With results showing the movie business recovering from COVID-19 theater closures at a “faster rate than we expected,” Cinemark CEO Mark Zoradi is bullish on the long-term “stability of theatrical exhibition,” he told a Q2 call Thursday. (See materials here). “Theatrical moviegoing provides a premium, out-of-home entertainment experience that people simply love,” he said. The “unique” experience “has not changed even as in-home delivery technologies have advanced,” he said. “A successful theatrical release is complementary and additive to the overall content owner’s revenue pie, and elevates the perceived value of the movie in subsequent release channels.” Zoradi, who’s retiring as CEO at year’s end and staying on the board, believes in feature films' “exclusive theatrical window” because it’s “critically important to the overall media landscape.” Q2 revenue increased 324.3% to $294.7 million, including a 414.7% increase from theatrical admissions to $153.48 million. Global revenue from theatrical admissions was $37,000 in the year-ago quarter.

Though cost concerns drove many from traditional pay TV, cord-cutters spend an average $85 monthly for online pay-TV or stand-alone over-the-top services, reported Parks Associates Thursday. OTT services “are delivering on the promise that they can offer desired video content at a considerably lower price,” said President Elizabeth Parks, “but we find 47% of cord-cutters subscribe to four or more OTT services.” Consumers are creating their own video bundles by stacking OTT services, she said. Cord-cutters spend nearly double monthly on OTT services as cord-nevers, which Parks pegs as a 6 million audience. Cord-nevers are less likely to own streaming video products such as smart TVs and streaming media players, while 58% of cord-cutters own a smart TV, equivalent to the national average.

ViacomCBS ended Q2 with 42 million streaming subscribers worldwide, and its $982 million in streaming revenue nearly doubled from the same quarter a year ago, it reported the company Thursday. It said Paramount+ was the biggest driver of the 6.5 million new streaming subscribers it added. It said Paramount+ will launch in Australia and New Zealand this month and in European markets including the U.K., Germany, Italy and Ireland in 2022 through a partnership with Comcast's Sky. Total sales were $6.6 billion, up $489 million, with $411 million of the gain due to growing advertising revenue. Licensing revenue, at $1.24 billion, fell $701 million, partly reflecting depressed film licensing due to lack of theatrical releases in 2020 and early 2021, it said. ViacomCBS closed up 7.1% to $41.55.

Following its acquisition of clypd, Xandr launched Monetize TV, an audience-based selling platform for advanced TV. Monetize TV’s self-serve technology provides TV sellers with monetization tools and demand enablement; in the future it will add converged video solutions, said the company Wednesday. The platform allows buyers to make audience-based buys with certain premium networks, creating an opportunity to target audiences at scale, it said. Monetize TV's effort to standardize audience-based transactions will help scale the digital TV marketplace, said Xandr’s Mark Mitchell, vice president-business development, TV Platform.

ViacomCBS and Cox Communications signed a multiyear distribution deal keeping the programmer's cable content on the MVPD's channel lineup and covering retransmission consent of CBS stations in Los Angeles, ViacomCBS said Tuesday. This expands Cox subscriber access to ViacomCBS streaming services.

Discovery+ has “strong traction,” with 130% year-over-year revenue growth and 17 million paid direct-to-consumer subscribers globally at the end of Q2, said Discovery CEO David Zaslav on an earnings call Tuesday. “We are really pleased with the cadence and monetization” of discovery+, “notwithstanding the seasonally slower summer period, only exacerbated by the post-COVID reopening,” he said. The company had 13 million discovery+ subscribers in Q1.

Discovery+ subscription streaming will be coming to Vizio SmartCast smart TV viewers by September, said the TV vendor Tuesday. Vizio also said it's bringing the BET+ streaming app to SmartCast TVs beginning Wednesday. Users can access the streaming service for a free, seven-day trial before buying a premium, commercial-free subscription for $9.99 monthly.

Fiscal Q2 revenue in Harmonic’s video segment was up 34% year over year, including 68% growth in streaming software-as-a-service revenue, said CEO Patrick Harshman on a quarterly call Monday. The quarter ended July 2. The scaling of “existing customer usage,” plus new customers, drove the streaming revenue growth, he said. “The streaming market continues to grow,” and “streaming brand awareness” keeps improving, said Harshman. “We're pleased to see continued resurgence in broadband project activity worldwide.” Revenue growth “reflected overall broadcast market resilience and happened with nearly no 5G bandwidth reclamation contribution, as Q2 was between 5G-driven projects," he said. The stock soared 23% Tuesday, closing at $10.63.

Fandango said it’s combining its Vudu and FandangoNow streaming services into a newly updated Vudu-branded offering that will replace FandangoNow as the official movie and TV store on Roku. The new Vudu service will offer more than 200,000 new release and catalog movies and TV shows to rent or buy, it said Tuesday. It claims the largest collection of 4K titles with no subscription required.

Brightcove’s better-than expected Q2 revenue was tempered by disappointing Q3 guidance, Colliers analyst Steven Frankel wrote investors Thursday. Brightcove reported a 7% bump in revenue to $51.5 million Wednesday. It gave Q3 guidance of $50.5 million-$51.5 million, reflecting continued fears of media churn in the second half, said Frankel. Potential for additional churn led the company to lower full-year mid-point revenue guidance by $2 million, he said. Consistent with expectations, the company lost “another” media customer in Q2, which Frankel said wasn’t a competitive loss, noting some of Brightcove’s larger media customers that run on its cloud product “are pivoting to in-house,” do-it-yourself solutions. New and renewed customers in the quarter included Black News Channel and SoftBank. Shares fell 14% Thursday to close at $11.31.