VoD specialist TVN Entertainment and content wholesaler Avail Media, both US operations, are to merge. TVN claims it is the world’s largest VOD company but is really a VoD implementer offering content distribution, asset management, encoding and advertising services.
Avail Media is simply an aggregator. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
A number of investment companies were behind the deal, including Columbia Capital, Novak Biddle Venture Partners, Valhalla Partners, Pioneer Ventures and the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC).
It is pretty odd that the NRTC would make its own direct investment, but it could be a move to help its members get access to content for IPTV and VoD services. This is especially important given that the satellite delivered IP Prime service from SES Americom which is about to be switched off in July. IP Prime was providing content and distribution of that content to around 65 telcos in 31 states. Other rivals to IP Prime are offering replacement services, once again using their own aggregation abilities and delivery of final IP packets via satellite. TVN and Avail could either replace these services or at least augment them on the VoD side.
In fact the NRTC is in a position with this investment to create a kind of US wide super head end and distribute content over existing land based IP networks and to run the service as a kind of content collective for all of its members which would give them access to any kind of program either on an IPTV system or even on a cellular platform.
The resulting company is said to be able to provision, package, protect and delivered content across multiple viewing platforms, in support of multiple business models.