NBCUniversal promoted content distribution executives Monica Williams and Matt Farina to senior VP.

Williams becomes senior VP of digital production and operations. Farina will be senior VP of digital product partnerships and programming.

Both execs had been VPs. They will continue to lead their teams and will continue to report to Matt Bond, chairman, NBCUniversal Content Distribution.

“Monica and Matt lead teams that work across NBCUniversal and our industry partners to deliver best-in-class experiences that are driving the future of video viewership,” Bond said. “These are well-deserved promotions and I look forward to the continued innovation that each of their groups will continue to bring to bear.”

Williams joined NBCU in 2005 and had been in the content distribution organization since 2011. She started her career as an intern in the Early Identification Program at General Electric, which owned NBCU before Comcast. 

Farina joined NBCU’s advertising sales and client partnership division in 2010 and moved to content distribution in 2014. Earlier he wired at Entertainment One.

Cheddar, the business and tech news service focused on affluent millennials, has landed a $22 million Series D round led by Raine Ventures.

Cheddar, which has raised about $32 million so far, said the funds will be used in part to fuel domestic and international expansion.

Existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Comcast Ventures, AT&T, Altice USA, The New York Stock Exchange, Ribbit Capital, and Amazon participated in the latest round, as did new ones such as Liberty Global, Goldman Sachs, Antenna Group, 7 Global Capital, and Dentsu Ventures.

In line with its new funding, Cheddar talked up a growing distribution strategy that expanded on its OTT roots to also include work with MVPDs and other partners that include Sling TV, Layer3 TV (now part of T-Mobile), Comcast (for its X1 platform), Amazon, Facebook, Spotify, Twitter, and Twitch, among others.

It also has plans to launch its Snapchat Publisher Story offering in April, as well as Cheddar Big News, a service that’s billed as a “general news network” covering politics, business, sports, weather and trending stories “without crowding the set with pundits and panels.”

RELATED: More Channels Tune in to Twitch

Cheddar is valued at $160 million, up from $85 million following its previous funding round, and has booked $18 million in revenue for 2018, Cheddar founder and CEO Jon Steinberg told The Wall Street Journal.

"I'm thrilled to welcome this group of leading global media powerhouses into Cheddar," Jon Steinberg, founder and CEO of Cheddar,” Steinberg said in a statement. "We are strengthening our already robust balance sheet with capital that we can use to bring our Post Cable Networks to Europe and beyond. We own all of our IP and now is the time to monetize this asset globally."

"Our investment in Cheddar is the first step in what will be our international collaboration with the company," Simon Freer, chief commercial officer of Liberty Global's content investments arm, said in a statement. “Cheddar is the leader in live digital news video, and owns all its IP. We believe Cheddar can go global, and we are excited to collaborate with the company to make that a reality."

BidSlate, a global content rights marketplace, said it has closed a three-year, exclusive deal that will bring Unlocked: The World of Games Revealed from Discovery Networks to the Asia Pacific market.

Written and directed by Jeremy Snead of Mediajuice Studios, Unlocked is an eight-episode, non-fiction limited series that tells firsthand stories by celebrities, gaming icons and field experts on the culture, tech, history and the future of the video game industry. The series features episodes with Michael Rooker (Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2), Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings Trilogy), Penn Gillette, Tom Arnold, Kevin Smith, and Alison Haislip (Attack of the Show!).

“As we celebrate our first year as a quickly-growing online platform determined to change the way that content is sold around the world, we’re delighted to close a major deal with an international broadcaster,” Roland Rojas, co-founder and president of BidSlate, said in a statement.

“We’re excited about this inaugural deal with BidSlate,” said Darren Chau, Director of Programming, Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific – Australia, New Zealand & Pacific Islands. “This series is an informative, entertaining and extensive celebration of video games featuring well known celebrities and pop culture references.

New York-based BidSlate operates an online platform that handles the process of transacting global media rights and distribution for content distributors. A key aim, it says, is to simplify content rights negotiations between buyers and sellers of content.

Cheddar, the millennial-oriented business channel, is expanding its over-the-top reach with a Thursday (July 27) launch on Haystack TV.

Cheddar, which broadcasts live from the New York Stock Exchange floor, will be accessible on Haystack across mobile and OTT platforms, including Apple TV, Android TV, Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV, the companies said.

Haystack offers users personalized newscasts by aggregating content based on users' interests and preferences. The app distributes content from local, national and digital news organizations.

Related: Cheddar to Mix Some OTA With Its OTT

The Haystack debut comes on the heels of news Wednesday that KXTV, Tegna’s ABC affiliate in Sacramento, Calif., would be airing Cheddar segments in its morning and afternoon newscasts – which could be a model for an eventual rollout across the group.

Cheddar CEO Jon Steinberg, the former president of BuzzFeed, launched Cheddar in 2016, billing it as a “post cable network” for millennials with an interest in business. Unlike other new media brands, however, Cheddar has focused on nabbing viewers on linear TV as well as on digital.

Turner has named Richard Warren president of Turner Content Distribution, replacing Coleman Breland who remains president of Turner Classic Movies and FilmStruck while taking on a new role as head of content experiences. Both execs are based in Atlanta and will report to Turner president David Levy.

Warren, in his new role, will oversee all brand distribution, affiliate marketing, interactive television and business development for Turner's 10 domestic entertainment, news and kids networks as well as continued oversight of TCD’s strategic planning, business operations, and legal and business affairs. Previously, he served as executive vice president of content negotiations & strategy and associate general counsel, where he led the company’s efforts in structuring and negotiating Turner’s linear and digital content agreements with its distribution partners, as well as oversaw the strategic planning, operations, distribution technology and TCD legal and business affairs teams.

“Rich is a tremendous leader and has played an integral role in the growth and success of Turner’s content distribution division for the past 17 years,” Levy said in a statement “I have tremendous respect for Rich and I’m confident his extensive experience in the distribution space, and his relationships in the industry, as well as his strong and strategic deal-making abilities, will steer Turner to continued growth in the distribution space.”

In the newly created positon of president, content experiences, Breland will lead a cross-functional, company-wide initiative to explore new content strategies for business models both inside and outside traditional TV. Breland will work with business leaders across the company to develop an approach for the company’s content portfolio that reflects rapidly shifting consumption behaviors, technology advancements, set-top-box evolution and disruption. He will remain responsible for oversight of TCM and FilmStruck, including the development of new distribution opportunities, digital brand extensions, e-commerce and direct-to-consumer engagement opportunities for both brands.

“For more than 23 years, Coleman has played a vital role in the growth and success of Turner, leading one of the industry’s most dynamic and creative divisions and, together, they have delivered outstanding results for our partners and company,” Levy said in a statement. “There is simply no one better than Coleman to lead this new effort in developing innovative content-driven strategies and initiatives for our company so we can remain agile, keep our competitive edge, and be poised for success in the future.”

As Wall Street still waits for more consolidation among video distributors, many such companies are eyeing deals to buy content assets that they had jettisoned just a few years ago to unlock hidden value.

So-called vertical integration, the marriage of distribution and content under one corporate roof — owning the pipe and the water — has always looked better on paper than in practice. For pay TV providers, owning a large block of the content they make available to customers would seem to lead to lower programming costs and greater exclusivity.

But operators found out the hard way several years ago that isn’t necessarily the case. As the industry grew, Federal Communications Commission programming- access rules made it virtually impossible to have truly exclusive content. With that need to make carriage deals as arm’s-length transactions, limiting any possibility for deep discounts, there was little value in keeping programming and distribution together.

Several companies cut the vertical cord by spinning off content assets over the past two decades, including AT&T and Liberty Media in 2001; Cablevision Systems (now Altice USA) with both MSG Networks (2010) and AMC Networks (2011); Viacom and CBS in 2006; and Time Warner Inc. and Time Warner Cable in 2009.

The rationale behind each split was varied, but the transactions shared a common theme: Unlocking the value of content that was hidden inside what was, at the time, a lower-growth distribution business.

As the industry moves toward an over-the-top model, where mobility and slimmed-down content packages rule the day, some believe that putting those assets together makes more sense.

Viacom and CBS will probably be the first to inch toward reconciliation, as both have put together committees of independent directors to look into a combination, with the blessing of largest shareholder National Amusements. Some analysts see that as more of a horizontal move, as CBS and Viacom both produce programming. Nonetheless, some are beginning to warm up to the idea of putting distribution and content together again.

CONSOLIDATION’S NEXT PHASE

The change of heart comes just as phase one of a continued consolidation wave among distributors winds down. In the wake of megadeals like Charter Communications’s acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks; AT&T’s purchase of DirecTV; Altice USA’s purchases of Suddenlink Communications and Cablevision Systems; and even Comcast’s abandoned attempt to buy TWC, the thought is that the industry will now turn its M&A attention toward content.

The big difference is Internet video, which has changed attitudes toward vertical integration, Barclays analysts Kannan Venkateshwar and Amir Rozwadowski noted in a recent report.

“In our opinion, distributors have the ability to subsume all content under their aggregation umbrellas, which makes the whole concept of cable networks irrelevant,” the Barclays analysts wrote.

There have already been a smattering of content/distribution deals: Verizon Communications purchased a 24.6% stake in digital content producer AwesomenessTV in April, and Comcast purchased DreamWorks Animation for $3.8 billion in TV in August, to name two.

Technology platforms that help further monetize video also have been a focus with Comcast’s purchases of Visible World and investments in BuzzFeed and Vox Media, and Verizon’s AOL and Yahoo buys. Others could follow suit.

“We would not be surprised if other distributors were to potentially embrace larger opportunities in the content arena over time,” Venkateshwar and Rozwadowski wrote.

There appears to be no shortage of candidates. Speculation has been high that AT&T, fresh off its $48.5 billion purchase of DirecTV last year, is on the hunt for more content.

Not everyone is convinced that vertical integration is making a comeback, though. Telsey Advisory Group media analyst Tom Eagan said that while there could be a few horizontal deals on the horizon — Viacom and CBS being the prime example — he doesn’t expect to see any moves toward vertical integration.

“I think there has definitely been some MVPD horizontal integration, and there’s definitely been some content integration, i.e. Lionsgate and Starz. But we haven’t seen any vertical integration since Comcast-NBC,” Eagan said.

CONFLICTS ARISE

Even Comcast’s 2011 purchase of NBCUniversal — vertical integration’s shining star — now has a slight tarnish because Comcast is conflicted in certain transactions, Eagan noted. For instance, increased retransmission-consent fees benefit the content side of the business, but could hurt the operation’s cable portion.

“There’s more of an internal conflict,” Eagan said.

Comcast has claimed that retrans fees from NBC went from $0 when it bought the broadcast network in 2011 to an expected $800 million this year.

MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett also doubted the chances for a vertical-integration wave. In an email, he said the economic theory behind the vertical-integration concept is guaranteed supply or guaranteed distribution. Neither notion applies to media, he said.

“What’s left is mostly just exclusivity, and unless you believe that the program-access rules are going to sunset, exclusivity is illegal,” Moffett wrote. “I get the appeal on a superficial level, and I even get the grass is always greener argument, but the historical evidence for real synergy between content and distribution is extremely thin. If the program access rules do sunset, however, then it’s a completely different ballgame.”

Eagan was also skeptical of the earlier idea that that content companies would seek to combine in an effort to battle larger distributors, such as Charter Communications, which more than quadrupled its size after purchasing Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.

“The old-media model was getting beachfronts,” Eagan said. “Every new cable-network channel was a new beachfront to growing higher ad fees and more affiliate revenue. That’s not the game anymore. If you don’t have great content, it doesn’t matter if you have another beachfront.”

Still, AT&T is reportedly in the hunt for more content, and has kicked the tires on several media properties over the past year, including Starz (which was purchased by Lionsgate in June for $4.4 billion) and Yahoo (purchased by Verizon in July for $4.8 billion). According to a Bloomberg News report, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has a list of 40 to 45 companies that he constantly monitors, including peers and potential targets, as he plans his next move.

Adding more content seems to fit in with AT&T’s mobility strategy, which is further proffered by its planned launch of a new over-the-top service, DirecTV Now, later this year. DirecTV Now will have more than 100 live and on-demand channels targeted at younger viewers. AT&T has signed several content carriage deals in the past few months to fuel the service, including with NBCU, Disney, Discovery Communications, A+E Networks, Turner Broadcasting System and Scripps Networks.

MOBILE MOVES

Both AT&T and Verizon have been active in the deal market and see mobility as the future of the distribution business. While Verizon has focused more on digital assets for its mobile go90 service, AT&T could take a more traditional route, with some analysts predicting that Time Warner Inc. could end up in its crosshairs.

Time Warner and AT&T officials declined to comment.

Time Warner has arguably been in play since 21st Century Fox abandoned its unsolicited $80 billion offer for the programmer in 2014. Since then, Time Warner has launched HBO Now, a standalone OTT product for its flagship premium channel HBO, and set an Oct. 19 launch date for FilmStruck, with the Criterion Collection.

But along with cable networks like TBS, TNT, CNN and Cartoon Network, Time Warner also creates a large number or movies and television shows through its Warner Bros. Studios arm. Warner Bros. Television Group produces such cable and broadcast TV hits as The Big Bang Theory, The Flash, Gotham, Rizzoli & Isles, Shameless, Supergirl and Westworld.

Time Warner would attract a high price — Venkateshwar has estimated that a deal could be done for about $97 billion, including assumed debt — which could limit the players willing to make a bid.

Perhaps fueling the deal speculation is the relative sluggishness of content stocks over the past year, as uncertainty around OTT, skinny bundles and declining subscribers have sent some investors for the exits. Disney, which had its stock price rise fourfold between 2010 and early August 2015 from about $31 to $121.69, saw a 20% decline later that month, after it was revealed that its flagship ESPN network had lost about 7 million subscribers over the past few years. While Disney stock over the long haul is up by about three times its 2010 levels, it hasn’t fully recovered from the August 2015 dropoff. Shares were at $92.59 on Oct. 4.

Other content stocks have fared the same: 21st Century Fox, Discovery Communications, and Viacom are all down in the double-digit percentages from last August.

At the same time, distribution stocks — bolstered by continued broadband growth, consolidation speculation and a resurgence in video subscribers — have been on the rise.

Granted, consolidation has reduced the number of publicly traded distributors from six to four with the acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and DirecTV. But the four that remain are up a collective 30% since August 2015, driven by Charter’s consolidation-spurred 28% rise and a 5% gain at Comcast, currently the only vertically integrated cable operator.

Comcast first announced its plans to purchase a 51% stake in NBCUniversal — including the NBC broadcast network and 16 cable channels such as USA Network, Syfy and Bravo — in 2009. In 2013 it went all in, buying the remaining stake in the programmer from General Electric for about $16 billion.

In the past five years, Comcast has managed to rejuvenate NBCU’s content business, with the broadcaster atop the current TV-season ratings among 18-to-49-year-olds for the third straight year and cash flow nearly doubling from $3.7 billion in 2010 to $6.4 billion in 2015. The content side has also helped fuel Comcast Cable’s on-demand efforts.

Nowhere is that more evident than in Comcast’s August airing of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games from Rio de Janiero, where it offered more than 7,000 hours of content through live broadcasts on NBC and 11 cable channels; on-demand, through its X1 platform; and streamed online. Though overall ratings were down for the 2016 Olympics, Comcast still made about $250 million from the Games.

The Barclays analysts see even more synergies for Comcast as the nation’s largest cable operator moves into the wireless business. Comcast has activated an MVNO agreement with Verizon that would allow it to resell that carrier’s wireless service under its own brand, and has said it expects to launch a product next year.

BOON FOR WIRELESS?

Venkateshwar and Rozwadowski believe that wireless, with its heavy video component, could make content ownership even more important.

“Over the last few years, however, with mobile broadband, smartphones, Internet video streaming, and e-commerce becoming mainstream, as well as consumers and advertisers starting to look across platforms for content, the ecosystem finally is at a place where cross-platform monetization is more achievable,” the analysts wrote.

Pivotal Research Group CEO and senior media & communications analyst Jeff Wlodarczak said it makes sense for Comcast to continue to dip into the content trough, but doubted other distributors would make the plunge.

“It may make sense for Comcast to bolster its existing NBC operations to do deals and potentially realize substantial synergies,” Wlodarczak said. But Comcast and Charter might do better to set their sites on a wireless carrier such as T-Mobile, he argued, adding that such a play would eliminate the telcos’ only advantage over cable and could present huge synergies by allowing the MSOs to offload wireless traffic onto their own WiFi networks.

“The good news for cable is that getting into wireless is a lot easier than the RBOCs getting into cable’s core business, super-fast terrestrial broadband,” Wlodarczak said.

Following up on six trends driving the future of content, here are six technology-enabled developments that are driving how television content is distributed and consumed.

1. More (and Smarter) Devices

Both mobile and stationary devices will continue to populate the home, business and travel lives of Americans. That’s because we like it! The average U.S. TV household  has gone from one TV set to several, and from just TVs to other devices, and from just one mobile device to several. That’s a lot of screens, especially considering each home on average has just a bit more than two folks living in it. Most of these devices will also acquire more and more storage and computing power. Read more.

2. Data Use Grows

Data will come from many platforms, e.g., social media’s Twitter tweets will factor into comScore’s and Nielsen’s measurements of “total viewing audiences and their preferences.” Data will not just determine if people like programming, but as importantly, it will more and more determine what people will like, and thus what content gets made. This will include the advertisements consumers watch, which will be more and more targeted, based upon the likes and dislikes of that viewer, and that viewer only. Read more.

3. Internet of Things

A business colleague in Denver, Colo., tells of the audio speakers in his living room being run off of an Internet connection. This is but one early example of how more and more devices – including those in the video and TV worlds – will be connected to the Internet for the purposes of more viewing enjoyment and sophistication. Of course, this also ties in with the trend above, that of data use. Unimaginable information sources are just being developed today, which will completely drive the what, where, how, why and when of TV viewing, in no less than a couple of years. Read more here and here.

4. Distribution Migration

The transition of millions of former pay TV subscribers to IP-enabled devices is the paradigm of this trend. Another great example is that of wireless providers rivaling wireline providers in the delivery and distribution of content to America. And there will be more such transitions, as large, small, and medium-sized content-rights holders and distributors grapple with the best technology to deliver those ones and zeros. But a tiny example of this migration is the challenge presenting itself to cable and telcos by the upstart Alternative Broadband Providers.

5. Enhanced (and Advanced) Digital Media

For years, this side of the industry has also been known as Advanced Media Services or Advanced Digital Media. Examples include DVRs and VOD during the past couple of decades, and most recently Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality capabilities. Applying these two latter viewing options to just video gaming alone,opens up a multibillion-dollar industry subsector. And there will be more and more, as regularly as in the past there have been new TV shows introduced every September. HDTV, 4K, and UHDTV are additional examples on the picture-quality side of the ledger.

6. The Pie Grows

The knee-jerk reaction is to look at OTT/broadband/streaming video services and predict a sharp fall off in traditional distribution modes. But perhaps one of the best examples is that of the Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) industry and its influence on cable. Sure, cable lost subscribers, but cable found ways to enhance the most important benchmark, i.e., average revenue per unit (ARPU). Cable also found its way into a couple more technologies, i.e., telephone and Internet/broadband service, and made a huge investment in better infrastructure. Thus, the better measure was to describe the “Video World in a Post-DBS Era” as having increased the options, rather than one ruining the other. So, too, will most of these technologies and developments above, as well as the content trends in Part One, encapsulate the same theme: The Pie Grows. (And what could be better for “The Consumer Choice Culture” that is American TV today — and tomorrow?)

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO ofThe Carmel Group, a streaming/broadband, broadcast and pay TV/video consultancy based in Carmel by the Sea, Calif.; he writes about telecommunications, entertainment and media.

Univision Communications Inc. said it has hired Eric Ratchman as executive vice president, content distribution. He joins from The Walt Disney Co., will be based in New York and reports to Tonia O’Connor, chief commercial officer and president of content distribution for UCI.

“Eric has more than a decade of experience in global content distribution strategy and business development. His background and expertise will add tremendous value as we continue to expand UCI’s growing portfolio of brands accessible anytime, anywhere,” O’Connor said in a release. “Eric will play an integral role in evolving our relationships with both new and longstanding distribution partners and will be instrumental in negotiating critical distribution agreements for UCI’s stations, networks and content.”

Ratchman most recently served as senior vice president of global distribution strategy and business development for Disney Media Networks. Notably, during his tenure at Disney, he negotiated the first carriage of Disney’s networks on an OTT basis with SlingTV, Univision said. Before joining Disney in 2005, Ratchman worked at Accenture and Abbott Laboratories . 

Univision recently signed new distribution agreements with Atlantic Broadband and Mediacom Communications but has an ongoing tiff with AT&T over U-verse carriage. Univision stations and networks are back on U-verse while the two sides continue negotiations.

Ovation TV has hired Participant Media executive Mike Kim as senior vice president, content distribution. He reports to content distribution executive vice president John Malkin and Ovation said he will work with Malkin on maintaining and renewing existing national accounts and securing distribution for the network with non-affiliated national accounts, including TV-everywhere, video-on-demand and streaming platforms. He will also be responsible for managing and securing incremental distribution with National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) accounts. 

At Participant Media he was vice president, affiliate distribution and partnerships and played a key role in the launch and growth of Pivot. Before joining Participant he was VP of  affiliate sales and marketing, Western Division, for Outdoor Channel, overseeing sales and marketing for cable systems in 18 states. Earlier in his career he was a distribution executive at Fox Cable Networks; Tennis Channel and Showtime Networks.

“Mike’s extensive experience in multi-platform content distribution will be critical to our success as we continue to expand our footprint and range of distributor partnerships,” Malkin said in a release. “He understands the challenges and advantages of being part of an independent network in today’s ever-changing media environment and will be a great asset in helping us capitalize on the myriad of opportunities in front of us.”

Ovation TV, the independently owned arts and entertainment channel, said it has hired John Malkin as executive vice president of content distribution, reporting to CEO Charles Segars. He leads the network's distribution efforts across all platforms, Ovation said. He replaces Brad Samuels, the former EVP who left to join Bloomberg TV, per Ovation.

Malkin was VP of affiliate distribution at NFL Network. During his tenure, the National Football League-owned network increased by distribution by 22 million subscribers, securing carriage deals with Time Warner Cable, Cablevision Systems, Charter Communications and more than 400 cable companies in the National Cable Television Co-Op, Ovation said. NFL Network, with 69 million subscribers, had distribution difficulties early on that it overcame largely by expanding its roster of live games. Ovation, which has about 46.5 million subscribers, had a major distribution challenge in 2013 when it lost Time Warner Cable carriage, but it regained that key affiliate in January 2014. 

Malkin also has held network-affiliate distribution posts at Fox News, E! Entertainment Television and MTV Networks. 

Ovation’s senior vice president of content distribution and partnerships Mike Pons and VP of affiliate marketing Randy Rovegno report to Malkin.