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 0:22

Welcome to the Dan Rayburn Podcast. I am Dan Rayburn. Back this week, friday, october 11th, we're recording. My name is Dan Rayburn, I'm your host, mark Donegan, here, and this week we're going to be covering really a bunch of content things around DirecTV doing some new fast offerings, an apple tv here, we've got a brit box and stars bundle. We've got espn's president, uh, talking about the new service that's going to come out next year with some details there. We've also got a joint venture between bbc itv. Channel four and channel five got an acquisition well, not really an acquisition or merger with merger slash acquisition yeah, we're not really sure.

Speaker 3 1:04

We're not sure by who, by whom? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 1:08

Of Connexus and JW Player or JWP, I should say and then one or two other things that we'll hit here. So, Mark, first let's just thank IDS podcast sponsor this week Again, if you guys don't know who they are. Integrated-digitalcom podcast sponsor this week, again, if you guys don't know who they are, integrated hyphen digitalcom these guys are a small focus shop to do some of the, you know, the most efficient back-end development stuff in the industry. Some really cool stuff with content discovery, custom video processing in the clouds. Check them out. Integrated hyphen digitalcom.

Speaker 2 1:40

Let's jump into the first news of the week direct DirecTV. So this is Mark. To me this is a really straightforward deal, but it's interesting just how some are talking about this. So DirecTV has announced plans to launch a fast platform which they're branding MyFreeDirectTV. Okay, makes sense. Look, it's my, it's Free, it's DirecTV. I think the name's good. The service will launch November 15th. It's going to be available on select smart TVs and streaming devices. I did reach out to the company asking for a list of devices at launch. They didn't provide it as of now. So we're going to know in about a month.

Speaker 2 2:17

As far as how much content they're going to have, again, we don't have an exact number. All they said was they'll have quote dozens of channels number. All they said would they'll have quote dozens of channels. Uh, in addition to the news, they also announced that a gentleman by the name of kent reese was previously at sling tv as the gm of their um, oh sorry, who's previously at sling tv working on their fast service. He's now going to be the gm of direct tv's new fast service. Uh, the myFree offering is going to have both linear fast channels and on-demand content as well. So to me, pretty straightforward deal here. Some DirecTV execs on LinkedIn were calling this quote a premium fast-based service. I don't know what that means. What makes it premium To you?

Speaker 3 3:04

and I, Mark, mark and everyone else it would be content yeah, exactly, but since they haven't disclosed you know what, exactly, which channels they're going to be able to carry on this? Um, maybe, maybe there's one or two that would be a little more premium. I, I don't know. Yeah, we have no idea, no idea.

Speaker 2 3:23

Hard to know. They're also calling it quote a unique fast service. But then again, what makes it unique? I'm not really sure.

Speaker 3 3:29

Yeah.

Speaker 2 3:30

Another executive says well, the service will give quote consumers more choice and control. Well, we already have far too much choice in the market on fast services. Exactly, Thank you.

Speaker 3 3:42

Do I need more choice?

Speaker 2 4:03

no-transcript aggregation carousel that was introduced by them earlier in the year on its gemini streaming devices and apps, so we'll know in about a month what the service looks like. Uh, hey, look, this is good another option in the market, but this isn't revolutionary. It's not changing anything in the market. I wouldn't use the term premium.

Speaker 2 4:26

They certainly don't have the rights to be streaming live major sporting events for free on it. So, and that's what I would think of as premium content. Uh, the other thing we don't know is, okay, what happens to the service if the whole deal for echo star selling dish direct tv goes through. Yeah, we're not gonna have have Sling TV plus Direct TV Stream plus two fast services from the same company, so that whole product line is going to have to be scaled down and integrated into one product offering, or one brand I really should say so.

Speaker 2 4:58

A lot to be seen here, but that's the latest on that.

Speaker 3 5:03

You know, dan, one of the things I'm'm wondering is when are we just going to stop calling these services fast and they're, and they're just, and they're just streaming Like, when did like? Why do we call? Like we don't call TV ad supported TV.

Speaker 2 5:21

You know we've had this debate in the industry for a long time I mean frankly, I I don't like a lot of these terms. Avod svod fast transactional um tvod right tvod. Yeah exactly, streaming is a technology, it's not a service.

Speaker 3 5:37

That's the yes yes, yes, netflix is totally alive no, netflix is in the content.

Speaker 2 5:43

business Streaming is the distribution mechanism.

Speaker 3 5:45

Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 5:46

Yeah, I get how those lines blur, though I think that's okay. Yeah, you can only nitpick to stuff to a degree. The other thing I would just say, mark, is you know we all in the industry keep calling this fast and whatnot, but I've never run into a person, an average person, like average consumer, who's not tied into the industry somehow, or tech who goes yeah, I got to get on that fast service. Yeah, exactly, and you'll notice none of these services are called fast. What's it called Tubi Polio TV MyFreeDirectTV.

Speaker 1 6:21

Roku channel. Yeah, makes sense.

Speaker 3 6:23

Totally makes sense. Hey, hey, I have an idea, dan. I have an idea you and I are going to. We're going to launch a new service. You know what? It's going to be called Fast TV. Yeah, it's going to be revolutionary. Oh boy, fast TV. I think at this point.

Speaker 2 6:41

Anything you're doing that's video related is already TV.

Speaker 3 6:44

Exactly.

Speaker 2 6:46

I mean, just look at the younger generation. They think YouTube's TV.

Speaker 3 6:49

Yeah, I mean, but that's my point, like here you know we're announcing, or we, you know, companies are announcing, you know, a new fast service, like it's just. It's a new video platform and there happens to be a business model that I'm monetizing my attention ie watching ads to pay for it.

Speaker 1 7:10

Which is fun.

Speaker 3 7:11

Yeah, which is great.

Speaker 2 7:13

Anyway, well, I also like here.

Speaker 3 7:14

That's our soapbox, right.

Speaker 2 7:16

I like here with DirecTV. Same way Fubo is using fast offering. It's also to help bring people into the platform.

Speaker 3 7:24

Yes, yes, exactly, and DirecTV has fast offering it's, it's also to help bring people into the platform. Yes, yes, exactly, and direct tv has a brand stream is right yeah, I mean direct tv has a brand and there's people they'll just be like, oh, free direct tv, right, you know like they'll think that way. I mean, obviously it's different channels, different content, you know we understand. But to the consumer it's like hey, have you heard about that new free direct TV?

Speaker 2 7:48

No, what's that? I think that's good. Yeah, that's if you're making some money while they're viewing free content from ads of course and maybe you can then upsell them to your service in terms of actually direct TV stream.

Speaker 3 8:01

Yeah.

Speaker 2 8:01

I think it's a good opening and that's where I like fast to Mark in terms of fast acts acting as a springboard to other portions of the business. Yeah, of course. Right, I think that's great. Now also, we should say here from a number standpoint, just so people have you know, direct TV stream is estimated to have about 600,000 subscribers. Yeah, so it's not as if overnight they're getting a lot of traffic to this. Yeah, they're going to have to promote it. Uh, this is going to be a very small fast offering, and by small I am referencing just the number of hours and ads that will be delivered on a monthly basis. When compared to the other large fast services out there, that's okay, you know, I don't see that as like oh well, because they're not the size of the Roku channel. It's a failure.

Speaker 2 8:47

No it's just it's a bit different in terms of the business model, but this isn't all of a sudden generating a lot of revenue for for DirecTV. That's not happening into Amazon and Apple TV. So to me this was a really straightforward deal again, but it was interesting all the comments I saw online. So the news is that Amazon announced that Apple TV Plus will become available on Prime Video later this month in the US only for 10 weeks as a channel as a channel to be clear.

Speaker 2 9:19

yeah, so Apple TV Plus will be a channel on Prime Video which already offers over 100 subscription options in the US.

Speaker 3 9:27

Amazing, I didn't know it was that big?

Speaker 2 9:30

Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 9:30

Yeah, it is. Depends on whose numbers you look at. From third parties, they say that more than 50% of all the signups for niche channels comes directly from Amazon because it has so many add-on subscriptions in the US. Now, I don't know if those numbers are accurate, amazon's never said. Also, how do you define niche? Well, it's not Paramount Plus or Max or Netflix, it's smaller channels. Now, would Apple TV Plus be considered a niche one? It might, we don't know.

Speaker 2 10:03

But the key thing here is Eddie Q at Apple said the following quote we want to make Apple TV and its award winning library of series and films from the world's greatest storytellers available to as many viewers as possible. Exactly, that's pretty smart, but the comments I've seen online, mark is, this is a surprising decision by Apple. Apple is throwing in the towel by working with Amazon and showing that they can't compete. Earlier this year, apple struck a deal with Comcast of Apple TV plus bundled with Netflix and Peacock at a discounted price. No, they did not. Apple struck a deal with Comcast. Comcast then bundled in Apple TV with Netflix and Peacock. Yeah, you got to get the facts straight here. Someone also said this deal shows that Apple TV will soon launch a lower priced ad supported tier. They might add a tier. No doubt it's ad supported, but I don't know how this deal somehow influences that. I don't see the tie in here.

Speaker 2 11:06

And then there was a lot online mark of mostly folks you know, tied to the industry, saying this really shows how, how apple has, uh, failed in making apple tv, the os in the living room and, like you know, they could have made 25 dongles and just done better than everyone in the market. And I find that interesting because the argument most of them are saying is apple can afford to do it, yeah, and I mean I could afford to have a motorcycle but I don't have one because it's not the means of transportation that's best for me. Yeah. So just the fact that apple has the money and, yes, a lot of it, yeah where they could subsidize hardware and make an apple tv physical device at a much cheaper price, it's just not their core business, yeah. So I don't understand the arguments I see from people in the space saying Apple really lost here.

Speaker 2 12:00

And if you remember, listeners probably remember this is now going back. I think it was nine years ago where there was all this commotion in our industry that Apple was going to come out and build a physical TV set, an all-in-one TV set. They never did that either. Now why? Well, that's not the way they wanted to get in the living room, but it's also not their core business and, as we know, margins on that stuff are really low. Hardware Also.

Speaker 1 12:23

Apple wouldn't make a crappy TV to begin with with so it would be a higher end model and to reinforce that, point mark.

Speaker 2 12:29

It was amazon. Amazon has so many prime sale weeks now I don't know what it's called anymore I know what this one was it used to be once a year, now they're all the time, it seems so now it's like all the time, yeah, I don't know what it was, but whatever it was called.

Speaker 3 12:45

I think it is prime week, I think it's Prime Week, I think it's still, I think.

Speaker 2 12:49

I think oh, because I saw the top sold things they were talking about. But then there's another Prime Week coming up just for makeup and I was like what? There's a whole one now just for makeup. Okay, amazon on sale was a 32 inch Amazon uh, fire TV TV set for $99, 32 inches. So why would Apple get into the business of making TVs? Right, amazon is selling a lot of those things.

Speaker 2 13:21

People in many cases, don't care about the quality of the screen, depending the size at a 32 inch, like you're not going to be caring about 4k. It was not a 4k device tv either, it was only hd. And yet amazon said it was one of their best-selling devices during the week. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just interesting on how we look at things in the market when we're inside the industry and in our little bubble, as opposed to how you would look at things really as an, as an average consumer.

Speaker 2 13:49

And that's that's what I do is just constantly ask family members and others who don't have technology experience how they purchase products, what they look at, how they get content. So to me, I look at this deal, mark, with Apple TV and I say, okay, perfect example. My mom, my mom, has no idea what Apple TV plus is yeah, she would not go out and get a hardware device for it. Yeah, she really wouldn't want to sign up, even for another subscription and have to write down on her book another username and password. Yeah, download another app. But if all of a sudden in prime, which she knows and knows well, yeah, she can pay an extra $10 a month to get content she may want from Apple TV. You'll get her as a subscriber.

Speaker 3 14:34

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 14:35

So to me this opens up. This deal opens up their content to a lot of other people Makes sense.

Speaker 3 14:41

Absolutely yeah, yeah, totally, totally agree.

Speaker 2 14:45

So I think it's straightforward. And while I'm on the subject of TVs, mark, let me just do a quick shout out to LG. So I'm a huge fan of LG OLED TVs. Oh, amazing, yeah, absolutely. I bought three sets different sizes all around the same time. All three of them started having screen issues. Oh, and odd screen issues. Not even dead pixels, but hundreds of weird what looks like fireworks almost. Oh weird, yeah, all around the edges. Wow, reached out to LG even though they were out of warranty, swapped them all out with 2024 models.

Speaker 3 15:24

Wow, amazing. So thank you for that. Yeah, that's a big yeah, that's a yeah.

Speaker 2 15:29

Now did the fact that I was an analyst in the space. Play into that? I bet it did. Let's just call out what it was right. Yeah, uh. However yeah, but when a company does something good, goes above and beyond, it's you know, call them out I agree, and also the reason I'm calling them out is because the 2024 models, I can tell you, are incredible.

Speaker 2 15:49

I mean, I had a 2021 and I had, I think, two 2022s and I thought, ok, that's nice, they're giving me 2024s, but there's not going to be a big difference in two years.

Speaker 3 15:59

It's incredible the difference, In particular the audio, the way, the speaker setup is on these, because these are all mounted on walls.

Speaker 2 16:09

Yeah, is is amazing and also interesting now the software, in terms of they're saying they're using ai to really determine how to change the picture quality based on what the content is. Now, I'm probably a nerd when it comes to TVs right, since I have a lot and I'm constantly reviewing them but I could. I could definitely see a difference, yeah, yeah. So thanks to LG for that. Um, that's awesome. I recommend the 2024 models.

Speaker 3 16:39

Hey, you know, while we're this is totally unplanned, but you know, I just came back from the tech Emmys in New York city and, uh, who's, of course, the founder of Vizio was given a Lifetime Achievement Award and it was really great. They did a great job, put a nice tribute together and, you know, his daughter introduced him and you know it was pretty cool, but he's a real funny guy and so he got a plug in for his new 75 inch Speaking of cost reduction, dan, 75 inch Vizio connected television for 800 bucks, 75 inches. And you know, and I happen to have a lot of Vizios in my house, you know, and I buy the upper, you, you know they're kind of their best model. Uh, I, I don't think mine are oleds but, um, maybe they're qled, I don't know, mine are a couple years old now, but you know, it's just phenomenal again for the price point, the quality of the displays. So there's just a lot of innovation.

Speaker 3 17:46

I think on on the display side that, um, yeah, I don't want to say it gets missed, but I think sometimes, you know, we talk about encoding and decoding and compression, formats and codecs, and you know all this stuff which, of course, is super important. But you know, you think about what's going on in these TVs. It's amazing.

Speaker 2 18:05

It is really incredible. You know they have a 75 inch model that's normally priced at $600.

Speaker 3 18:10

Yeah, well, he was, he was really funny how he he like. Well, the guy actually has an incredible sense of humor. I don't know if you've heard him, heard him speak, but he's like you know, he's like, he like woven in like the sales pitch until he like the punchline was like, and it's just 800 bucks at costco, and the whole room just erupts, you know, because it's like that's how he built his business.

Speaker 2 18:33

Of course, it is especially the big box stores yeah, yeah it's had a 75 inch set in the market for a while at uh, six hundred dollars through, I think it was. I think it's mostly walmart the key there is it's 4k and it's uhd. Yeah, but the moment you go up to the $800 model. It's a QLED streaming screen.

Speaker 3 18:52

Yeah, yeah, which makes?

Speaker 2 18:53

it much much nicer.

Speaker 3 18:55

Yeah, yeah, qled is a big difference.

Speaker 2 18:57

But yeah, I mean, that's what TVs have become. Walmart runs a special on a Vizio TV that is an LED model. It's the Class M series.

Speaker 3 19:07

That's right, really nice.

Speaker 2 19:09

Yeah.

Speaker 3 19:10

I have an M. One of mine is an MQ 43 inches, it's $298. It just it's crazy, like you do have to ask how in the world do they make money? Well, of course, they make very, very, very, very little money, but they sell a lot of these.

Speaker 2 19:26

So yeah, very, very, very little money, but they sell a lot of these. So yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 19:31

Yeah, the problem we have with Vizio, though, as we've talked about previously.

Speaker 2 19:33

They aren't selling as many TVs and they're not signing up as many.

Speaker 3 19:38

Yeah, accounts.

Speaker 2 19:39

Yeah, streaming service is a problem and also, now that they're at some point, the deal goes through being acquired by Walmart. Yeah, be interesting how we see that business. Business change yeah, but yeah, tvs it's fascinating what you can see, and also anyone looking for a tv. The week of thanksgiving and that's the whole that's.

Speaker 3 19:58

That's the week to get it.

Speaker 2 19:59

Yeah, yeah, the discount lgo leds at prime week. We're down to a thousand dollars for 55 inch. No 2023 models, I should note. 2024 models were still 1200 bucks, but 2024 models during thanksgiving guaranteed they'll be below a thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 20:16

and now that you, now that you said that the uh 24 oleds are noticeably better, um yeah, maybe I'll have to go to an 85 inch, who knows? Well, that's yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 20:31

That's a couple grand easy.

Speaker 3 20:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Dan, remember when 85 inch was like 15 grand, you know, I mean, you know. So you get one for like two 2,500 bucks. Three grand 85 inch. You know that kind of technology, wow, I mean it's still a lot of money, but for what it is.

Speaker 2 20:51

It's an incredible TV problem I think with you know. An 85 inch model is how many people actually have a room. That is best suited.

Speaker 3 21:01

This is, this is true.

Speaker 2 21:02

You gotta be sitting far enough away.

Speaker 3 21:04

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 21:05

You have to. It's just you're not going to like that otherwise. But, mark, also 83 inch. They don't make an 85 inch but 83 inch OLED right now from LG. Do you know what that costs? I haven't checked With tax, it's about six grand, okay.

Speaker 3 21:23

Well it better. It better be a darn good Black Friday special for me to add one of those to my family room.

Speaker 2 21:30

I bet it gets down to $4,500.

Speaker 3 21:34

Yeah, probably.

Speaker 2 21:35

But the 55-inch you.

Speaker 3 21:37

I won't spend that.

Speaker 2 21:39

All right, let's jump into ESPN. All right Only because there's kind of some interesting news. It's kind of some interesting news. So ESPN's network president, jimmy Patero he was speaking this week at Columbia Columbia has a super interesting conference called the.

Speaker 2 21:55

Columbia University Sports Management Conference and it was the NBA, it was ESPN. But, like chairman or CEOs, the CEO of an NBA Very, very interesting talks. Or CEOs the CEO of an NBA very, very interesting talks. And so he talked a little more about the, the upcoming new ESPN product for next year, which they're calling flagship for now, and really what he's talking about is this is going to be something very different than what he's saying is is what consumers can get now in one app. So, yes, it's going to incorporate all the programming on the ESPN family of networks for sports, but he's saying that the key part of this service is that it's going to integrate tickets gambling merchandise. It's going to have sports betting capabilities which will be powered by ESPN Bet. It's going to have a whole bunch of fantasy data and advanced stats for those that are big into that. So what he's really talking about is he wants to make this a what he's calling a tailored made experience. So they're still targeting getting this out for football season in 2025. So real interesting what this is going to look like.

Speaker 2 23:03

Front Office Sports also reports that the new streaming service is going to offer Disney's current sports streaming service, espn, within the flagship service, the flagship service. Oh, wow, wow. Which would be interesting, because one of the things we don't know is okay, how are they going to bundle all this together when you have multiple espn services? Yeah, that's a good question. How do you do that branding? How do you do go to market? Also, how do you do different tiers? Because sports fans are obviously going to wonder, well, what do I get with what tier espn plus versus this new thing, what's the difference? So, yeah, they're going to wonder, well, what do I get with what tier espn plus versus this new thing, what's the difference? So, yeah, they're going to have to make that simple to figure out but interesting if they keep it within this new flagship service. So we are about uh, let's see if they want to kick this off before football, let's call it september of next year, so figure you know, summer, I'm guessing, is when they're going to launch this next year.

Speaker 2 23:59

So figure you know summer, I'm guessing, is when they're going to launch this next year. I also would not be surprised if they do some sort of small initial rollout somewhere. Yeah, they were very smart. I give Disney a lot of credit for when they rolled out Disney+. They rolled it out first in a foreign country for a short period of time.

Speaker 3 24:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2 24:16

Collected all that feedback before they rolled before they were in the. Us. I don't think they can do that with this ESPN product, since it'll be US-based to start.

Speaker 3 24:24

Yeah yeah, but interesting to see what they do.

Speaker 2 24:33

Yeah. So let's go on to a couple other quick news items here on content, stars and BritBox announced a new partnership and bundle this week. So, via the stars website, consumers can access both of the ott services for one price of 15 a month. So you can save 25 off if you were to subscribe for both of them separately. So interesting now what percentage of users might want both don't know to throw out some numbers here and q1 of 2023. Brit box quoted as saying they had three million subscribers. They haven't given an updated number since then, so let's just say it's even four million subs out of your four million subs, what percentage of them also want to get stars?

Speaker 2 25:15

don't know. Yeah, yeah, but even if we just say it's of them also want to get stars, don't know. Yeah, yeah, but even if we just say it's 25 of them, which is probably a little high, you're talking about a million subs, so great. I think bundles are good, but this isn't moving the needle in any way. Another uk-based, british-based news deal here uh, so there's a company called uh everyone, which is now a new joint venture owned and supported by the BBC ITV, channel four and channel five, so they've announced a deal that allows viewers to watch live and on demand TV for free. Uh, coming to uh Amazon's fire TV operating system.

Speaker 2 25:55

And the service itself was called freely Makes sense Free, yeah, free, yeah, okay, tv freely, I get it. Um, now freely has already been out there. It's already available on tvs made by high sense. To shiba panasonic, they've already announced the deal with tcl, which is coming soon, so now they're adding amazon's fire tv operating system to the mix, so that's cool.

Speaker 2 26:20

A couple other things here mark, I did today post a few more updated low latency, low and ultra low latency slides, basically a chart from vendors in the market fastly dobly and nano cosmos for the. For the last three I put up today. I'd previously put up charts from bitmo and wows and cdn 77 and the reason I've done this is during ibc there was so much talk by vendors and press releases about low and ultra low latency, but I didn't see anyone define it. You know how do they define it because we have no standard in the market, so I put up the first round. I've now put up a second round, also for vendors. Listening, I threw up on LinkedIn hey, vendors, send me your chart and I'll push it out for you. And just to give you an idea of how popular this is, it's incredible within the industry how popular it is. The first post I did, where all I did was put up three graphics from Bitmove and WoWs and CDN77.

Speaker 3 27:17

It already has over 50, impressions yeah, amazing and then.

Speaker 2 27:21

So only three hours ago, I posted the other three from the vendors, and it's already over 6 000 yeah on a friday and what are the.

Speaker 3 27:31

So what are the? You know what are the comments that you're getting is because you and I have have talked about how you know this whole conversation around ultra low latency. Um, everybody's interested, you know, um, but who's going to pay for it?

Speaker 2 27:52

well I wouldn't say everyone's interested. So you know it's interesting in the market because as an industry it's kind of like 4k, right, oh, everything's 4k. It's interesting in the market because as an industry it's kind of like 4K, right, oh, everything's 4K it's going 4K and then it took

Speaker 3 28:02

years for the industry to realize. Oh well, interesting. Maybe that's not the case, and then the Super Bowl isn't 4K.

Speaker 2 28:09

It's 1080p Super Bowl isn't.

Speaker 3 28:11

Upscaled yeah Olympics.

Speaker 2 28:12

Major League Soccer Friday night. Apple isn't Thursday, mm-hmm. Apple isn't, uh um, thursday night football on prime isn't like you get the deal, like it's not important. So, yeah, I think the industry realized, okay, 4k has a limited use case set depending on the region you are in, the type of content. Yeah, now ultra latency has finally gotten to that point where vendors are finally realizing, okay, this isn't something that's going to drive a lot of revenue. There's a very subset use case here and some still want to argue that, even want to argue that online. But look, you can't argue with the customer. And when I had Amazon Prime Video, ba Winston, I had Phil Weiser from Paramount, you know on stage in April on the show.

Speaker 2 28:55

Like I asked them about ultra-low latency, they were very clear and very open of look, we could do it and we could do it more. But there's a big trade-off here and there's certain customers that then will have more problems as a result and it's hard to do and QO it impacts QoS and it's hard to scale. Cdn Like this is from the customer directly. So I think, mark, there's still a lot of interest amongst the industry because people also want to see how vendors are defining it. Yeah, that's the whole point of me putting the slides up, but it's it's one of those things where one of the vendors who gave me the slides even today said you know, I think our company should really start talking about the use cases.

Speaker 1 29:35

Yeah exactly. Don't just say sports.

Speaker 3 29:38

Yeah, yeah, or yeah exactly, don't just say sports, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 29:46

Or or gambling gaming, that's the other one. Oh, it's gaming, yes, and the vast majority of gaming is not delivered via streaming services, it's proprietary technology yeah, yeah, that's absolutely correct Microsoft, sony and others right yeah, it's different there, so I like the idea of vendors start saying, well, listen, this works really well for a particular subset in a region, like I've seen.

Speaker 2 30:03

Some stuff they do with horse racing in dubai makes total sense because they're betting on it. Yeah, but you don't have a big audience either, so it's easier to support. So, yeah, uh, just I'm throwing that out there. Vendors, you still got time to get me your charts. Just email them to me. One chart, very simple, shows how you define low and ultra low latency. Uh, get those to me and I'll promote them. Uh, then finally, mark, let's do vendor news here from jw.

Speaker 2 30:32

So jw player um has announced that they're merging with a company called Connexus. I believe that's the way you pronounce it. I've seen a couple of different pronunciations here, but it's C-O-N-N-A-T-I-X. Yes, so they announced plans to merge into a new company called JWP Connexus. Apparently, though, that name is just a placeholder and there's a rebrand of the company happening.

Speaker 2 31:06

Now. This was first announced. Well, I shouldn't say announced, but this was first talked about. I saw it on Digiday, where, in July, it was reported the companies were holding talks to merge. Now Connexus did have a term sheet out in the market. I can say that without going into further details.

Speaker 2 31:31

Quartz Square Capital Partners, which is a private equity firm that has the controlling stake in Connexus, potentially put money in for this deal. Now the problem here is, um, this is this is odd because jw player is not giving out any details of any kind about the deal, and I get how that makes sense at times that, okay, maybe you want to talk financials, but, um, there's a lot of pieces here that are just odd because we don't really know what the benefit is to either company when we don't know what the financials look like or how much money now is in the bank or was money raised to support this deal? How much money now is in the bank, or was money raised to support this deal? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So what I know in terms of JW's revenue, they were on a run rate in 2023 with about $75 million in revenue, mm-hmm. Now this deal says that they'll have a combined $100 million in revenue, over $100 million Interesting. So that would put Connexus revenue at about $25 million $25.

Speaker 3 32:39

Yeah, yeah, Right, but Conexus calls themselves quote the largest and most innovative video technology company for publishers and advertisers in the world.

Speaker 2 32:57

That doesn't square with $25 million of revenue. No, so I don't know what that'll, what that means. Yeah, um, the whole sort of pr outreach was weird here too, because there were three different companies involved. Yeah, so I asked okay, what's the overlap here in terms of employees? Right, because you could potentially have some employees, um, you know, having to be let go because of this.

Speaker 2 33:16

Yeah yeah for sure, so I was told that they would have about 400 employees, but then CEO Dave Odden did a interview with AdExchanger and he said headcount will end up somewhere between 350 and 400, saying that there will be a small number of people with overlapping skill sets that will be let go across the company Makes sense. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but my point is the messaging on this whole thing was not done very well. Jw raised money as well in terms of its last round to the other.

Speaker 3 33:53

Yeah, how much was that. It was a pretty good trunk $100 million or something.

Speaker 2 33:58

Yeah, it was $100 million, I forget the date when it was. Now Connex, as far as I could find, has only raised $15 million in two rounds. Yeah, which is good. It means they're small, yeah. But what we don't know here is was money put into this deal? And if so, why wouldn't you announce that so that people realize oh hey, you guys merged and now you've got more capital to fund this and also grow the company?

Speaker 3 34:26

I sort of get it, though I was a part of a deal, I won't say which, and it was a few years back. So, and you know, we acquired a company and did a raise around the same time and actually didn't really talk about the raise as much, kind of talk more about the acquisition, you know.

Speaker 2 34:47

But we don't even know if this is an acquisition yeah, we don't know that any money exactly yeah yeah, we're. We're the folks of the private equity firm that own connex. Were they bought out? Don't know, maybe they were just murdered and they were given stock?

Speaker 2 35:00

Exactly, yeah, but my point is why leave all this questionable in the market? I get, if you don't want to give out numbers, but at least say what the deal structure was. Yeah, because in the website page they set up to announce the deal, all they're talking about is how the top 10 streaming services have revenue expected to reach $44 billion this year. Why does that matter? Your customers are not Netflix or Amazon or Apple TV+.

Speaker 3 35:26

That drives me nuts when that's justification. First of all, that is not your TAM. Your TAM is not $44 billion.

Speaker 2 35:35

Right.

Speaker 3 35:38

Anyway, that's my soapboxbox, but it drives me absolutely nuts when that is justification I would have done this completely different.

Speaker 2 35:45

You know, they did say that they have over 2 000 elite blue chip customers, but then they didn't list who any of the customers were. Now, when I reached out, they then said okay, here who are some econotex customers are okay, yeah at least they gave me some names there, but that's not on the page that's available publicly.

Speaker 2 36:05

So I don't know what this deal looks like. And because we don't know what this deal looks like, here's my bottom line is is this deal good or bad? I don't know. People keep asking me Dan, what do you think of the deal? I don't know. I don't know the terms.

Speaker 3 36:17

People keep asking me Dan, what do you think of the deal? I don't know, I don't know the terms, don't know anything about it?

Speaker 2 36:20

And even if you don't put value on the company, did JWP use up X percentage of the cash they had on hand to make this deal? Okay, what does that leave them in the bank? I don't know. Yeah, it's just odd how this was talked about and announced, so hopefully they're going to come out with some more information at some point. I also think it's just telling that they wouldn't get on the phone and talk about the deal anymore. It's like oh, we'll reply to your email, which was pretty cut and paste.

Speaker 2 37:03

The other thing I don't know here is you know they're talking about this whole workflow ad tech combo but then aren't discussing well, how long is it going to take to integrate the two? Is it just going to be one brand? In the meantime? You know, are you still operating them separately? I get that you want to upsell Conatex customers on the workflow tech and the JW player, but there's just so many unknowns here. You know and it's nice that they're saying together, you know they deliver roughly 30 billion video plays. That's nice, but that doesn't tell me anything about your business.

Speaker 2 37:39

Because you could be, delivering 30 billion video plays and losing a ton of money.

Speaker 3 37:44

Yeah, and then 30 billion video plays that largely comes from the advertising platform. I mean, that's what Conatex, you know, is.

Speaker 2 37:52

True, but I don't know if they're still counting the player being used with JW player to deliver.

Speaker 3 37:58

Ah, ah, ah, very, very, very, very, very good. Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good point too. Um, yeah, so well, I think you're, I think you're, you know.

Speaker 3 38:11

your point is that the the listener should take away, is it? You know? There's, unfortunately, it feels like a lot of news in the market that there's not enough detail to even give an assessment of. You know, is it good, is it positive, is it neutral, is it negative? What does it mean? There's just not, there's not enough information and just an announcement of you know, two companies merging or one company buying in another, in and of itself rarely is enough to say, hey, you know, that's, that's a good deal.

Speaker 2 38:45

Well, yeah or it's not. I mean, give me an idea of who your target customer now is for the entity. Yeah, who are they? Like you know I get that. You know JW players tech for you know the ingestion, encoding, monetizing video Context is all about video ad server supply side platform, contextual ad platform Like I get all that. The workflow ad tech combo makes sense. But now who is the target customer you want to sell that to? I don't know, like what's the monthly reoccurring revenue you're targeting?

Speaker 3 39:18

Cause you're not going after a customer at $500 a month.

Speaker 2 39:20

Yeah, so just the whole way it was done was odd. Also, just additional insight you know, press releases were sent out to the media saying, by the way, this is embargoed, you have to hold it to this time. But the CEO had already done an article earlier that morning that was published on ad exchanger as a quote exclusive, with the details of the news. So if the news is already out there from hours ago, why do I have to agree to an embargo? It doesn't make any sense. So the way the whole thing was done three companies involved, it just was it was not a good way to do it.

Speaker 2 39:56

So, you know, I just hoped that you know, going forward, the companies are like, okay, let's, let's put something out here that gives a little bit more information to customers, to analysts, what this is going to be integrated into, how it's going to look, how long it's going to take. Yeah, um, that's, that's really the biggest thing. Um, I would like to see. Yeah, I obviously know too the companies here. They want to invest in ai for the data personalization side, sure, which, if done properly, will allow them to determine that, you know, the best ad load maximizing yield for publishers. I get all that totally makes sense. But what they haven't told us is how they're going to do that, how long it's going to take and what money you have to invest in it.

Speaker 3 40:39

Yeah, that's right. That's really what I want to know.

Speaker 2 40:41

So maybe we'll get something over time, but as of now, I'm not commenting on the deal, as people ask me, like what do I think of it? Cause I just, frankly, don't have enough information. Yeah of it. So that's what we got this week, mark, let's see. So next week we've got Netflix earnings on the 17th, so we'll record a podcast on the 18th. So next week we'll give you everything that comes out of Netflix, if anything. You know some, some quarters. We've got a lot to talk about, others we don't, so we'll see. Then, mark and I'll take a week there as I travel, and then we'll be back with earnings from. We'll discuss cord cutting from verizon yeah, I have microsoft earnings, so, most importantly, their cloud for me. Yeah, well, some uh data for meta from their earnings. We'll also have comcast. That'll give us peacock. That'll give us comcast in terms of cord cutting as well, uh, and then we'll also have fubo, so we'll have some some good earnings. On the next two podcasts, we'll get right back into earnings season.

Speaker 2 41:45

Yeah, that's great, you know it, it will, yes, and then about three weeks, I'll announce the call for speakers for the streaming summit, the NAB show next year, april 2025, again Monday, tuesday, west hall in the lobby. So I'll announce that along with all those sponsorship kits. Now we're going to have a lot more uh, what I'll call networking and meet up things taking place throughout the day, which is really nice. One of the biggest things we've been asked for Also some small, focused invite only breakfast we'll be doing in the mornings in the same location, which is great. So more details to that will be coming. I'm targeting about the first week in November to put all the information up at nabstreamingsummitcom. That's the goal. So that's what we've got this week.

Speaker 2 42:33

Thanks again to IDS. Podcast sponsor for this week integrated-digitalcom. If anyone has any questions, let us know. Mark. Everything we've talked about today I have put up online. It's all up there, some of it just an hour or two ago, but it's all there. So by the time this drops and people are listening, it's all online. You have any questions? Reach out to Mark or I at any time. We appreciate everyone listening every week. Podcast downloads are still going up every single week, which is amazing, mark also, so you know just when these do drop. The number of people who are downloading it within the first four to five hours is really growing. It's kind of surprises me at times.

Speaker 2 43:13

Amazing, you know, I hit publish and then I come back three hours later and I'm like wait, 200 people already, 200 people already listened, they're waiting. That was quick, yeah. So, um, real nice to see. We appreciate the amount of people who reach out, at least, you know, to me, and I know they do market times as well.

Speaker 2 43:32

But you know, keep giving out information, facts, numbers, data analysis, right, super important. So we appreciate everyone's support in the podcast. If you have any questions, reach out to us. Otherwise everyone stay safe and we'll talk to you next week.

Speaker 1 43:48

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 Dan's blog at streamingmediablogcom.