Blog: tv networks

Amazon’s latest play into the TV ad market with the launch of Free Dive, an ad-supported video service for Fire TV users, showcases the company’s intent to further diversify revenue streams from its video services, pushing into advertising video on demand (AVOD).

For the TV industry, the current period of video content spending is a golden era. Content budgets are the highest they have ever been, as are revenues for the top 22 global TV networks. However, the video content business is inadvertently fuelling a speculative financial bubble, where investment returns are moving increasingly out of synch with the market fundamentals.

Shonda Rhimes is now a ‘Netflixer’, in the words of Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos. Rhimes is renowned for being the creator of hit shows such as Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal , which have generated more than $2 billion in licensing for ABC – one of the big three TV broadcast networks in the US.

The announcement yesterday that Netflix is going to allow TV and movie downloads for offline viewing is a seismic moment for TV generally not just SVOD (subscription video on demand) services in particular.

Amidst all the positive news about Netflix’s continuing growth story, some interesting points were touched upon in yesterday’s Netflix Q4 2015 Earnings Interview with analysts. Perhaps the most revealing meta narrative for the whole management zeitgeist was summed up Netflix’s CFO David Wells when he described the gaining the next 50 million subscribers as “a little bit harder than the first 50 million.