The TV App Revolution Authenticated Channel Apps And TVE Strategy

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The 20,000 Foot View

Pay-TV is under assault from a pincer movement, on the one hand losing subscribers to cord cutting and on the other growth slowing due to cord-nevers (Digital Natives with no interest in subscribing to traditional pay-TV).  Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and others welcome these consumers with open arms. The result is a steady erosion of audience share for traditional TV operators which in turn disrupts the TV networks that rely on them for distribution. TV Everywhere (TVE) strategy is the pay-TV industry’s response to the streaming insurgents and has begotten a host of channel apps.  TVE is still work in progress, racked by licensing tensions that could ultimately see studios and networks using it as a means to bypass TV operators in order to sell direct to the end user.

Key Findings

• In        2015 US pay-TV companies lost        subscribers while online video services added        million new        of US consumers pay for Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD), rising to        of        year olds 
  
• The        year old age group is the fastest growing for SVOD adoption
  
• SVOD has broad appeal,        are female compared to        for music subscriptions
  
• TVE describes an increasingly diverse mix of strategies and technologies
  
• Operators and networks / studios have differing, and sometimes conflicting, TVE objectives
  
• Channel apps reimagine what a channel represents
  
• Google, Facebook and Apple could all emerge as next generation operators, re-bundling individual channel apps
  

Companies mentioned in this report: A+E Networks, ABC, Apple, Amazon, AT&T, CBS, Comcast, Direct TV, Dish, Fox Networks, Foxtel, Google, HBO, Hulu, NBC, Netflix, Sky, TED, Telenet, Time Warner Cable, the Huffington Post, The Walt Disney Company, The Weather Company, Vevo, Xfinity