Tim Mulligan

Tim is MIDiA's research director and senior video analyst. His research focus is streaming TV, and the intersection between established and emerging monetisation and engagement models for consuming TV and film. Underpinning this is a focus upon the business strategy and financial environment around which video services compete. Supporting this supply side coverage is a detailed overview of the consumer dynamics driving engagement from fandom to subscription challenges and video ad responsiveness.

Skydance is seeking to become of Paramount importance for streaming

Tim Mulligan

12 Dec 2023

Skydance media Skydance Paramount

The tectonic plates of consolidation are once again on the move with The New York Times breaking the story on Sunday that Shari Redstone, the President of National Amusements, Inc. (NAI) and Chair of Paramount Global, is in talks with Skydance to sell a controlling stake in NAI.

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The coming sports monetisation revolution

Tim Mulligan

5 Dec 2023

Audience Insight

Despite recent sports rights hikes (driven by tech major interventions, such as Amazon’s NFL Thursday Night Football 2021 rights agreement), sports as a broadcast asset is under increased scrutiny. An ageing audience, combined with its decreasing relative importance in home entertainment, means that live sports must work harder to justify its hef...

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Magnifi

Tim Mulligan

5 Dec 2023

Audience Insight

Magnifi is one of three platforms owned and operated by Mumbai-based SaaS start up VideoVerse (previously known as Toch.ai). The company operates as a white label service provider for the entertainment industry and its core services focus on utilising machine learning algorithms and a video technology ecosystem to deliver video content in easy-to-u...

Squid Game: The Challenge - successfully spinning new content from existing IP

Tim Mulligan

5 Dec 2023

Strategy Squid Game: The Challenge Squid Game

Tomorrow sees the release of the final episode of season one of Squid Game: The Challenge, the reality game show spin-off of the 2021 dystopian global hit episodic drama Squid Game . The original drama was an early example of TV internationalisation 2.

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Why Amazon’s road to the Bond millions is part of a bigger plan

Tim Mulligan

28 Nov 2023

007: Road to a Million 007 James Bond

Earlier this month, Amazon released 007: Road to a Million onto Amazon Prime Video (Prime) – its subscription video on demand (SVOD) service. As the biggest investment into an unscripted reality show since The Grand Tour , it represents Amazon’s first serious attempt to exploit the James Bond IP...

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Why smart TVs are the new frontline in interactive ads

Tim Mulligan

21 Nov 2023

Online video roku Unity

Yesterday Roku announced that it is partnering with Unity to serve interactive ads across Roku’s connected TV ecosystem (with 76.8 million accounts as of Q3 2023). This recognises that the traditional big screen of the TV is low hanging fruit for reaching mainstream consumers.

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Why measuring video attention requires nuance

Tim Mulligan

14 Nov 2023

video measurement ASI 2023 FAST

Last week’s ASI conference provided a forum for those grappling with measuring ad engagement to coalesce around some of the common aims required to quantify the value of consumer attention. The overarching theme of the event was managing complexity .

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Why ad innovation will be so important for Netflix

Tim Mulligan

7 Nov 2023

Netflix Basic With Ads Netflix Q3 23

This week, Netflix introduced a download feature into its Basic with Adverts subscription tier, making it the first ad-supported streaming service to offer this in video. This comes off the back of last week’s announcement that there were now 15 million monthly active users (MAUs) on its Basic wit...

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Why Amazon is bringing FAST to podcasts

Tim Mulligan

31 Oct 2023

Podcast video Wondery FAST

Last week, Wondery , an Amazon-owned podcast studio,announced the launch of three new free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels on Amazon’s FAST service, Freevee. These channels will join the lineup of over 400 existing channels on Freevee and will serve as a new entry point for audiences to ...

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What Netflix needs to do next

Tim Mulligan

25 Oct 2023

Netflix Video Business Strategy

Netflix’s Q3 2023 numbers were better than expected, with quarterly revenue up by 7.8% year on year to reach $8.5 billion, and operating margin now up to an impressive 22.4%. The company attributed its revenue growth to three areas: firstly, an increase in average paid memberships, which is due to...

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How Taylor Swift has ushered in an era of direct distribution for media fusion

Tim Mulligan

19 Oct 2023

Taylor Swift Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour Concert Film amc theatres

Cinematic releases of music concerts are nothing new, with the likes of the Beatles Help! film of 1965 ushering in a new era of mass participation for global fanbases beyond the concert arena. When Covid shut down the live music scene in 2020-2021, there was a brief flurry of interest in delivering ...

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Sony is tapping its core media fusion opportunity. Here is why:

Tim Mulligan

11 Oct 2023

Sony Media Fusion cross entertainment

In March 2023, MIDiA wrote a report on the increasing media fusion emerging between gamers and video streaming. In rebooting video fandom we argued that gamers were now both shaping and being targeted by streaming services keen to expand their reach (and revenue) across the digital entertainment lan...

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Youth versus age
A streaming video sanity check

Tim Mulligan

6 Oct 2023

Audience Insight

The video industry is fixated on the disengagement of youth audiences from traditional TV and the risks of this continuing unabated into the streaming TV era. However, this fear is based on flawed assumptions around the relative value of younger consumers versus older demographics – particularly the 55+s.

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Frndly TV
Going the extra mile for the silver dollar

Tim Mulligan

6 Oct 2023

Established by former pay-TV executives from DISH in 2019, Frndly TV’s founding mission was to serve the needs of pay-TV customers who were paying too much for too many under-viewed channels. While traditional pay TV was aware of this issue and indeed had started reluctantly rolling out “skinny bundles” in the US market, Frndly TV went one st...

Goodbye DVDs, hello streaming economics rationalisation

Tim Mulligan

4 Oct 2023

Netflix streeaming economics Writers Strike

Last Friday saw the end of 25 years of Netflix’s DVDs subscription business, drawing to a close the pre-streaming model of home entertainment for the largest international subscription video on demand (SVOD) service.

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Why investing in IRL entertainment is so important for Disney’s streaming future

Tim Mulligan

26 Sep 2023

Disney Theme Parks IRl

It appears that investors are losing confidence in Disney as the transition from linear TV to streaming TV moves into its final chapter. Last week, Disney saw its stock price fall after announcing that it was doubling its capital expenditures investmentin its parks, experiences, and products segment...

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Murdoch versus Iger | Why Fox’s focus on live programming has a key role in streaming TV

Tim Mulligan

21 Sep 2023

Murdoch Iger Fox

Rupert Murdoch’s decision to step down as chairman of Fox News and Fox Corporation is the culminating act in a 70-year media career spanning print to TV. It comes four years after Murdoch clinched the deal of his career – selling all of 21stCentury Fox except for Fox News and Fox Sports to Disne...

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The FAST advantage
Build sustainable consumer models

Tim Mulligan and Ben Woods

14 Aug 2023

Streaming Amazon Netflix

Inflation and retention pressures are combining to make free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) an appealing go-to-market strategy for video distributors.FAST is still underperforming significantly in engagement terms when compared to its video rivals, but there are promising signs.

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Innovation feature concept
Building a dynamic social ad experience on FAST

Tim Mulligan and Ben Woods

14 Aug 2023

Freemium advertisers Business Strategy

Building a dynamic social ad experience on FAST Free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) is currently positioned as streaming free-to-air (FTA) TV. However, the early data is building a compelling case that there are two distinct use cases for the new distribution model.

Why streaming and AI disruption is unlikely to have a Hollywood ending

Tim Mulligan

8 Aug 2023

AI Writers Strike Actor's Strike

With the writers’ strike nearing 100 days long, there is still no end in sight to the first industrial dispute of the streaming era. Both the studios and screenwriters met last Friday and failed to reach a workable compromise.

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