Roku is adding a “premium subscriptions” option to the Roku Channel, enabling viewers to watch either free ad-supported content or paid premium programs through a single interface, said the company Wednesday. Subscriptions will be available from more than 25 content providers, including Epix, Showtime and Starz, through a single monthly bill and “simple account management,” it said. Customers will be able to start a free trial or subscribe to new premium programs “with one click using their existing Roku account information once they visit the subscription page,” it said. A newly updated Roku mobile app for iOS and Android will soon enable users to watch the Roku Channel on their smartphones or tablets, it said: “Users will be able to start a video on a Roku player or Roku TV and pick up from where they left off while on the go.” Roku plans a “phased rollout” of the premium subscriptions feature starting in late January, around the same time the updated app becomes available, it said.

Expect 2019 to bring accelerated MVPD subscriber losses, deeper rather than broader subscription VOD adoption, the initial big launch of Disney+ to quickly taper off and the first vMVPD service shutdown, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Tuesday. He said with Disney and Time Warner increasingly focused on direct-to-consumer distribution instead of pay-TV providers, they'll have even less motivation to rein in pricing demand of pay TV. He said the Disney streaming service will undoubtedly get big adoption when it rolls out but lack of depth in its catalog will mean usage substantially below competitors. He said vMVPDs FuboTV and PlayStation Vue could be most vulnerable this year, given escalating channel license fees. Fubo emailed Wednesday that 2018 was its biggest year, surpassing a $100 million annual run rate, closing a $75 million fundraising round and more than doubling subscribers. "We were also the first vMVPD to expand outside of North America with the launch of fuboTV in Spain, and are better positioned than our competitors to bring fubo to even more markets in 2019," it said. Disney and PlayStation didn't comment.

As recently as three years ago, streaming was only 25 percent of Warner Music Group’s recorded music revenue, but grew to more than 50 percent of sales in the year ended Sept. 30, said CEO Steve Cooper on an earnings call Thursday. Warner’s streaming revenue is now nearly three times that of physical music, he said. “We remain very focused on ways to turbocharge the industry’s recent growth period,” said Cooper. “Subscription streaming now has a firm economic foundation,” with more than 200 million “paying customers” globally, he said. There’s still “plenty of room for long-term growth” in “established and emerging markets” because the 200 million is only 3 percent of the world’s population, he said. Cooper does think It’s conceivable that streaming will reach “something akin to saturation” in the next five to 10 years in developed countries, he said. Though subscription growth in less affluent emerging markets will be more open-ended, revenue growth in those regions will be slower due to lower average revenue among active users, he said.

CBSN New York debuted Thursday, the first of several planned advertising-supported, direct-to-consumer local news services in major markets where CBS owns and operates stations (see 1811010064). CBSN Los Angeles is due next in early 2019, said the network.

Classic film subscription VOD services struggle to find an online audience, and the best route might be through bundles, nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon blogged Monday. The failures of FilmStruck and Fandor point to challenges for spring launch of The Criterion Channel SVOD service, he said. Criterion also could be a test of the bundling approach, because alongside its stand-alone Criterion Channel, its film content will be available in WarnerMedia's service to debut in Q4 2019, the analyst said. Criterion didn't comment.

Among those streaming video subscribers, Netflix is most popular, with 89 percent getting it, though 75 percent of those subscribe to other services in addition, Lab42 Research said Monday. It said streaming video consumers subscribe to an average of 2.5 video services. Among those who subscribe to just one video, 25 percent subscribe to Netflix, making it the most popular, while next is Amazon Prime Video, with 6 percent. The researcher said Netflix has the highest renewal rate, at 93 percent, with Amazon Prime Video next at 75 percent and Hulu at 64 percent. It said Netflix's renewal rate benefits from "its hyper-customized content and suggestions," and investment in original content. Results come from an October survey of 500 U.S. consumers.

Taking no position on Charter Communications' petition for effective competition finding in Hawaii and Massachusetts based on existence of DirecTV Now streaming service (see 1809170020), AT&T in an FCC docket 18-283 posting Friday said its DirecTV subsidiary isn't an MVPD as defined by Section 602 of the Communications Act since it doesn't provide a transmission path to subscribers. It said two of the three Cable Act tests for an effective competition finding require cable operators show competition in their franchise areas from MVPDs, and the LEC test in the act doesn't specifically require the LEC or its affiliate be an MVPD. It said courts have long followed statutory interpretation principles that say if language is included in one section of a statute but not another, that exclusion is presumed to be intentional. AT&T said Congress also didn't require the LEC or its affiliate to video programming "channels" as part of the LEC test, only video programing services.

AT&T’s focus on shareholder dividends stands in the way of ambitions to build a scaled direct-to-consumer business (see 1810100038) to rival Netflix, BTIG's Walter Piecyk wrote investors Wednesday evening. Thursday, the company didn't comment. Piecyk cited AT&T’s discussion of its DTC content strategy at an investor meeting -- to forgo WarnerMedia licensing revenue in favor of exclusive content -- and then its course reversal Monday to re-license Friends to Netflix for $100 million. “We wonder why investors should expect AT&T to show any resolve in future content decisions given the size of Netflix and Amazon’s checkbook and the likely entrance of Apple and Disney into the DTC market,” said Piecyk. The Time Warner acquisition was pitched to investors as an opportunity to expand the market for WarnerMedia content by leveraging AT&T’s wireless and advertising capabilities, said the analyst. Piecyk quoted BTIG's Richard Greenfield in October: “Content like Friends is likely to disappear from Netflix in 2019 as WarnerMedia launches its own SVOD service.” A Twitter panic set in over the weekend as fans reacted to news on the Friends Twitter page that the popular syndicated show was leaving Jan. 1. Calm was restored with a screen grab of the Ross character tweeting Monday: “The Holiday Armadillo has granted your wish: ‘Friends’ will still be there for you in the US throughout 2019.” BTIG questioned how investors should think about losing high-profile syndicated content as more content creators launch their own subscription VOD services and how actors in those syndicated shows will feel about “their content reaching a fraction of the subscribers they currently do on Netflix.”

If Disney is “successful” with its direct-to-consumer streaming service launching in late 2019, it won’t be to the “detriment” of Netflix, Ted Sarandos, Netflix chief content officer, told a UBS investors conference Monday. “There's plenty of room in this business for other players to be successful.” Sarandos doubts a live-sports offering, like that of ESPN Plus, would be conducive to Netflix, he said. “On-demand” is part of the Netflix “core proposition,” he said. With live sports, on-demand “adds almost no value to it,” he said. “People want to watch sports now. They want to know who won.” Should live sports ultimately become “the next best place to spend $10 billion, I would look at it,” said Sarandos. “Relative to the business today and how we’re growing around the world, professional, scripted and unscripted programming is the best place to spend that money.”

Apple Music will be available to Amazon Echo owners beginning Dec. 17, blogged Amazon Friday. Echo owners with Apple music subscriptions will be able to ask Alexa to stream radio stations based on genre and by songs, album and artist, it said. Music is one of the most popular features on Alexa, said Dave Limp, senior vice president-Amazon Devices, and the company launched a music skill application programming interface in October. Other music services available to Echo users are Amazon’s free and subscription-based services, Spotify's premium service, iHeartRadio and TuneIn. The Amazon-Apple relationship adds more spice to an increasingly competitive space for voice-enabled speakers. In its first annual report Thursday, wireless multiroom music leader Sonos named Amazon, Apple and Google as competitors (see 1811290041), and referenced their larger financial, technical and marketing resources. “Our current and potential competitors have established, or may establish, cooperative relationships among themselves or with third parties in order to increase the abilities of their products to address the needs of our prospective customers, and other companies may enter our markets by acquiring or entering into strategic relationships with our competitors,” it said. The post didn't say whether Amazon Music will be available on Apple's HomePod. An Amazon spokeswoman emailed us the company can't speculate on the future; Apple didn't respond to questions.