The consortium includes Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc., Cablevision Systems Corp., Bright House Networks LLC and Cox Communications Inc. Consumers will be able to access more than 50,000 Wi-Fi hot spots in the New York area, Los Angeles, Tampa, Orlando and Philadelphia. Most of the operators offer the service only as a perk to current broadband subscribers — but Time Warner Cable has offered a pay-as-you-go option for non-customers as well.

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Eventually they settle, and you, the pay-TV customer, ends up paying more.

And that’s what’s happening in the latest dustup between Dish Networks, the satellite TV service, and AMC Networks, the programmers now best known as the guys who bring you “Mad Men,” “The Walking Dead” and “Breaking Bad.”

The slight twist here: For argument’s sake, at least, Dish is saying that because AMC is selling digital versions of those shows to other outlets, its hit shows are worth less to Dish subscribers. “It’s actually devalued,” says Dish chairman Charlie Ergen.

The fact that networks are selling or giving away their stuff online has been a minor but growing issue in carriage fights for a while now. But this is the biggest stink that a cable/pay TV provider has made about it, at least in public.*

Dish first brought this up via a press statement last week, but Ergen went on about it at length today during the Dish earnings call.

It’s worth reading. I’ve cleaned up his comments just a bit for clarity (note that AMC Networks includes multiple channels, including AMC, IFC and Sundance):

We have very, very specific viewer measurement. Much more granular than somebody like Nielsen might have. So we’re able to watch our customer base and — we realize we skew a bit more rural — between [AMC Networks] programming, they have very, very low viewership, outside of a few obviously popular [shows] on AMC.

But those particular channels are also available to our customers on a variety of other sources, like iTunes, Amazon, Netflix and so on.

One of the things that programmers have done is that they’ve devalued their programming content by making it available in many multiple outlets. So, when someone asks for price increases …

We just look at it. Our customers are not really saying “We want to pay more money,” they’re saying, “We want more flexibility in our programming, and we don’t want to pay more.”

And when you look at that from a timing perspective, that’s just a contract that we can change. And we believe that the product is actually devalued. Not that there’s not some good programs, but that they’ve been devalued, because you can get it in multiple ways. And customers are asking for more flexibility, or have more flexibility to get the programming. So it’s not quite the same as something that was exclusive.

So we look at it and say, “This is a good opportunity to make a good business judgment call.” And obviously there’s a price where an [AMC Networks] product makes sense. We just don’t think that’s where we are today.

First things first: Obviously it makes the most sense to dump all of this into the “posturing” bucket, and treat it accordingly. The easy money here is to bet that, yet again, Dish and AMC will strike a deal, which Ergen, at the end of his remarks, explicitly says is on the table.

That said, a couple of points:

• Most of the big TV programmers seem to agree with Ergen’s point when it comes to free repeats of recent shows. Which is why they have been taking stuff that they’ve been giving away via outlets like Hulu, and either pulling them off the Web entirely, or requiring that customers “authenticate” — prove that they’re paying for cable or satellite TV —  in order to see them without delay. Note that Dish was the first pay-TV service to participate in the Fox authentication plan last summer. (Fox is owned by News Corp., as is this Web site.)
• TV programmers don’t seem to think that iTunes’ and Amazon’s a la carte sales of shows that aired the night before are devaluing their product. Because they’re still selling them, and by all accounts there doesn’t seem to be a ton of volume for those episodes. If there was, advertisers would squawk long before pay-TV providers would.
• The really touchy subject here is what happens to prior-season episodes of AMC hits like “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” on Netflix. Netflix has been arguing that these episodes are big draws for its customers, and that this is good for networks like AMC, because people discover the old shows on Netflix and then watch the new ones as they air. There is some evidence for this, too.
• But there is also evidence that Netflix repeats hurt some cable programming — like kids’ shows — too. And that leads to speculation that Viacom and Disney will pull back their shows from the service or raise prices when their contracts expire — even though Netflix is already paying big dollars for them. Netflix will have its hands on “Mad Men” and other AMC shows for at least a couple of years more. But it will be interesting to see what Dish’s complaint means for the renegotiations.

*There is also a wrinkle involving a lawsuit between Dish and a former AMC subsidiary, but that’s par for the course, too. All of these guys sue all of these guys, all the time. No recession, ever, for TV attorneys.

The Philadelphia-based company continued to shed video subscribers but said the rate of subscriber defections slowed for the sixth consecutive quarter to 37,000, a 5 percent improvement.

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Here’s a new trailer for HBO’s upcoming series “The Newsroom,” by famed Hollywood screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.

The series — by the man behind the hit television show “The West Wing” and the Facebook movie “The Social Network” — is set at a cable news channel under siege in the new-media age.

In other words, lots of hand-wringing over blogs and tweeting, along with the drama.

It looks tasty, and Walt Mossberg and I will be asking Sorkin about it at the 10th D: All Things Digital conference at the end of this month, where he will be appearing as a speaker.

Enjoy (I also included another trailer, that starts off the “Newsroom” series):

Add another speaker to the stellar list for the 10th D: All Things Digital conference, which is taking place in a little more than a month: Aaron Sorkin.

For those who have followed the long and award-filled career of the well-known playwright and Hollywood writer, it’s an astonishing litany of success — from “A Few Good Men” to “The West Wing” to “Moneyball” — filled with more unusually clever lines than anyone has ever penned.

But, most famously for tech, Sorkin also wrote the screenplay (and also won an Academy Award) for “The Social Network,” about the rise of Facebook and its unusual co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The film caused a lot of controversy in Silicon Valley over its depiction of Zuckerberg as an evil genius of sorts, of course, but few can argue that it was not a corker of a movie.

We are excited to talk to Sorkin about that experience, as well as his take on the state of entertainment in the digital age. He’s about to debut a new HBO show in June called “The Newsroom,” set behind the scenes at a cable news show. It deals with the massive changes roiling through the media industry and it begins, natch, with a viral video.

Sorkin is also set to make his Broadway debut as a librettist for the upcoming musical “Houdini.” And he’s also working on another new movie, based on a book about the downfall of Sen. John Edwards, which he’ll adapt, produce and direct.

Sorkin will be joined at D10 — which will be held in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., just south of Los Angeles, at the end of May — by a litany of major players in tech and media, including: Apple CEO Tim Cook, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz and many more.

And we still have more speakers to come, but until then, here’s the famous line from “The Social Network” — something about a billion dollars:

The New York-based media company has been discussing the idea on and off for several months, though it hasn’t made a decision. If it does go ahead, such a venture would not launch any time this year, the person said.

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In broad brushstrokes, one key aspect of the deal addresses a problem with Cisco’s set-top box business: Its lower profit margins. Adding high-value software to the mix will boost that unit’s overall profitability, De Beer told me. NDS, which has been private since 2009, is on a run rate to about $1 billion in sales this year. “And it’s a very profitable revenue stream,” he said.

But there’s also some pretty interesting tech in play. NDS specializes in software that creates a unified entertainment experience across several devices. You can watch your shows on the TV, as always, but if you want to switch to your PC or tablet, you can do it with a user-interface environment that’s entirely consistent and customized according to the service provider’s branding and needs. NDS has a software architecture called Snowflake that’s supposedly pretty good and is the basis of the Zon TV service that is being plugged in the ad that can be seen below, which I think is for Portuguese TV.

But there’s another Snowflake interface video that’s worth seeing first. Check out the demo reel (also below) of the user interface for SFR’s Neufbox Evolution, which I think is a streaming Internet media box.

The point, De Beer said, is to get more closely engaged with the service providers, and by those he means the cable, satellite and other TV and entertainment outfits around the world, and offer them white-label software they can build and brand as they see fit, to deliver a consistent experience across any device. “They’ll be able to constantly update and upgrade their experiences,” he said.

Another point: NDS is strong in India and China with the satellite TV outfits, whereas Cisco is strong in North America with the cable companies. “They’re strong where we’re weak, and vice versa,” he told me.

There are a few critical points. ISI analyst Brian Marshall observed that Cisco is using up about 20 percent of its offshore cash balance. Also NDS’s business is pretty highly concentrated. About 70 percent of its revenue comes from 10 customers, and a little less than half comes from the top three: DTV, BSkyB and Sky Italia.

While Marshall sees the opportunity in comprehensive digital media, he thinks the price Cisco is paying is “rich for a company growing sales at less than 10 percent year on year.” And with revenue per employee at $200,000 at NDS — much lower than Cisco’s $750,000 per employee — Marshall wonders how the deal will be accretive to Cisco right away. “We struggle identifying sources of accretion in year one other than headcount reduction.”

NDS STUDIO DESIGN & SFR AWARDED from NDS Design on Vimeo.

ZON online from NDS Design on Vimeo.

Here’s Andy Samberg from last week’s “Saturday Night Live,” trying his very worst to channel Sarah Palin in the absence of Tina Fey. It’s related to HBO’s recent original movie, “Game Change,” about the 2008 presidential campaign. Palin, who was the GOP VP candidate, dismissed the highly rated cable show as “Hollywood lies.”

Whatev, but this is funny:

The Silicon Valley company has for several months been pitching media companies on a plan to create a “virtual cable operator,” which would offer their U.S. TV channels nationwide over the Internet in a bundle similar to subscriptions sold by cable- and satellite-TV operators, according to people familiar with the effort. Intel wouldn’t provide Internet access, which subscribers would obtain separately.

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Day takes the spot vacated by Blip founder Mike Hudack, who left the company last fall. She’s one of several top hires with traditional media credentials that the Web video company has made in recent years.

COO Steve Brookstein, who joined a year ago, spent most of his career at cable providers like Comcast. And sales chief Evan Gotlib came to Blip after stints at Conde Nast, Time Inc. and Disney.

Blip was one of many Web video start-ups created in the wake of YouTube, and it deserves credit simply for sticking around since then. Blip’s co-founders were smart enough not to make it a (would-be) YouTube competitor, and focused instead on helping video creators distribute and sell their stuff on other sites.

By last year, that business was generating around $10 million a year, and Blip now says the clips it distributes generate around 300 million video views a month. Which sounds big, unless you compare it to YouTube, which generates four billion views a day.

Blip doesn’t need to worry about YouTube’s scale, per se, but it does need to pay attention to the video giant’s renewed focus on “professional” content. That means clips from Hollywood talent, but also from the new breed of Web video natives that Blip has made its living helping out.

Last year, YouTube bought onetime Blip rival Next New Networks, specifically so it could increase its outreach to video creators. This year, it upped the ante by leasing out a huge warehouse complex in L.A., where it will provide studio space and advice to video creators. Day has her work cut out for her.

That’s the first time Netflix has handed off its customer billing to a third party. And it’s a significant step for Reed Hastings and company.

For starters, it will make it that much easier for Netflix to sign up more users. But it also sets up a model for a possible Netflix-cable provider deal.

Reuters reported yesterday that Hastings was looking to bundle his service with pay-TV operators, and to deliver movies and TV shows through cable providers’ set-top boxes. But people familiar with his thinking tell me the Apple TV model is a more plausible tie-up: Netflix would be happy to let cable operators take care of billing, but wants to send its video over the Web, just like it always has.

That assumes that the cable guys buy the argument Hastings has been making for some time — that his service isn’t for cord-cutters, but for people who like watching lots of video, and don’t mind paying another $8 for what is essentially another cable channel.

How much would Netflix be willing to pay to let a third party market its service and take on billing duties as well? I don’t know.

But I have a hunch that that it’s less than the 30 percent per month that Apple has previously required from subscription services that want to let users sign up via its iOS devices.

One hint: Though you’ll now be able to sign up for Netflix using Apple TV, you still won’t be able to do that with Apple’s iPhones, iPads and iPods. Those devices will still require you to sign up somewhere else before you can stream video on their screens.

Worth noting that Netflix isn’t the only outside service handing over billing to Apple. Major League Baseball is doing the same thing with its app, and presumably we’ll see more down the line. Curious to see if Hulu Plus joins in.

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The new device will support video in 1080p, and Apple will now allow users to re-download movies they’ve already purchased from iTunes, like they’ve already been able to do with TV shows, via Apple’s iCloud service. No details yet on whether this means all movies from all studios. If I had to bet, I’d guess that some studios may not participate, but I’ll ask around.

Update: A studio executive tells me that Apple does not have all six of the major studios on board. And here’s confirmation from a source with first-hand knowledge: News Corp.’s Fox and Comcast’s Universal aren’t in, because they have preexisting deals with Time Warner’s HBO that give the pay-TV service exclusive “windows.” (News Corp. also owns this Web site.)

That means that if you bought, say, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” from iTunes earlier this year, you won’t be able to re-watch it on Apple TV.

But that should get sorted out eventually, says HBO spokesman Jeff Cusson. “With every technological enhancement, we have always been able to find common ground with our studio partners, and we’re sure that will be the result here.”

The price for the device remains the same: $99. The upgraded boxes will be available next week, says Apple CEO Tim Cook.

RELATED POSTS:

• Verizon, AT&T Get to Duke It Out Over 4G iPad; Sprint, T-Mobile Stuck on Sidelines
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But Google’s Web video giant is also very happy to run good old-fashioned TV shows, if it can get its hands on them.

Here’s a reminder: Nearly 70 videos from Disney’s Disney Channel, many of them full-length episodes, are all free.

The videos have gone up in the last few days, but neither Google or Disney has said much about them. They’re there because of a programming deal the two companies cut last fall.

Coverage of that pact focused on the fact that Disney was going to create original short videos for YouTube, and would also allow YouTube to post a selection of user-generated stuff that incorporated Disney characters, etc.

But the deal also allows YouTube to run full-length shows. They’re even fully embeddable, as you can see below, if you’ve got 22 minutes to catch up on Zack and Cody’s suite life.

I’m not an expert on this flavor of kids’ programming, but I gather these are relatively old clips. But I do know that kids don’t really care about the vintage of their Web videos — they’re generally happy to watch whatever they watch, over and over again.

That’s why kids’ videos are so important to Netflix, and why they’re potentially very important for Google. That long-running, never-ending copyright lawsuit means that YouTube can’t get its hands on all the kids’ stuff that Viacom controls, but the Mouse House has plenty of its own. The fact that Disney distributes its stuff quite widely on the Web doesn’t diminish its value to YouTube boss Salar Kamangar.

This isn’t the first time YouTube has distributed full TV episodes, or even full movies, owned by Big Media, for free. (See more here and here). But it is a good reminder that it is very happy to show more of them, as soon Hollywood is ready to play along.

Nearly three years after Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corp. kicked off a drive to make cable programming available online for cable subscribers, the idea of TV Everywhere remains mired in technical holdups, slow deal-making and disputes over who will control TV customers in the future.

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But that hasn’t happened yet. And it’s possible that even as Web video grows, TV will continue to do just fine.

That’s the thesis of Bernstein analyst Todd Juenger, who made his case to investors earlier this week. Two slides from his presentation sum it up well.

First, he notes that even though eyeballs have moved away from broadcast TV, ad dollars have not (click to enlarge):

Even more important: Though the Web ad business is growing, TV continues to grow, too. And while other old media industries have shrunk, their losses haven’t turned into equivalent gains for the Web (click to enlarge).

But what about consumer spending? After all, Netflix is streaming more than 2 billion of hours of video every three months. That has to cut into TV, right?

Not really, says Juenger, noting that overall TV viewing is still up. Instead, he says, Netflix, iTunes, Amazon et al are eviscerating the DVD business. Important distinction.

And yes, all of this could eventually change, particularly if the digital guys figure out how to break up big cable’s lock on programming. But as we keep pointing out, that’s a very strong lock. It’s not going away anytime soon.

The kings are at it again in the second season of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” — the hit cable show based on the famous series of books by George R.R. Martin.

Also, one queen, who has herself some dragons.

Someone’s definitely going to lose an eye. Also a limb, a head, a heart and, well, you get the idea of this fantastically gory television series.

Enjoy:

Earlier this week, HBO co-Presidents Eric Kessler and Richard Plepler hosted a cocktail party in San Francisco, along with a screening of HBO’s latest original film, “Game Change.”

The idea of the event was to get the Time Warner-owned premium cable channel some much-needed cred among the tech press in Silicon Valley, as well as to talk up its slick and well-done streaming service, HBO Go.

Kessler said that HBO would soon be adding Microsoft’s Xbox 360 to the many connected devices to which HBO Go now distributes the channel’s content. So far, the HBO Go app has been downloaded six million times and is available via cable operators.

Alison Moore, SVP of digital platforms at HBO, talked about that and more in this video interview I did here:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120302/hbo-digital-head-alison-moore-talks-about-hbo-go-and-more-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120224/hey-yahoo-when-you-act-like-a-media-company-i-like-you-i-really-like-you/ http://allthingsd.com/20120224/hey-yahoo-when-you-act-like-a-media-company-i-like-you-i-really-like-you/#comments Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:15:26 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=177642

Last night, I did the unthinkable, and actually drove myself through rush hour traffic in Silicon Valley to go to an event in San Jose.

I did this for three good reasons.

First, it was to see Bill Maher’s “CrazyStupidPolitics: Live From Silicon Valley” show, which was being being broadcast live and exclusively on Yahoo Screen, the Internet giant’s video destination. The event launched the Yahoo Comedy Channel, which will offer premium original video from some top talent for free, underwritten by advertisers.

Second, Maher is really, really funny, and even better in stand-up than on his HBO cable show.

Third, some Yahoos always think I am too mean to the company and don’t focus on what it’s doing right.

To be fair, that’s because it has not been doing much right when it comes to stabilizing leadership, handling its longtime moribund board, and giving non-cat-wrangling direction to its talented pool of much-beleaguered employees.

Thus — with some sort of usually self-inflicted fire drill going on all the time — there is a lot for me to report on, from persistent attrition to declining metrics to the latest bickering with its Asian partners.

Which is why it was a pleasure to see the Maher event and then also watch it online, because it was done by Yahoo with the kind of beautiful ease that it used to roll out all the time from its media properties.

When I say pleasure, it is a major compliment, since making and presenting content on the Web has usually ended in pain. Google-owned YouTube, as successful as it is, still hurts my eyes when I watch it, and has not yet become the kind of environment that big brands would want to live in for a long time.

But, from its very first day, without a lot of fuss and noise, Yahoo has created and distributed some of the very best online content experiences from its undersung media units, whether it was Yahoo Finance or Yahoo Sports or Yahoo News.

While there were some notable misses — there was a strange original news show produced in Web 1.0 that was so bad it was good — Yahoo has always had a strong talent for media distribution, and has the huge audience to aim it at.

What has been a shame is the lessening focus the media side has gotten, despite its success over the many years, and even though many of its channels have long been No. 1 across the Web.

The often short shrift has been largely due to the faux struggle between whether Yahoo was a media company or a technology one. It has been an exhausting and toxic debate within Yahoo over the years, with no clear conclusion.

But here’s the truth: The Maher event showed that what Yahoo can do well is be a high-level, high-quality, highly selective distributor of media of all kinds to millions upon millions of users.

This has been and can still be — if properly organized, staffed and sold — a very good business for Yahoo, which has always treated it like some sideshow, rather than the main one.

I get that, of course — why be in a media business, when the pickings are so good in search, commerce, social … whatever?

Why? Well, because a terrific guide of all sorts of media experiences online is what Yahoo was from its very start, and what it has since tried not to be as definitively.

Having covered Yahoo from its very beginnings, it has been a lot like watching someone you think looks good in one outfit change into one ill-fitting and inappropriate get-up after the next in search of the right image.

But if the company only cared to take a look at how well and seemingly effortlessly it pulled off the Maher event, it would know immediately what it has always done well is what it should always be doing.

The Maher live offering was not fancy and it was not flashy and it did not have all kinds of the latest trends hanging all over it.

It was just good, well done and well worth a watch, whether in person or at home. And it was very, very funny.

It would be nice, then, if Yahoo learned to laugh like this much more often.

Here are some of the clips from Maher’s patter to enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120224/hey-yahoo-when-you-act-like-a-media-company-i-like-you-i-really-like-you/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120222/googles-cable-tv-lineup-a-wishlist/ http://allthingsd.com/20120222/googles-cable-tv-lineup-a-wishlist/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:29:59 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=176491 The cable guys are getting into the Web video business. Now Google is about to get into the cable business. So what will that look like?

Google has asked federal regulators for permission to sell pay TV in Kansas City, where it has been working on a broadband/fiber buildout, and the WSJ thinks it could launch in a couple months.

It would be awesome if Google could use this as an opportunity to break up the cable bundle, and let people buy individual channels instead of big expensive blocks of programming they mostly ignore.

But that’s very unlikely to happen, because the cable programmers love the bundle, and don’t have any incentive to break it up (see: Viacom’s Philippe Dauman and ESPN’s John Skipper last month at Dive Into Media). If Google wants cable TV programming, it’s going to have to play by cable TV’s rules.

So what can Google offer that will make someone switch from Time Warner Cable, which dominates the pay TV business in Kansas City?

Very high-speed Internet access, for starters. And perhaps Larry Page will figure it’s worth his while to offer the service at an extremely low margin, because the whole project is a very expensive test, anyway.

Beyond that, here are some guesses/predictions from Bernstein Research analysts Carlos Kirjner and Craig Moffett, who have a pretty good handle on this stuff. They’re the ones who predicted on Tuesday that Google would file for cable licenses “very soon.” This prognostication comes from that same note:

DVR in the Cloud: “We would expect Google to store (and make available to consumers) the content across all or most TV channels it will provide, making available to users not just the live stream but also past content going back several days or weeks, if not longer. With the addition of good search and discovery and user interface capabilities, this would make DVRs obsolete.”

TV Where You Want It: “We would expect Google to offer access to something like ‘Cloud TV,’ described above, including the live TV stream, across multiple devices, such as computers, tablets and handsets.”

A Programming Guide That Doesn’t Suck: “It is not very hard to imagine a much better user interface than the one currently provided by the MSOs and satellite TV providers,” presumably along the lines of what they’ve been showing off with the revamped Google TV.

Again, the big caveat here is that none of this happens unless the cable programmers play along. And while none of the stuff described above seems truly mind-blowing, some of it — like live mobile streaming — will stil require programmers to give Google capabilities they haven’t given to heavyweights like Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

And even though the cable programmers often tangle with the cable providers, they’re at least comfortable with them in general. Google, though, still scares the bejesus out of lots of traditional media companies, so I’m not sure how many of them will play along.

One pretty good bet: Google’s foray into cable TV won’t include anything from Viacom, since the cable giant is still suing Google in the YouTube copyright case. So no Snooki for Kansas City.

[Shutterstock/Dwight Smith]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120222/googles-cable-tv-lineup-a-wishlist/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120221/comcast-is-launching-a-netflix-competitor/ http://allthingsd.com/20120221/comcast-is-launching-a-netflix-competitor/#comments Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:40:08 +0000 Sam Schechner http://allthingsd.com/?p=176539 Comcast Corp. is taking aim at Netflix Inc., unveiling its own streaming-video service that will give existing Comcast video customers a similar selection of old TV shows and movies over the Web.

The Philadelphia-based cable operator said Tuesday that the new service would be called Xfinity Streampix, and will be bundled with certain tiers of Comcast video service, and available for $4.99 per month to other Comcast video customers. By contrast, Netflix’s streaming-video service costs $7.99 per month.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120221/comcast-is-launching-a-netflix-competitor/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120215/nbc-reruns-on-netflix-boost-comcasts-bottom-line/ http://allthingsd.com/20120215/nbc-reruns-on-netflix-boost-comcasts-bottom-line/#comments Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:08:11 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=174833 Netflix is trying its hand at producing new TV shows, like “Lilyhammer.” But it is spending the vast majority of its ballooning content budget buying old stuff.

A good reminder of that comes from today’s Comcast earnings report, where the cable giant notes that its NBC broadcast unit posted a $305 million bump in licensing fees last year, “primarily the result of a licensing agreement for prior season and library content.”

Comcast doesn’t identify which agreement that was, but people familiar with the company say it was the “multi-year” renewal agreement that Netflix and NBC Universal announced last July. That deal gives Netflix subs access to shows like “The Office” and “Parenthood.”

Comcast generated $55.8 billion in revenue last year, so that $300 million barely qualifies as a drop in a bucket. But it is a profitable drop, since licensing revenue is basically found money with big fat margins.

And given that woeful NBC saw revenue drop 7.1 percent last year to $6.4 billion,* that money is nice to have.

Meanwhile, a quick check on Comcast’s cable business: It lost 17,000 video subscribers in the last quarter, which Comcast executives say is a great result, because it’s the lowest quarterly drop they’ve had in five years. And the company added 336,000 broadband customers.

*Some of that drop is because the network saw a boost from the Olympics in 2010.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120215/nbc-reruns-on-netflix-boost-comcasts-bottom-line/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120214/why-would-you-pay-12-a-month-for-free-tv-aereo-ceo-chet-kanojia-explains/ http://allthingsd.com/20120214/why-would-you-pay-12-a-month-for-free-tv-aereo-ceo-chet-kanojia-explains/#comments Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:49:47 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=174418 If you want to watch TV that comes from one of the broadcast channels, you’ve got options: You can get it for free, using an old-fashioned over-the-air antenna. Or you can pay for it as part of your cable TV package.

And now, if you live in New York City, you can pay Aereo to send it to your laptop or phone for $12 a month.

Aereo debuted today with a press conference, where reporters had lots of questions about the mechanics of the service (which are really interesting, and involve an array of thousands of dime-sized antennas, per the images below) and its legality (also interesting, and also dependent on the idea of each antenna “belonging” to an individual subscriber).

But the core question is why someone would use the service: Assuming it works as advertised, would you use it to supplement your existing TV service, or use it to replace some of the TV you’re already paying for?

The former, for now. And maybe, down the road, you could do the latter.

Today, Aereo makes the most sense as an add-on for TV super-consumers — the ones who have digital cable and HBO and Netflix and Apple TV and want to watch even more stuff on more screens.

Since it’s only delivering broadcast TV, Aereo won’t let you get lots of shows you like. But it will let you get a lot of shows you do like, and it will let you access them in new ways.

For instance: For various odd reasons, the broadcasters haven’t been able to figure out how to serve those people live TV on the go, to their iPads and iPhones, and Aereo will do that.

But Aereo’s ambition is much bigger. IAC CEO Barry Diller, who led a $20 million funding round, says Aereo will eventually be a “wedge” that will force the TV industry to give up the bundle: The idea is that eventually you’ll start by paying Aereo $12 a month for a bunch of TV, and add a series of channels and programs that you like on top of that. In theory, you’ll still end up paying much less than you do now.

CEO Chet Kanojia is slightly more diplomatic: “It’s going to start the process of putting the thought in people’s mind that says ‘I have other options.’”

Alternate scenario: If Aereo isn’t shut down by a legal challenge, it will act as a loud starting gun in the ear of cable TV providers and broadcast networks, prompting them to get their act together.

There’s no reason that, say, a Comcast cable subscriber shouldn’t be able to watch NBC or any other channel they get on their TV, live, on the go, on their iPad. And if Aereo finally convinces the cable and TV guys to make that happen, that will be good for consumers. But maybe not so good for Aereo.

But if you bet against the cable and TV guys getting their act together, you might get very good odds.

Kanojia sat down with me after his press conference to explain what he’s up to. He’s soft-spoken and the IAC lobby was loud, so you may have to turn this up a bit.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120214/why-would-you-pay-12-a-month-for-free-tv-aereo-ceo-chet-kanojia-explains/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120213/roku-plays-nice-with-cable-guys/ http://allthingsd.com/20120213/roku-plays-nice-with-cable-guys/#comments Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:36:38 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=174003 Roku is one of the cord-cutter’s favorite tools, because its devices make it easier to get video on your TV without paying for a cable subscription. But as Roku plans to more than double the current number of apps on its platform, it is putting a particular focus on cable apps — ones that will still require users to keep those cable subscriptions.

Roku’s founder and chief executive officer, Anthony Wood, has said that Roku users can expect to see more cable apps from providers like Comcast, Verizon, and others working on the platform, as the Saratoga, Calif.-based company ups the number of apps running on its devices from 400 to around a thousand by the end of the year.

Currently, content from HBO GO and Epix plays on Roku boxes — provided that the user is paying for and can authenticate the apps through cable services like AT&T U-verse, Charter, Cox, RCN and Verizon FiOS.

And on the cable side, providers like Comcast and Verizon have introduced their own apps, which, as my AllThingsD colleague Peter Kafka has pointed out, allow subscribers to stream channels to their iPads while they’re in the home — and not too far away from that cable box.

You’ve probably heard a lot about cord-cutting in recent years — though the data on this trend is still somewhat contradictory. With cable companies launching streaming apps, and streaming device makers looking to cable content, both sides of the TV-content coin are acknowledging the same thing: We’re not entirely sure yet that cord-cutting is a real phenomenon, there’s evidence that consumers want both cable TV and Internet streaming options, and the industry could stand to experiment a little bit while it all shakes out.

But for Roku, which brought the first Netflix-centric device to the market and has since sold around two and a half million boxes, it also means trying to take a greater stake on the hardware side. Basically, Wood said, his idea is that users will be able to get most if not all of their cable needs through a Roku product.

Roku also recently announced a cordless “streaming stick,” which is meant to enable Internet video streaming on a non-connected television set. Despite predictions that “smart,” Internet-connected TVs are set to take off over the next couple years, Wood is taking a long-term view with the streaming stick, targeting the consumers who initially won’t be looking to buy new smart TVs. He has also said that the stick, a flash-drive-sized device that plugs into the back of a TV set, will allow for easier, regular software updates to TV apps.

“While we can’t necessarily compete with gaming consoles, we see it as less likely that a family would have an Xbox paired with every TV in the house. But they might have a Roku device with every TV in the house,” Wood said, referring to Roku’s relatively low cost structure.

Wood’s assertions arrive as the Federal Communications Commission is considering a rule change that would require consumers that patch into low-tier or basic cable channels to use some sort of cable set-top box to do so, rather than access cable wires directly (and for free). One start-up, Boxee — which makes the video-streaming Boxee Box and just threw its efforts behind a Live TV stick that’s meant to provide users with basic cable channels — has openly opposed the potential change, saying that it would harm innovation in the set-top box space.

It’s unclear if or when this ruling will come to pass, though VentureBeat reports that it could come within a few weeks.

But Roku’s strategy to bring more cable apps aboard its platform is a different tack than the one Boxee is taking, since Boxee has marketed itself explicitly as a cord-cutting tool, whereas Roku is eyeing the idea of a holistic TV-watching solution.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120213/roku-plays-nice-with-cable-guys/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20120131/viacoms-philippe-dauman-says-mob-mentality-doomed-sopa-and-pipa/ http://allthingsd.com/20120131/viacoms-philippe-dauman-says-mob-mentality-doomed-sopa-and-pipa/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:30:48 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=169478 The “mob mentality” and “unfortunate rhetoric” around the protest of SOPA and PIPA earlier this month unnecessarily polarized the copyright debate between the technology and entertainment industries, said Viacom President and CEO Philippe Dauman, speaking today at D: Dive Into Media.

A stickler for detail, Dauman noted that while the House of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act was a focal point of online protests, it was the Protect IP Act, the Senate version of the bill, which would have set the legislative precedent.

“I think the bill that would have emerged would have been very reasonable,” Dauman said.

“It became almost religious dogma that any legislation built around the process would have broken the Internet and created censorship around the world,” Dauman said.

Meanwhile, he argued, many technology companies supported a patent bill last year. “There should be a system where patent and copyright are both protected to make these two industries grow,” Dauman said.

Dauman — or “Philly D,” as Snooki apparently calls him — addressed a number of other topics in an onstage conversation with AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka.

Regarding the hefty payments sports networks get from cable and satellite companies, Dauman said he felt they were due for a reduction.

He said Viacom channels account for 20 percent of all viewing on subscription television, and a greater portion for young viewers. Dauman attested that, according to an unnamed distributor’s set-top box data, half of its audience never turns on sports-only channels, while half of its content costs come from sports.

“I do believe that premium content should command premium value, but there’s a fine line,” Dauman said.

We’ll hear more on that topic from ESPN’s John Skipper at the conference later today.

As for developing internal technology and acquiring tech companies, Dauman said, “We prefer to work with partners.”

“Everyone who’s developing a new form of distribution or technology stops by our office,” he said.

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