More TV Everywhere Adoption by Cable Operators Seen by Executives
ORLANDO -- Pay-TV customers are likely to see more disruption of programming, as increasingly difficult negotiations among programmers, broadcasters and multichannel video programming distributors are expected, MVPD executives said at the Cable Television Association for Marketing show. Charter Communications, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV and the National Cable and Television Cooperative (NCTC) executives said programming negotiations -- including those involving broadcasters and independent programmers -- will likely produce more disruptions in programming. Executives also said pay-TV companies are continuing to introduce TV Everywhere (TVE), so subscribers to an MVPD service can get programming online and not just on their TVs connected to set-top boxes.
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Cable operators plan to offer more content in TVE platforms, but consumer education will be the key to expand adoption of the new services, executives said. HBO Go and Watch ESPN are the content leaders behind TVE, and more products are becoming available, they said. Time Warner Cable will start its TVE app “in a year or so,” said Andrew Rosenberg, Time Warner Cable senior vice president-content acquisitions. In-home TVE products, like home computer viewing, will be more robust than outside-the-home products, partly due to the negotiation of content rights, he said. Negotiating content rights will also pose challenges to TVE, panelists said, as more content delivery options make agreements more complicated.
Consumers are already “conditioning” themselves to watch content on smaller screens like smartphones and tablets, Rosenberg said. The trend is especially strong with young viewers, but older viewers still prefer the TV, he said. By the end of the year, DirecTV will be comfortable that it has enough content to tout TVE products, said Daniel Hartman, vice president-programming acquisitions.
Smaller and mid-sized cable operators are still evaluating TVE products, but National Cable Television Cooperative members are varied in their adoption of TVE, said Judith Meyka, NCTC executive vice president-programming. The Olympics offered about 90 NCTC members an opportunity to provide TVE content, and the response was positive, she said. Costs are a concern for smaller cable operators, she said. “For some, it will just be a matter of time” before NCTC member cable operators adopt TVE platforms, Meyka said. “For others, they won’t do it with additional costs unless they know they are retaining customers."
"On retransmission consent, there’s no indications that there’s an end in sight,” said Allan Singer, Charter senior vice president-programming. Meyka said there will be more issues with content negotiations. “The model isn’t working right now,” she said. “We have members who can’t make headway on video margins” and are dropping content or in some cases, selling their systems, she said.
Technology could eventually level the playing field, especially with retransmission consent, Singer said. Adding antennas to set-tops could “flatten out negotiations,” he said. “Right now, negotiations aren’t working.” Rosenberg agreed there would be more disruptions across the industry, and that “consumers are being trained that this is part of the landscape,” he said of programming disruptions. Consumers are becoming less likely to change MVPDs over programming disputes, making it harder for programmers to “weather a disruption,” he said. “I believe things will settle down,” Rosenberg said of programming disruptions. A wider range of programming products, like video on demand and TVE, are likely to make negotiations more difficult in coming years, Rosenberg said.