlets that they have not submitted a final offer. And they are also being reported in multiple outlets that they have not submitted a final offer Because we've seen numbers thrown around oh, here's what they're willing to pay. But if they're still looking at the business, it happens where they look at it and say, oh well, that's not what we thought it was. So the number changes, so a little early there to really know what's going to take place.

Speaker 2 11:19

Moving on here to some multi-view news, which is kind of interesting and cool too. Youtube is rolling out support for multi-view in the iPhone and iPad. But just sorry, let me rephrase that YouTube TV is rolling out support on multi-view and iPhone and iPad, but it does not work with all games. It's very important here. It works for select games only. Also, you must use version 8.11 or higher of the YouTube app. So if you have an older iPad and can't update to at least iOS 11 or later, it's just not going to work. Not too surprising. You need to be running some of this on the latest hardware. We also know that YouTube TV is doing the multi-view feature server side. Also, in a support thread, youtube said they will launch multi-view and Android in the coming months. They didn't say when that is, but that's certainly good for Android users.

Speaker 3 12:16

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 12:17

Mark, I'm going to make a prediction and I don't have any insight into this. If it'll come by then, but I think by the next NFL Sunday ticket season, which is what September now.

Speaker 3 12:29

Yes.

Speaker 2 12:30

I'd be very surprised if users can't pick the games that they want to see in multi-view of football, because YouTube TV continues to make advancements in terms of getting to that and they continue to make it easier to select different versions already prepackaged. But the number one thing they've heard from fans is we want to be able to pick the games.

Speaker 3 12:52

Sure.

Speaker 2 12:52

So they have hinted, at some point it's going to come.

Speaker 3 12:56

It's going to come.

Speaker 2 12:58

This year, next year it's happening, but I've got to give them credit. They're making a lot of advancements.

Speaker 3 13:03

They really are the nine to five Google link which I believe you have in the post right, your LinkedIn post. They have a. There's a video there of just a phone it's just an iPhone sitting there playing. I think it's an iPhone and it's pretty cool to see those four tiles, those four games playing. It works well. It's pretty neat.

Speaker 2 13:33

But the ultimate for the fan experience is being able to pick those games.

Speaker 3 13:37

Yes, of course.

Speaker 2 13:39

And so I think that's coming sooner rather than later for sure.

Speaker 2 13:42

Now let's stay on this multi-view thread. Here we're having timing. So Peacock recently announced a new upcoming enhanced four-view experience they're calling Discovery MultiView, which is coming in time for the Olympic Games in Paris. Now, I got to see a demo of that this morning, mark from NBCU. So thanks to the Peacock team for allowing me to see that. Very interesting to talk to them about how they thought about the user experience.

Speaker 2 14:16

Discovery is very important, extremely important. How do I discover what I want? How do I jump into? All right, thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next video. Live content immediately. But also continue to see the live content I want, even one that may be the main feed switches. Also, they're gonna be providing more than 5000 hours of live coverage Throughout the games, which is also 329 metal events. So it's more content than they had to do for the previous Olympics. The winner Olympics, I think by by a factor of three. So the new discovery multi view Will support all Olympic events. You'll be able to pick whatever events you want. They also have a multi view option called the traditional multi view, which will only feature soccer, wrestling and track and field events.

Speaker 3 15:08

Oh, interesting.

Speaker 2 15:09

Yeah, they are gonna provide me with some technical details a little closer to the event, because what I want to know is what is the lowest common denominator from a device standpoint?

Speaker 3 15:21

Yeah.

Speaker 2 15:23

Also, when you're doing four streams to a screen at the same time, how are you adapting bit rate? I'd love to know what the max bit rate was there. So they were great on the call in terms of what they could talk to. Now I won't push anything out and tell them allowed to and I have some more technical details, but it was great to see it. Both multi view options allow you to move around the screens. You can switch the audio and click through to watch full screen. They're gonna start testing the enhanced four view experience during events this spring select events.

Speaker 2 15:55

Golf was mentioned, but there's there's some other events they mentioned on the call that I won't hold them to yet until they put it out where they're thinking about other ways that users might want to consume different camera angles. Obviously, golf for me is a natural one, even though I don't watch golf at all whatsoever. Golf fans imagine they could be watching you know four different holes at the same time. I would imagine they would absolutely love that. So to me golf makes makes perfect sense. But peacock also has so much live sports content that there'll be there'll be plenty of things that they can test this on. Now the peacock app is gonna offer the multi view experience across smart TVs, streaming devices, web browsers and tablets. And I mark specifically said are you gonna support Safari? Because nothing supported in Safari. And they said yes. So I was like, oh interesting, safari will be supported. Now You'll notice I did not say phones on that list. Phones will not be supported.

Speaker 2 16:56

Yeah and, frankly, I agree with them. They said in all the testing and feedback that they did why do I need four video screens on an iPhone? Yeah, it just doesn't make sense. Yeah it's small, so the fact that it's gonna be available and everything else I think is is pretty cool. And also, at any given time, they can have as many as 40 live events taking place For the Olympics this year. That's a lot. Yeah that's a lot of content.

Speaker 2 17:25

Yeah so be interesting to see how that how that launches and definitely interested to see it when it comes to some some testing. Let's see. Moving on a couple other things here, mark, twitch is doing away with a feature it introduced during the early stages of COVID. So on an April 2nd about another week or so Users are gonna lose access to watch parties, so you'll no longer be able to do co-viewing from prime video content. Now I thought it was interesting, mark. You had people, of course, complaining about this online and like calling out twitch and whatnot, but here's what I love twitch came out and said why they're doing this. Yeah, and here's what they said. Quote we launched watch parties in 2020 to offer streamers a way to enjoy prime video content with their communities. While some streamers incorporated watch parties into their streams, usage of watch parties on Twitch has declined over the years, so we're removing it and investing these resources and other features. So what they're saying is no one's watching it.

Speaker 3 18:28

Yeah.

Speaker 2 18:30

It's too small of a subset of their base. So smart, why include the functionality and continue to develop it when you can spend your efforts on other features that you get better value out of? So I think that's smart, even though they're taking a little flack online. For that. I would say ignore that. We did have one licensing deal Formula One. They announced a 10-year naming deal Sorry, a 10-year deal naming BN Sports as the exclusive broadcaster. F1 races across the Middle East, north Africa and Turkey through 2033. So this gives them all F1 programming to air everything Practices, sprints, grand Prix on its sports channels and on its streaming platform. So just in those regions, but a 10-year deal. Now what we want to see, obviously, is what F1 is going to do with some of the other rights that they have coming up pretty soon, including the US.

Speaker 2 19:32

Yeah which we've certainly heard Apple's name linked to quite a bit there. So we haven't heard anything up any update on that in a while, but it's it's coming, it's definitely coming. And then, mark, let's go on a little CDN bit of news here, because we did have an earnings. So KingSoft for those who don't know KingSoft and the version of their CDN is really under their KingSoft cloud brand. They announced their earnings and also said they're making quote strategic adjustments and scaling down of our CDN business and, quote the company said they're phasing out loss making clients tied to their CDN business and that the revenue share of their largest CDN customer is 12% in Q4 fiscal 2023. They said, as a result, their CDN revenue decreased by nearly 10% in the quarter compared to the previous quarter and CDN's revenue as a whole, as a proportion of their total revenue, decreased to approximately 23%. What I love about this mark is we actually have real numbers here.

Speaker 2 20:37

So KingSoft reported revenue 242.6 million for Q4 fiscal 23. So what this means is they had $55 million of CDN revenue in the quarter. That's the number. Revenue from public cloud services decreased 21.7% and enterprise cloud services fell 14.7%. Also, for those that don't know, almost all KingSoft's cloud CDN revenue comes from delivery in China. Very little comes from outside China and there's quite a few CDN's KingSoft, alibaba, tencent. There's also ByteDance plus.

Speaker 3 21:23

All the hyperscalers operate.

Speaker 2 21:25

CDN. There's a huge amount there. Kingsoft had 317.7 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year. They also get a large portion of their revenue from gaming and some other software licenses. But there we have some revenue numbers in another region of the world specifically for CDN. And then the final piece too is this hasn't been talked about too much, but Comcast is going to restructure how they're currently delivering video pretty soon. Many don't know that Comcast for a long time has had a commercial CDN under the branding of CTS, Comcast Technology Solutions. So that's going to go away. Not surprising once Disney pulled their content from there, Like Disney did with many CDNs, and just defaulted to two Akamai and Fastly. There's not a lot of business left for Comcast on the CTS side specific to delivery. But they're going to be using some third party solutions in the market which I won't disclose now. But that's going to be another change in the content delivery market as well. So interesting to see just how many changes we've had in the CDN market in the last 12 months.

Speaker 3 22:42

A lot, a lot of consolidation. Quite a few Consolidation also just in terms of Shutdowns, I mean just that's right.

Speaker 2 22:51

Some shutdowns as well. Also interesting just to Look at edgio. Over the last you know call it man even just over the last five days, but just over the last month because of what edgio did in terms of Doing the stock reverse, stock split. Yeah, and they did that. And then, you know, the stock dropped 52 week range was six dollars and sixty seven cents. Now this is after the split, but today it's back up just over ten dollars.

Speaker 3 23:25

Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 23:27

So interesting to watch their stock over the last couple days. Now, who knows why that's happening. Right, I won't. I won't try and guess at that, but yeah, the CDM market is still still certainly very interesting. So that's all we've got for this week. We are we're prepping for the NAB streaming summit. We've we've got some news coming up. I know, mark, that's gonna come out before the NAB show.

Speaker 2 23:48

Mmm quite a lot, obviously with vendors, but we'll take a look at all that next week and decide what we really want to focus on, what we think is interesting, and After the NAB show we'll also do a quick wrap-up, just what we saw there. You're gonna walk to show floor, I'm sure, way more than I will.

Speaker 3 24:05

Yes. I'll be lucky to, or maybe you won't, I don't know yeah, that's the problem, you know, the meetings get so stacked up and and and so in a way, I virtually walk the floor, because I'm always asking people hey, you know, what have you seen? What are you hearing? What's exciting, you know? And so you get different perspectives.

Speaker 2 24:25

But yeah, we'll see so I I walk it at night, so I'm gonna be walking at the night before Sunday night, and what I'm gonna be looking at is what I always like seeing is how are these vendors in the market branding themselves this year? What are the phrases they're using, right? Yeah, all you're saying is workflow and AI. You better be more specific of what?

Speaker 3 24:45

you're actually doing AI, ai, everything.

Speaker 2 24:49

There'll be some for sure. Last year there wasn't as much, honestly, as I thought there there was going to be. I also thought last year Some vendors did a much better job explaining what piece of the workflow they play in.

Speaker 2 25:00

Yeah, it wasn't it wasn't, like you know, end-to-end video, so I noticed that change. But I like to walk the floor the night before when the booths are empty, mm-hmm, taking a look at what all the signage and everything is really Promoting and advertising and what they're saying their specialty is. But that's about all I get to To do on the show floor. The amount of events taking place, of course, every night, the amount of dinner invites I've got which is very nice, from from vendors, of what they're doing, like wow, I mean, there's just there's always so much taking place. I don't get to go to any of that.

Speaker 2 25:33

Of course, I'm prepping for next day and I'm sleeping, but it's, it's gonna be good. There's gonna be a lot of events taking place that are also very focused, which I like. So you can you can go hang out with your tribe, so to speak, because we all know there's a lot of different types of individuals from the total video world at the NAB show. You and I obviously are in a different realm. Many of us then say those that are there looking at cameras and lenses and audio and lighting and.

Speaker 2 26:03

Satellites, and so I like the fact that a lot of events are very focused. This year it's gonna be busy.

Speaker 3 26:10

It will, it will just good, great lineup.

Speaker 2 26:12

But any was any questions about what Mark and I talked about this week, let us know. If you want to discount code for the NAB stream some us, let us know. Mark and I'll have two more podcasts coming up. Then we're gonna take a take a break just before the NAB stream summit and we'll be right back. But any questions, let us know at any time. Reach out to us on LinkedIn, hit us up directly. We appreciate everyone listening and we'll talk to you next week. Everyone stay safe. Have a great week.

Speaker 1 26:37

If you enjoyed the show, send it to a friend, have questions for Dan or Mark, connect with them on LinkedIn at any time and be sure to check out dance blog at streaming media blog com.