HBO is launching a stand-alone streaming media service in 2015

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Net Neutrality, Random Acts of Progress

4thWEB curated content from The Washington Post
By Cecilia Kang (see full article)

HBO is set to launch a stand-alone online streaming media service in 2015 that will not require a cable or satellite subscription. (Reuters)

HBO will launch a streaming media service in 2015 that doesn’t require consumers to have a cable or satellite subscription, the company said Wednesday, in a move that could roil the television industry and pave the way for vastly more choices for consumers.

With HBO’s announcement, television fans have been given one more reason to drop their expensive cable subscriptions, a growing trend in recent years as viewers have enjoyed more choices online through streaming media services like Netflix, YouTube and Hulu.

Up to now, many households have decided to continue paying for cable since they value live sports on ESPN and wildly popular shows on HBO, such as “Game of Thrones”– all content they can only get through a cable box.

But HBO’s move could change that calculus.

“This is an enormous breakthrough; consumers will be able to get to pick what they want and they will finally have content companies selling directly to them,” said Gene Kimmelman, president public interest group Public Knowledge, which has fought for regulations that would force the unbundling of cable television channels for consumers. “The question is, ‘Who is next’? That’s trickier because this speaks to the power of HBO’s brand to be able to break from the cable bundle.”

HBO chief executive Richard Plepler, who announced the plan in an investor meeting held by parent company Time Warner, did not say how much the streaming media service would cost or what content it would offer exactly. He said starting next year, the service will be available to U.S. subscribers and to consumers in two other countries before expanding to its entire international footprint.

Plepler was careful to describe the streaming media service as complementary to cable, rather than something aimed at busting the industry’s business model. He said HBO is targeting the 10 million homes in the U.S. that have high-speed Internet but don’t subscribe to cable or satellite television already.

“It’s time to remove the barriers to those that want HBO,” Plepler said.

The way things works now, cable firms and HBO have enjoyed a highly profitable and close relationship. HBO charges cable firms hefty fees for the right to carry their programming; cable companies in turn charge consumers additional money–say, $10 or $20 per month–to add HBO to their selection of cable channels. The linchpin of this arrangement: HBO agreeing to offer its content exclusively to cable companies.

But in recent years, HBO has grown impatient with its cable partners, saying many have not done a good job of marketing the premium channel. Plepler said “hundreds of millions of dollars” have been left on the table through untapped distribution rights and poor marketing for new subscribers. And studies show younger viewers — particularly millennials — are choosing online video subscription services over cable TV.

In May, Amazon and HBO announced a deal in which Amazon Prime members could watch a slew of HBO shows, films and miniseries–mostly past seasons of old shows like “The Sopranos.” When asked by an analyst if the plan will hurt HBO’s cable business, Plepler said: “I don’t think this is either or,” adding that 85 percent of Netflix’s users also subscribe to cable or satellite television. He said the HBO online service would be offered in partnership with Internet service providers, who are also their cable partners.

The announcement Wednesday is a striking reversal for parent company Time Warner, whose chief executive Jeff Bewkes in 2010 famously dismissed the threat of Netflix, equating it to “The Albanian army” or a “200-pound chimp.”

But with an online streaming media service, HBO is taking a page directly from Netflix and will soon compete head-to-head with the rival streaming service. HBO has 30 million subscribers in the United States; Netflix has about 37 million.

Netflix has modeled itself after HBO with its mix of exclusive award-winning original shows like “House of Cards” and movies. “We have to become more like HBO before they become like us,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in an interview last summer, referencing a favorite saying of the company’s chief content officer, Ted Sarandos.

With HBO stripped away from the cable bundle, Netflix loses one of its advantages over its rival. The company, which reported Wednesday that it added fewer subscribers than anticipated, saw its shares tank about 25 percent in after-market trading.

As much money as HBO makes from cable companies–the company made $4.9 billion in revenues last year, mostly from fees paid by cable firms–the future of watching television is clearly online. According to a report by Comscore this week, four out of ten online users subscribe to a service like Netflix or Amazon Instant Video.

“I find it hard to believe that HBO is going to offer something that will make [cable companies] angry,” said Deana Myers, an analyst for research firm SNL Kagan. She said the key will be how much the online streaming media service is priced.

streaming media service

The big question is how much HBO charges for the online service. If the company sets the price too low, many consumers will drop their cable subscriptions and eat into the firm’s profits from that business. But set it too high, and viewers used to the roughly $10 per month charged by Netflix and Hulu Plus will balk.

The availability of more online content will provide more choices for consumers. But it won’t necessarily reduce costs. Cobble together HBO, Netflix, MLB.tv and a few more services and being an online-only viewer adds up.

And even though HBO’s announcement weakens the hand of the cable industry, firms like Comcast still enjoy a huge advantage: exclusive live sports.

As a result, consumers like Avi Greenberger won’t stop paying for the monthly streaming media service. The 25-year-old Brooklyn resident subscribes to HBO, sports channels and online services such as Hulu Plus. “I hate double paying for both cable and online services,” Greenberger said. “But with the Rangers on MSG and the Yankees on Yes Network, it’s hard to give up on cable.”

Will there be football and basketball streaming online for people who don’t pay for cable or satellite? Not anytime soon.

This month, ESPN and TNT inked deals to retain rights to show NBA games through the 2024-25 season. And the National Football League and ESPN have a deal to keep “Monday Night Football” on the sports network through 2021.

HBO Going Rogue Could Get Us to Net Neutrality

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Net Neutrality, Random Acts of Progress

4thWEB curated content from Huffington Post Tech
By Richard Zombeck (see full article)

net neutrality

Recently, a couple of cable content providers have announced that they’re going rogue and are going to start providing content independently of cable companies. That’s good news for consumers who have, until now, been at the mercy of companies such as Comcast and Time Warner. It might also be good news for proponents of Net Neutrality, who have been waging an uphill battle for internet data and traffic equality.

The rest of this post assumes that the reader is familiar with the finer points of Net Neutrality, if that’s not the case, you can read more about it here and here, but in a nutshell, it’s the idea that Internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all data that travels over their networks equally. The other possible scenario being that ISPs would be allowed to slow down, or “throttle” data transfer from certain sites at their discretion. For example, an ISP could decide they didn’t want their customers visiting sites of a particular political party, movie actor, author, store, etc. and slow down speeds significantly resulting in the site taking too long to come up.

That said, HBO announced last week that it will be offering its HBO Go service to viewers who don’t have a TV/cable subscription in 2015 — a stand-alone streaming service. HBO CEO Richard Plepler made the announcement recently saying:

“That is a large and growing opportunity that should no longer be left untapped. It is time to remove all barriers to those who want HBO. So, in 2015, we will launch a stand-alone, over-the-top, HBO service in the United States.”

This means that popular shows such as Game Of Thrones, the most pirated TV show in history, will be available to you regardless of your cable plan. HBO’s move makes sense. According to Entertainment Weekly:

“[HBO] officially condemns theft, yet also recognizes that Thrones is an enormous hit, that content leakage is tough to prevent and that the show’s popularity among pirates is inevitable (countries such as Australia, where viewers don’t receive new episodes via pay cable in a timely manner, tend to be among the biggest piracy territories).”

Michael Lombardo, HBO’s programming president also told Entertainment Weekly that the downloading was a “compliment of sorts,” adding, “the demand is there. And it certainly didn’t negatively impact the DVD sales. [Piracy is] something that comes along with having a wildly successful show on a subscription network.”

So why not offer a paid subscription service and minimize piracy? Netflix has more than 37 million subscribers in the US who watch and average of 90 minutes of programming every day; 47 percent of American households subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Instant or a combination thereof; nearly 50 percent have a TV connected to the internet; and 34 percent watch online videos every day. That’s a lot of potential customers. Netflix’s model of eight dollars per month has worked so far and frankly, with the exception of Orange is the New Black and House of Cards, the content isn’t that great.

The day after HBO’s announcement, CBS announced their own “cord cutter” service. For $6 per month, you can live stream CBS programs, get next-day access to current shows on mobile devices, and access an archive of past shows and classics from the network.

Up until now, the only way to get HBO, has been through a provider such as Comcast or Time Warner. The prices vary by region and it’s difficult to determine an overall or average cost across the country. If you want HBO from Comcast you’ll have to buy a bundle that includes other “premium channels” you probably don’t want.

According to hbowatch.com, the price of an HBO subscription, averaged over seven providers, runs about $16/month. Feel free to correct me in the comment section below, but even at $10 per month a streaming service from HBO would be a bargain.

Of the hundreds of channels available to me on my TV I probably only watch a half dozen, of which two are premium and the rest, I could care less. Looking at $60 per month, as opposed to the nearly $150 I spend now is certainly more attractive.

As for the technology, most laptops and tablets are equipped with a micro USB port to play streaming video on most flat screens; Google Chromecast integrates with Netflix and YouTube so far; and gadgets such as the soon to be released Nexus Player and Apple’s AirPlay are going to make streaming content more accessible and easy to use.

America lags behind many countries when it comes to the kind of world class network we should have. In terms of speed and access America trails Sweden, Estonia, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, to name but a few. As for price? According to an article on HuffPost:

“Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, claims it’s capable of providing 3Gbps broadband — but its fastest service currently on the market is $320 a month for 305Mbps. Verizon, meanwhile, has just announced its fastest FiOS ever, 500Mbps for $310 a month. Compare that to Hong Kong, where consumers can get 500Mbps for $25 a month, or Seoul, where the same speed is priced at $30 a month. Only Google Fiber’s broadband plan seems competitive with those of other tech-savvy nations: It offers 1Gbps for $70 a month, which is only outpaced by Japan’s proposed Nuro network with speeds of up to 2Gbps for $51 a month.”

Many countries view internet access as a utility and almost a necessity. In Sweden, for example, people pay about $30 per month for gigabit access as opposed to our ten megabits per second or less. Sweden, Japan, Hong Kong and many European destinations offer connections nearly 100 times faster at lower rates. In America, we’re arguing over Net Neutrality that could allow service providers Comcast, Time Warner and others to “throttle” internet speeds and charge content providers and customers more for “high speed lanes.” Movie watchers, music lovers, gamers, etc. would all be affected if Congress and the FCC allowed what are essentially monopolies to set their own speeds and prices. Want to play a game with your friends? More money. Want to watch a movie without having to watch that little hourglass every five minutes? More money. How about this article? Are you old enough to remember when a page with this much content and images could take 10-15 minutes to load? For those of you too young to have had this experience and the exercise in patience it required, here’s a video.

In an interview for Vox.com with Ezra Klein, Susan Crawford, former Special Assistant to President Obama on Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, had this to say about how the internet is too important to be left to the private market:

“What happens is that we deregulated this entire sector about 10 years ago and the cable guys already had exclusive franchises across the country. They were able to very inexpensively upgrade those to pretty high-speed internet access connections. Meanwhile the telephone companies have totally withdrawn. They have copper line in the ground and it’s expensive for them to build and replace it with fiber. Because of both deregulation and sweeping consolidation in the cable industry we’ve ended up on this plateau where for about 80 percent of Americans their only choice for a high-capacity internet access connection is their local cable monopoly.”

It wasn’t that long ago (less than 20 years) that a cable bill was under $50 per month. The rates have risen faster than inflation and certainly faster than income.

Last June, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision to allow a startup, Aereo, that was streaming live TV to computers, tablets, and smartphones using tiny antennae that grabbed over-the-air broadcasts. The traditional broadcasters sued Aereo out of existence, because they know that if the startup had actually succeeded, they would have a harder time hitting the cable companies with high retransmission fees — which add to cable bills and help keep the whole industry afloat.

Chet Kanojia, Aereo’s founder and chief executive, called it a “massive setback” for consumers and “sends a chilling message to the technology industry.”

What may hopefully end up happening here is that as more content providers like HBO and CBS go rogue and offer their own content to viewers they’ll have a say in what the backbone, i.e. Comcast and Time Warner, can do to that content and the speed at which it arrives to consumers.

The average Joe doesn’t have much of a voice these days in what lawmakers are deciding. We can’t afford lobbyists to speak on our behalf. HBO, CBS, Showtime, Netflix, Amazon and the rest have more than enough money to lobby for Net Neutrality — it ultimately affects their bottom line. As strange as this may seem, this could end up being a rare case of what passes for Capitalism in this country actually working for average people.

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