MGM premium network Epix will be available via AT&T's DirecTV May 19 and also will be offered through the DirecTV Now streaming service, under a distribution agreement the two announced Wednesday.

There are only so many "seats" in "this rocket ship" of competitive streaming "taking off in our space,” said CBS Chief Digital Officer Jim Lanzone on a Q1 call Thursday. “There aren't that many people who spend $8 billion plus per year on content and do it as well as we do,” he said. “If we play this right, there's definitely a seat for us in that ship.” The CBS All Access audience averages about 20 years younger than that of CBS linear TV and is split roughly 50-50 between men and women, said Lanzone. Two-thirds choose the “limited commercial option,” the rest go for commercial-free, he said. Churn is “in line with industry norms and we've been happy to see many lapsed users coming back to All Access upon the seasonal return of their favorite content,” he said. “We think of these users as pausing their membership rather than canceling it in the traditional sense, and the data suggests that our investment in content across CBS will be our most effective tool for eliminating or reducing the pause cycle for these users, as well as deepening their engagement.” The company is on pace to reach 25 million streaming subscribers in 2022, said President-acting CEO Joe Ianniello. That "doesn't include subs from our international services where we continue to increase our footprint," he said. Having launched streaming in Canada and Australia, “next up” is expanding services into Latin America and Western Europe, he said. “We're taking our time with international,” Ianniello said. “We're being methodical,” with focus on “making sure that the offering to the consumer is robust,” he said. Content will be “the constraining factor, but we're committed to rolling this out in 200 countries around the world,” he said. With nearly 7.5 billion people living outside the U.S., international is “a huge opportunity for further long-term growth,” said Ianniello, whose contract was just extended through Dec. 31 (see 1904290062).

U.S. home entertainment content spending increased 6.4 percent in Q1 to $6.04 billion, reported the Digital Entertainment Group Tuesday, despite a tough comparison with a year earlier when the Easter holiday fell in March. Easter season is “traditionally a strong sales period,” it said. Subscription streaming was the engine that drove the truck in Q1, rising 20.7 percent to $3.59 billion, it said. Physical media sell-through dropped below the $1 billion mark, falling 22.4 percent to $822.3 million, though Ultra HD Blu-ray player penetration increased 63 percent to 14 million homes. DEG estimates 53.4 million homes in Q1 owned Ultra HD hardware products, a 55 percent increase.

Viacom networks will launch on its Pluto TV free streaming service starting May 1, the programmer said Monday. BET, Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon will feature library content. Viacom is rolling out digital-only series for the service.

News could be the key to a streaming service's attracting and keeping viewers, though it comes with some potential costs, like controversy, said a study Monday from Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. While some experiment with the format, "news is still a dirty word in the streaming universe," it said. Market leader Netflix "is not all-in on news," though news has shown again and again in various media that it's "a successful hook to attract and retain audience," it said.

The “pay video service arena is turbulent to say the least,” said Harmonic CEO Patrick Harshman on a Q1 call Monday evening. “We have several large customers who are in the midst of a variety of M&A activities, all fighting ferociously with each other as well as a whole host of new players.” A “dimension” of that competition involves “quality of service,” he said. “Incumbents” and “new players” are making “significant investments in new streaming capabilities,” he said. Quality is “a big deal,” he said. “Consumers more than ever are expecting high-quality services.” Streaming is an “opportunity-rich area,” he said. “You see some of our customers on the defense and some of them are on the offense.” They have “more flexibility than they've ever had to go to market with in this really rapidly changing environment,” he said.

Slipping DirecTV Now subscriber numbers mean it has a penetration level well below the 15 percent needed to constitute effective competition, Hawaii said in an FCC docket 18-283 posting Monday. Online video distributors, regardless of whether affiliated with LECs, don't have the inherent market power telcos do in communities served by that facilities-based infrastructure, it said, so the FCC should make clear Congress intends for its statutory LEC test to apply just to facilities-based video programming offerings of LECs and deny Charter Communications' petition for determination of effective competition. The Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable, filing in the docket, recapped meetings with aides to all five commissioners at which it said it's not arguing that streaming services can't provide competition to cable, but that DirecTV Now doesn't pass the LEC test for effective competition. It said granting Charter's petition would "provide the elemental framework necessary" to claim all streaming video providers are MVPDs, and broadcasters could put retransmission consent obligations on streaming services and let streamers put nondiscriminatory program access requirements on cable operators. Massachusetts also said the FCC should focus more on the basic cable rates regulation Further NPRM proceeding as a route for easing cable regulatory burdens but without all the regulatory uncertainty. The states have argued against Charter's petition (see 1810260026).

Imax is in discussions with key streaming services for introducing the Imax Enhanced solution it launched last year with DTS (see 1809040055), said CEO Richard Gelfond on a Q1 call. The companies cooperated on a certification and licensing program for home viewing of remastered content on high-end CE products (see 1901080039). Initial focus was on physical media, and the first Blu-ray titles, A Beautiful Planet and Journey to the South Pacific, released in December. At CES, DTS demonstrated Marvel's Spider-Man: Homecoming and Sony's Venom and Alpha on Blu-ray, and a spokesperson said the Sony titles would also be available for streaming. Also at CES, DTS, Imax Enhanced and MediaTek said they're collaborating on an SoC solution incorporating a streaming codec for 4K Imax Enhanced movies for delivery in second half. The DTS:X TV, designed for single- and dual-core TV SoC architectures, is backward-compatible with all DTS-encoded content such as DTS:X and DTS:HD Master Audio Blu-rays, they said. China-based Tencent Video, FandangoNow in the U.S. and Rakuten TV in Europe said they'll begin streaming Imax Enhanced content to certified devices this year, and Privilege 4K in the U.S. is due to begin streaming Imax Enhanced content to select Sony Bravia TVs this year. "Only digital retailers that meet the highest standards for 4K HDR streaming will be authorized to distribute Imax Enhanced content," said the companies. Though content companies' strategies for streaming services are "still developing" and are "relatively young" in development, "announcements are imminent," said Imax Entertainment President Megan Colligan on Friday's call.

Most pay-TV subscribers get 100-plus channels in their video bundles, up from 27 in 1995, with sports-related networks today accounting for about 17 of those, S&P Global Market Intelligence said Friday. It said sports channels were the most expensive of genres, averaging $1.11 per subscriber per month, with costs from $7.46 per sub per month for ESPN to 5-7 cents for Outside TV and Outdoor Channel. It said the NFL Network was the only other national sports network commanding in excess of $1 monthly a sub in 2018. It said sports programming costs as a portion cable average revenue per user was roughly 22.1 percent in 2018, up from 14.1 percent in 2009. S&P said the local sports rights market has seen numerous new entrants, like ESPN Plus, YouTube and FloSports, but their effect on values of local sports rights in the next few years "will be minimal." For regional sports networks, monthly license fees per sub averaged $2.64 in 2018, up 8 percent from 2017 and up 37 percent from 2014, it said.

If Verizon markets YouTube TV at a “meaningful bundled discount,” it could “accelerate subscriber growth” for the streaming video service, which ended 2018 with about 1 million subscribers and raised monthly fees from $35 to $45 to $50 within the past 12 months, BTIG's Richard Greenfield wrote investors Friday. Verizon said Tuesday it's bringing YouTube TV to customers across platforms this year. Greenfield cited Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg saying the provider wants to focus on the network, platform and integration but not invest in a TV platform or content. He touted Verizon’s distribution, network and brand for being able to attract partnerships like Google’s with YouTube TV. “Time will tell how serious Verizon is about marketing YouTube TV,” said Greenfield, but if it does push hard, pay attention, because its marketing muscle could “make a huge dent” in a 5 million subscriber threshold required for Google to impact the overall broadcast-cable ecosystem. He imagined YouTube TV having enough future clout to win rights to something as high-profile as NFL Sunday Ticket, which AT&T/DirecTV owns through 2022. YouTube TV’s recent price hike “gave us pause,” said the analyst, who believes there’s more to Google’s strategy than being “just another distributor of the bloated legacy bundle.” He believes Google finds a way to scale the service to where it can have leverage. YouTube TV provides “one area of consumer data Google is missing today,” said Greenfield. It also gives Google a route to the access TV ad spending, which Greenfield pegged at $70 billion in the U.S.; the ability to mingle YouTube content with linear TV content; and an opportunity to "replace Nielsen’s antiquated measurement standard.”