The panel “If Content is King, Distribution is King Kong” went down at the Paley Center for Media’s Paley Museum in New York during the Paley International Council Summit. Sowmyanarayan Sampath, CEO, Verizon Consumer Group, and Matt Strauss, chairman, direct-to-consumer and international, NBCUniversal, spoke about attracting users to their services, and the best ways to keep them on board for the long haul. 

Stephanie Ruhle, host of The 11th Hour on MSNBC and senior business analyst, NBC News, was the moderator. Ruhle asked the panelists about combating customer churn. Sampath boasted about the low churn rate at Verizon Consumer Group and mentioned how the major streamers seek to work with Verizon to lower customer departure rates. 

Churn happens when things get complex for the user, Sampath said, such as an expiring credit card that nixes a subscription. “Churn management and retention is an art,” he said. “That’s what we are good at.”

He hinted at Verizon’s ability to “subtly nudge” users who might need a prompt to stay subscribed. 

Strauss mentioned the “infinite choice” of programming that consumers have, describing it as both a blessing and a curse. He said it’s on the networks in terms of “how easy it is to sign up and how easy it is to search and find all the choices that are available.”

Better partnering between networks and distributors and tech platforms, Strauss added, will lower churn rates. 

Ruhle also asked about the best way to get subscribers on board in the first place. Strauss spoke a bit about the launch of Peacock, at a point when the industry’s focus was on ad-free interfaces and binge viewing, he said. “It’s really not how most people watch television,” he countered. “Sometimes you don’t know what you want to watch.”

Peacock sought to “go beyond movies and TV [series],” he said. Borrowing a page from the broadcast playbook, sports and live news give the network a burst of urgency. “It’s what makes TV great, that it’s got a pulse,” he said.

Strauss also talked up Peacock’s $6 monthly price point. The mindset at launch was not to get all of users’ average five hours a day of TV viewing or all of their monthly TV spend, he said, but to get a significant piece of both. 

Strauss said the streaming wars are not winner-take-all: “There will be multiple streaming services.”

The Paley International Council Summit happens November 7-8 in New York. It bears the title “Breaking Boundaries: How New Ideas Are Reshaping Media.” Speakers include Eddy Cue, senior VP of services at Apple; David Kenny, executive chairman, Nielsen; and John Malone, chairman of Liberty Global. 

The panelists broke down whether streaming is starting to resemble cable in terms of bundling networks. “There’s likely going to be some reaggregation,” said Sampath. 

“I call it back to the future,” Strauss added. “If you’ve been in this industry long enough you do tend to repeat things.”

Ruhle brought up the frustration of never seeming to know which streamer a movie or series may be on. The panelists said it’s on the networks to improve the user experience. Sampath mentioned a massive Verizon investment in 5G. 

Strauss said, “I think we’ll look back in a few years, and realize how pedestrian streaming interfaces are.”

The decline in cable viewing is “not because people don’t like it, but they are being priced out,” Matt Strauss, chairman of direct-to-consumer and international at Comcast-owned NBCUniversal, told a Digital Entertainment Group virtual meeting just before Christmas.

“There’s a lot of competition in the streaming space… a lot of it going after Netflix,” said the executive who oversees NBCU’s new Peacock streaming operation, which debuted in July. Strauss stressed that NBC (and parent Comcast) have a long-term strategy for operating in this competitive sector – although he did not disclose many specifics.

In his brief but wide-ranging remarks, Strauss pumped advertisers’ “pent-up demand” for ways “to participate in premium content” and he also waxed nostalgically for the nearly 20-year-old MagRack video-on-demand project that he ran at Cablevision Systems’ Rainbow Media Group.  

Also Read: Peacock Grows Signups to 26 Million, Says Shell Related:  Mag Rack Targets Micro Niche

Strauss reviewed the challenges of launching Peacock during the pandemic, especially without being able to piggyback the streamer’s debut onto NBC’s waylaid Summer Olympics juggernaut. Glowing with upbeat optimism, he explained that by spreading out the launch over “the back half of the year … [generated] an ongoing cadence and drumbeat that … was actually better than what we had initially planned.”

Strauss concentrated on what advertisers want, saying that they are looking for a way to participate in streaming content, which poses special opportunities and challenges for NBC.

“We saw that as a sweet spot for us,” he said, but the Peacock team was concerned about how to “shape a user-friendly ad load.” He emphasized that NBC wanted to avoid the constant repetition of the same ads in order to fulfill impression commitments to advertisers, an annoying factor on many other streaming channels. He said NBC was “really fortunate” to nail down 10 premium launch sponsors for Peacock.”

“They get an uncluttered environment,” he said. The initial advertisers also “have a seat at the table as we’re developing the product.” 

“Our ambition is really not just to look at this as a 15-second or a 30-second spot” but to find other creative ways through ad innovation that we can bring to advertisers, he explained.

Strauss, a former DEG chairman, characterized the challenge as finding “creative ways that brings advertisers to light but maintains a premium environment.”  Without disclosing details of Peacock’s plan, Strauss said, “We feel we’ve [found] other ways to bring advertisers into a premium user experience.”

Not NBC Plus

Strauss insisted that NBC deliberately avoided adding a “Plus” to its brand name, as Apple Plus, Disney Plus and other streaming providers have done. After evaluating the Netflix position, which he acknowledged was a “good price-value equation” NBC realized it didn’t want to be a “me-too” service.

“We want to position ourselves as an aggregator that goes beyond” traditional programming, he said, as part of a plan to “migrate customers to subscriptions.”

“We see it as an opportunity over time,” Strauss added, indicating that “early data [show] our strategy is resonating” because viewers are “looking for lower-cost alternatives” to cable. He said the company wants to position Peacock as an aggregator that can go beyond the boundaries of our catalog and our content, citing the “user friendly ad load” of no more than five minutes of ads per hour. But he stopped short of making a permanent commitment to such limited advertising.

“We all know the power of on-demand,” he said, noting that “the way people watch TV is broader,” across “a lot of different modes.” Strauss called the three-month Peacock trial runs with Comcast’s X1 and Flex (internet-only) customers a valuable process in refining the user interface.

“It was a really interesting sandbox,” he said.

He expects a bonanza of new programming in 2021, as Hollywood’s COVID-induced production slowdowns end and the Olympics momentum revives. In addition, Peacock will experiment with new pricing scenarios, such as its keystone series The Office, which will be offered “in a way that’s maybe a little bit more unique than what people have seen in the past,” he said.

The first two seasons (2005-2006) will be available for free with ads; there will also be “Superfan Episodes” on Peacock Premium for $4.99 monthly with ads or $9.99 without ads; the “Superfan” package also includes unseen footage, extended cuts and deleted scenes.

Strauss, a 16-year Comcast veteran, reflected that he has had “a front row seat in the evolution that we’ve gone through as a company.” He shared his enthusiasm that Peacock is fulfilling his video-on-demand dream dating back to the early 2000s when he was executive VP and general manager of Rainbow Media Holdings LLC's Mag Rack.

Strauss’ presentation was the centerpiece of a virtual DEG event that replaced the group’s annual social/business gathering, usually held on the first night of CES. Amy Jo Smith, DEG’s president/CEO, characterized the online evening as offering insight into, “the ways consumers are enjoying entertainment by transactional models or subscriptions.” That alone marked a diversion for an organization that was founded for – and still substantially focuses on - the shrink-wrapped world of DVDs and BluRay discs, an evolution from its original videocassette roots. Smith declared the holiday-themed online event (complete with beverage kits shipped in advance to participants) as a digital version of what “we would have done in Vegas.”

Comcast confirmed that Dan Herscovici, the former SVP and GM of Xfinity Home, has left the company.

Comcast didn’t elaborate on Herscovici’s exit from the company, which happened earlier this month, but also confirmed that Dennis Mathew, who has held roles such as president, wholesale and VP of new business at Comcast, now leads the Xfinity Home business and reports to Matt Strauss, EVP of Xfinity Services at Comcast Cable.

The Philadelphia Business Journal first reported that Herscovici had left Comcast.

Herscovici was with Comcast for more than 10 years in exec roles that included VP of new business and VP of the MSO’s high-speed internet services, and was a key player in the rollout of Xfinity WiFi. Prior to Comcast, Herscovici was a product and operations exec with Motorola.

Under Herscovici, Xfinity Home, Comcast’s home automation and security service, grew to about 1.1 million subscribers and expanded its ecosystem of third-party product support via its "Works With Xfinity Home" program. During his tenure, Comcast also deepened its expertise in home security technology and services via the acquisition of a piece of Icontrol. Comcast has since rebranded that as Xfinity Home Wholesale. 

RELATED: Why Comcast Is Buying Icontrol

Herscovici’s departure also comes amid a shift and broadening of Comcast’s service and technology strategies involving the smart home and home automation.

For example, Comcast last month announced that it had extended home automation services and functionality to more than 15 million customers, centered on the company’s xFi Wireless Gateway and the xFi Advanced Wireless Gateway, along with plans to extend those capabilities across multiple services, including X1, Xfinity Home, Xfinity Mobile and xFi, its new home WiFi management service.

RELATED: Comcast Scales Home Automation Services to 15M Subs

Oversight of those automation-facing functions has been moved to Eric Schaefer, SVP and GM, communications, data and mobility, Comcast Cable; and Patti Loyack, the company’s VP of IP services.

There are no flukes in Cable.

Just ask Comcast, which was the first cable operator to report a full year of positive video subscriber growth in a decade, ending 2016 with 161,000 more customers than in the previous year. That Comcast managed to do that just as over-the-top and alternative video delivery systems were proliferating, gaining legitimacy and chipping away at traditional pay TV customer rolls was remarkable enough, but it was no fluke.

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That growth was a planned, concerted effort that not only yielded a video customer surplus, but was also profitable. Comcast finished the year with a 6.6% increase in cable-systems revenue and a 5.6% rise in cash flow. And it did it all the hard way, with no aggressive promotional pricing or special deals to attract customers that will drop the service in six months.

Instead, Comcast put its collective head down and focused on the fundamentals, rolling out new products like Xfinity Home and Xfinity Mobile at a steady pace and pumping hundreds of millions of dollars to beef up customer service.

The path to positive subscriber growth was a multiyear process, starting with the hiring of former Charter Communications CEO Neil Smit in 2010. It was Smit who initiated a multipronged plan to improve customer service, beef up the network and steer the company on a path toward product innovation and network superiority.

Smit stepped away from day-to-day operations in April — he is now vice chairman of Comcast Corp. — and handed the reins to 20-year Comcast veteran Dave Watson, who moves up to Comcast Cable CEO after serving as the cable unit’s chief operating officer for the past seven years, implementing the plans that he and Smit developed. Watson takes over just as subscriber growth is expected to decline in the wake of two massive storms that devastated homes in Houston and Western Florida. Comcast has said it expects the impact of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma to result in the loss of 100,000 to 150,000 subscribers in the third quarter.

MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett observed that the declines weren’t that surprising given that the video subscriber estimates, even at best-in-class Comcast, will have to come down.

Infrastructure Advantage
“We’ve spent 18 years repeating a simple mantra: Cable operators are not media companies, they are infrastructure providers,” Moffett wrote in a research note. “Their infrastructure is still advantaged. Comcast will be just fine.”

But the company is confident that it will continue to hit its financial targets, as well as continue its pace of innovation. For those reasons and more, Comcast is the 2017 Multichannel News Distributor of the Year.

For Watson, Comcast’s success has been the result of the company’s decision to stick to three basic tenets.

“The key for us is that we’re very focused on our core set of operating principles,” Watson said. “Staying focused on sustainable, profitable growth, driving innovation, that’s a big part; and third is to continue to improve the customer experience.”

While that may sound oversimplistic, Comcast has managed to make it work. In the past five years (2012-2016), overall revenue has grown at a 6.2% annual clip while cash flow has risen 7.2% per year. This year, the growth is even more dramatic — in the last 12 months between the first half of 2016 and the first half of 2017, revenue has grown 9.4% to $41.6 billion and cash flow is up 10.2% to $14.1 billion. This in a year that has seen competitive pressures increase as Hulu (25% owned by NBCUniversal) launched its Hulu Live offering, AT&T unveiled its over-the-top product DirecTV Now and networks are queuing up to release direct-to-consumer versions of their channels.

Comcast has used the X1 platform expertly in driving forward what Watson said is its newest mantra — becoming an “aggregator of aggregators.” That means not only offering access to subscription video on demand and over-the-top competitors, but embracing them.

Xfinity subscribers can access Netflix directly from their set-top boxes and over the years Hulu, YouTube and music service Pandora have been added to the lineup. Earlier this year, Comcast reached a deal where Sling TV — the over-the-top MVPD service from Dish Network — received a coveted spot on the set-top (mainly for international and multicultural programming). Just last week the cable operator expanded its relationship with YouTube, allowing customers to launch the online video app merely by speaking “YouTube” into their X1 voice remote.

Including those products is all part of the overall strategy of offering customers best-in-class products in almost every category, Watson said.

‘Aggregator of Aggregators’
“We look at each part of our business, every major product area, and we look at innovation opportunities at each one,” Watson said. “With X1, I think we are delivering in its early stages the promise of being an aggregator of aggregators — the best in linear, the best of on-demand, a terrific DVR, a great app, data and applications integrated. Netflix is a good example and soon-to-come will be You Tube. … To me this is constant improvement of our major product areas.”

That’s a far cry from the past, when a Netflix app embedded in any cable operator’s set-top box would have signaled the end of the world. But the evidence continues to mount that SVOD services like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube aren’t replacements for cable, but can complement the service. And making it easier for an X1 customer to access their SVOD subscriptions only enhances the cable operator’s stature in the customer’s mind.

That shift, along with a continued focus on innovation — Comcast still has a mandate to roll out a new product or product enhancement at least once per quarter — has been a key part of Comcast’s success. In the past five months, Comcast has rolled out a new wireless service, Xfinity Mobile, part of its mobile virtual network operator agreement with Verizon Communications; xFi, a cloud-based home WiFi management platform; and enhancements to XFinity Home that allow consumers to remotely control home functions like heating, cooling, lighting and security cameras through their voice remote.

The voice remote, launched in 2015, is one of those product enhancements that has fared even better than its staunchest proponents had hoped. Comcast has deployed about 17 million voice-remote devices and customers now make about 1 billion voice commands per quarter.

“It’s just remarkable,” Watson said of the product.

Comcast has also embraced products from programmers such as AMC Premier from AMC Networks and 21st Century Fox’s FX+, ad-free versions of the AMC and FX pay TV networks available for an additional fee. In an interview, Comcast executive vice president of Xfinity Services Matt Strauss said the offerings are part of an overall evolution of the video product, and of the strategy to entice customers to buy into the entire Xfinity family of offerings, not just one or two things.

Strauss said the strategy could be traced back to Comcast’s initial investments in infrastructure that laid the foundation for the product suite that is available today.

“We’re now at a point where it’s really about scale, and how do we continue to deliver innovative products and services and accelerate how we get deeper and deeper into our base,” Strauss said.

The answer, Strauss said, is to provide elegant, easy solutions to customer problems even before subscribers know they are problems. For example, as the TV audience became more and more fragmented and finding shows grew more difficult, X1 provided a user interface that made it easier to navigate through the thousands of linear and on-demand content choices. Later, X1 added a voice remote, which made navigation even easier.

For high-speed data, the solution was faster speeds. Comcast has increased data speeds 17 times in the past 16 years and by the end of 2017 will have fully deployed DOCSIS 3.1, which will enable speeds of 1 Gigabit per second.

“Speed is important, but access is equally important,” Strauss said. “Most people now connect devices via WiFi. Ensuring we have the best WiFi in the home, as well as the best WiFi out of the home is also very core to the strategy and that’s where you’re seeing us deploy our newest wireless gateway, the XB6 (xFi) which can deliver the fastest in-home WiFi speeds.”

From there, xFi customers would naturally migrate to Comcast’s XFinity Home product, which again incorporates the aspects of other company products, like the voice remote, to control household functions. Comcast is truly selling a bundle, and that bundle is interconnected.

“When we look at the future, today we typically sell on price,” Strauss said. “And the more products you take, the better the price. The challenge there is when you sell on price, essentially you’re making yourself a commodity.

“What we really want to transition to is selling an experience,” Strauss added. “The more products you take from us, you will of course get a better price, but you will also get a better experience. Starting to weave together the portfolio and reinforcing that, I think, is a big opportunity. A lot of that you’re going to see solidly around the home. There is a big opportunity around the digital home.”

The company is obsessed with giving more choice in the video-on-demand side of the business. “We’re breathing new life into what it means to get video,” Strauss said. “Now we have 130,000 choices, the top 100 Nielsen-rated shows, 900 series fully stacked. We added Netflix, not just as an app, but integrating Netflix contextually.”

As a result, on-demand is growing again — this year, Comcast customers are spending an average of 32 hours a month watching on-demand shows, up 20%.

“When people have said video is in a decline, ratings are in a decline, we see something different,” Strauss said. “We see more and more video consumption moving to time-shifting, we see while live ratings may be declining, the total video consumption is increasing, instead that more is happening outside of traditional measurement. It’s like dark matter, people aren’t seeing it, but we think the total video pie is increasing. And we’re continuing to build the platforms and the capabilities to all people to watch TV smarter and on their terms.”

The emergence of over-the-top players has added to that shift and is continuing to challenge the model, Strauss said, but Comcast doesn’t see any compelling reason to join the OTT fray.

“Part of what is happening in the market, especially on the video side, is you are seeing a lot of increased competition, you’re seeing a lot of competitive offers — in some cases you’re even seeing some of these OTT players offer video at negative gross margins. We’re not going to chase that.”

But the evidence is mounting that younger consumers are increasingly looking outside the traditional pay TV ecosystem for their content needs. Pay TV subscribers fell by more than 900,000 in the second quarter, the worst Q2 performance in history. That’s after a record first-quarter loss of more than 750,000 video customers.

Moffett, who raised his rating on Comcast to “buy” earlier this month after downgrading the stock to “neutral” in June, said he sees the company as the standard for the pay TV business. But he also estimated that the MSO will lose almost 1 million video customers in the next five years, ending 2021 with 21.7 million subscribers, down from 22.5 million in 2016. The analyst does see Comcast adding about 5 million broadband customers in that same time frame, finishing 2021 with 31.1 million high-speed data customers compared to 26 million in 2016.

Competition is also heating up. Google’s YouTube TV expanded to eight additional markets earlier this month, growing its total markets to about 48 cities. In addition, AT&T began pricing its DirecTV Now service even more aggressively in the quarter, at $10 per month for any unlimited wireless subscriber, and returned to offering free Apple TV devices with a three-month commitment.

While weakening subscriber metrics shouldn’t come as a surprise, Moffett said, they aren’t a calamity, either. Pay TV companies, he said, still have broadband pricing power, which should help them in reaching financial targets. That’s just what Comcast said when it predicted the Q3 subscriber loss.

Strauss noted that all the panic over OTT and cord-cutting could be unwarranted. There is no doubt, he said that viewing habits are changing, but life stages and household economics also need to be considered.

As an example, Strauss pointed to Xfinity on Campus, Comcast’s multiscreen managed IPTV service for college students. When the product was in development, Strauss said Comcast realized that the last thing college students wanted was to be tied to a set-top box. So the MSO had to rethink the idea, creating a product that allowed students to download the Xfinity Stream app, offered a cloud-based DVR and would let them watch live TV anywhere on campus. The product has been highly successful and, as students returned for the most recent fall semester, it is deployed in more than 100 schools.

“Millennials do watch TV as much as any other segment,” Strauss said. “They just have different needs and how they want to consume and access it.”

That, Strauss said, has led to Xfinity Instant TV — an in-home, in-footprint, managed IPTV service slated for a Q3 launch — as well as ad-free versions of networks that consumers can buy for a fee. Comcast reached a deal with AMC Networks in August for AMC Premiere, an ad-free version of the popular AMC network for an additional $4.99 per month. A month later, FX Networks announced a deal to offer an ad-free version of its flagship FX channel — called FX+ — to Comcast customers for $5.99 per month.

Strauss said those channels and other services like it are just an example of how Comcast’s foresight in investing in content, infrastructure and innovation have translated into meeting needs even customers didn’t know they had.

“The future we’ve always talked about has finally come, at least for us,” Strauss said. “I think that is because of decisions that we made, not six, 12 or 24 months ago, but years ago, based on where we saw the puck going and ensuring that we would have the technology capabilities and the infrastructure in order to deliver upon the innovation that we believed we were going to need to stay competitive. As a result you’re seeing us deliver on a lot of these products and services. But this didn’t happen by accident. It really happened because of very important strategic decisions we made years ago.”

Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts tried to ease investor fears at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference Tuesday, telling an industry audience that despite expected video losses in the soon-to-be closed third quarter, the company is performing well financially and operationally.

Comcast stock took a hit Sept. 7 after executive vice president XFinity Services Matt Strauss said at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications & Entertainment conference in Los Angeles that the nation’s largest cable operator would lose between 100,000 and 150,000 video customers in Q3 as a result of competitive issues and damage from Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma. Strauss had said that despite the subscriber losses, Comcast was expected to meet its financial targets for the period, but that seemed to be lost on investors, who drove the stock down as much as 7% on Sept. 7. Comcast shares closed that day at $38.60 each, down 6.2%.

Comcast stock continued to fall in subsequent trading – it closed at $38.21 on Sept. 8 and $37.83 on Sept. 11. Roberts’ comments seemed to have some initial effect – the stock was up slightly in earlier trading – but was down later in the day, priced at $37.70 each at 2:30 p.m. on Sept. 12.

READ MORE: Charter's Rutledge says the battle is not against OTT video

Roberts started off his Communacopia presentation by addressing the issue, adding that Comcast was “in great shape,” and should end the third quarter with positive RGU growth as broadband subscribers continue to rise.

“Our investment in and focus on innovation is really paying off,” Roberts said. “We have the best products in the industry, our management team strong, and we have a good competitive position. We hit a competitive patch this quarter that was compounded by these two storms.”

The loss is particulary harsh as Comcast finished 2016 with positive growth in video (161,000 customers) for the first time in a decade. In the first half of the year, it continued to remain ahead of the curve, adding 41,000 video customers in the first quarter, while losing about 34,000 in Q2. It should also be noted that the third quarter is traditionally the weakest for cable operators, as college students and customers with summer residences disconnect service.

Roberts continued that the success of its X1 platform has become the company’s real asset, but video is the heart and soul of that platform,” he said. Comcast is expected to end the year with more than 1 million broadband additions, the eleventh straight year the company has added 1 million or more high margin high-speed data customers. Its business services unit is performing at a $6 billion revenue run rate and its newest product – XFinity Mobile – is proving popular with customers.

Comcast launched XFinity Mobile in May, as part of its Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) agreement with Verizon Communications. The product is available to existing XFinity customers and is characterized by its flexible plans – customers can opt for unlimited data, or can subscribe to a By the Gig plan that costs $12 per gigabyte per month. 

Roberts said that initially, most users are opting for the By the Gig plan.

“These prices we believe bring real value to the customer,” Roberts said.

Comcast confirmed that the company has promoted Matt Strauss to executive vice president, Xfinity Services, where he now heads up the cable unit’s residential video, internet, home and voice services.

Strauss most recently was executive vice president and general manager, video and entertainment services at Comcast.

In his new role, Strauss takes over the duties previously held by Marcien Jenckes, who was promoted earlier this year to president, advertising, where he heads up all of the company’s advertising assets and businesses, including Comcast Spotlight.

RELATED: Comcast Promotes Marcien Jenckes to President, Advertising

Strauss’s new role and title, mentioned in this tweet Monday by FierceCable, is also outlined in this updated bio posted by Comcast.

Strauss joined Comcast in 2004 as senior vice president, New Media, and previously was an exec with what was then Rainbow Media’s on demand service, Mag Rack. He is also late of Disney-ABC.

In a recent interview, Strauss discussed the strategy behind a deal to create a premium commercial-free on-demand service with FX Networks, called FX+.

RELATED: Comcast’s New Model: Self-Disruption (subscription required) 

“We think of ourselves as the aggregator of aggregators,” Strauss said. “We want to have all of the choices and the best choices available in one place. In many ways, that is why we put Netflix on X1 and we’re putting YouTube on X1 later this year.”

RELATED: Comcast to Stream YouTube on X1 Boxes

Comcast last week signed a deal creating a premium commercial-free on-demand service with FX Networks.

The deal comes at a time when, according to Matt Strauss, executive vice president and general manager, video and entertainment services at Comcast Cable, there’s probably more high-quality original programming available than in the history of television.

Comcast will see more than 4 billion hours of on-demand usage this year and Strauss said the cable operator will continue to invest to provide instant gratification and to blur the lines between what’s live, what’s on-demand, what’s on your DVR and what’s over-the-top. Strauss talked to Multichannel News contributor Jon Lafayette about what Comcast is thinking as it launches premium services. Here’s an edited excerpt of their conversation.

MCN:Based on the AMC Premiere and the FX+ announcements, have you found a segment of your customers who don’t like watching commercials?
Matt Strauss: We think of ourselves as the aggregator of aggregators. We want to have all of the choices and the best choices available in one place. In many ways, that is why we put Netflix on X1 and we’re putting YouTube on X1 later this year.

At the same time, DVRs are now at 50% penetration of the market and in many ways, it gives you control, it gives you the ability to fast-forward through ads or, if you have cloud DVR, we give our customers the ability to stream their DVR recordings or download their DVR recordings, so in many ways this is just another choice.

There is a segment of viewers who would be willing to pay an incremental fee for a more premium experience. They do that today with premium channels. They do that today with [subscription video-on-demand] services.

Commercial-free is one piece of it. If somebody really wanted that premium experience — had the ability to, in one place, catch up from the beginning and have the most comprehensive catalogue of FX programming — it really didn’t exist. And now, with our technology and through our partnership with FX, we have the ability to offer FX subscribers the option to a more premium experience.

MCN:Did you do consumer research on the demand for commercial-free options?
MS: We have done research on this. There’s absolutely a segment of the population that would be willing to pay an incremental fee for a commercial-free experience. We’ve been offering electronic sell-through now for years and in a relatively short amount of time we’ve actually become one of the largest digital retailers in the country. So we’ve even seen it first-hand where people are willing to pay $3 an episode. So there’s both research and there been some actual transactional data that has led us to believe that there is a segment — it’s not everybody — who is willing to pay extra.

MCN:How big is that segment?
MS: It’s hard to say only because it depends on the network and the passion index of the network.

But there’s something even bigger at work here, which is it’s providing the networks a sandbox to experiment with different models and to potentially provide also a mechanism for them to reclaim rights or to aggregate more rights or to experiment with more original programming, and to do it in a way that we think is going to really benefit our customers.

MCN:What have you learned since adding Netflix to X1?
MS: Since we’ve added Netflix, I think we’ve seen all boats rise. We’ve seen an increase in total on-demand consumption. We’ve seen an increase in total viewership on our platform and as a result we’ve also seen many networks see an increase in their viewership because we have even more eyeballs using on-demand.

So I think as we continue to offer more and more choices — but also do it in a way that it is contextually integrated — I think that the key on the X1 platform, whether it’s the voice remote, whether it’s our recommendations and the personalization, it’s how do we snap this all together in one place.

It also gives us the ability to contextually offer somebody a subscription, so if you’re watching American Horror Story, you’re going to be able to go to X1, it’s live, you’ll be able to now watch it on-demand for free with ads and there will be another choice that says would you like to subscribe to FX+ and watch it ad-free or watch all the prior episodes and the prior seasons?

You’re seeing those elements all come together in a way that’s redefining what you should expect to get when you subscribe to pay TV and certainly kind of surprising; it’s delighting our customers when they have a platform like X1.

MCN:Did your ad sales folks object to the commercial-free services?
MS: I can’t comment on that. I think though that it ultimately has to start with the customer and the viewer giving them the choices.

And if you look at our technology, technology has continued to evolve and that means that we have to challenge the status quo, even if that means in some cases disrupting ourselves. … We’ve always been very bullish on giving customers more choice and creating the technology to add more value to pay TV and we’re not going to stop that.

Related > Viewer Watch 2017: Download the Complete Report

With new business models proliferating almost as fast as new consumer-electronics devices at this year’s CES, TV executives are recalling 2016 as a year of landmark changes that will produce even more profound developments in 2017.

“In the last year, there has been more change in the video business than we saw in probably the past five years,” said Matthew Strauss, executive vice president and general manager of video and entertainment services for Comcast Cable. “We’re just continuing to find the competitive landscape shifting. There are more services being delivered over the top to consumers. There is the growth and proliferation of Internet-connected TV devices like Roku, Apple TV or Amazon Fire. And you are also seeing new services that are delivering bundled over the top channels like Sling TV, Sony’s PlayStation Vue and DirecTV Now.”

In response, programmers and operators have introduced a flurry of new products. “In terms of video, this has been one of the biggest for Cox in all the years I’ve been here,” Steve Necessary, executive vice president of product development and management at Cox Communications, said.

Less obviously, operators and programmers continue to make massive investments in their technology infrastructures with important implications for their offerings in 2017 and beyond.

“As a company, we are investing and positioning content to be consumed on more and more platforms every day,” Discovery Communications chief technology officer John Honeycutt said, stressing that the programmer is rapidly deploying new cloud and software-based infrastructures so it can adapt to consumer needs and quickly roll out new services. “We are in the middle of a revolution in our supply chain.”

Related: Old Controversies and New Businesses

DIGITAL-FIRST REALITY

Much of this reflects longstanding changes in consumer behavior and the underlying economics of the TV, digital and media industries.

Vincent Letang, executive vice president of global market intelligence at Magna, said 2016 was the first year digital advertising exceeded total TV advertising in the U.S., garnering 39% of the total ad spend versus 37.4% for TV. Digital advertising is set to exceed total TV advertising worldwide for the first time in 2017, he added.

“We are forecasting that in five years, digital will grow to 56.0% of total advertising [in 2021 in the U.S.] while TV will plateau at 29.9%,” he said. Meanwhile, content creators and distributors are following the flow of money into digital media, fueling rapid growth in consumption of TV shows on mobile devices, computers and TVs connected to the Internet.

“The cliché of how consumers ‘want my content when I want it, where I want it and how I want it,’ is now a truism,” Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors at Frank N. Magid Associates, said. “Just five years ago, it was hard to find a lot of content. But now, in 2017, I’m really the captain of my media ship in a way that was not true in the past.”

Given ongoing rapid growth in the usage of mobile and connected TVs, it is difficult to call digital video “mature.” But researchers stress that the tectonic changes in how video is consumed and delivered have already made digital media a central part of the TV business.

“After four or five years of talking about alternative ways to access video and watching significant growth in its usage, we are now at a point where it is pretty much established,” Howard Horowitz, president and founder of Horowitz Research, said. “It’s not a fly in the ointment, but part of the business. Digital self-managed access to video content is with us and mostly that is a good thing for all the players.”

DISRUPTIVE GAINS

Others agree. After ticking off a long list of new products and initiatives designed to realign their offerings with newer consumer behavior, Comcast’s Strauss said: “Our third-quarter video results were the best we’ve had in 10 years. We added 32,000 video customers, which is an 80,000 improvement year over year. And if you look at the last 12 months, we are video-positive.”

Some programmers have been buffeted by the changes, which have hurt ratings, but those that have aggressively moved to capitalize on the newer delivery platforms are pleased with the results.

Bernadette Aulestia, executive vice president of worldwide distribution for HBO, noted that the launch of the OTT service HBO Now has allowed the programmer to tap into new markets and see healthy growth in the overall business. “Less than 1% of [the OTT] HBO Now subscribers are coming from our linear multichannel subscribers,” she said.

Executives from Dish Network and AT&T cited similar experiences with their respective OTT channel bundles, Sling TV and DirecTV Now, which are designed in part to tap into viewers outside of the pay TV ecosystem.

“There are about 20 million households in the U.S. that are either not engaged with pay TV or have opted to leave the pay TV ecosystems,” Tony Goncalves, senior vice president of strategy and business development for AT&T Entertainment Group, said.

That doesn’t mean that the industry can sit back and pretend it will be business as usual in 2017.

An acceleration in the decline in pay TV subscribers has caused Magna to revise its estimates of pay TV subscribers downward. There is also a great deal of uncertainty about the ad market.

These trends raise important questions about the changing use of video on various platforms — traditional TV, mobile, Internet-connected TVs, set-top boxes and other technologies. How these trends will impact the health of the industry and the kind of products that get launched in 2017 is the subject of the next story.

Home entertainment trade organization DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group has named Mike Dunn, president of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, as its new chairman for the 2016-17 fiscal year.

Dunn previously served as vice chair for DEG. The group named Matt Strauss, executive vice president and GM of video services for Comcast Cable, to take over Dunn’s prior role.

Sofia Chang, EVP of worldwide digital distribution and home entertainment for HBO, will continue to serve as DEG’s CFO, while Mike Fasulo, president and COO of Sony Electronics, will continue to serve as DEG’s secretary.

Former chair Ron Sanders, president of Warner Bros. Worldwide Home Entertainment Distribution, will serve in the position of Ex-Officio.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

Bucking a trend amplified by a small but growing cord-cutting trend and the popularity of over-the-top video options, Comcast just came off first quarter in which the MSO added 53,000 subs, its best Q1 video result in nine years.

A sizable portion of the credit goes to X1, Comcast’s IP-capable next-gen video offering, but, according to Matt Strauss, Comcast Cable’s executive vice president and general manager, video services, the results are due to a confluence of efforts and initiatives that span not just the core product but also areas such as improved customer care.

Multichannel News technology editor and Next TV editor Jeff Baumgartner recently caught up with Strauss to discuss Comcast’s ever-expanding video strategy, including  X1, usage trends for mobile and TV everywhere applications, what’s next for the operator’s IP-delivered “Stream” product, some hints at the MSO’s ambitious plans for the Rio Games, and how Comcast is positioning itself as consumers continue to adopt new TVs that are capable of supporting 4K video and high dynamic range (HDR) formats.

The following edited transcript ran in two parts earlier in the week in Multichannel News dailies distributed at the INTX show in Boston.

Multichannel News: As you look at the second half of the year, what are your top priorities? 

Matt Strauss: We're really focused first and foremost on continuing to execute against the deployment of X1. We're seeing a lot of very positive benefits from X1, both on the churn and on the increased consumption side. We're now at about 35% penetrated, and it's even higher if you just look at triple-play subs -- about 50% of our triple-play subs now have X1. 

What goes hand-in-hand with that is that we also want to finish out the deployment of our cloud infrastructure. We've been deploying cloud across our footprint -- both cloud streaming and cloud DVR – and we are very close to getting 100% deployment. We want to finish that up by the middle-to-end of this year. 

Finally, we want to continue the penetration and usage of our products and services. We’ve got a very ambitious deployment for our new consolidated Xfinity app. With the upcoming Olympics [in Rio] we want to use that as an opportunity to shine a light on this new application, which we think is a tremendous value to our customers. 

MCN: For X1, you've been deploying about 40,000 boxes a day. Is that a comfortable clip for you or are you looking to push the needle even harder? 

MS: I think there are always opportunities where we want to accelerate. But at the same time, there's a bit of a cadence where we've gotten into where we want to make it easier for customers to get access to X1, which includes self-install kits. But there are segments that prefer a professional install.

I think we're at the right pace and speed based on what we're forecasting. We're installing between 40,000 to 50,000 [X1] boxes per day. At that run-rate, our goal is to get close to 50% by the end of this year. 

MCN: With respect to the pay TV momentum, how much credit does X1 get, even as you continue to improve other areas like customer care and customer experience? 

MS: It certainly is contributing. When you look at X1, we're seeing improvements in churn. X1 customers are also consuming more video. They also have a higher attachment rate to DVRs and typically they take additional outlets in their home. There's no doubt that X1 is contributing, but I don't know if there's any one silver bullet. 

When it comes to growing the video business, it's really a combination of several factors and investments that we've been making over the past few years, both in how we've been improving our infrastructure, moving more to IP.

We're also equally focusing on reducing call volume. We've had some of the lowest agent call-in rates in years. We've taken more than 11 million calls out of the system.

MCN: How is X1 impacting viewing habits? Comcast has talked about the impact on VOD usage, but how is it affecting viewing of live, linear TV?

With X1, we're now seeing 85% usage of on-demand among X1 subs. That equals about 25 hours of on demand consumption per month. We've expanded the number of series that are stacked where you can get access to all the episodes in a season. We went from a few series a few years ago to now over 700 series that we offer fully stacked. 

When you incorporate this seemingly infinite amount of content and ultimate control and you also marry in with this recommendations and voice navigation and a level of personalization, we actually have seen an increase across the board in video consumption -- live, on demand and DVR. 

When you track an X1 households from a year ago to 2015 to 2016 we've seen an increase of over 3% in total video consumption on average across the board. 

When you marry together those things together with choice and control, we're seeing a lift. That doesn't mean that viewing habits aren't changing and shifting. But we think X1 is becoming in many ways a better mousetrap. 

[READ MORE: Xfinity TV App Starts to Support NBC, ABC Live Feeds Out of Home]

MCN: What kind of usage patterns are you seeing with the Xfinity TV app? Is the big challenge getting the message out to customers so they understand the app's full capability? 

MS: I'd almost characterize it as we're in a moment in time because we have the Xfinity TV in-home app and we have our Xfinity TV Go app. We are in the process of consolidating those into just one app, which will be the Xfinity TV app. This unification…will provide this unprecedented access to content both in the home and out of the home. And I think those lines are going to continue to get more and more blurred. 

When you look at the usage of our app in general, we have about 42% penetration of our mobile app among our double-play customers on a monthly basis. On a quarterly basis, it's almost 60% who are using one of our apps, and that's up about 16% year-over-year. 

MCN: How far along are you with this app unification plan?

MS: If you download the Xfinity TV app today, we've already started. We've already incorporated all of the TV Everywhere content and the in-home content into the app. It's primarily been targeted at X1 customers. For the Rio Olympics this summer you'll see a much more concerted effort to increase awareness around the availability of that app to the broader base. 

MCN: What's next for Comcast with respect to 4K? You've got the app for Samsung TVs but we've seen some recent reports that you'll really be focusing more on a strategy that puts an emphasis on High Dynamic Range (HDR)? 

MS: We are highly focused on ensuring we're delivering the best video quality. The realty is we're at the very early stages of 4K. There's arguably more marketing and messaging going on around 4K than actual content and choice. 

When we evaluated this -- while there's hyper-attention on 4K, when we look at the total video experience, we think 4K is part of the offering. But HDR, which is not necessarily getting the same amount of attention, is in many ways more immersive and, we think, impactful.

When you marry that with Dolby Atmos [an immersive three-dimensional audio platform], it's the combination of 4K, HDR and sound that we think is really the right combination of transcending to an almost Ultra HD experience. That's what we determined was the right experience and focus that we want to lean into. 

Instead of deploying maybe a half-baked solution, which we're starting to see a little bit of in the market, we thought it was more prudent to deliver the complete experience... and that's what's being developed with our Xi6 box, which we'll be testing this year, but it's going to really be deployed next year. 

We will be experimenting with the Olympics with 4K. There's going to be a couple of hours a day of 4K content that we will be delivering. We're also sponsoring the opening ceremonies in 4K, but we're also shooting it in HDR with Dolby Atmos sound. [Note: Comcast showed off the wireless, HDR-capable Xi5 box at INTX, and plans to start shipping it on July 4. A 4K-capable HDR box, the Xi6, is also in the works].

MCN: The video market continues to be abuzz about skinny TV bundles. Comcast has been going after that segment with the Stream TV product in some select markets. What have you learned so far and what's next on the rollout plan? 

MS: In many ways X1, we think, is satisfying the demand for how many of watch television. The average person watches about 130 hours of video every month.

But there are changes in how other segments are consuming video. When we look at skinny bundles, we believe that they are in some ways a manifestation of the economy as anything else. It's rare that you hear someone say that they want fewer choices. What’s more likely is that you might hear someone say they want to pay less. 

We have been experimenting with skinny bundles and experimenting with ensuring we're getting the right product to the right customer at the right time in their life, whether that's Internet Plus or the Xfinity On Campus product, or Stream. 

Stream, though, in many ways is not really just about a skinny bundle. In many respects, it's us looking at new ways at how we market, how we activate a video subscription, and, for instance, if you're a high-speed data customer and you are in one of the markets where we've deployed Stream you can instantly add Stream. It doesn’t' require a truck roll, it doesn’t require additional equipment. We're able to instantly activate it for you. 

Stream has a different buy flow. You can cancel it at any time. You can use a credit card. The care is primarily self-help. 

MCN: So, it's designed to be low friction. 

MS: While Stream is, at the moment, comprised of a skinny bundle, the strategies behind Stream is much more around how we're going to transform the overall end-to-end customer experience, and Stream is just one example of how we are expanding into that terrain. 

You will not only see us deploy Stream into additional markets, but we'll also evolve the Stream product which will include additional tiers of content and you'll also see us expand streams to additional platforms. 

It was initially launched for mobile and Web, but we've always known that access to the TV is going to be critical. [On April 20], we announced a deal with Roku. As part of that you will see us enabling Stream and other parts of our video subscription onto Internet-connected TV devices. 

It would be a mistake to think of Stream as a skinny bundle. It's much more comprehensive strategy in how we're looking to evolve that over time. 

MCN: Let's talk a bit about the results you’ve seen with electronic-sell through, which you launched in 2013. Also, Fandango (part of NBCUniversal) just bought M-Go and rebranded that EST service as FandangoNow. Do you see some opportunities for Comcast to align its EST product with that? 

MS: Since we've launched electronic sell-through, we've had over 5 million customers make digital purchases and it has also unlocked the ability for us to access content in earlier windows. It's not uncommon for studios to release movies digitally, in some cases, three or four weeks before physical. It's given us the ability to market to those customers in advance of some other distributor's that have not launched electronic sell-through. 

We continue  to refine the product; we're introducing bundling and pre-buys. You'll see us test different ways to add value. For example, we're testing these enhanced content offerings that when you purchase  movie digitally it unlocks companion experiences. And we're looking at gaming as another way that we can add more value to digital purchases. We're working closely with the studios to continue to find ways to evolve the product and look at ways to [support ] earlier windows. 

There certainly may be opportunities where we collaborate at some point [with Fandango], but my sense is that Fandango is interested  in exploring ways to expand and enhance their ticketing business and electronic sell-through may provide new models for them like super tickets. That has not been as high a priority for us.

Who knows? There could be some shared learnings that allow us to find ways where we could better work together. 

Bucking a trend amplified by a small but growing cord-cutting trend and the popularity of over-the-top video options, Comcast just came off a first quarter in which the MSO added 53,000 subscribers, its best first-quarter video result in nine years.

While a portion of the credit goes to X1, Comcast’s Internet protocol-capable next-generation video offering, those results are due to a confluence of efforts and initiatives that span not just the core product but also areas such as improved customer care, according to Matt Strauss, Comcast Cable’s executive vice president and general manager, video services.

Multichannel News technology editor and Next TV editor Jeff Baumgartner recently caught up with Strauss to discuss Comcast’s new video products and strategies involving X1, TV Everywhere, its new IP-delivered “Stream” product, and future 4K plans.

Editor's Note: An expanded version of this interview will appear in Multichannel News’s show dailies at this week’s INTX show in Boston.

MCN:As you look at the second half of the year, what are your top priorities?

Matt Strauss: We’re really focused first and foremost on continuing to execute against the deployment of X1. We’re seeing a lot of very positive benefits from X1, both on the churn and on the increased consumption side. We’re now at about 35% penetrated, and it’s even higher if you just look at triple-play subs — about 50% of our triple-play subscribers now have X1.

What goes hand in hand with that is that we also want to finish out the deployment of our cloud infrastructure. We’ve been deploying cloud across our footprint — both cloud streaming and cloud DVR — and we are very close to getting 100% deployment. We want to finish that up by the middle to end of this year.

Finally, we want to continue the penetration and usage of our products and services. We’ve got a very ambitious deployment for our new consolidated Xfinity app. With the upcoming Olympics [in Rio] we want to use that as an opportunity to shine a light on this new application, which we think is a tremendous value to our customers.

Related:INTX 2016: Comcast's Roberts Says No Plans to Take Pay TV Over-the-Top

MCN:With respect to the pay TV momentum, how much credit does X1 get, even as you continue to improve other areas like customer care and customer experience?

MS: It certainly is contributing. When you look at X1, we’re seeing improvements in churn. X1 customers are also consuming more video. They also have a higher attachment rate to DVRs and typically they take additional outlets in their home. There’s no doubt that X1 is contributing, but I don’t know if there’s any one silver bullet.

When it comes to growing the video business, it’s really a combination of several factors and investments that we’ve been making over the past few years, in how we’ve been improving our infrastructure, moving more to IP.

MCN:What kind of usage patterns are you seeing with the Xfinity TV app? Is the big challenge getting the message out to customers so they understand the app’s full capability?

MS: I’d almost characterize it as we’re in a moment in time because we have the Xfinity TV in-home app and we have our Xfinity TV Go app. We are in the process of consolidating those into just one app, which will be the Xfinity TV app. This unification … will provide this unprecedented access to content both in the home and out of the home. And I think those lines are going to continue to get more and more blurred.

When you look at the usage of our app in general, we have about 42% penetration of our mobile app among our double-play customers on a monthly basis. On a quarterly basis, it’s almost 60% who are using one of our apps, and that’s up about 16% year-over-year.

Related:CEO Roberts: Comcast, X1 Ready for Olympics

MCN:What’s next for Comcast with respect to 4K? You’ve got the app for Samsung TVs but we’ve seen some recent reports that you’ll really be focusing more on a strategy that puts an emphasis on High Dynamic Range (HDR)?

MS: While there’s hyper-attention on 4K, when we look at the total video experience, we think 4K is part of the offering. But HDR, which is not necessarily getting the same amount of attention, is in many ways more immersive and, we think, impactful.

Instead of deploying maybe a half-baked solution, which we’re starting to see a little bit of in the market, we thought it was more prudent to deliver the complete experience … and that’s what’s being developed with our Xi6 box, which we’ll be testing this year, but it’s going to really be deployed next year.

MCN:The video market continues to be abuzz about skinny TV bundles. Comcast has been going after that segment with the Stream TV product in some select markets. What have you learned so far, and what’s next on the rollout plan?

MS: In many ways X1, we think, is satisfying the demand for how many of us watch television. The average person watches about 130 hours of video every month.

But there are changes in how other segments are consuming video. When we look at skinny bundles, we believe that they are in some ways a manifestation of the economy as anything else. It’s rare that you hear someone say that they want fewer choices. What’s more likely is that you might hear someone say they want to pay less.

We have been experimenting with skinny bundles and experimenting with ensuring we’re getting the right product to the right customer at the right time in their life, whether that’s Internet Plus or the Xfinity On Campus product, or Stream.

While Stream is, at the moment, comprised of a skinny bundle, the strategies behind Stream are much more around how we’re going to transform the overall end-to-end customer experience, and Stream is just one example of how we are expanding into that terrain.

Stream TV, Comcast’s mobile-first IPTV service for cord-cutters, launched Thursday in Chicago, a move that follows the service’s debut earlier this month in the Greater Boston region, which includes eastern Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine.

The no-contract, $15 per month service, targeted to broadband-only customers, features the major broadcast networks, HBO, access to “thousands” of VOD titles and the MSO’s Cloud DVR service. Comcast has plans to make Stream TV available across its footprint by early next year. The service FAQ notes that the new service is also available in select areas of Indiana and Michigan. Comcast has previously identified Seattle among cities that will get Stream TV in the early phases of the rollout.

The Cloud DVR component of Stream TV lets subs record up to two shows at once and holds 100 GB of storage (about enough for 20 hours of HD programming). Stream TV subs can watch on up to two devices at the same time.

Stream TV, delivered to the home on Comcast managed IP network, supports Web browsers, smartphones and tablets via the Xfinity TV app. Using their credentials, Stream TV subs can view some programming from ABC, Fox and HBO (via their respective apps) on connected TV devices such as Roku players, Apple TV boxes, the Amazon Fire TV, gaming consoles and via the Chromecast streaming adapter.

Update: Comcast's FAQ also reiterates that the in-home Stream TV service is exempt from the MSO's monthly Internet data usage allowance policies, which have recently been expanded to several markets, though not yet in Chicago or Boston. "Stream TV is a cable streaming service delivered over Comcast's cable system, not over the Internet. Therefore, Stream TV data usage will not be counted towards your XFINITY Internet monthly data usage," the MSO notes.

This approach came up with Comcast's original Xfinity TV app for the Xbox 360 (Comcast recently discontinued that app), which was also delivered over separately managed IP capacity, and not "over-the-top," meaning that the traffic did not co-mingle with spectrum and capacity set aside for the MSO's high-speed Internet service. Comcast has also been careful not to label Stream TV as an OTT service. However, the same can't be said for TV Everywhere apps that Stream TV subs can access in or out of the home.  

Comcast introduced Stream TV in July, and is launching it as it continues to improve its video sub losses. It shed 48,000 video subs, nearly half the 81,000 it lost in the prior year period and marking its best Q3 in nine years.

While Stream TV allows Comcast to target a different set of consumers, the MSO’s primary video focus is on X1, it next-gen video offering. “X1 has been transformative for us,”  Matt Strauss, Comcast Cable’s EVP and GM of video services said last week at the Wells Fargo Tech, Media & Telecom conference in New York. He said  VOD usage on X1 is 45% higher than on Comcast’s legacy video platform. About 25% of Comcast’s video sub base is now on X1.

Strauss acknowledged that Comcast must be careful not to cannibalize its base video offerings with slimmed –down offerings like Stream TV and Internet Plus.

“You have to monitor that very, very closely,” he said. “This isn’t about putting things in the market to get consumers to downgrade.”

Dish Network (via Sling TV, Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications and Cablevision Systems are among other MVPDs that have launched or are testing streaming products geared for the cord-cutting crowd and consumers who have never taken a traditional pay TV service.