Content owners revealed windowing strategies and threats of disruption from Internet-delivered services and platforms during a panel discussion at The Cable Show. The panel included Matt Blank, chairman and CEO of Showtime Networks, Anne Sweeney, president of Disney-ABC Television Group and Josh Sapan, president and CEO of AMC Networks. The panel was moderated by Cynthia Littleton, deputy editor of Variety Magazine.
‘I think we’ve all realized that the consumer has taken control, and they’re not giving it back,’ Sweeney said. ‘So every new technology that comes forward is something that we have to integrate into the way we’re thinking about distributing our content, and our thinking of what happens to our content when it appears on a device or new platform.’
Sapan said AMC has looked at technology as an opportunity to enrich stories, not as a threat. ‘Every piece of technology is a big opportunity,’ Sapan said. ‘Second screen viewing, Webisodes that are incremental to the show; the show after the show, and then most interestingly, what occurs between seasons.’
New platforms for engagement ‘create a particular invitation for stories that go on,’ Sapan said, meaning the technology is actually influencing the content. He said AMC looks to provide fans with opportunities to stay engaged with the content during the off-season.
Disney’s Sweeney pointed to the importance of Twitter for linear TV today. She talked about the show ‘Pretty Little Liars,’ and the ‘outstanding’ relationship it has with Twitter. ‘That show never goes off the air,’ she said. ‘It never goes out of consciousness, because the Twitterverse and our viewers are one of the same.’
Twitter has become something of a requisite piece of the success of a TV show.
Subscription-based VoD has proven instrumental to premium networks and their audiences. Matt Blank of Showtime, talking about ‘Homeland,’ made the argument that binge viewing relates directly to linear viewing. During the second season of ‘Homeland’ he said they had tremendous on-demand viewing of the first season of the show. ‘What we’ve seen universally is higher ratings for the final episode of the show,’ he said.
Sapan said AMC uses OTT SVoD services and other on-demand platforms as a delayed window for content during an off-season to keep viewers caught up with the series. He said AMC will make the previous season of ‘The Walking Dead,’ for example, available a few weeks before the newest season debuts on linear TV. ‘It has been successful in bringing in lots of new people to subsequent seasons,’ he said.
Sweeney, on the other hand, pointed to ad-supported OTT on-demand models in a windowing model. She said, ‘ad-supported video on demand, when fast forward is disabled, is a very positive thing for the economics of television.’
Disney is no stranger to ad-supported OTT services, as it is part owner of Hulu.
Moderator Littleton asked the panel if SVoD services are friends or foes to content owners.
Sapan said he thinks of SVoD as a friend. ‘It’s just a big juice up for the new season that premieres on TV,’ he said. ‘There’s always the specter of friends turning into foes. We’ve always been quite careful in the manner of licensing, we put extended periods of time between what goes on cable TV and what goes onto an SVoD service.’
Sapan was careful not to say OTT once during the panel, instead preferring the term ‘Internet-delivered SVoD.’
Sapan pointed to the slick discovery features that OTT services offer their viewers to help content find eyeballs. He said that the recommendation algorithms OTT services use make them appealing for content owners to be on, and was quick to add that cable TV operators are starting to add those services into their own on-demand platforms as well. He said that’s great because it helps keep it all ‘within the system.’
Let’s not forget that AMC has been the most open to using Netflix as a window to drive audience for its shows ‘Breaking Bad,’ ‘The Killing’ ‘The Walking Dead,’ ‘Mad Men’ and others.
Blank turned downright fiery at the notion that OTT services had knocked the premium networks off the ‘Disruptor’ pedestal.
‘We’re still the disruptors,’ Blank said. ‘The thing that drives me crazy right now, you read in the media everyday: your favorite companies are companies with no revenue and no earnings. You’re second favorite companies are companies that have revenue but no earnings. And then you have Anne, Josh and I running companies that keep growing subscribers, keep growing revenue, keep growing bottom line, and you’re going ‘Eh, you’re being disrupted.’ Disrupt me every day like that.’
Blank said Showtime has only benefitted from more competition. ‘The premium services were in business when there was no AMC, there was no Disney, no ESPN, yet we’ve never had better performance than in this highly competitive environment,’ he said.
Sapan agreed that AMC’s network has largely benefited from the OTT services. ‘Shows have been enabled by this ‘disruption,” he said, reiterating the notion that new technologies and platforms are areas to develop story. ‘It has created a groundswell of people talking about the shows, audiences get bigger, appetites are increasing.’
Pay TV operators throughout The Cable Show were touting their new slick OTT-like interfaces, and personalized recommendation engines were a trendy feature to show off. Representatives from Cox, Comcast, TiVo and recommendation engine company ThinkAnalytics took the stage to discuss how pay TV operators are implementing personalized content recommendations for their subscribers. The panel was moderated by Steve Donohue, editor of FierceCable.
Both TiVo and ThinkAnalytics are veterans of the content recommendation game. Eddie Young, chairman of ThinkAnalytics, was quick to point out that operators in Europe are two to three years ahead of US cable TV companies on this front. ‘Competition is the great driver of innovation,’ he said. In the US, ‘there’s not so much competition between cable TV operators, but it’s coming from the threats of Google, Apple and Netflix,’ Young said.
Jeffery Klugman, EVP and GM of products and revenue at TiVo, said a general rule of recommendations is to remove steps for the user to reach the content he or she wants to watch.
‘We recognize that people go to the TV for one of two primary reasons,’ Klugman
said. The first is that the viewer already knows what to watch. ‘In that case they probably don’t want a whole lot of personalization or recommendations, they want to be able to get the thing that they know that they want really fast,’ Klugman said.
The second case is when the viewer doesn’t know what to watch, and they’re very open to suggestions.
‘You need to very carefully balance those two things,’ Klugman said. ‘We’ve spent an awful lot of time thinking about the balancing of those two things, making sure we’re not frustrating subscribers.’
‘Recommendations should be on the first screen, not to be intrusive but to be helpful,’ Young said. He added that less than 10% of viewers actually know what they want to watch when they sit down in front of the TV, which means content discovery features are quite useful for cable operators.
Charles Herrin, SVP product development and design at Comcast, said operators could walk that balance by offering subscribers the ability to opt-in or opt-out of recommendations.
Len Barlik, EVP of product management and development at Cox, said Cox’s Trio Guide takes a stab at personalized recommendations by offering subscribers individual profiles. In fact, Barlik said, Cox was the first operator to launch individual profiles for its guide. The Trio Guide was first launched in Q4 2012.
Individual user profiles are the best solution ‘ so far ‘ for resolving ‘the SpongeBob problem’ in recommendations. The SpongeBob problem refers to an obstacle for household-based recommendations, which can lead to a recommendation engine suggesting parents watch ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ because their children watched ‘Bob the Builder’ earlier that day.
Cox’s Trio Guide offers up to eight individual profiles per household, which Barlik said can be created in a matter of two remote clicks. ‘Off of that, within 20 key learn actions, the recommendation engine really begins to kick in, off metadata, off genre, off the time of day,’ Barlik said. Cox uses ThinkAnalytics’ recommendation engine. ‘It begins to get a lot smarter, and customers have the opportunity, using those individual profiles, to give likes and dislikes and that make the recommendations even more relevant.’
Barlik said Cox would be introducing a second screen experience to go along with Trio Guide that will help make the user profile even more personal. ‘So the learn actions on the iPad and on the set top box will be integrated into the recommendations,’ Barlik said.
Herrin touted personalization on Comcast’s Xfinity platform, which was launched last year and is now enjoying a national roll-out. He said the company has also been ‘playing’ with personalization and recommendations on its TV Everywhere online portal.
‘You’re going to see us continue to push and push on personalization,’ Herrin said. ‘You have to remember what the user’s done, you have to make it a little bit fun, you have to anticipate, and give them information before they ask for it. And you have to do that in a very balanced way.’
‘You have to be incremental in how you approach each one of the variables,’ he said, meaning balancing DVR, on-demand and linear TV offerings across multiple devices.
The X1 interface has an app section, which Herrin said could house a personal and customized list of apps and widgets for the subscriber. ‘We think the X1 platform is a great canvas for other types of information,’ Herrin said. He mentioned Pandora weather, traffic widgets ‘ but didn’t go so far as to say Netflix or Hulu.