BBC iPlayer is now available on ScreenHits TV in the U.K., Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, said the streaming platform Friday. On-demand programs and live channels from the BBC will appear in the ScreenHits TV interface, and selecting one of the BBC’s programs will take viewers through to watch on BBC iPlayer, it said. ScreenHits TV customers can access the service via desktop PCs, tablets, the iOS app and Amazon Fire TV sticks, it said.
NBCUniversal’s Peacock over-the-top streaming service will launch a Tokyo Olympics destination July 15, said the company Wednesday. Olympic events will be available to stream free on the advertising-supported Peacock tier. USA men’s basketball coverage will be exclusive to Peacock Premium subscribers, it said. We learned that 4K HDR, though on Peacock's road map, won't be part of its Tokyo Olympics coverage. Peacock didn't comment. NBCUniversal will beam the Tokyo Olympics in 4K HDR to its U.S. “distribution partners,” which will “individually choose how to make the content available to their customers,” said the network this month (see 2106110043). Peacock will be available to more viewers when it launches Thursday on Amazon Fire TV and Fire tablets, said NBCUniversal and Amazon Wednesday.
Univision Communications will launch a streaming service in the U.S. and Latin America next year with ad-supported and premium subscription-based options, it said Monday. Pricing will be announced after the Televisa-Univision transaction is completed later this year (see 2104140067). The service will include “more Spanish-language originals than any other streaming service,” the company said. Univision’s current streaming and on-demand services will “be transitioned and unified into one global service and brand.” The free tier will have more than 100 linear channels and a news service; the subscription tier will include more than 6,000 hours of Spanish-language content and more than 30 original productions, it said. See also the personals section of this issue.
Advertising-supported VOD growth could stall due to content fragmentation, and the move toward original programming will worsen this, nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon blogged Sunday. A chief problem is that not all services are available on all devices, the analyst said, citing NBCUniversal's Peacock not being available to Amazon Fire TV users.
The top 10 most watched programs on The Roku Channel May 20-June 3 were Roku Originals, said the streaming platform provider Friday. It added 30 original series to The Roku Channel in late May; in the first two weeks they aired, more than a third of the channel’s users streamed an original series, nine on average, it said. The company expects to release 45 more Roku Originals this year, adding to The Roku Channel’s library of 40,000+ free movies, TV shows and over 190 live linear channels. The Roku Channel was viewed by an estimated 70 million people in the U.S. in Q1, said the company.
Cable TV usage in May with 39% of TV viewing, reported Nielsen. Broadcast had 25% of usage and streaming 26%, led by Netflix (6%), YouTube (6%), Hulu (3%), Amazon Prime Video (2%) and Disney+ (1%). Eight percent of streaming was from other high-bandwidth video sources. The “other” category, with 9% of viewing, includes VOD, gaming, DVDs and streaming through a cable set-top box. Streaming usage across all TV homes climbed to 26% of all time spent on TV. As people begin to "dive back into their pre-pandemic activities," consumers will continue to sample and explore viewing options, said Brian Fuhrer, senior vice president-product strategy. "As production ramps back up, new content will enter the space, driving additional traction."
There’s no ad-supported Disney+ offering in Disney’s future, CEO Bob Chapek told a virtual Credit Suisse investor conference Monday. “We're always reevaluating how we go to market across the world, but we've got no such plans now to do that,” he said: “We're happy with the models that we've got,” but “we won't limit ourselves and say no to anything.” On Chapek’s previously announced intentions to debut new Disney+ content on the service weekly, the plan is to “hit that cadence this year,” he said. “Something new can be a new movie, a new piece of content or something new added to the library,” plus a new season of episodic TV, he said. Chapek wouldn’t comment on when the timing will be right to shift ESPN to an a la carte offering. “We bought flexibility into every new media rights deal that we've done in terms of sports rights,” he said. The “speed of the transition” will depend on how fast “consumer behavior” evolves, he said. “When full content migration to such a platform makes sense, we'll be prepared to do that.”
The top four network broadcast affiliate groups said streaming services should be required to disseminate emergency alert system messages, while a wide range of opponents from NPR to NCTA contend that’s not necessary or practical, in replies filed by Monday’s deadline in docket 15-94. Streaming services “are not ill-equipped to distribute EAS information, and no wholesale reconfiguration of Internet-based programming distribution technology would be needed,” said affiliate groups for Fox, CBS, ABC and NBC. “Requiring streaming services to create this infrastructure and solve these technical challenges would be infeasible in many cases, and costly and unduly burdensome in others, especially when EAS alerts already are delivered widely through traditional broadcast and wireless means,” said NPR. Requiring this would be “technically impracticable” and “produce little, if any, benefit,” said MPA, the Digital Media Association, Digital Content Next and Internet Association. Streaming is too vague a term, said the Information Technology Industry Council. “The difficulty of defining an unbounded term such as 'streaming' makes any effort to bring streaming services into the EAS untenable.” Comtech sided with affiliate groups, saying it's “absolutely imperative” to enable such alerts and conceding it would involve “significant technical challenges.” Instead of new alerting requirements, the FCC should consider convening a multistakeholder working group to study “the alerting ecosystem as a whole” and how to best to reach consumers, said NCTA.
Billie Eilish is the first artist DJ to host Amazon’s new DJ Mode, an on-demand streaming station designed to deliver the “vibrancy and personality of DJ-hosted radio,” said Amazon Thursday. DJ-hosted stations, covering hip-hop, country and pop genres, feature music insights from industry experts, artist drop-ins, and music facts and trivia from Alexa, said Amazon, which promoted the stations via YouTube on its website Thursday. Billie Eilish Takeover premieres June 17 on Prime Video. To begin listening with DJ Mode, Prime members and Amazon Music subscribers in the U.S. can opt in by requesting stations using Alexa on smart speakers, Amazon’s Car Mode or the Amazon Music app.
About 46% of U.S. broadband households subscribe to four or more over-the-top video services, and 82% have at least one, up from 76% in the year-ago quarter, said a Q1 Parks Associates survey. Services are using different growth strategies, including external partnerships, to expand their reach and improve retention, said President Elizabeth Parks Wednesday.