The Bulletin Edition 6
From The Desk of
Post-election period, the dust seems to have settled somewhat, although I wonder what the news outlets will have to focus on apart from probably continuing a well-earned rest, at least until January 20th 2021.
With sports still nowhere near what it was pre-pandemic, the winter season of television viewing looks a little bleak for traditional media companies. Even though traditional broadcasters saw record viewing during the election, the overall numbers were still down compared to previous elections and with sports on pause, many traditional TV viewers have altered their viewing habits and found solitude in other streaming platforms and entertainment pastimes such as gaming. Only time will tell if the loyal sports fan with their trusty cable package will eventually decide to cut the cord or hang on a bit longer with the hope the games come back to how they were before.
Last Sunday, after publishing edition 5 of The Bulletin and wrapping myself up in a few layers before heading outside into cold air, the podcast I was listening to reminded me that season four of The Crown was now on Netflix.
There is a rumour that Netflix has had season four of the Crown in the bag for some time now, however, they wait until the optimal time to release the season to existing and hopefully new subscribers. A number of factors go into the mix, the viewing data and habits of subscribers watching the previous three seasons, the amount of chatter in the press, world news and developments (such as the pandemic) and seasonal cycles (more subscribers stay inside during winter)
However, there is one more factor. That subscribers are still quite happy to keep paying the monthly subscription fee, even if they watch nothing else on Netflix, simply because the next season will be eventually be available to watch. A London based friend of mine said that he initially only subscribed to Netflix to watch House of Cards but then afterwards decided to continue paying and now watches Netflix as part of his overall entertainment routine.
This is quite interesting as data came out this week from The Conquering Content report, conducted in October 2020, that out of 1,604 U.S. broadband consumers surveyed, a third of them said they signed up to a particular streaming service just to watch a single, exclusive show, most likely on Netflix, followed by Hulu and Disney+ and then 74% of them decided to keep the subscription after the show had ended.
I must be one of these subscribers as I haven’t watched anything on Netflix for a while and regarding The Crown, I have restarted season one so many times and still haven’t managed to catch up. So here we are with season four out and I need to go back to re-watch season one to remember where we are in the historical storyline. I’m hoping the folks at Netflix don’t get impatient with this one subscriber who seems to have difficulty in getting past season one. They might just pull the plug!
As ever, thank you all for your support and words of encouragement and I wish you all the success for your coming week [C]
The Weekly Dispatch
How a lack of global scale could kill off traditional media companies
The rise of streaming services in 2020 has always been put down to a battle of streaming versus cable, yet the dividing line between both these competitors isn’t quite as simple. As streaming services and platforms such as Netflix, Disney, Roku and Amazon Fire TV expand their distribution globally, we still compare their growth as disrupting local national cable and media companies such as Comcast in the U.S or Sky in the UK. Cord cutters are leaving national cable TV companies and moving over to global streaming companies, so what does this say about the future of local TV stations and local news outlets if consumers are signing up to globally focused platforms?
A regional or national cable company can only sign up a maximum number of customers, simply based on regional or national household numbers. Then what? How do you increase your revenue beyond that while reducing your costs? You can’t, unless you continually increase your pricing while being stuck with the catch 22 situation of having to then continually increase the value to your subscribers (which then costs more money)
This week, billionaire and Liberty Media Chairman John Malone told investors that traditional U.S. based TV providers face a long arduous and uphill battle against global streaming platforms such as Amazon and Apple, who provide “extremely high-quality services while meeting consumer needs on a global scale.”
The fact that the new streaming platforms can expand worldwide, unlike traditional U.S TV providers that are solely tethered to the U.S. market, means that they will be hard-pressed to compete in the long run.
"It's all about scale. Entertainment programming has gone global. Charter or Comcast, with a 30 percent footprint in the U.S, and maybe a 60 percent market share in that footprint, represent a very small slice of global scale,"
"So players that are putting out platforms that have global footprints and are achieving full scale, their economics is going to be dominant. It's very difficult for a cable company that's limited to a subset of a national footprint to have enough scale to play in global programming and global content," he argued.
"Once you get multi-nations, or global, it's difficult for a cable distributor to have enough reach to control the market and make program creation and ownership economically viable,"
Local and regional news and sports do have opportunities to expand however if the global streaming platforms continue to hoard subscribers, it will be tough for local or national offerings to fight for some space in an already crowded environment of trying to capture as much of the viewers screen time as possible. Could we see a future where every channel or platform you watch, even if it is a localized version, is from a global brand watched by billions in every country around the world?
Netflix explores TikTok verticals
This week some Netflix adult users in the U.K., the U.S and other selected markets gained access in beta mode to a new feature that allowed them to watch and interact with certain Netflix content in vertical mode.
“Fast Laughs,” is the company’s latest experiment that offers a TikTok styled swipe through feed of short form comedy clips from the Netflix catalogue of both licensed and original programming. The new beta feature also has engagement options along the side. It is not clear if this experiment would be rolled out to a wider audience or if the streaming company is trying to pull users away from TikTok and other social platforms. However, we all hope that for the sake of all our sanity, Netflix isn’t trying to copy Quibi.
The Playstation 5 is out of the box
Sony launched the long-awaited PlayStation 5 this week, although not for some unfortunate buyers who were caught recoiling in dismay as their packages contained bags of sugar or an air fryer (which seemed to be an Amazon UK issue) Either the retailer made a mistake or more likely there were some unscrupulous goings-on around the most hyped and anticipated electronics launch in a long time. Sony even teamed up with the London Underground to give the traditional Tube signs and maps a PS5 feel as part of a global marketing campaign around launch day.
For those of us who are familiar with the mobile phone market, it seems like a new iPhone is released every year, yet for gaming consoles, a new model launch is a much, much rarer occurrence. To put this into context, Sony announced last October that the PS5 would be ready to ship at the end of 2020, however the previous model, the PS4 was released in November 2013, seven years ago to almost the day of the new PS5 release.
In the realms of the iPhone or the new Android device, seven years is a lifetime but for the gaming industry, it’s pretty much the norm considering how complex building a gaming console is. The design, engineering, research and testing is on a completely different scale to that of most other consumer electronics, with the games themselves also taking up to 4 years to finish.
The interesting part of such a large gap between the PS4 and the PS5 is that the PS4 wasn’t quite ready to be a “home entertainment hub” back in 2013, as it only had a few non-gaming apps and a Blu-ray player and SVOD and other streaming platforms were still very much in their infancy. Fast forward to 2020 and the OTT market has taken off and now Sony (and Microsoft with their new Xbox) has a big opportunity to really make gaming consoles more of a family entertainment hub as opposed to just a device you use for gaming. Tubi has already announced their AVOD service will be front and centre on the new PS5 and recent data shows that gaming consoles are being used more and more for streaming video. With the rise of not only OTT streaming video services but community driven games like Fortnite (that contain movies and live concerts) it might be a tough sell to drag away an entire new generation of gamers from their consoles that can do everything and onto individual devices such as Roku and Apple TV.
On Point
15% - percentage reduction of Apple app commission for new developers with less than $1 million in revenue (Apple)
17 million - number of households in the UK with SVOD subscriptions (BARB)
20% - percentage that mobile devices account for total video consumption (Parks Associates)
6 - number of episodes ordered by HBO Max for a new docu-series about the singer Nicki Minaj (Variety)
50% - the percentage of Disney Plus’ total subscriber base that will be in the U.S. or India by 2025 (Digital TV Research)
36 million - number of cars that will ship with Android infotainment systems by 2030 (ABI Research)
50% - percentage of programmatic OTT and CTV advertising that goes to Roku devices (Pixalate)
35 million - number of people who watched Lil Nas X‘s recent in-game performance in Roblox, making it one of the most viewed concerts of all time (Roblox)
67% - percentage of original shows that are renewed for further seasons on Netflix (Netflix)
$17 - cost of an entry-level Roku stick device during Black Friday as a Walmart Exclusive (Walmart)
38% - percentage of 4K TV ownership in Europe (Omdia)
Diversion
As always this part of The Bulletin is the wild card of each issue and this week, as the holiday season seems to have been sprung upon us, I thought this feisty and creatively brilliant campaign from Burberry would go down a treat when so many other retailers and consumer brands are tip-toeing around their Holiday messages and dithering about with “we all know how hard it is at this current time.” Sometimes you just need a well thought out, solid and memorable campaign to get your message across.
Productivity
I was having a discussion with a London based friend yesterday and remarked on how productive I am when I plan out and write this weekly Bulletin. I said it was quite incredible how much house cleaning gets done, how the laundry is folded, the fridge is reorganized, budgets are balanced and many more hours are put on the vacuum cleaner. In other words, it’s productive in the sense that I occasionally avoid the task in front of me.
We all put this down to “procrastinating,” but what does that even mean, apart from simply avoiding what you know you should be doing? It seems this involuntary process of procrastination, which seems to mostly affect people during tax filing season, Is more complex than we think. Sam Kemis-Zapier, writing for Fast Company, breaks down this niggling trait and how to push through it.
One To Read
This recommended read started out as being an odd choice especially considering many of us are now working from home (and perhaps see ourselves as WFH experts already) however, as I started to dig into the pages, I realized that this 2013 published guide is a vision into what working and “the office” will become, not what it currently is.
Having to leave your office back in March due to government restrictions, hastily put together a home office, homeschool your children (also online) not being able to take your laptop to the local coffee shop or coworking space, is not working from home. Many companies are already struggling to understand how to convert an office culture and environment outwards to employees who are now at home and only accessible via digital means. Those office ping pong tables and water cooler chit chats almost seem like the old world.
Authors Jason Fried and David Heinemeier (who are also the founders of 37Signals, the company behind the project management service Basecamp) cover every aspect of working remotely, but also onboarding and managing remote employees. Incidentally, 37Signals only just went 100% remote in September of this year, after deciding not to renew their Chicago office lease (where only a small percentage of the staff worked)
This book should be your guide to working from 2021 and beyond.
Visual Insight
And Finally
Spotify puts a foot in it
After reading that a company called Neatsy AI has launched a new app that aims to help consumers choose the correct sneaker shoe size and then help retailers and sportswear companies reduce the number of shoe returns due to incorrect sizing, Spotify announced this week that they have teamed up with Reebok to promote the sportswear company’s footwear collaboration with rapper Cardi B.
The “B Unbelievable” experience in Spotify’s desktop app, lets users make their own 40-second mixes of not only the artist’s music but also many of Cardi B’s well-known catchphrases.
Alexa Routines take us into the future
If it wasn’t enough to hear your partner or your neighbour yelling at “Alexa” for various instructions and interactions, Amazon has announced that it will be extending the Alexa command framework out to Amazon Fire TV with the user being able to create routines or “bundles” around various schedules and activities. The groups of commands can then be executed together with one voice command.
To set the stage for this concept, according to a survey, 75% of respondents say they pause their content at least once a night to grab a snack from the kitchen and 32% say they fall asleep while watching a TV show or a movie.
For those of you who really want to have a unique command such as “Alexa I’m hungry” and then your TV automatically pauses, the kitchen light automatically turns on and perhaps the kettle boils automatically, you can learn more about Alexa Routines here
This concludes this week’s edition of The Bulletin. If you would like further details on anything mentioned or have questions or suggestions that you would like to discuss on email or to schedule a call, please drop us a note.
Cheers and thank you for your support and we wish you all the success for your coming week.