Asked about last year’s failed Hulu sales effort and expectations he would move on, Kilar said he sees “many winners” among Hulu and competitors like YouTube, Netflix, Amazon and Apple. “Online video and online video advertising are enormous,” he said.

Last year’s aborted sales effort, Kilar said, was “far more public than I would have liked. I’m a private guy.” Is he surprised he’s still at Hulu? “I’m not.”

Will he be leaving Hulu any time soon? Kilar urged watchers to look at his history, which includes two employers — Amazon and Hulu — since graduating school. “I’m not the kind of guy who dabbles in a lot of things,” he said. “Just judge me on my history, and the team on the history.”

As for the economics of Hulu, Kilar noted (as he has before) that the company made $420 million last year, which was 60 percent more than 2010, but less than the company had expected after a “soft” third quarter.

Hulu Plus, which Kilar described as being in “investment mode,” pays content owners more per user per month than any of its competitors, Kilar said. “The dollars going back to content owners on Hulu Plus are extremely generous.”

Kilar downplayed content negotiations with News Corp., NBC and Disney, the large media companies who own significant parts of Hulu. “Keep in mind we have 330 content partners, three of which we have an equity relationship with,” he said. (News Corp. also owns this Web site.)

It’s not even 8 am PT yet here, but we’ve got a full day of speakers at D: Dive Into Media, and first up is Hulu CEO Jason Kilar. I’m sure we’ll hear him talk about the future of Web video, not to mention his own position and that of his company in said future.

Earlier:
8:08 am: We’re getting just a bit of a late start, as SoCal traffic is messing with the schedule just a bit.

8:19 am: I think we are close now. Attendees are grabbing seats.

8:24 am: Looks like you still have some time to catch up on your favorite show on Hulu. But it shouldn’t be too much longer now.

8:27 am: Here he is.

Peter: I’m a little surprised you are here (refers to memo a year ago that a lot of people thought would get Kilar canned).

Are you surprised you are still running Hulu?

Kilar: No, I am not.

You have to be a bit crazy to do this. He notes that the company was initially called Clown Co.

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

8:28 am: What were you thinking when you wrote that memo?

Kilar encourages people to reread the memo. “I think it stands up today.” I actually think that when it comes to bundles, there is tremendous value, but you have to be very careful in how you construct that. Customers vote with their wallets.

8:30 am: Why print the memo?

When you are starting a new business, it’s important to explain yourselves. That was a very important moment for the company.

The entrepreneurial jouney is not a smooth one or an easy one.

8:31 am: Kafka: One of the reasons it was called Clown Co. was the idea that the media companies couldn’t build a successful joint venture, and that the interests of the parents and the company would necessarily diverge.

8:32 am: Kilar: It’s not unique to the history of media. Kilar notes that TV was originally seen as a threat to the movie industry.

It turned out it was the best thing that ever could have happened to content companies. The Internet could be the same way.

8:33 am: Kafka: The broadcast content industry is now getting paid in the form of retransmission fees, and distributing its shows in many forums. Is there the same need for Hulu to exist as there was four years ago?

Kilar: I think there’s more reason for Hulu to exist now than there was four years ago.

8:34 am: Some of the content isn’t there, or is being “windowed.” You have to wait eight days for some shows. Are customers still as happy?

Kilar: There’s actually more content. In addition, we have Hulu Plus (the paid service), which allows customers to get content sooner, and with more content.

Kafka: Is the subscription business a profitable one?

Kilar: Clearly still in investment mode, but a lot of opportunity to make money.

It allows us to pay the content community more per user per month than any other service. “We’re thrilled about that business. It’s a very scalable service. It’s our fastest growing service.”

8:37 am: Kafka: You have to pay for TV, but not for laptop. Isn’t that confusing?

Kilar: Agrees, the distinction might be confusing to our grandkids down the road.

“There’s no doubt there is this transition happening.”

8:38 am: Kafka: How do you think the content owners think about the value Hulu delivers?

If I were in their shoes.

You’ve got this amazingly large business (broadcast TV) that is very robust and very healthy, so you are constantly thinking about that.

At the same time, you can’t be blind to what you are hearing from consumers.

If I were in their shoes, I’d balance the obligation to that existing business, but plant seeds that allow things to bear fruit for the long term.

This is not dissimilar to the introduction of television. People used to go to movie houses three or four times a week to watch “premium content.”

8:44 am: Kafka: What about YouTube and others?

Kilar: There’s going to be many winners in this space. Online video and online advertising space.

Kafka: Why did owners put you on the block then?

Kilar: You should ask News Corp.’s Chase (Carey) this. (Carey is on stage later.)

It’s fair to say the process that happened last year. … We were approached by a company.

Kafka: Yahoo.

Kilar: We never commented on it.

Kafka: Yahoo.

Kilar: It was far more public than I would have liked. I’m a private guy.

Kafka: What do you think happened?

Kilar: Things change … people have different points of view.

It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t salacious.

Kafka: One thing that you heard was that the bids weren’t high enough and/or that the content owners weren’t willing to give a long enough rights deal to make it viable.

Could you ever sell this company or take it public? Can this work as a standalone company?

Kilar: We have 330 content partners, only three of which are investors in the company.

Kafka: You’ve said you are going to spend $500 million in content fees this year. Does that include money to main broadcasters?

Kilar: Yes. Main investment is in existing content, though spending a little on new, exclusive content. Gives them some healthy differentiation.

It’s not the thing, but it is an important thing.

Kafka: Is it important to have a lot of exclusive content?

Kilar: It’s important to have some exclusive content.

8:51 am: Kafka: Folks describe you as “rerun TV.” Are you OK with that?

Kilar: At end of day, we search for Hulu and Hulu Plus and see what consumers say. Kilar reads on Twitter a lot, but doesn’t post much.

8:52 am: Audience Q&A. Hulu said it brought in $420 million last year, but less than it had been on a pace to do.

Kilar: In Q3, specifically, the ad market was very soft. Things rebounded in Q4. “We’re pacing very well. I’m not going to talk about the financials of the business.”

Kilar said it was up 60 percent from the prior year, and ahead of its original plan for 2011, which was for $408 million.

Kafka: Will you stick around?

Kilar: I’ve only done two things. One was Amazon for nine years. The other is Hulu. I’m not the kind of guy that dabbles. I tend to go deep.

Kafka: Do you think you will be here in a year?

Kilar: Just judge me on my history.

Kafka: Very eloquent side step. I appreciate it.

8:55 am: TV everywhere. How does Hulu fit into that?

Kilar: Differentiation is important. When we think about services like TV Everywhere, which has been around as a theory for a while … Hulu Plus is designed to be different from TV Everywhere, which only has four or five episodes.

TV Everywhere is getting better, and will continue to, but Hulu Plus is designed to be different.

8:58 am: Hulu Plus for Apple TV?

Kilar: It’s a juicy question. I don’t have a juicy answer. We don’t talk about our product road map.

Q: Can we expect it in 2012?

Kilar: We don’t talk about our product road map.

That’s where SnagFilms comes in. The start-up has distribution rights to more than 3,000 indie movies, which it shoots out to platforms like Netflix and Hulu. The four-year-old company is best known for the documentaries it puts out, like “Casino Jack,” the story of the disgraced political fundraiser Jack Abramoff; others include “Super Size Me” and “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.”

Now SnagFilms has raised another $7 million, following up a $10 million round from a year ago. Earlier investors like Ted Leonsis, New Enterprise Associates and Comcast have re-upped; new investors include Terry Semel, the former Warner Bros. studio and Yahoo boss.

SnagFilms started out by asking bloggers and other Web site operators to embed its films on their sites for free. It made money by selling ads against the films and sharing revenue with the movie owners.

It still does that, but it has expanded to offer free movies on other platforms, like the iPad and Android tablets. It has also started making its movies available on pay-per-view outlets like Apple, Amazon and Comcast’s video-on-demand channels. CEO Rick Allen says that by the end of the year, revenue from transactions will eclipse the company’s ad dollars.

The interesting question for SnagFilms — and a whole lot of digital video companies right now — is whether there’s a way to get consumers to identify and value what distributors do. If they do, then these guys can build lots of value, as consumers learn to trust them as a good source for small, quirky films the big guys missed.

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/James Steidl)

To recap: Lots of people you know, and lots of people who read sites like this one, think people are already ditching cable TV for some combination of iTunes/Netflix/Hulu and/or pirate sites, etc. But cable providers and cable networks say they don’t see any signs of it.

So onward to today’s numbers from Time Warner Cable, which show the second-biggest cable company in the U.S. losing 129,000 video subscribers — about 1 percent of the 11.9 million base.

If you’re in the “it is totally for real” camp, you can jump on this as proof of your thesis, and that’s what this Business Insider post* does, Grim Reaper art and all.

But in order to get really worked up about Time Warner’s losses, you’d have to ignore contrary data points from other video services that show a boost.

For instance, AT&T and Verizon each added about 200,000 subscribers to their pay-TV offerings in the last quarter. Presumably, many of those 400,000 subscribers were already paying for TV from another provider, so those losses have to show up somewhere.

Time Warner Cable notes that AT&T’s service is available in about 25 percent of Time Warner’s footprint, while Verizon, which it says was “aggressive” about marketing last quarter, is available in about 12 percent of Time Warner’s market.

In any case, until we get numbers from all of the pay TV providers, it’s hard to make any calls about cutting/adding in the last quarter. Comcast, the industry’s biggest provider, won’t report until February 15.

And once we do have all of this quarter’s data, we’re still just going to have this quarter’s data. As we’ve seen over the last year or so, sometimes pay TV user numbers go up, and sometimes they go down. We’ve yet to see a clear trend one way or another.

None of this will soothe some of you folks, who will tell me that you, or your friends, or someone you know has cut the cord and is loving life. That doesn’t mean that’s not the case — just that statistically, it has yet to register.

Earlier this month I tried to make an analogy between cord-cutters and vegans, but I’m not sure I hit the mark. So this time we’ll let Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt make a similar argument, in his own words, via Seeking Alpha:

I think there are — remember, the average TV in America is on for some very large number of hours a day, with 6, 7, 8 hours a day, whatever the latest number is. And this activity you’re talking about is kind of sporadic, watching no specific programs. So most people watch a lot of TV and they like these packages of linear networks. And the services we’re talking about are not, at this point, a substitute for that. Having said that, there are people who don’t watch TV very much and they’re quite satisfied with just being able to watch a few shows now and then. And we all know one of those people and I think that affects our perception of what’s really going on in terms of the mass market.

*Per my disclosure, I not only like the guys over at Business Insider, but I have a vested interest in their success.

But at least as important are the company’s subscriber numbers and guidance, which should give us a much better sense of whether consumers have forgiven/forgotten its missteps of 2011. Netflix has already warned investors that it would lose money through much of 2012, largely because of its international expansion plans.

Q4 Domestic streaming: 22 million subs
Q4 Domestic DVD: 11.17
Q4 International: 1.86 million

Outlook: The company had already warned that it may not turn a profit in 2012, and it is now being more explicit about that, citing expansion costs and diminishing DVD revenue: “We expect modest quarterly losses, as well as losses for the calendar year.

Netflix ended the year with 24.4 million U.S. subscribers. That’s up 25 percent from the previous year, and — crucially — up from the previous quarter’s total of 23.79 million subs. That doesn’t mean its customer base has completely forgiven the company, but at the very least it means it is growing again.

Investors are pleased, and are pushing the stock up 10 percent in after-hours trading.

This is a case where the cheat sheet that Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney provides is particularly useful (click to enlarge).

Here’s a very interesting note on competition from Amazon: Netflix agrees with a New York Post report this morning which says Amazon will offer a standalone video service: “We expect Amazon to continue to offer their video service as a free extra with Prime domestically but also to brand their video subscription offering as a standalone service at a price less than ours.”

Hope to hear more about that from CEO Reed Hastings during the company’s conference call, which starts at 6 pm ET.

The new apps behave similarly to the “read,” “listen” and “watch” Open Graph applications that have already rolled out in the past few months, which include the Washington Post, Spotify and Hulu. So every time your friends read an article or listen to a song, you might now learn about it on Facebook, and possibly even join them in reading or listening at the same time.

Outside developers have been furiously coding other custom actions since September; and recently, many have been waiting on Facebook, so they can make them available to users.

Facebook has invited press to an unveiling event on Wednesday evening in San Francisco — where it will launch the first batch of these apps, sources confirmed.

Facebook did not reply to requests for comment, though it did send us invitations to the event.

This may well be one of Facebook’s last big press conferences before it files to go public and enters a quiet period, during which financial regulations keep it from commenting on its products, business or criticism from competitors and analysts.

The timing of the Wednesday press event aligns with Facebook’s last public guidance on the subject. The company told developers in late December that since its Timeline profile design was being rolled out worldwide, Open Graph Actions would start being approved in January.

Currently, Facebook Timeline is available to users on an opt-in basis. At some point soon — perhaps as early as this week — Facebook will start requiring users to migrate to the new design.

That’s because Open Graph and Timeline go hand in hand; the idea is for each user’s activity across various Web sites and apps, both on and off of Facebook, to be aggregated as a visual living record of his or her life.

What kind of Actions will developers build on the Open Graph? Some examples include tracking a workout with a GPS device, completing a recipe from a cooking site, or buying an item on an e-commerce site. Those Actions could be expressed on Facebook with verbs like “run,” “cook” or “purchase.”

Along with the new verbs will surely come Facebook’s usual problems: Unanticipated incursions into user privacy, people who hate change, and profligate oversharing.

Sources said that in the lead-up to the launch, Facebook has been busy working on things like how to conjugate the verbs for the Open Graph Actions.

Facebook told developers their Actions must be “simple, genuine and non-abusive.”

To Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is known to have studied Latin, I say: Just remember, “Veni, vidi, vici!”

Perhaps I should have saved that joke for our live coverage, which you’ll be able to find here Wednesday at about 5 p.m. PT.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Hulu said Sunday that it will roll out two new shows between now and summer, while bringing back a third it debuted last year. The new shows include a half-hour scripted comedy about a dysfunctional Senate campaign, dubbed “Battleground,” beginning in February, and a travelogue show from director Richard Linklater.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

In a blog post, CEO Jason Kilar blames the shortfall on a “soft advertising market (economy) in the second half of 2011.”

The numbers: Hulu did $420 million last year, via a combination of ad sales and revenue from its Hulu Plus subscription service. But during the first half of 2011, it had told the world — several times — that it was “on pace to approach” $500 million.

In retrospect, it’s easy to see when sales started softening. In July, when Kilar reported his company’s Q2 numbers, he was still offering the same $500 million revenue guidance. But in early October, when he reported Q3 numbers, the guidance had disappeared from his update.

There are a whole lot of people who would like to report 60 percent annual growth. And the fact that Hulu revenue missed earlier projections by 16 percent  – “overall the Hulu ad business grew aggressively and Hulu Plus materially exceeded our plan,” Kilar notes in his post — isn’t going to be the biggest issue for the service by a long shot.

Hulu’s management and its owners — Providence Equity, Comcast, Disney and News Corp. — need to reach a fundamental agreement about the video site’s direction, and how the site fits into today’s entertainment landscape. (News Corp. also owns this Web site.)

But it’s still worth noting the miss, because Hulu is both a digital ad business and a digital ad business that sells very premium video.

It’s an article of faith among digital ad bulls that the industry will keep growing even if the larger economy takes a hit, because ad dollars will shift from old media, anyway. And advertisers are supposed to be clamoring for the tv shows and movies that Hulu sells — which is one of the reasons Google is trying to shift upmarket from dogs on skateboards, with its “channels” strategy.

We’ll start hearing other reports on the state of last fall’s ad market, and the outlook for the future, over the next couple weeks, when public companies start reporting their Q4 numbers.

And we’ll hear a lot more from Kilar himself, who will be appearing at our D: Dive into Media conference at the end of this month. If you want to see him in person, grab a seat.

Instead, I’m focusing on the ones that promise to bring me the TV I want to see, when I want to see it, without charging me a fortune. And without making me pay for stuff I don’t care about.

Try it yourself. See? Things get quiet in a hurry.

All that other stuff that everyone is talking about right now — new ways to get Web video onto your TV set, new ways to chat up your friends while you watch TV, etc. — is sort of interesting. Maybe it eventually turns into something really interesting.

But none of it solves the problem that regular people have with TV right now. Because they actually like TV quite a bit, and watch tons of it every week, and they’re okay paying for it, too, even if they say they’re not. They just want to pay less for the stuff they want.

Making that happen will require a lot more than using AirPlay to throw video from your iPad to your LCD, or making it easier to search the Web via a Google TV. It means fundamentally overhauling the TV business.

And while it can look like the TV business is loosening up dramatically — look at all those shows the networks are putting on the Web, for free! — it’s actually tightening up considerably — it’s getting harder and harder to watch that stuff, it turns out, without paying for cable, or going rogue.

Even the most interesting stuff I’ve heard about — selling TV “over the top,” via the Web — still contemplates buying bundles of channels from the programmers, which means that over-the-top TV will look just like cable TV. Just like satellite TV and fiber TV do.

“I think there’s not a lot wrong with the business models,” says Myspace owner Tim Vanderhook, who wants to launch his own over-the-top service this year. I’m not at all confident that he’s going to pull it off, but I’m sure the programmers are happy to have a chat. They love the idea of more buyers ponying up for their stuff.

One interesting variant you’re hearing more about right now involves keeping bundles intact, but buying less of them. If you don’t pay for ESPN, then you’re not going to get anything from Disney, including ABC Family and the Disney Channel. But if you can live with sports or kids stuff, you could save an awful lot — or put the money into other programming you do care about.

That’s not nearly as sexy as The End Of TV As We Know It, but it is doable. And I’ll definitely holler about that one, if and when we see it.

Per earlier reports, Dish Networks’s big rollout at the Consumer Electronics Show today is focused on “The Hopper,” a supersized video recorder that lets users store two terabytes of data. In English, that means about 250 hours of high-def shows, or 1,000 hours of regular shows.

There are a slew of other bells and whistles, and Dish had other stuff to announce, too, like an expanded deal with Time Warner’s HBO to offer more programming to Dish customers who also pay for the premium TV service, more programing for its Blockbuster movie service, and a broadband Internet via satellite option.

Oh, and a kangaroo, which did duty as both mascot and onstage prop.

But if you were looking for an “over the top” service that lets you get pay television over the Web without getting the standard pay TV bundles, this isn’t it. It’s possible that Dish CEO Joe Clayton will offer that one day, but it’s not here now.

The chief focus here is on the DVR, which doesn’t seem like it’s the kind of thing that will attract new customers, but might keep existing ones happier. Nothing wrong with that.

The most interesting wrinkle here is the Hopper feature that will let customers automatically record the primetime lineup of the four broadcast networks — News Corp.’s Fox, Disney’s ABC, Comcast’s NBC and CBS — and store the shows for up to eight days.

Anyone with a DVR is already able to record any show they want, and keep it as long as they have space, so this isn’t an earth-shifter. But it seems clearly designed to poke a bit at other playback options, like the video-on-demand offerings that many broadcasters offer for free, or the Hulu/Hulu Plus service co-owned by Disney, Comcast and News Corp. (News Corp. also owns this Web site).

All of those options, for instance, make you wait at least a day after a program airs before they let you see it. And the networks only offer some of their shows through those options (and CBS doesn’t work with Hulu at all).

My understanding is that Dish didn’t ask the broadcasters for permission on this one, and the way it’s constructed — broadcast-only, with a time limit, etc. — make me think it believes it has created something that doesn’t require a signoff, at least legally speaking. But since all of the big pay TV providers — Dish included — are signing “retrans” deals with the broadcasters and their owners, and those deals include restrictions on how the broadcast shows can be used, it seems like Dish would want to make sure its partners are okay with this.

And they might be! As a network executive pointed out to me this afternoon, this doesn’t have to be negative for the broadcasters. If Dish, for example, can get Nielsen to give the programmers full credit for the shows stored on the Hopper, then that’s a good thing — they’d rather get paid for that eyeball, for instance, than one they sell on the Web.

But it still seems like Dish is playing this one deliberately close to the line.

[Shutterstock/Anna Jurkovska]

If you’re in the big-deal camp, then you’ll like a new survey from Deloitte, which finds that a staggering one in five U.S. residents say they have either cut the cord or are thinking about doing it. The breakdown: Nine percent of survey respondents say they’ve recently cut the cord and are getting their shows from Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, etc. And another 11 percent say they might do it. (Click image to enlarge.)

To repeat: The Deloitte survey is asking people about cutting pay TV — Comcast, Verizon, Dish, etc. Not cutting back on certain channels like HBO (that would be cord-shaving) or simply never signing up in the first place (that would be the “cord-nevers” we’ve started to hear about).

How can that possibly square with the pay-TV industry’s reported results, which show that overall subscription levels remained basically flat last year? Even if you allow for a significant margin of error, things don’t add up: If the pay-TV business had lost a single percentage point of its customers in the last year, it would be a huge deal.

But Deloitte is reporting that approximately nine million people say they’ve recently stopped paying for TV. That’s the entire population of New York, plus another million or so, vanished. Can’t be.

I’ve asked Deloitte if they’ve got any insight on the gap, but haven’t heard back. But my hunch is that — for now, at least — cord-cutters are like vegans: They’re real, and they’re out there. They’re particularly notable in certain places like New York, the Bay Area and college towns. And they over-index at certain Web gathering places, like this one. But McDonald’s sales are still chugging along.

The deal will also give Comcast customers more ways to watch those shows, including the ability to stream some of the programs live, on the go, on laptops, iPhones and iPads.

I’ve published the full press release below, but here are some of the quick takeaways:

THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY AND COMCAST CORPORATION ANNOUNCE A LONG-TERM, COMPREHENSIVE DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT THAT ADVANCES THE SUCCESSFUL MULTICHANNEL BUSINESS MODEL

DEAL PROVIDES XFINITY TV CUSTOMERS BROAD ACCESS TO TOP SPORTS, NEWS AND ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT ACROSS MULTIPLE SCREENS IN AND OUT OF THE HOME

PHILADELPHIA AND BURBANK –– JANUARY 4, 2012 –– Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) and The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) today announced a long-term, comprehensive distribution agreement that will deliver Disney’s top quality sports, news and entertainment content to Comcast’s Xfinity TV customers into the next decade on television, online, on tablets and handheld devices. The new agreement enhances the multichannel business model and supports the companies’ mutual goal to deliver the best video content to customers across multiple platforms using the latest technology and cloud innovation. For the first time ever, Comcast’s Xfinity TV customers will be able to watch ESPN, ABC or Disney shows live or on demand and across multiple screens. The companies also agreed to collaborate over the term of the deal to create new, innovative viewing experiences for Xfinity TV customers.

The networks and services covered by the agreement include: ABC, ABC Family, Disney Channel, Disney XD, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN Deportes, ESPNEWS, ESPN Classic, ESPN Goal Line, ESPN Buzzer Beater, ESPN 3D, ESPN GamePlan, ESPN FullCourt and ESPN3; retransmission consent for seven ABC-owned broadcast television stations (WABC-TV New York, WLS-TV Chicago, WPVI-TV Philadelphia, KGO-TV San Francisco, KTRK-TV Houston, KTVD-TV Raleigh-Durham, and KFSN-TV Fresno) as well as more than 10 high-definition networks. Additionally, Comcast will launch Disney Junior, a new 24-hour basic channel for preschool-age children, parents and caregivers. Comcast will also provide its Xfinity TV customers with broad access to a suite of live Disney networks on an authenticated basis and expanded Xfinity On Demand content through Disney’s comprehensive TV+ initiative. In total, 70 services are covered by the broad scope of this new agreement. License fee schedules for different services under the deal will be phased in over time.

“Comcast was the first video provider to create technology that enabled us to deliver content to customers where and when they want it across any viewing experience,” said Neil Smit, President and Chief Executive Officer, Comcast Cable. “We are very pleased to have reached this unprecedented and innovative, long-term agreement with Disney which embraces the future of entertainment and allows Comcast to continue to bring our vision of TV Everywhere to Xfinity customers whether at home or on the go.”

Anne Sweeney, Co-Chairman, Disney Media Networks and President, Disney/ABC Television Group, added, “This landmark deal is a great example of what can be achieved when programmers and distributors collaborate and innovate together to meet the ever-evolving needs of consumers and enhance the viewing experience. By combining the best news, sports and entertainment content available today with cutting-edge technologies, we’re able to fully realize our comprehensive TV+ initiative, and introduce a brand new suite of authenticated services to Comcast subscribers.”

Added George Bodenheimer, Executive Chairman, ESPN, Inc., “Given the scope of assets Comcast and Disney/ABC/ESPN are making available to consumers, this agreement is unprecedented in our industry. It reinforces the value of the multichannel subscription and takes full advantage of new technologies, which serve all of our viewers.”

The extensive and expanded rights package for Comcast’s Xfinity TV customers includes rights across multiple platforms for:

· Comcast’s Xfinity TV customers will receive more ABC, ABC Family, Disney and ESPN content through their set-top-box and, at this time, Disney and ESPN content online, including:

o ABC On Demand, ABC’s fast-forward-disabled On Demand service, which currently features a selection of top-rated primetime entertainment programming, including episodes of such popular current ABC shows as “Castle,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Once Upon A Time,” “Private Practice” and “Revenge.” Full current seasons will be made available on a number of shows. Additionally, Xfinity TV customers will have access to a variety of ABC News programming as well as some local ABC owned-station content.

o ABC Family On Demand, which features a variety of top-rated full episodes, refreshed monthly, from such popular millennial favorites as “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” “Switched at Birth,” and “Melissa & Joey.” Full current seasons will be made available on a number of shows. ABC Family original movies like “12 Dates of Christmas” will also be available.
o Disney-branded On Demand offerings, including Disney Channel On Demand, Disney Junior On Demand, and Disney XD On Demand. Refreshed each month, the Disney Channel On Demand offering will include episodes from such series as “Handy Manny,” “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,” and “Jake and the Never Land Pirates” for preschoolers, as well as variety of episodes from “A.N.T. Farm,” “Good Luck Charlie,” “Wizards of Waverly Place,” and other popular series for older kids. Select episodes featured on Disney Channel On Demand will be available in innovative new offerings, such as playlists and monthly programming blocks, in addition to a number of episodes available in multiple languages. Disney Channel Original Movies such as “Lemonade Mouth,” “Geek Charming” and “Phineas and Ferb: Across the Second Dimension” will also be available. Disney XD On Demand features a variety of episodes from such series as the Emmy Award-winning animated hit “Phineas and Ferb.”
o Disney Channel’s subscription Video On Demand service, which offers on demand access to select episodes before they air, will now be available to Xfinity TV customers who receive Disney Channel, a service that Comcast will offer to these customers for no additional fee.
o Expanded on demand content from ESPN, including content from ESPN Deportes and ESPN’s award-winning original content from ESPN Films.
o The subscription On Demand service “Disney Family Movies,” which features a selection of classic and contemporary feature films and animated shorts from The Walt Disney Studios.
Xfinity TV customers will receive broad access to existing authenticated products like WatchESPN, as well as upcoming authenticated products, including WatchDisneyChannel, WatchDisneyXD and WatchDisneyJunior. These services will give Comcast’s Xfinity TV customers more opportunities to access live and video on demand content, both in-home and out-of-home, on their computers, smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles.
Xfinity TV customers will also receive the recently announced Disney Junior, a new 24-hour basic channel for children ages 2-7, parents and caregivers. Upon its debut in 2012, the new channel will feature animated and live action programming that blends Disney’s unparalleled storytelling and beloved characters with learning, including early math, language skills, healthy eating and lifestyles, and social skills.
Comcast also obtained rights to air certain content from ESPN3, ESPN FullCourt and ESPN GamePlan on Comcast’s Xfinity Sports Entertainment Package.

It’s the typically newsless time around Christmas and New Year’s, but for once there has actually been a lot going on at Yahoo.

Last week, the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s typically moribund board decided to move ahead with negotiations to sell part of its stake in China’s Alibaba Group, as well as all of its shares in Yahoo Japan.

While that is still not a done deal, it adds clarity to the Yahoo mishegas, as current leaders there seek to turn around the company’s lagging fortunes.

Now, as Yahoo continues to contemplate a pair of partial investment bids by private equity firms Silver Lake and TPG Capital into 2012, more focus will be on the selection of a CEO candidate to take over, sources said.

While I have floated some names that have been contemplated — such as Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson, former aQuantive and Microsoft exec Brian McAndrews, and board member David Kenny — I have collected some more that seem to be getting the once-over and are being mentioned internally as well as externally.

Sources said that the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee at Yahoo, which is run by independent director Patti Hart, has been looking for someone with definite public company experience, as well as expertise in large-scale management.

As to talent, candidates seem to be either good at running big platforms, or deeply knowledgeable about advertising and media as well as technology.

Another important criteria, said sources: Someone who is “collaborative” and nonconfrontational. As in, not like the former and very pugnacious CEO Carol Bartz, who was fired in September.

Thus, here’s another trio of candidates to consider, while we wait — and who knows how long that will be given that the Asian activity could have tired out for a bit this usually slow-moving board:

Chris Liddell: The former CFO of Microsoft is an interesting name that just popped up recently, and it makes some sense when you think about the possible mindset of the Yahoo board.

Liddell, who has a charming New Zealand accent, did a short stint, from January of 2010 to March of this year, as CFO at General Motors. Recently married to another former Microsoft exec, he has since been living in New York.

He apparently loves living in the Big Apple.

But when he left GM, Liddell made it clear he wanted to go for a top job next. He was among the candidates for a recent search for a CEO of Time Warner’s Time Inc. (an effort that was run by exec search firm Heidrick & Struggles, which is also conducting the Yahoo hunt).

Known as tough and decisive, he certainly is qualified to deal with complex financial situations, such as the one in which Yahoo now finds itself knee-deep. One knock: Little product or advertising experience.

Laura Desmond: While certainly a dark horse, Desmond has been queried by Heidrick, said several sources.

She is CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group, a subsidiary of Publicis, one of the largest media planning and buying agencies, making Desmond one of advertising’s most prominent players.

Well-known in Yahoo’s key market, she is considered a savvy and smart exec with a wry sense of humor.

I happen to particularly like one line from one of her bios:

“Ms. Desmond’s career has been driven by two caveats: Take intelligent risks and learn more from failure than from success.”

She could learn a lot at Yahoo. (I know, easy jab, but it works!)

David Rosenblatt: The former DoubleClick CEO, who went on to a big ad job at Google after it paid $3.2 billion for the company, is also a long shot, mostly by his own choosing.

The sharp exec is always on the short list of CEO candidates for a lot of big, splashy online jobs, but he seems to want to swim his own way.

Case in point: He was recently named CEO of New York-based 1stdibs, a relatively obscure online marketplace known among antique dealers and interior designers looking for one-of-a-kind furniture, art and lighting.

Yes, that’s right: Fancy lamps.

Rosenblatt also serves on the boards at Group Commerce, Twitter and IAC.

All that Internet ad and e-commerce experience is exactly why Rosenblatt would be one of the better choices for CEO of Yahoo. But, for him, I would guess taking such a job is probably in the life’s-too-short category.

More to come, obvi!

They’re less happy than they used to be. But they don’t seem to be going anywhere.

That’s the cautiously optimistic conclusion of a new survey Citigroup commissioned over the past few months. It finds existing subscribers still fairly pleased with the service Reed Hastings is offering: 57 percent say they’re either “extremely satisfied” or “very satisfied.” But Hastings’ good will has certainly eroded a bit: In May, a similar survey found 50 percent of his customers in the “extremely satisfied” category. That number is now down to 18 percent.

As Citi analyst Mark Mahaney points out, the survey is a bit skewed, since Netflix subscribers who were most disappointed with the service’s changes — a price hike, an ill-fated attempt to spin off its DVD business into a separate unit, and the loss of programming deal that gives the company access to Sony and Disney movies — have already bailed.

But a different survey question suggests one reason customers are sticking around with Netflix: They don’t see many other options.

While Amazon has been building up its catalog of streaming video, only 9 percent of Netflix customers said they’ve watched movies or TV shows there. And while 15 percent said they’ve used Hulu, that number is down from 19 percent in May. Apple’s iTunes comes in at 8 percent. (Perhaps the reason only 27 percent of Netflix subscribers say they use Netflix is because they’re distinguishing between apps and the site. But that seems like a fairly precise distinction for a large number of people to make, so who knows.)

The very big picture is that Mahaney still assumes Netflix will keep growing. He figures its DVD-only subscribers will drop by 800,000, to 9.9 million, over the next year. But he thinks streaming subscribers will increase 9.9 million, to 30.9 million, and that the company will add a few million more as it expands in Latin America and the U.K. He also thinks Netflix will become profitable again by the end of 2012.

But none of that is going to help anyone who bought Netflix stock earlier this year, when shares had climbed as high as $300. Mahaney has lowered his price target for NFLX, and is now hoping it climbs back to $80.

Whatever you want to call him or her — a silver bullet, the cure or, as I like to say, the last unicorn — Yahoo’s ever-seeking and never-deciding board has now renewed its focus on finding a new CEO.

Also on the docket: Working on a deal to sell back at least some of its stake in its twin Asian assets — Yahoo Japan and the Alibaba Group — back to the companies. A partial sale of stock back could placate the often tense situation among the partners.

What is clear is that the two bids from private equity firms are now in an undetermined circling pattern — due to a variety of concerns around shareholder unrest (Occupy Yahoo looms for 2012).

Therefore, the idea of bringing in said fantasy leader to perhaps finally be the one to revive the long-troubled company has returned to the forefront of action, according to numerous sources both inside and outside the company.

The concept in short, said people familiar with the situation: Hire some compelling and entrepreneurial CEO to get the company moving again from a product point of view, do a massive organizational overhaul and help settle Yahoo’s thorny Asian issues.

While a number of names have been rumored in reports — such as Google business lead Nikesh Arora, who is actually not likely to leave his top post at the search giant — sources said the board has been targeting a number of candidates, including Hulu CEO Jason Kilar.

Others on Yahoo’s wish list include Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson and online advertising entrepreneur Brian McAndrews, who sold aQuantive to Microsoft. There are several others also being considered.

Sources said Kilar has met with Yahoo board members about the offer, but his hiring would be a long shot.

It’s an interesting — if complex — gambit to bring in Kilar, who has had his own wrangles with the multi-owner structure of the premium video service over the years.

Kilar’s status at Hulu has been in question ever since it was put on the block, then removed and then — well — who knows.

Hulu’s owners — News Corp., Disney and Providence Equity Partners, along with Comcast (which is a now a passive investor) — did not like the offers it got from various bidders, including Yahoo.

While the media giants have made noises about wanting to keep a stake in distribution, their commitment to that remains unclear.

The situation has put Kilar — who already had tense relations with the service’s shareholders — in limbo until a valuation is determined next year. Without going into the complex details, Kilar has a large equity stake that could be liquid in April, related to certain rights held by Providence.

It is well known that Kilar has been concerned the team that built Hulu gets some sort of payout for their work. In fact, many years ago, Hulu was seen as a possible IPO candidate.

What’s not in question is Kilar’s talent at creating a cohesive team and a compelling product — especially with an advertising and media focus — and the need at Yahoo for a vibrant leader to encourage innovation and discourage its rapidly increasing attrition issues.

The search for a new Yahoo CEO — which is being led by director Patti Hart, and is being conducted by Heidrick & Struggles — had been mostly sidelined until recently, as the board solicited bids for a partial investment from PE firms.

Two emerged, from Silver Lake and TPG Capital, which had wanted to pay from $16.50 to $18 a share for a stake of just under 20 percent in what is called a PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity) arrangement.

But the low price, and worries about lawsuits and even a proxy fight related to such a deal, have slowed down the momentum significantly, said sources.

Instead, Yahoo has told bidders it will get back to them in the coming weeks about the direction it will take. Thus, the focus on lining up CEO candidates and plans related to reviving Yahoo.

Some of those possible execs have put their hand up, while others — like Kilar — are being solicited. In addition, some still think that Yahoo board member David Kenny remains an internal option, especially if the board of Yahoo gets a refresh, despite his recent announcement that he has no intention of seeking the job.

In general, this shift should not come has a surprise for the hurry-up-and-wait board of Yahoo, which has struggled over the years to make good choices for the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

That drift has resulted in a downturn in its prospects, even as other companies have surged.

Those troubles were brought into sharp focus in a recent report by new Goldman Sachs Internet analyst Heath Terry, who strafed Yahoo in his “sell” recommendation.

Among the gems by an analyst whose investment bank is currently an advisor to Yahoo on its strategic options:

Yahoo simply faces too many competitive and structural headwinds to believe any kind of meaningful turnaround is possible. While there is significant asset value on the balance sheet and in the company’s large, though increasingly less engaged user base, we continue to believe, as we have since before the first Microsoft offer, that the segment of management driving the company is intent on trying to revive Yahoo as a company, regardless of the cost to shareholders.

And, noting the need for a new CEO:

We would become more positive if we felt there was a likely event in the near term that might unlock the value of the balance sheet assets at Yahoo. While we believe the aggregate value of those assets is above the value reflected in YHOO, in order to be more positive on the stock we would need some proof that management is willing and able to take the steps necessary to unlock that value either through a sale or distribution to shareholders. Meanwhile, the declining profitability of the core display advertising business is masked by a search business that continues to lose share and relies on artificial support from Microsoft. We would become more positive on the core Yahoo business if the company is able to find a new CEO capable of focusing the business on its core advertising and communications opportunities, rationalizing costs, and driving growth. This would require user growth and especially engagement improvements in both online and mobile, improving monetization of advertising inventory, and stabilizing its search business.

In other words: Wanted, one unicorn to work magic against increasingly troublesome dragons. Ability to sparkle a plus.

If you’re reading this site, you know who all of these folks are. But just for formality’s sake:

Jason Kilar is CEO of Hulu, the video joint venture co-owned by Comcast, Disney and News Corp.’s broadcast TV units. The site has been a huge hit with viewers and subscribers, who have put it on pace to generate $500 million in revenue this year. But its owners aren’t quite sure what to do with it: They put it up for sale this summer, then decided to hang on to it after all. This will be Kilar’s first major public appearance since that tumult, so we’ll have plenty of questions.

Dick Costolo is CEO of Twitter, which has moved from Web oddity to a service used by more than 100 million people a month. Twitter’s founders didn’t like the notion of turning their baby into a media company, but that’s exactly what Costolo is trying to do now; he is ramping up efforts to attract more eyeballs and sell more ads. And he’s leaning heavily on big media companies — especially TV networks and movie distributors — to make that happen.

Martha Stewart is the founder of Martha Stewart Living, the multimedia empire she built from scratch, which now includes magazines, TV shows, a Web site and multiple lines of branded goods; her newest coup is a big-dollar deal with J.C. Penney. She’ll be joined onstage by Lisa Gersh, the president and chief operating officer Stewart brought in from NBC Universal nearly a year ago. At NBC U, Gersh had overseen the acquisition of the Weather Channel, among other duties; she had previously been chief operating officer at Oxygen Media.

They’ll join a lineup that includes ESPN President John Skipper, YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, New Yorker editor David Remnick, Warner Music Chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr., News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey, Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman, Legendary Pictures head Thomas Tull and Vevo CEO Rio Caraeff. And we may still have a surprise or two between now and the end of January.

All Things Digital’s first-ever media conference runs Jan. 30 and 31 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, an hour south of Los Angeles. See you there.

Greenfield, a very sharp media analyst at BTIG, says that 2012 will be the first time we’ll see a true “virtual” cable-company offering in the U.S., where consumers can subscribe to TV delivered over the Web. This is different than the on-demand services that currently exist, like Netflix and Hulu, which offer up programming that’s already been on TV. This will give you access to “real” TV, in real time.

His summary: “While [quality] will not match what you are accustomed to from your traditional [cable provider] (due to Internet congestion), virtual MSO pricing to the consumer will be substantially lower, subscribers will receive a significantly better user-interface/navigation across a wide-array of IP-enabled devices in the home and service will be accessible anywhere in the US, rather than being stuck in a certain region.”

Who/what/where/when? Greenfield’s prediction post (registration required) doesn’t commit to any of that. But it does sketch out the basic “how” framework:

• The “virtual” cable company will have to cut distribution deals with all or most of the big TV channels/programmers, just like the satellite TV guys did in the ’90s. It’s possible that some of the programmers won’t want to play along, for fear of upsetting their existing deals with the cable guys. But just like in the ’90s, as long as the “virtual” company is paying market rates (and likely higher) for the programming, the cable guys can’t really do much about it. (And if they do, they’ll have a lot of explaining to do in Washington: Note that when the Feds blessed the Comcast/NBC deal this year, they required the company to make its programming available to this kind of competitor.)
• All those deals mean that this won’t be “a la carte” cable, where you can get ESPN but not the Disney channel, or vice versa — these will be all-or-none deals.
• And all of the above means that you won’t be getting these channels for next to nothing. Greenfield figures the pricing will be “substantially lower” than what the cable guys currently charge. But since he assumes that the “virtual” cable guys will have to pay at least $40 a month per subscriber for the programming, it’s going to cost at least that much for consumers — he envisions the new guys selling this stuff at “razor-thin” margins, but not at a loss.
• Getting your TV programming from a “virtual” cable company doesn’t mean you’ll be able to tell Comcast or Time Warner Cable, etc., to pound sand — you’ll still be paying them, or someone, for broadband. Greenfield thinks this could actually be a good thing for the cable guys in the long run, because the margins on broadband are much better than in the TV business. And they’ll probably be able to force many customers to upgrade their broadband subscriptions to a higher tier, so they can stream all of that video.

OK. So who might do this?

Greenfield runs through a laundry list of every potential player, including Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, even Wal-Mart. I assume that the most logical step would be for someone who’s already in the video business, but with a limited footprint — like Verizon or Dish Network — to try this out.

But over the phone this morning, Greenfield said he thinks the first player will be someone who’s not in there already, but wants to build another platform that gives them direct access to millions of consumers. Start speculating now!

So congrats to Reuters’ Yinka Adegoke and Sinead Carew, along with The Wall Street Journal’s Sam Schechner, Anton Troianovski and Spencer Ante on their new gigs! If you guys ever want to get together and trade tips (Google Analytics or Chartbeat? etc.) I’m totally down for a Meetup. It would be good to get out of my pajamas …

Meanwhile, this blogger can also report that Verizon has been talking to programmers about a Netflix-style video service. There don’t appear to be any signed deals, and there may not be anything formal on the table yet, so don’t expect to see anything until next spring at the earliest.

But the idea of offering packages of video programming, delivered over the Web, is a fairly straightforward one. Which is why it has also appealed to satellite TV provider Dish Networks, which has also had grown-up conversations about the idea. And to Microsoft, and Google, and Apple, whose discussions about it over the years haven’t progressed very far.

And, of course, to Hulu and Amazon, who are already doing it.

So we’re certain to see more “over the top” video from big brand names down the line. “Shame on those [Netflix] competitors for not being in the market years ago,” says a TV executive — who would be happy to sell any of them some programming when/if they do get into the market.

So if that’s the case, what does that mean for companies like Verizon, which sell traditional pay TV services right now?

Here McAdam, speaking at the UBS media/telco conference this morning, doesn’t just disagree with professional typers. He’s also butting rhetorical heads with Ivan Seidenberg, whose last job was … CEO of Verizon.

A year ago, Seidenberg told investors that “over the top” video — stuff that comes from the Web instead of a cable subscription — was going to be a big problem for pay TV services: “Young people are pretty smart. They’re not going to pay for something they don’t need to … Over the top is going to be a pretty big issue for cable.”

Nah, says the new guy, who takes the conventional line that over the top is a complement to his business, not a threat. Or at least not anytime soon. “We have a tendency to see trends like this in the industry and extrapolate it to become the majority. I think it will be many years before it is,” he said.

Still! McAdam did allow that Verizon was interested in offering stuff that sounds a whole lot like the “over the top” options that Reuters and the Journal reported about yesterday (and I am reporting this morning! From my basement!).

He acknowledged, as we reported earlier this year, that the company had kicked the tires on Hulu this summer. “We kind of  looked at that,” he said. “And we’ll continue to look at alternatives.”

HBO Go users, who can watch shows like “Game of Thrones” on their iPad, iPhones, and Android devices, watch 30 percent to 50 percent more than non-users*, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said today at the UBS media conference.

But Bewkes said that the pay channel’s subscriber count had been “stable” in the past year, which would mean it still has about 28 million paying customers.

That makes sense, given that the “TV Everywhere” strategy Bewkes has been pushing isn’t focused on attracting more customers but in keeping the ones he has — especially those tempted to seek out video entertainment via the Web, or services like Netflix.

Meanwhile, Bewkes was careful to note that those viewership bumps may not continue, given that HBO Go is still primarily in the hands of early adopters, though that’s still a decent-sized number. Last month Time Warner announced that the HBO Go app had hit the 5 million download mark for Android and iOS users.

Speaking of Netflix — just in case you didn’t get the message via this weekend’s interview with the Financial Times — Bewkes reiterated his position on the service. He’s happy to sell them stuff he can’t sell anymore. Services like Netflix and Hulu “can definitely add value to all of us, if you’re trying to get that obscure movie that you haven’t seen yet,” he said.

That kind of faint praise may explain why Bewkes’s initial assessment of Reed Hastings’s company today — “Netflix is our friend” — drew laughs from the audience.

*Bewkes didn’t specify whether that 30 to 50 percent increase was for TV viewing, or an aggregate number that includes TV + devices. I’m assuming the latter, but have asked Time Warner reps to clarify. UPDATE: Yup, aggregate.

And if you didn’t understand that one, he offered another metaphor: A “200-pound chimp.”

In the following months, Bewkes cut back on his rhetoric, which may or may not have had anything to do with a lucrative deal to sell reruns of “Gossip Girl” to Netflix. But now that deal has been inked, Netflix stock has been crushed and lots of smart people think the video service may be on a permanent spiral.

So here’s Bewkes again, damning his new partners with very faint praise, this time in the Financial Times instead of the New York Times: Netflix and similar services (read: Hulu and Amazon, for now) can’t get the best stuff anymore, he says, and are stuck showing “archival content that nobody would want in Blockbuster.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Bewkes adds. “It can do certain things and not other things. It can fly, it’s not a submarine. Don’t turn a hamburger into a cow.”

And that is how a pro mixes metaphors and backhanded compliments.

Again, remember that the real purpose of this stuff isn’t to hurt Netflix CEO Reed Hastings’s feelings — Hastings can probably take it — but to make Time Warner shareholders feel better about the company’s cable holdings. Because Time Warner’s cable channels — like TBS and TNT, and its HBO premium channel — are absolutely competing with Netflix for viewer time and dollars, no matter how much either company tries to insist otherwise.

Does this sort of semi-smack-talk entertain you? (It’s okay to admit it. Me, too.) Then you’ll want to check back on Tuesday: Both Bewkes and Hastings are scheduled to present that day at the annual UBS Media/Telecom conference. I’ll be there to record the slings and arrows, and I’ll report back.