TCLtv+, the free ad-supported streaming service launched last year by Chinese smart TV maker TCL, in partnership with Bloomberg Media Monday announced the arrival of two new FAST channels.

The agreement will give viewers access to Bloomberg’s global business coverage and analysis, as well its Bloomberg TV and originals programming starting this month.

It’s the most recent addition to TCLtv+, which recently inked a content deal with the NFL, adding to a pool of existing agreements that includes studios like Sony, Lionsgate and Scripps Media.

TCLtv+, which includes more than 330 FAST channels, is currently available on all TCL Google TV-powered smart TVs. The FAST will soon to be available to all North American TCL connected TVs.

Audiences in the U.S. and Canada can find the new Bloomberg FAST channels in the TCLtv+ app’s "News and Opinion" section.

“Whether its coverage of the biggest news stories of the day, or deeper dives into topical stories that matter, our viewers can rely on Bloomberg for critical conversations and thoughtful analysis," said Catherine Zhang, TCL's VP of content service and partnerships, in a statement.

The collaboration is part of Bloomberg’s strategy to broaden video offerings through the production of business-oriented documentaries and series, under its originals banner.

“The launch of Bloomberg's premium video content on TCLtv+ is an expansion of our broader global partnership with TCL," said Travis Winkle, Bloomberg Media’s general manager of video and audio, . 

Shares in Altice USA soared Thursday (July 21) after a report in Bloomberg News said the mid-sized cable operator was seeking a buyer for its Suddenlink Communications division that could fetch as much as $20 billion.

According to Bloomberg, Altice USA is working with Goldman Sachs on a potential deal, citing unnamed sources.

Altice officials declined to comment on what they called "rumors."  

Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei opened the door ever so slightly to a sale back in May at the MoffettNathanson Media & Communications Summit, when he didn’t rule out a potential deal. 

“Suddenlink in itself is a great asset, great growth matrices, under-penetrated markets, less competitive areas, despite that it’s very rural,” Goei said at the conference. “But strategically, it's not a footprint that makes you sit there and say ‘Wow, that’s the most strategic footprint out there.’ So are we sellers or restructurers of certain of our assets in other areas outside of Cablevision? We're always open to listening to people out there if it makes sense for us to trade, swap, sell certain assets.”

Altice USA shares rose more than 40% in afternoon trading July 21, priced as high as $13.17 each, up 43.5% or $3.99 per share. Trading was halted briefly by the NYSE because of the spike, but was resumed later in the day. The stock closed at $11.24 each on July 21, up 22.5% or $2.06 each. 

Nevertheless, the gains have basically erased year-to-date declines for the shares — they were down 43% since December 31 prior to Thursday — fueled by broadband subscriber losses and threats of more intense pricing competition from telco Verizon Communications.

Altice USA has the greatest exposure of any operator to Verizon’s Fios product: About two-thirds of its Optimum footprint in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut competes with the telco. While its Suddenlink footprint is virtually Fios-free, it faces increasing competition from fixed wireless and fiber builds from large and small providers.  

Suddenlink operates primarily across 17 states in the Midwest, southern and western parts of the country. Although Altice USA does not break out specific data for Suddenlink, in a research note Wells Fargo Securities analyst Steven Cahall wrote that he estimates the unit has about 1.8 million customers and passes about 3.9 million homes. He also estimated that 2022 cash flow could be about $1.4 billion. At a $20 billion take-out price, that implies a 14 times cash flow multiple, which would be considerably higher than recent deals. 

Cahall had previously speculated in May that Altice USA could sell Suddenlink at a 7-to-8 times cash flow multiple, which would imply a $12 billion to $13 billion price tag. But if the Bloomberg report is correct, Cahall wrote that his past enterprise value for the company “was far too low.”

In a research note in September 2021, MoffettNathanson senior analyst Craig Moffett assigned a 12 times cash flow multiple to an upgraded Suddenlink, in line with past deals like Cable One’s purchases of Fidelity Communications (11.7 times) and Hargray Communications (17.2 times); adding that any possible buyer would not have as many cost-cutting opportunities as Cable One in those prior deals.

The list of possible buyers could run the gamut of private equity and strategic players, including Cable One, Breezeline (formerly Atlantic Broadband), Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners, TPG and others.    

Whatever the price it is likely to be far in excess of the $9.1 billion Altice paid for Suddenlink back in 2015. That purchase was the international telco’s first in the U.S., and led to its $17.7 billion purchase of Cablevision Systems in 2016.

While Altice was able to cut a lot of costs out of the two companies, more recently it has had trouble gaining broadband customers, reporting a loss of 13,000 high-speed data customers in Q1, after shedding about 3,000 broadband subscribers in 2021.

In a note to clients Thursday, Moffett said while the idea that Altice would sell Suddenlink isn’t that surprising — equity values across the cable landscape are short of their intrinsic values — he was surprised they would attempt a sale while they’re still publicly traded. Altice shares have been on a steady decline over the past several months -- prior to today (July 21), the stock was down 68% since September 3, 2021. That had some speculating in the past that Altice management could take the company private.  

“A large part of our recent reticence in taking a more constructive stance on the company despite its appealing valuation has been our fear that majority owner Patrick Drahi would be much more likely to take the company private first, potentially at only a modest premium, in order to capture the upside of a Suddenlink sale for himself,” Moffett wrote Thursday. ■

Apple is developing a new subscription model that would provide pricey gadgets to consumers for ostensibly affordable monthly fees, according to Bloomberg, which said the new business scheme could be deployed as soon as the end of 2022.

The report provides unnamed sources and sketchy details, but has given the tech press all it needs to jump into speculation ... as in, what if everyone who owned an iPhone had access to services like Apple TV Plus?

Clearly, Apple likes the subscription model. In the first fiscal quarter of 2022, Apple reported revenue of nearly $20 billion from selling subscription-based services.

And it likes bundling its subscription services. 

In late 2020, Apple introduced its "Apple One" bundling strategy, packaging together services including Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, Apple Arcade and iCloud storage in tiers ranging from $19.95 - $29.95 a month. 

Currently, you can buy devices like the highly popular iPhone from Apple in installments, paying for it in 12 - 24 monthly payments. That's a separate bill from your service subscriptions, but what if the device subscription were to be bundled with services like Apple TV Plus under the Apple One strategy?

With 113 million iPhone users in the U.S. alone, according to 2021 Statista data, that could dramatically increase the subscriber count, as yet unknown, for services like Apple TV Plus. 

Consider that there are only around 75 million U.S. subscribers for the leading subscription service, Netflix. 

Apple has goosed uptake of Apple TV Plus by offering the service for free promotional periods with the purchase of Apple hardware.

But if distribution of the subscription streaming service were permanently tethered to popular hardware, it could truly change the game in terms of Apple TV Plus scale. ■

As anyone who reads the day's top headlines will tell you, ending long entanglements can be a bloody affair. 

And WarnerMedia is finding that out the hard way with its ongoing extrication of HBO from Amazon Channels, a departure HBO chief Andy Forssell concedes will cost the premium programmer around 5 million subscribers in the near term. Forssell said HBO will still meet its full 2021 target of around 70 million total subscribers worldwide across IP and linear. But it might come up a little short on third-quarter customer growth results, however. 

“It’s important for us to own the customer,” Forssell told Bloomberg. “If the viewer is in the app, we can tailor the home page to them. We can tailor what they show them next. We can respond to that in real time.”

For the last half of the past decade, HBO was the biggest seller in the Amazon Channels smorgasbord, which disaggregates various subscription video services (Starz and Acorn TV, also among them) into a unified Amazon Prime Video app experience with centralized billing. Besides revenue sharing, Amazon gets to hoard all the data. 

When it launched the HBO Max app in May 2020, WarnerMedia was determined to control its direct-to-consumer destiny, and keep the new app out of Amazon Channels. The result was tech battle with Amazon, which didn't agree to support HBO Max until the end of 2020, following WarnerMedia's capitulation on a new Amazon Web Services cloud computing service agreement. 

These days, as parent company AT&T readies a $43 billion spinoff of WarnerMedia and merger of the media entity with Discovery Inc., HBO seems intent on enduring the pain of course correction. 

HBO Max, for example, is in the process of reprogramming its app, moving away from a core architecture that was rooted in legacy software, HBO Now and HBO Go.

And as Bloomberg describes it, that's not all HBO is moving away from. 

The story describes the channel's founding architects -- aughts-era HBO president Chris Albrecht and his successor, Richard Plepler, as well as former Time Warner Inc. CEO Jeff Bewkes -- as interpreting the direct-to-consumer global streaming biz as "uninteresting," its finer details as "gibberish." 

As it launched its HBO Go app in 2014, Bloomberg noted, HBO was still licensing out streaming rights to crown jewels including The Sopranos and Sex and the City to Amazon. 

And because of output deals signed with companies in Canada, the U.K. and Australia, WarnerMedia is curtailed in its ability to deploy HBO Max into regions that collectively yield rival Netflix 20 million customers. 

“As you see agreements in other territories come up, were more likely to lean into direct-to-consumer posture than not,” Forssell told Bloomberg.

So he's just fixing the mess left by linear-focused tools? 

OK, we'll buy lots of accusations of shortsightedness for Bewkes, the pre-AT&T acquisition corporate overseer who once referred to Netflix as posting a threat on par with the "Albanian Army."

And if you want to toss Plepler under the ol' too-linear-focused bus, I suppose you can, although it could be argued that he did a marvelous job of sustaining the HBO water-cooler brand with Game of Thrones. Being a programmer was his core job.

But Albrecht? The man who pioneered the whole destination programming model that that was copied by many DTC streaming services, including Netflix, left HBO way back in 2007, just as Netflix was starting nascent streaming service. 

Rockbot, a music and video provider to businesses, and Clear Channel Airports, part of outdoor advertising company Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, have launched an airport-terminal "TV experience" aimed at air travelers. The Rockbot Airport TV Network has launched initially in airports in Cleveland, Oakland and New Orleans with a mix of content including business, sports and entertainment news, travel segments and, of course, ads, the companies said last week. 

The service looks to fill in a gap created when the CNN Airport Network shut down this past March after operating in more than 50 airports across the country for 30 years. Rockbot actually replaced the CNN service on the existing infrastructure being used by CNN in markets where Clear Channel Airports had ongoing contractual obligations, a spokesperson said. Rockbot brought its own players to replace the CNN units and is looking to expand into other markets beyond the initial ones. 

There are others operating in the airport space, including ReachTV, but it delivers short-form video programming to airport locations outside of the gate areas that CNN commanded. ReachTV also targets hotels.

Garrett Dodge, the Rockbot CEO, said in a release: "Rockbot’s Airport Media Network reimagines the traveler experience by bringing them high-quality entertainment and news from the leading content brands. For example, the network features live stock market and business coverage from Bloomberg, which is the leader in business news and a perfect fit for the airport audience. In addition, the network delivers real-time cloud-based digital signage to give airports a streamlined ability to message their travelers and prompt their concession partners. Just as air travel is picking up again, we have created a modernized TV environment for airports, advertisers and travelers that will forever elevate the industry standard.”

In an example of content coming on board tailored to specific airports, Rockbot has signed with Nine PBS in St. Louis to feature Living St. Louis on the Rockbot Airport Network in St. Louis Lambert International Airport, a spokesperson said.

Clear Channel Airports SVP of development John Moyer said in the release: “After vetting a number of content providers for gate hold news and entertainment, we selected Rockbot as our partner. They’ve transitioned in quickly, seamlessly and in a user-friendly way delivering custom local and national content, as well as vital airport partner messaging to these networks. We look forward to working with them across these in-airport TV networks.”

Clear Channel Airports said it operates more than 260 airport media programs globally and is in 28 of the top 50 U.S. markets with major airports.

DistroTV, an independent free ad-supported streaming TV platform, said it has added Bloomberg TV and Bloomberg Quicktake to its 150-plus channel roster.

“Bloomberg Media is known for featuring independent voices who equip viewers with the news and analysis necessary to have an informed take on the latest in finance, technology, culture and politics, from the latest stock market trends to conversations surrounding the future of work to the pandemic’s ongoing impact on local businesses and communities,” said Navdeep Saini, founder and CEO of DistroScale, parent company of DistroTV. “The addition of these channels signify our ongoing commitment to deliver thought-provoking and engaging content to a globally-minded audience.”

DistroScale, started in 2013, provides media companies with a video platform for the web, apps and streaming. It launched DistroTV in 2019.

"The addition of Bloomberg TV and Bloomberg Quicktake on DistroTV extends our reach to new audiences who are looking for trusted, global business news on streaming,” said M. Scott Havens, chief growth officer and global head of strategic partnerships, at Bloomberg Media. “Both networks provide a unique content offering that reaches decision makers, business professionals and rising leaders who have high expectations from the content and news they consume.”

DistroTV programming lineup includes CineLife, Euro News, Reelz, Law&Crime, Qello Concerts by Stingray, Magellan TV, People TV, Kweli TV, Canela TV, BritAsia, LiveFilmeraa, and Venus TV.

While Quibi’s disappointing audience performance during its first six months on the market has been widely—and in many cases gleefully—reported, so has the start-up’s success at raising capital, which totaled $1.8 billion at launch. 

Unfortunately for founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and his mobile-first streaming service, it looks like Quibi might need to come up with a lot more cash to keep going. 

Also read: Quibi Exploring Possible Sale or IPO (Report)

Bloomberg said it crunched the numbers and found that Katzenberg is going to need to come up with another $1.8 billion by 2024 to keep his platform alive. At the current trajectory, Quibi will come up about $6 billion short by 2030. 

“By compiling Quibi’s reported and public statements about content spending, advertising, subscribers and more, a picture emerges of a company headed for financial distress after a tough first year,” the Bloomberg report said. 

Quibi’s reliance on original content is one factor that makes its operational costs significant. And as has been widely reported, the company works with top-level producers, paying top dollar for shows produced in dual production workflows (one for landscape, one for profile), so Quibi original content isn’t cheap. 

The platform also has the generous producer clause that gives ownership of shows back to makers after seven years. 

So yeah, making TV shows for smart phones can cost a lot of money. 

The Bloomberg report comes a few weeks after Wall Street Journal reported that Katzenberg was exploring a possible sale of Quibi, or maybe even an initial public offering involving a special purpose acquisition company. 

Just wait until stocking-stuffer time.

That was perhaps the most interesting declaration made by WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar in an interview with Bloomberg, published right after parent company AT&T went Godfather II on its media division’s senior executive staff, axing Robert Greenblatt and Kevin Reilly and buttressing the reign of the former Hulu chief executive, just appointed in April. 

Also read: WarnerMedia Restructures Under Kilar; Greenblatt and Reilly Out

Asked by Bloomberg if there are some technology companies that are just too big, the otherwise close-to-the-vest Kilar took the bait, signaling out Amazon, which along with Roku, does not support WarnerMedia’s new HBO Max app on its connected TV devices. 

“If Amazon were truly focused just on the consumers with Fire devices, HBO Max would be on Fire devices. The consumer wants it,” Kilar said.

Will HBO Max ever by supported by Amazon Fire TV and Roku. 

Kilar said his mom considers him optimistic, and that optimistic side of him sure hopes so. 

He thinks the holiday gift-giving season, a time when OTT devices have been hot buys in recent years, will put pressure on Amazon and Roku. 

“As we head into the fourth quarter, when gift giving happens, it becomes a more material situation for a seller of hardware. There are alternatives in Google Chromecast and Apple TV,” Kilar said. 

Bloomberg notes that WarnerMedia’s 25,000-member staff is about to undergo some recessionary pruning under Kilar. But the interview fixates quite bit on the fate of the pay TV bundle…and how it’s fading, but will never really go away…

Thinks perk up a little when Kilar talks about Hulu’s decision to launch in Japan as opposed to embark on a full-fledged international strategy, as Netflix did. 

“If you talked to any of them today, they’d say it was a mistake,” Kilar said. “I’d say it was a mistake, and one of my biggest regrets was not being able to persuade the board of Hulu to go international.”

Fox News has lined up another Democratic presidential candidate for a town hall.

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg will appear Monday, March 2, on the eve of Super Tuesday. 

Bloomberg is late to the race, but armed with billions. It will be a week for Fox town halls with billionaire New Yorkers. It is holding a town hall with President Donald Trump March 5. 

The Bloomberg town hall will be held at the Hylton Performing Arts Center in Manassas, Va., which is one of the Super Tuesday primary states. 

Like the Trump town hall, the Bloomberg event will air from 6:30-7:30 p.m. and be moderated by Bret Baier (Special Report) and Martha MacCallum (The Story). 

Both those shows, which air at 6-7 and 7-8 p.m., respectively, will give up a half hour to the town hall.   

Boasting more than 86 million domestic users, Roku has the leading OTT device ecosystem in the U.S. usurping Amazon Fire TV, which has nearly 67 million users.

Citing these eMarketer figures, Bloomberg framed the battle for domestic streaming platform supremacy up pretty neatly this morning, painting Roku as the market incumbent, thriving but besieged by competition that also includes Apple TV and Google Chromecast.

Notably, Bloomberg’s feature also outlined all the different ways the platform makes money.

Or, as authors Lucas Shaw and Gerry Smith put, “Nearly every inch of real estate on Roku is for rent.”

For example, an advertiser can take over the Roku homepage, as Hulu recently did when it poached the rights for Seinfeld from Netflix. According to Bloomberg, those rights go for around $1 million. (The news service didn’t specify how long of a takeover that $1 million buys.)

Hulu, Netflix and Showtime, meanwhile, have to pay Roku a licensing fee of $1 a customer to have dedicated buttons on Roku remote controls that take users directly to their service.

Roku is projected to take in more than $600 million in advertising revenue this year and could reach $1.5 billion by 2022, according to RBC Capital Markets figures that are highlighted in the Bloomberg article.

Perhaps Roku’s most notable monetization feature is its carriage model. While pay TV operators cough up licensing fees to carry media networks, Roku pays nothing to have content companies put apps (aka “channels”) on its platform. But Roku gets a share of the ad dollars, just the same.

And when a subscription service like Netflix signs up a customer on Roku, the platform gets a cut of the revenue, as well.

Despite the explosive growth of so-called “platform” revenue on Roku, which grew another 79% in the third quarter, the company still loses money, Bloomberg noted.

Hardware is a big reason why, with the company still selling its devices at artificially low prices to better proliferate its OTT ecosystem.

But proliferated it is.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Sam Bloom, who heads advertising firm Camelot, said, “When we went out to Roku, my eyes were opened. I was shocked by how large the footprint is there.”

Boasting more than 86 million domestic users, Roku has the leading OTT device ecosystem in the U.S. usurping Amazon Fire TV, which has nearly 67 million users.

Citing these eMarketer figures, Bloomberg framed the battle for domestic streaming platform supremacy up pretty neatly this morning, painting Roku as the market incumbent, thriving but besieged by competition that also includes Apple TV and Google Chromecast. 

Notably, Bloomberg’s feature also outlined all the different ways the platform makes money. 

Or, as authors Lucas Shaw and Gerry Smith put, “Nearly every inch of real estate on Roku is for rent.”

For example, an advertiser can take over the Roku homepage, as Hulu recently did when it poached the rights for Seinfeld from Netflix. According to Bloomberg, those rights go for around $1 million. (The news service didn’t specify how long of a takeover that $1 million buys.)

Hulu, Netflix and Showtime, meanwhile, have to pay Roku a licensing fee of $1 a customer to have dedicated buttons on Roku remote controls that take users directly to their service. 

Roku is projected to take in more than $600 million in advertising revenue this year and could reach $1.5 billion by 2022, according to RBC Capital Markets figures that are highlighted in the Bloomberg article. =

Perhaps Roku’s most notable monetization feature is its carriage model. While pay TV operators cough up licensing fees to carry media networks, Roku pays nothing to have content companies put apps (aka “channels”) on its platform. But Roku gets a share of the ad dollars, just the same. 

And when a subscription service like Netflix signs up a customer on Roku, the platform gets a cut of the revenue, as well. 

Despite the explosive growth of so-called “platform” revenue on Roku, which grew another 79% in the third quarter, the company still loses money, Bloomberg noted.

Hardware is a big reason why, with the company still selling its devices at artificially low prices to better proliferate its OTT ecosystem. 

But proliferated it is. 

Speaking to Bloomberg, Sam Bloom, who heads advertising firm Camelot, said, “When we went out to Roku, my eyes were opened. I was shocked by how large the footprint is there.”

Bloomberg Businessweek appeared to have a major scoop on Oct. 4, when it reported on an investigation of an alleged spy hack by the Chinese government that infiltrated as far as CIA network servers.

The hack, the report said, originated with motherboards manufactured in China for San Jose, Calif.-based server tech vendor Super Micro Computer Inc. (aka “SuperMicro”). The tech company is alleged to have sold corrupted motherboards to unwitting clients including Apple and Amazon. These motherboards are said to have had tiny, grain-of-rice-sized chips embedded into them that would allow backdoor access to otherwise secure networks by Chinese operatives.

Related: Amazon Denies Report That AWS Elemental was Pawn in Chinese Chip Espionage

On Tuesday, Bloomberg published a follow-up, reporting that an unnamed U.S. telecom company found and removed “manipulated” SuperMicro hardware in August. This discovery, the news agency said, was provided by an Israeli security expert, after he read Bloomberg’s initial report last week.

Bloomberg said that its two veteran reporters behind the story talked to 17 sources working for Apple, Amazon and in the national intelligence community.

But the latest report represents a kind of doubling down for Bloomberg, which received extraordinarily vehement denials on its original story from Apple, Amazon and SuperMicro last week.

“On this we can be very clear: Apple has never found malicious chips, ‘hardware manipulations’ or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server," the computer giant said in a statement. “Apple never had any contact with the FBI or any other agency about such an incident. We are not aware of any investigation by the FBI, nor are our contacts in law enforcement.”

Apple didn’t stop there. It’s VP of information security, George Stathakopoulos, sent a letter to key Congressional committee heads over the weekend, assuring them the story is simply “not true.”

“We are struck by the fact that the gravity and magnitude of the claims seemed to be undermined by their uncertainty around key details,” Stathakopoulos wrote.

Bloomberg said the investigation into the spy chips began in 2015, when Amazon purchased cloud video company Elemental Technologies and asked to audit some of their motherboards.

"As we shared with Bloomberg BusinessWeek multiple times over the last couple months, at no time, past or present, have we ever found any issues relating to modified hardware or malicious chips in SuperMicro motherboards in any Elemental or Amazon systems," Amazon said in an emailed statement. "Additionally, we have not engaged in an investigation with the government.”

Amazon later added, “[W]hen Amazon was considering acquiring Elemental, we did a lot of due diligence with our own security team, and also commissioned a single external security company to do a security assessment for us as well. That report did not identify any issues with modified chips or hardware.”

Still, it’s a world-shaking story … if it holds up,” noted New York Magazine.

But with two notoriously press-shy companies being so aggressive in their denials, New York wondered, if Bloomberg Businessweek, “a very cautious publication with extremely stringent editing standards, and two veteran reporters with decades of experience between them, got badly played by over a dozen sources spread across Apple, Amazon, and the national intelligence community.”

Bloomberg Media has created a new position, global chief commercial officer, and tapped a veteran marketer to fill it.

Andrew Benett, most recently global CEO for Havas Creative Group, will assume the new post, in charge of Bloomberg Media sales, advertising, franchising, consulting and marketing. He will be based in New York and report to Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith.

Benett is being brought on board as Bloomberg expands its reach, which it already counts as a 60-million-plus audience across digital, TV, radio, print and live events.

Bloomberg recently said it would partner with Twitter on a 24/7 "breaking news" network to go along with its business news and analysis properties.

Even before it launches its HBO nightly newscast and a documentary service on the former A&E H2 channel, Vice is laying out plans for expanding its TV and online video presence globally, and anticipates a public offering or sale in the coming year, founder/CEO Shane Smith said.

During a CNBC interview in London, Smith disclosed that Vice plans to launch at least a dozen TV networks throughout Europe during the coming year, continuing to concentrate on edgy programs for millennial audiences. He acknowledged that he move into TV is essential since 75% of the company's ad revenue comes from TV. Smith said he expects to use that money for expanded ventures into mobile and over-the-top delivery.

"You can actually take money from TV and put it into mobile, which is quite frankly more difficult to monetize," Smith said.

He offered no specific details about the upcoming U.S. launches, but said he expects revenue will near $1 billion this year and will double during the next few years. 

Vice is in acquisition talks "with everybody," at a $5 billion valuation, but that is "kind of at the top end where media could buy us today," Smith said. Hence he also is pondering a public offering.

"Around the end of this year, we're going to have to make a decision about whether we start to make the book to go public, or do a sort of larger, major strategic deal," Smith told CNBC.

During the London trip last week, Smith also revealed that Vice has produced 32 TV series  since early 2014 "for our network in America" and added that the content has been offered for pan-European regional and national deals.

"We are trying to navigate the morass of how you do telco deals simultaneous with terrestrial TV deals and keep growing our online platforms," Smith said, according to published reports. He has said he expects to announce distribution partners within the next couple months and begin TV rollout during the first quarter of 2016.

Separately, Vice has hired former Bloomberg chief content officer Josh Tyrangiel to run the company's new daily newscast for HBO; the launch date for the new five-nights-per week show has not been set. Tyrangiel had been at Bloomberg for six years.

Smith described Vice's HBO show as a venture that will "take news programming in a totally new direction. ... [It] needs the leadership of an expert who’s hungry to do things differently."  

Meanwhile, Netflix, which has accelerated its original content production, said it will add the edgy kind of documentaries that have been Vice's forte. During Netflix's recent earnings call, content chief Ted Sarandos said the streaming service could compete with Vice documentaries and with news-based shows such as HBO's Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.

"We're definitely being more adventurous in terms of the genres we're going into," Sarandos said during a presentation, during which Netflix CEO Reed Hastings asked, "What's the likelihood that we compete directly with Vice in the next two years?"

Sarandos simply said, "Probably high." 

Jacki Kelley, formerly CEO of IPG Mediabrands North America and president of global clients, has joined Bloomberg Media as COO for Media, overseeing TV, Web, mobile digital video, radio print and live events. She will serve as deputy to CEO Justin Smith across the entire Media Group, including Web, mobile, Bloomberg TV, print magazines and live events.

She comes aboard Sept. 1 and will be based in New York. “This is a coup for our organization and important talent milestone as we implement our new strategy," Smith said in a release. "Jacki is a force of nature – a perfect a mix of shrewd business acumen and creativity with a clear track record of success."

At IPG, she is credited with helping snag the Microsoft account, adding to a roster that already includes ExxonMobil, Sony and BMW.

Before overseeing integrated tools, technologies and services for North American clients at IPG, Kelley's resume included posts at Yahoo!, and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. She got her start at USA Today, where she became SVP of Advertising.

Following the announcement of its new consumer media strategy, Bloomberg Media Group has named Paul Caine global chief revenue officer.

Caine joins Bloomberg from his current position as CEO of independent audio media company WestwoodOne. He also served 23 years in various advertising and marketing roles at Time Inc.

At Bloomberg, Caine will oversee advertising and marketing efforts worldwide. His position is effective today, June 2, 2014. He is based out of Bloomberg’s global headquarters in New York City.

“Paul is one of the great talents in global advertising with deep experience in digital and traditional media. He has developed some of the most innovative advertising strategies in the industry and will be instrumental in our efforts to build a portfolio of digitally-led, multi-platform brands for global business decision-makers around the world,” said Bloomberg Media Group CEO Justin B. Smith in a statement. 

Following the announcement of its new consumer media strategy, Bloomberg Media Group has named Paul Caine global chief revenue officer.

Caine joins Bloomberg from his current position as CEO of independent audio media company WestwoodOne. He also served 23 years in various advertising and marketing roles at Time Inc.

At Bloomberg, Caine will oversee worldwide advertising and marketing efforts across all platforms. His position is effective today, June 2, 2014. He is based out of Bloomberg’s global headquarters in New York City.

“Paul is one of the great talents in global advertising with deep experience in digital and traditional media. He has developed some of the most innovative advertising strategies in the industry and will be instrumental in our efforts to build a portfolio of digitally-led, multi-platform brands for global business decision-makers around the world,” said Bloomberg Media Group CEO Justin B. Smith in a statement.