CBS News streaming news service CBSN will incorporate Instagram Stories content into its live-streaming coverage of the presidential and vice presidential debates, CBS said in a news release Friday. CBS said Instagram Stories content from CBSN anchors and CBS News staffers will be part of CBSN's coverage book-ending the debates.

HGTV, Food Network, Travel Channel, DIY Network, Cooking Channel and Great American Country will be on AT&T's DirecTV Now streaming service when it launches later this year (see 1609210048), Scripps Networks said in a news release Thursday, announcing multiyear renewal of the carriage agreement.

Content services provider Vubiquity signed a contract extension with Virgin Media to manage content licensing and digital content supply chain matters for Virgin Media's on-demand video services in the U.K. and Ireland, it said in a news release Wednesday: Vubiquity will continue to license movies from studios for Virgin Media's VOD service Virgin Movie and provide various digital content supply chain services.

Over-the-top now generates $25 billion revenue annually, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) reported Tuesday. Of the more than 500 OTT service providers globally, most are local players competing in a single market, BCG said. The top five global players -- Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Time Warner's HBO and Google's YouTube -- generate about half of the total market revenue and are expected to grow due to advantages like scale in content creation and technology, BCG said. OTT growth is leading to a content boom, BCG said, with 1 billion amateur and professional content creators "adding daily (actually, hourly) to the content mix available through OTT channels." It said the middle tier of entertainment programming "is collapsing" due to content consumption bifurcating between "high production value, must watch shows ... and more modest, traditional professional, pro-am or even amateur productions." Live sports remains one area for TV channels to attract major audiences, with OTT driving additional growth by creating new monetization routes, BCG said. Traditional networks might start moderating their spending on content as OTT competitive pressures grow, but spending by major OTT players in the U.S. is expected to keep growing.

Recording-industry shipment results for first-half 2016 “illustrate the emergence of paid subscriptions as a primary revenue driver” in the U.S., RIAA said Tuesday in its midyear report: For the first time, paid streaming subscriptions ($1.01 billion) were “virtually on par” with paid downloads ($1.02 billion) as the biggest single format revenue source. That’s because paid album downloads revenue fell 11.4 percent from a year earlier and paid singles downloads decreased 21.9 percent, but paid-subscription revenue soared by 111.7 percent, RIAA said. The total value of shipments in physical formats was $672 million, down 14 percent from first-half 2015, it said. CDs were two-thirds of total physical shipments by value, but were down 16.4 percent in revenue, 11.2 percent in units, from a year earlier, RIAA said.

SiriusXM remains “very focused” on launching an exclusive Howard Stern video service, but “we’re not quite ready to say when we’ll launch it,” CEO Jim Meyer told a Bank of America/Merrill Lynch investment conference Thursday. Of SiriusXM's decision signing Whalerock Industries to the project, Whalerock founder Lloyd Braun, is “a very, very strong and confident producer with a big successful track record of producing video,” Meyer said. Asked if the public should think of the Stern video-service initiative as an initial step for a broader SiriusXM video offering in the future, or just a one-time project, Meyer said that was “a great question and it is one I am not sure of the answer yet.” One thing for sure, however, “we’re not going to be Netflix," he said. "We’re not going to produce 60 channels of video and try to compete with that kind of business,” he said. “The question that we’re focused on today is, do our customers want video -- short form of video or some other form of video -- as part of that audio experience?” Meyer sees SiriusXM “getting in this to keep our churn stable or improve our churn,” he said. “I don’t see it as this burgeoning new big business that we’re going to generate tons more revenue from. We don’t know the answer yet. We’re testing a lot of stuff. We’re out asking customers.” But the company is “going to walk into this, not run into it,” he said.

Pandora replaced Pandora One with Pandora Plus, raising the price of its premium music subscription service to $5 per month from $4, as expected (see 1609120050). The company is keeping its free advertising-supported service and will launch an on-demand service that will compete with Spotify and Apple Music by year-end, it repeated Thursday in an announcement. Existing Pandora One customers' subscriptions will “seamlessly transition” to the higher-priced Pandora Plus service in coming months, said the company in an announcement. For their price hike, Pandora Plus users will get additional song skips and replays per month and a solution for offline listening, which Pandora says “elegantly handles issues with lost connectivity and cellular data usage.” When users lose a signal, Pandora switches to one of users’ top stations “that Pandora knows you love,” said Chris Phillips, chief product officer. Basic service listeners will have more control over their advertising and listening experience, being able to skip more songs and replay songs by opting into a video ad, Pandora said. The new features will kick in next year for Pandora customers in Australia and New Zealand, it said.

Pandora and Warner Music Group reached a direct licensing agreement Thursday covering WMG's full music catalog. "With this agreement, we're on a path to launch the world's most personal and complete music experience that our listeners will love," said Pandora CEO Tim Westergren in a news release. Two days earlier, the company signed deals with other music labels (see 1609130048). That paved the way for its subscription plan announced Thursday (see 1609150046).

HBO and Cinemax will become part of the lineup on Sony's PlayStation Vue streaming service, and HBO's HBO Now direct-to-consumer service will be integrated into Sony's PS3 and PS4 game consoles, PlayStation Vue head Dwayne Benefield said in a blog post Thursday. It said the Vue arrangement is the first time Cinemax and HBO live programming will be available as stand-alone channel offerings instead of as part of a bundle. Vue customers will be able to subscribe to them as stand-alone channels for $15 a month each or add them to an existing Vue plan.

Google Fiber's expansion in North Carolina may show the internet company isn't exiting the ISP business, as some speculate, Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche said in a research note Tuesday night. Google Fiber tweeted Tuesday that its service is coming to Morrisville and the state’s Triangle region, which includes Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Durham and Cary. Recent reports that Google has frozen expansion while considering wireless technologies (see 1609070026) may be more of a “course correction” than abandonment of the company’s fiber strategy, Fritzsche said. Google may use wireless for the last mile, she wrote. “But even if wireless is used for this last 200 feet or so, this essentially means that the fiber to the base station -- from which the wireless signal is carried -- needs to be that much more durable/robust. Put another way, fiber should still be very much part of the Google Fiber plan -- even with a wireless solution at the last mile.” Google didn’t comment Wednesday.