Canelo Alvarez retained his undisputed super middleweight championship Saturday in a unanimous decision win against John Ryder. Time will tell whether the fight will continue to cement Alvarez’s unofficial title as the pound-for-pound pay-per-view boxing champion.

While it’s too early to determine PPV buys for the DAZN-distributed fight, Alvarez-Ryder was expected to be one of the higher-performing events in an already busy 2023 PPV schedule that has featured four other PPV events. Alvarez has been the category's most PPV draw, having averaged more than 600,000 PPV buys in his last three PPV fights since 2021.

Showtime’s April 22 Gervonta Davis-Ryan Garcia fight has set the high performance bar for the category so far in 2023, averaging a reported 1.2 million PPV buys.

Next up for the PPV boxing category is ESPN Plus’s May 20 undisputed lightweight championship bout between champion Devin Haney and former champion Vasiliy Lomachenko.

Streaming and advanced TV advertising took a big step towards convergence as Roku and Nielsen made a deal focusing on strengthening their grips on advertising and measurement. 

“This is somewhat of a watershed moment which should spell out to many TV buyers that the space is evolving rapidly,” said Paul Silver, global chief strategy officer for MIQ, a programmatic intelligence company. “The assumption has always been that TV will soon look more like digital in every facet of the planning and buying lifecycle. The truth, in this case, is that a digital player is becoming more like ‘TV.’ Perhaps the reality is the market will meet in the middle ground.”

In the deal, Roku acquired Nielsen’s advanced advertising business, including its automatic content recognition (ACR) and dynamic ad insertion (DAI) technologies and their associated patents.

The acquisition puts Roku in a position to enable addressable advertising not only on its streaming platform, but in linear broadcast and cable as well. 

Nielsen, which has been selling off businesses to focus on its One Nielsen plan for measuring programming and advertising across all screens, gets an important customer in Roku as well as a wealth of data coming from Roku’s extensive user base.

“We believe it’s fair to question why Nielsen was flirting with this [addressable ad] business in the first place,” Sanford C. Bernstein media analyst Todd Juenger said in a research note. Placing ads is very different from measuring them, Juenger said, and “independence is core to Nielsen’s trusted, third-party role as the industry currency.”

Roku will integrate Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings for advertisers into its OneView media sales and advertising platform. It will also enable programmers that work with Roku to implement Nielsen Digital Content Ratings via the platform.

The businesses Nielsen is selling don’t have “anything to do whatsoever with Nielsen’s current or future measurement capabilities or process design,” Juenger said. On the other hand, delivery and execution of addressable ad campaigns “is a business that Roku is already in and has designs to make much bigger,” he said.

The deal could make Roku, whose advertising revenue growth in the streaming segment rocketed in the fourth quarter, an addressable player in traditional linear as well.

“We’re excited to work alongside our publishing partners and bring the same benefits to linear by enabling real-time replacement of traditional ads with targeted ads,” said Alison Levin, VP, ad sales and strategy at Roku. “Our goal has always been really simple: just to make TV a better experience for everyone.”

Nielsen had been testing its addressable DIA technology with a large group of programmers, including ViacomCBS, NBCUniversal, Fox and WarnerMedia. 

“Owing to the partnerships that Nielsen brought to the table, Roku could reasonably address households more precisely across major stations and networks in live, linear scheduling,” MIQ’s Silver said. “This has just catapulted Roku out of CTV and into the TV big leagues.”

Bringing the industry closer to convergence could be a benefit to some media and a threat to others.

“Everybody in the industry recognizes the need for there to be greater cross-platform currency alignment,” E.W. Scripps CEO Adam Symson said. “The idea of a buyer being able to buy on-air and online impressions more easily and for those things to line up will benefit on-air, quite frankly.”

Dynamic ad insertion will also be important, particularly as broadcasters transition to the ATSC 3.0 format. Symson said Scripps is participating in experiments with multi-versioning and programmatic. “We’ve made a big investment in our over-the-air share and expect to be able to monetize that and increase the yield as the technology allows us to do it.” 

Sometimes art imitates life a little too closely.

For the hit AMC show The Walking Dead, the lockdowns, social distancing and related protocols associated with the COVID-19 outbreak, which is nearing its one-year anniversary, presented a particular challenge. How do you keep arguably the largest cast and crew in scripted series production safe while at the same time ensuring that new episodes of the still-popular show continue to be produced? For AMC Studios, the production arm of parent AMC Networks and the producer of The Walking Dead, it was a truly collaborative effort. 

All across the television industry, distributors and programmers have walked the fine line between being able to get out their products, satisfy their audiences and customers and meet growing demand, all while keeping their employees safe. For cable operators and networks, that has meant adhering to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) protocols and finding new ways to deliver products to consumers. For programmers, it has also meant in some cases finding ways to limit cast sizes and production crew exposures in unique ways. 

The premise of The Walking Dead comes uncomfortably close to an all-too-familiar reality — a global pandemic of questionable origins causes widespread death leading to a zombie apocalypse and forcing the non-zombie survivors to find a safe haven. For the show, which finished its 10th season in 2020 and was headed into its 11th and final season later this year, the dilemma was how to keep the cameras rolling and the 250-person crew — including 22 actors — safe during a real-life pandemic. After some thought, executives, producers, showrunners and writers on the series came up with a unique solution, creating six episodes as an extension of its 10th season that would focus on specific characters and require smaller casts. 

“Creative people are creative,” The Walking Dead executive producer and showrunner Angela Kang said in a Twitter video on making the extended 10th season. “If there is any superpower that we have as people that are making television or movies, is that we are supposed to think of out-of-the-box ways to do things. So I think you’ve really seen people stepping up to figure out how to make these processes possible at a really difficult time for everyone.” 

AMC Networks chief operating officer Ed Carroll said the decision to produce the six extended episodes was made to keep people safe, but it also resulted in some of the best programming in the show’s decade-long run.

“Many of the best episodes of The Walking Dead are the ones that are based on character,” Carroll said in an interview, adding that the show wouldn’t have lasted as long if it relied only on the zombie scare. “You really need to care about the characters. … We were able to do that and get everyone back to work safely, and take a very big show and make the set quite a bit smaller, but I think creatively accomplish some of our best storytelling.”

Character-Driven Episodes 

The first of those six episodes aired on Feb. 28, titled “Home Sweet Home” and focusing on Maggie Rhee, who left the series in season nine and is played by the returning Lauren Cohan. Other episodes are focused on Saviors’ leader Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam). 

COVID-19 protocols were the same on the TWD set as in all other AMC Studios productions — having an on-site epidemiologist; constantly testing and monitoring crew and actors for the virus; thoroughly cleaning before, during and after shooting; practicing social distancing; and essentially keeping people segmented. But in the six new episodes, the writers and producers crafted narratives that gave them the ability to use two different directors and shoot them in a sequence that kept one unit away from another. 

“What you have to do is rethink the entire operation, so your actors are only with the actors they need to be in a scene with and the crew is only coming into direct contact with other crew members that are essential to do their job,” Carroll said. “You’re minimizing the number of people on an active set, and I include network executives in that. We would normally be making set visits for all sorts of reasons. We’re just not doing that. We’re having our interaction with the cast and crew via Zoom or Teams. When you take a big show that is a multifaceted compilation and you reduce it as best you can, you break off small segments of the operation and keep them as discrete as possible.”   

The Walking Dead was unique in that it lent itself to character studies. Other series on the AMC slate won’t likely go the same route.

 “As we’ve all gotten better at the protocols, we think we can go back to a larger canvas of storytelling for season 11 and certainly for our other shows as well,” Carroll said. “Ideally, if you think about years from now, if people are catching up on a show, you wouldn’t want them to be able to say, ‘Oh, those must have been the COVID episodes,’ because they look and feel different.”

AMC Studios is getting back into its production stride, Carroll added. Better Call Saul was expected to start production on its final season in early March, and season 11 of The Walking Dead is in production in Georgia. Prequel Fear the Walking Dead started production earlier near Austin, Texas, although there were some delays because of the frigid weather in that state.

AMC also is more than halfway through shooting the premiere eight-episode season of Kevin Can F**k Himself, and is starting production on the second season of  Walking Dead: World Beyond. Later this month, production starts on 61st Street, a criminal-justice series based in Chicago. Production for many of WE tv’s reality programs has been ongoing, either via Zoom or other means.  

Other Production Restarts

Many other content companies have resumed production in one form or another, including Fox Entertainment, which said it is adjusting and adapting for the “new normal” when it returns, with all scripted series — 9-1-1, 9-1-1 Lone Star, Prodigal Son, The Resident and Last Man Standing — in production. 

In addition, all of the studio’s pilots that were ordered last year have been in production and are scheduled to deliver in mid-to-late March, including comedy This Country from Jenny Bicks and Paul Feig, based on the BAFTA-winning BBC format, for 2021-22. Fox Entertainment is also creating new pathways for projects, including opening writers’ rooms for two dramas with an eye toward series orders: Our Kind of People, a co-production with 20th Television, based on the acclaimed novel, from executive producers Lee Daniels and Karin Gist; and an untitled music drama. 

Fox Entertainment added that its animation efforts, including its in-house studio Bento Box, which produced The Great North, Bob’s Burgers, Duncanville and upcoming series Housebroken, has been largely unaffected by the pandemic. Bento Box has added new crew members since the pandemic began and also will produce an untitled Dan Harmon animated comedy scheduled to premiere in 2022. 

It was about a year ago, March 11, 2020, that the World Health Organization called the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic, with the first statewide stay-at-home orders issued shortly thereafter. To date, the pandemic has claimed more than 2.5 million lives globally (including more than 500,000 in the U.S.), forced millions of people to work or go to school from their homes and impacted nearly every aspect of everyday life. While hopes have been heightened by the slow but increasingly steady rollout of COVID-19 vaccines and the deceleration of cases in the U.S. and elsewhere, for the TV industry it is anything but business as usual.

For starters, the pandemic is far from over, even as there appears to be some light at the end of the tunnel. While the number of daily cases was down in the U.S. in January and early February, according to the Center for Disease Control, it began to tick up toward the end of the month. According to reports, there were 77,804 new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. as of Feb. 25, up from 55,195 as of Feb. 21. That number started to trend down again — there were 50,925 cases on Feb. 28, down 26% in the past two weeks, with 1,129 new deaths, down 21%. New strains of the virus were found in Houston and other parts of the country, but as vaccinations increase and funding for more widespread deployment is baked into the $1.9 trillion federal COVID-19 relief bill currently before the Senate, optimism that cases will continue their steady decline is high. 

Stay-at-home orders, implemented to halt the spread of the virus, also helped drive cable broadband subscriber growth to record highs, as the top three publicly traded cable operators added more than 4 million high-speed internet customers in 2020. While that level of growth isn’t expected this year, many operators are looking how to address the market as more consumers return to the office. 

At Mediacom Communications, the focus has been on making higher speeds available to its customers. Broadband speeds of 1 gigabit per second are now accessible in all of its markets, and the payoff has been strong.

The need for speed has been evident at the company. Mediacom reported a threefold increase in 1 Gbps customers year-over-year, and said 14.6% of its broadband subscribers take the 1 Gbps tier. That compares to about an 8.5% take rate for 1 Gbps service on average nationwide, according to OpenVault Broadband Insights.  

While most operators aren’t expecting the same broadband growth this year, some are looking closely at how their customers’ work habits could change. Some anticipate a hybrid approach between office and home will become more of the norm. 

“As things start to open up, we see customers that will still work from home permanently or on a hybrid basis and will continue to want to have a better connection that can give them that comfort that they can get their work done,”  Mediacom senior VP customer service and financial operations Tapan Dandnaik said.

To that extent, Mediacom has raised speeds for some levels of service and boosted usage allowances. The current usage allowance levels are 1, 2 and 6 Terabytes for its 100 megabits per second, 300 Mbps and 1 Gbps tiers. 

“We want customers to get the best speeds and the best service and make sure what we have for the customers is the appropriate service at the appropriate price point, so there is value in what we’re offering,” Dandnaik said. 

Charter Communications added more than 2 million broadband customers in 2020. While the No. 2 U.S. cable operator did see some customers migrate to higher speeds, chief operating officer John Bickham said that for the most part, subscribers found they could do a lot with less. Charter raised minimum speeds in most of its markets to 200 Mbps last year, and offers 400 Mbps and 1 Gbps service as well. Bickham said there are a few markets where 100 Mbps is still the minimum.

“We saw some upgrading,” Bickham said. “But fundamentally, if you have a 100 Mbps level of service in your home and it’s solid, there is hardly anything you can do that requires more speed. ... If people want a high level of speed, we’ll sell it to them.”  

Cable operators across the board moved to incentivize workers that had to remain in the field, either through bonuses or other means. Charter pledged to raise the minimum wage it paid hourly workers to $20 per hour by 2022, and said it is well on the way toward that goal. 

Charter also has teamed up with healthcare company Matrix Medical to vaccinate employees who want it on-site. According to executive VP, human resources Paul Marchand, the plan is to establish 50 to 60 megasites at Charter facilities across the country, working with local and state health departments to secure dosages and vaccinate employees that request it. 

Marchand added the company realizes that employees do and will have alternatives to get the vaccine — some are already getting it if they qualify — and that is OK, too. But he added that vaccines are expected to become more widely available in the coming weeks and Charter wanted to be prepared. 

“I can envision in the next four to six weeks on-site, maybe starting in one or two locations and building over time, we will be able to provide shots to our employees,” Marchand said. 

The pandemic accelerated cable’s long-desired plans to move toward self-installation. Comcast claims that more than two-thirds of its total installations are done by the customer. At Charter, self-installs are at about 80%. That pace is likely to continue.

“Don’t undersell self-installation,” MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett said. “It’s here to stay, and the MSOs will only get better and better at it.”

Remote Control

While all the emphasis has been on the general public working from home, most cable employees had to perform their tasks remotely and have performed amazingly well under the circumstances. For some workers — especially customer-service representatives — remote work could be permanent. 

“Work-at-home CSRs are a game-changer, particularly if we go back to having a tight labor market like we had pre-pandemic,” Moffett said.  “Among the biggest costs in running call centers are recruiting and training new employees, and one of the biggest reasons for turnover in call centers is lack of childcare. The ability to have CSRs working from home is transformational.”   

At Mediacom Communications, about 95% of CSRs work remotely, Dandnaik said. But he added that anything could change. 

“The thing is, we’re in March and if you asked me the same question in June, I hope to be able to say we have some kind of rotation,” Dandnaik said. “I think things are evolving. At some point in the future, I don’t know when, we will come up with the ideal hybrid approach to make sure we are adjusting to the new normal.”

Mediacom will be flexible with its employees and take their personal situations into consideration, he added. 

“We operate in 22 markets,” Dandnaik said. Where our call centers are, we have 10 or 12 locations. Every market is different and every situation is local.”  

Bickham said he expects the return to normalcy will most likely happen at a gradual pace.

“I think it goes away very slowly in terms of the impact on how people behave and where they work and how they go to school,” Bickham said. “It happens over an extended period of time. It’s not going to be like it was a year ago, when everyone went home and all of a sudden you had this very dramatic change.”  

Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts, in a January conference call with analysts to discuss fourth-quarter results, said moving customer-care workers from offices to work from their homes has worked so well, the company is “leaning towards embracing this model permanently.” In 2020, agent-handled calls were reduced by more than 16 million, Roberts said. 

“We are working hard with our communications and marketing efforts to enhance awareness of all we have to offer, which enables us to take cost out of the business while delivering a better experience for our customers,” Roberts continued. 

More than half of Charter’s CSRs are working remotely, but the hope is that once the pandemic subsidies, more will be able to return to the office. 

Although Charter came under some criticism for its approach during the early days of the pandemic, Marchand said the priority has always been to adhere to CDC standards, as well as the varying standards by state. And while Charter is complying with all federal and state requirements, once the pandemic is over, it would like to get as back to normal as possible. 

Weighing an Office Return

Charter has in some cases started a scheduled approach, where some workers would work one week in the office, some two weeks remotely and so on. While there will always be exceptions, he said, overall the company would like to get back to a place where most workers are in the office.  

“In the end, we think work is best done when we are together in person,” Marchand said. “We think collaborating, innovating, leading training, on-boarding all is best done, is most efficient, effective and rewarding and frankly, the best employee experience, when we’re all together. That doesn’t mean some situations don’t necessitate some people working remotely, and that in the future we may continue to have that.” 

AMC’s Carroll said he too misses the days when most of the team was at the office. While there have been some benefits to working remotely — Zoom meetings, he said, can sometimes run more efficiently than in-person ones — he said personal interaction is important on both sides of the business.

“On the client side, we do miss the client contact,” Carroll said. “We are doing it remotely, and that seems to be OK, but
you don’t find out as much about what’s happening with your clients on a 30-minute Zoom call as you do over lunch.”   

While some programmers and operators may crave a return to in-person meetings, the pandemic may have dealt the final blow to large conventions. 

The shift from huge trade shows to smaller, regional and local confabs had already been happening years before anyone had even heard of COVID-19, primarily due to massive industry consolidation. In 2017, NCTA–The Internet and Cable Television Association, ended its annual cable show, INTX, after 65 years. In a blog post at the time about the decision, NCTA president and CEO Michael Powell wrote: “Large trade show floors, dotted with exhibit booths and stilted schedules, have become an anachronism.”

But Moffett said the ultimate demise of the large cable convention shouldn’t be blamed on COVID. “There’s no need for a big centralized show if the alternative is making one visit to Philly, one to Stamford, one to Atlanta and one to Denver, and then calling it a day,” he said.

Other more regional shows managed to survive, even through the pandemic. ACA Connects and the National Cable Television Cooperative held their annual get-together, The Independent Show Reimagined, virtually Sept. 29-Oct. 1, 2020, and said the event had a record 848 registered participants. Plans are to hold a hybrid event July 11-14 in Minneapolis. 

But larger shows like CES, which was held virtually Jan. 11-14, drawing about 81,000 attendees (down from 170,000 in 2020) — have come under more intense scrutiny. In 2022, the CES event is expected to be a hybrid live and online event.

The Consumer Technology Association, which produces CES, declined comment. 

It may be too early to predict the long-term effect on events, NCTA senior VP of strategic communications Brian Dietz said. He noted that smaller or more-focused conferences like the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers-International Society of Broadband Experts (SCTE-ISBE) Cable-Tec Expo, the Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) Leadership Conference and National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC) conference were still very strong.

Virtual Events Draw Crowds

Attendance at the virtual SCTE-ISBE Cable-Tec Expo 2020 broke records, according to the group. WICT said registered attendance at its virtual 2020 Leadership conference was 860, besting the previous mark set in 2018 of 818 attendees. NAMIC said attendance for its virtual 34th Annual Conference was up 40% over the prior year. 

The SCTE plans to hold its next Cable-Tec Expo in Atlanta in October, the same month as the WICT Leadership Conference is scheduled for New York. The 35th annual NAMIC Conference is scheduled for Oct. 5-6 in New York.

The consumer-focused San Diego Comic-Con, used by TV programmers as a showcase for their newest offerings, also postponed the live event set for July 23-25 to 2022. Organizers said they will hold a virtual event this year, as well as a potential smaller live event in November.

But the jury is still out for larger conferences.

“I think it will be more interesting to see what happens with conferences like CES in which 150,000-plus gather in tight quarters for a week,” Dietz said. “That concept certainly seems to be more at risk because we are all now so much more educated about public health safety and how germs can spread rapidly.”

Whether big changes come and stick is about as uncertain as predicting when the pandemic will eventually peter out. But it is obvious that after a year (and counting) of relative isolation and disruption to the normal way of doing business, something has to give. Whatever it is, hopefully it will lead to a year ahead of living a bit less dangerously. 

AT&T says it’s listening to its homebound customers and increasing the number of simultaneous streams available on its AT&T TV platform to 20 from three. 

The change won’t affect the price of the service, the telecom said. 

Notably, users can only engage in 20 simultaneous streams from one IP address. Out-of-home streams — those not tied to the same internet protocol address — are limited to three. 

Also, some of AT&T’s programming deals restrict it from offering 20 simultaneous streams for certain networks, notably Fox channels, Starz, Showtime, the NHL Network and PBS. 

AT&T said it is also turning its 500-hour DVR service, a $10-a-month add-on, into an unlimited recording offering. The 20-hour cloud DVR, which comes with the base service, is unchanged. 

AT&T finished 2020 down another 5.1 million sub­scribers across its four pay TV platforms. It has struck a deal to spin off DirecTV, U-verse TV and AT&T TV Now into a separate company with private-equity firm TPG.

Continuing a thaw among the Silicon Valley giants in regard to over-the-top video distribution, Amazon’s IMDb TV streaming service is now supported by Chromecast with Google TV, as well as smart TVs running the new Google TV OS.

Support for other devices built on Google’s Android TV platform will arrive “in the coming weeks,” Amazon said in a Feb. 24 statement.

The news came just one week after Apple said its Apple TV app was supported by the Google TV OS.

As for Amazon’s free-to-consumer, ad-supported IMDb TV service, it already had intrinsic distribution on Amazon's Fire TV device ecosystem, as well as Roku and Microsoft Xbox gadgets. 

Amazon hasn't released an active user metric for IMDb TV specifically, but it said recently that it has 55 million monthly active users across its ad-supported channels. 

Amazon has been investing in its AVOD platform to the level of original shows. Notably, on Feb. 26 the service debuted Top Class: The Life and Times of the Sierra Canyon Trailblazers, a six-part docuseries focused on the high school basketball team of LeBron James’s son, Bronny. 

Google TV is the successor to Android TV, overlaying advanced search and recommendation features. So far, several smart TV makers, including Sony, have signaled their intention to integrate the new OS into their 2021 TV set shipments. But the broader field of Android TV devices will take several years to switch over to Google TV.

Android TV and its successor remain niche factors in the overall connected TV market. For example, in a recent Conviva survey of what devices U.S. consumers used to stream the Super Bowl earlier this month, only 4% used Android TV/Google TV, with 1% using Google's legacy Chromecast OTT device.  

Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen said the satellite-TV operator expects to light up its first wireless market in Q3 and doesn’t need a strategic partner to help offset the cost of deploying what he called a state-of-the-art 5G network. 

Ergen, speaking on a conference call with analysts about Dish’s fourth-quarter results, didn’t give specifics about that first wireless location other than it would be “an NFL city.” Ergen said he expects to meet the federally mandated deadline of providing service to 20% of the country by June 2022 and to 70% by June of 2023.

He also put the brakes on any speculation that Dish would need a deep-pocketed partner to fund construction of the wireless network. Now, fresh off a convertible notes offering in December that raised $2 billion, and with about $4 billion in cash on the balance sheet, Dish has the funding it needs. 

Going It Alone

“I think we always thought we might need a strategic partner when we didn’t have any capital,” Ergen said on the conference call. But just like in the early days of satellite TV, once the company’s vision became clear and it began to hit execution milestones, a partner was no longer needed, he said.

“Ultimately, we got confident enough and good enough in what we were doing, that it just made sense to keep the equity,” Ergen said. “And it didn’t make sense to give up the equity. I think we’re probably in a similar situation today, in the sense that we do have enough capital on our balance sheet today to build our network.”

In the past, Ergen had estimated the wireless network would cost about $10 billion to build, although some analysts have said that figure may be dangerously low. 

In a research note, Barclays Group media analyst Kannan Venkateshwar wrote that the lack of a need for a partner means that Dish’s balance-sheet health is going to be more important than ever, especially since the 5G network isn’t expected to reach meaningful scale for at least two or three years. He pointed out that Dish’s decision to raise $2 billion through a note offering that converts to equity could mean it couldn’t find any partners.

“The fact that the company issued equity-linked paper recently is likely another indicator of the lack of willing strategic partners and its need to limit
carry costs to manage its cash flow,” Venkateshwar wrote.

While Dish has been accumulating spectrum for years, it got a big boost as part of the conditions surrounding T-Mobile’s $26 billion purchase of Sprint last year. As part of those conditions, Dish agreed to buy about $3.4 billion worth of 800-Megahertz wireless spectrum from T-Mobile and paid $1.4 billion for Sprint’s prepaid wireless business, Boost Mobile.

Boost, with about 9 million subscribers, has provided a steady stream of cash to Dish: Revenue was $1.4 billion in Q4. But Dish said in its 10-K annual report filing late last month that it might have to pony up a “material” amount of cash to keep the Boost business going. 

Dish said in the 10-K filing that T-Mobile notified it in February that it will decommission its 3G CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) network, on which the Boost Mobile service runs, on Jan. 1, 2022. That, Dish said, would would have a “material adverse effect” on its wireless business, forcing the satellite company to either migrate Boost customers more quickly to a network it hasn’t yet built, purchase an enormous amount of new handsets to allow Boost customers to access T-Mobile’s 4G network or brace itself for a torrent of wireless customer defections. Dish seems to be gearing up for the defections. 

“It’s hard to upgrade, to go from a phone that works great and works in their territory, and then go to another phone that won’t even work on our network because we’re 5G,” Ergen said on the call. “Then we have to upgrade them again. So if you run the numbers on that, there would be significant fallout from that, in my opinion.”

Providing new handsets to Boost customers wouldn’t just be a logistical nightmare, it may be impossible to execute,” Ergen added. 

“I don’t even think we could get the supply of the phones that we would need,” Ergen said. 

While Boost has been a help as Dish continues to move forward with its wireless buildout plans, it’s real value may be in the pool of potential customers it presents for the 5G service when it becomes available. 

Boost has been losing subscribers since Dish took over in July, shedding about 363,000 customers in Q4 and 212,000 in Q3, a worse pace than its peers. Its value as a springboard for Dish’s 5G service is now in question.

A Big Setback

In a research note, MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett wrote that Boost was expected to provide a retail brand, store locations and a customer base that could eventually be converted to Dish’s 5G network. That arrangement now appears to be in danger. The analyst said having to migrate Boost customers to 5G quicker means it could be a “very challenging year ahead, both for subscribership and for costs.” 

Dish may be able to get some relief from the federal government, or at least more time to migrate customers. Asked on the call if he had contacted the Federal Communications Commission about T-Mobile’s CDMA shutdown, Ergen said he hadn’t spoken to the agency personally, but it is possible one of his staff may have. He said he believed T-Mobile’s decision to discontinue the CDMA service was anti-competitive. He noted that Boost customers are “economically challenged,” and that removing one of their options to access affordable wireless services, especially during a pandemic, seems to go against the motivation for allowing Dish to buy the service in the first place — to establish a fourth national wireless provider. 

“We are one of four providers,” Ergen said. “Washington picks winners and losers, and they make policy that affects people one way or the other. And we’ve had some good luck, we’ve had some bad luck with that as have others.”

The Biden and Trump Justice Departments have at least one thing in common: Both support opening up the entire 6-GHz band for WiFi, a move pushed by cable operators and computer companies.

The Federal Communications Commission, under then-chairman Ajit Pai, voted unanimously last April to allow all 1,200 megahertz of the 6-gigahertz band to be shared with unlicensed WiFi, the regulator’s latest move in freeing up more spectrum for connecting 5G in-home devices — to enable video streaming and video calls — and for connecting internet of things (IoT) devices to the web.

The WiFi Forward coalition, whose members include NCTA–The Internet & Television Association and Google, has said that opening up the GHz band, combined with the FCC’s plan to free up 5.9 GHz spectrum, also for unlicensed WiFi, will add at least $183.44 billion to the U.S. economy over the next five years.

The FCC voted in October 2020 to free up the lower 45 MHz of the 5.9 GHz band for wireless broadband while transitioning the remaining upper 30 MHz to the latest iteration of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications and cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) technology.

Broadcasters, telecoms and electric utilities, all using the 6-GHz band, tried to get the FCC to reconsider the decision, concerned about interference from unlicensed broadband access devices. When the FCC rejected that petition, they sued the commission in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which has principal jurisdiction over the regulator’s decisions.

AT&T, the lead party in the suit against the FCC, other telecoms and utility companies use the spectrum for backhaul. And while the telecoms are all for expanding WiFi, they said the FCC was opening up the entire band without what they argued were sufficient protections for incumbents.

Broadcasters favored protecting those already using the band for electronic news gathering (ENG) by reserving 80 MHz exclusively for journalists, saying there was too much risk of harmful interference to that even-more-crucial service in a time of pandemic.

The FCC, though, was convinced it could open up the entire band and still protect the incumbents, including by employing power limits. 

The Biden administration agreed, to the applause of Google and cable operators. Justice joined with the current FCC on a brief to the appeals court to that effect. 

The DOJ said it was satisfied the FCC knew what it was doing in imposing technical and operational limits on WiFi use of the band and deferred to the FCC’s expert judgment that those would prevent harmful interference.

Citing their indoor and outdoor use of the band for ENG, broadcasters were back at the FCC late last month contending there were “no 6-GHz unlicensed deployments that would provide real-world experience supporting the commission’s already tenuous conclusions about the likelihood of interference to licensed services.” 

A U.S. appeals court has given cable operators hope that they won’t have to start offering channels and even individual programs a la carte in Maine. But the fight may not be over, and over-the-top platforms and satellite providers could conceivably be brought into the discussion. 

In 2019, Maine passed a law requiring cable operators, but not other video distributors, to offer every channel and program a la carte, rather than bundled in a channel or tier of channels. Customers would have to buy the basic package before having the a la carte option for other channels and programs.

Reports that the court had thrown out the law were premature. Instead, it upheld an injunction against enforcement as currently written, but suggested the law could be rewritten to pass constitutional muster.

There is definitely a high bar for granting the injunction, as a Maine district court did, and for upholding it, as the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has done — including likelihood that the cable operators and programmers challenging it would win at trial. So there was definitely cause for some celebration.

Comcast, A&E, C-SPAN, Discovery, The Walt Disney Co., Fox Corp., NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS and New England Sports Network (NESN) sued Maine Gov. Janet Mills, state Attorney General Aaron Frey and and various cities and towns in federal court. They argued the law was unconstitutional because it singled out cable speech for regulation, but excluded satellite or online video distributors, and said the law was pre-empted by the federal Communications Act. They then sought a preliminary injunction to block the bill’s implementation while the legal challenge was heard.

The 1st District concluded that a la carte is a speech regulation that requires heightened scrutiny, another high bar and one that Maine conceded its evidence did not clear. The district court granted the injunction, saying that while the law did not impinge on cable operators’ editorial discretion it did single them out for disparate treatment.

The appeals court agreed that the law implicated speech and, given Maine’s concession, affirmed the district court injunction. But the 1st District ruled the law was not pre-empted by the cable act, leaving open the possibility a different a la carte law might pass muster.

The appeals court made it clear it was simply affirming that the lower court was reasonable in granting the preliminary injunction against enforcement based on the law as written and the evidence presented by the state, not whether or not an a la carte video law could be constitutional if crafted differently.

The appeals court agreed with the lower court that the Maine law, which required cable operators to offer individual channels and programs, implied speech and thus required a higher level of legal scrutiny.

Maine conceded its case can’t meet that heightened scrutiny. But the legislature could always rewrite the law along lines the court suggested. “We leave open the question of whether [the law] would trigger ‘singling out’ concerns if it applied across the board to all pay TV systems, including satellite- and internet-based ones,” the court said. 

Season two of Rock the Block is on HGTV March 8. Ty Pennington hosts the home-makeover show, which sees design experts work on identical houses, seeing which one can most maximize the value. The winner gets bragging rights and a street named for them. 

Two-person teams are a new wrinkle. “Two people work together, trying to create one cohesive design,” Pennington said. “That works sometimes, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

Contestants include Mike Holmes (Holmes on Homes), Alison Victoria (Windy City Rehab) and Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent (Nate and Jeremiah: Save My House). “It’s great to see how these artists go through their process of design,” said Pennington. 

Most every contestant is “in over their heads” at some point, according to the host. He added that the “chaos” sometimes gets cut out of design shows. Not so much on this one. “On Rock the Block, you see the good, the bad, the ugly,” Pennington said. 

Pennington previously hosted Trading Spaces and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. He doesn’t mind adding a little chaos to the Rock the Block mix. Said Pennington, “I love throwing wrenches and surprises into their plans.”

Genera+ion begins on HBO Max March 11. The dramedy comes from 19-year-old Zelda Barnz and her father, Daniel, who executive produce along with her father, Frank and funny, the series is about a group of high schoolers exploring modern sexuality. 

Zelda took to writing as a small child. She was obsessed with fairies as a young child, her fathers said, and would fill large notebooks with what they called “fairy narratives.” 

One can’t help but wonder if there was some awkwardness when Zelda shared her more risque Genera+ion scripts. “It was strange discussing some of the topics in our show at first,” she said, “but it got to the point where it was, if I want this show to be everything I envision, I really need to be honest.”

Added Daniel Barnz, “Sometimes I’m still blushing really hard.”

Zelda considers Freaks and Geeks, and the way “it captures teen angst but also joy,” an influence. She also mentions Fleabag, while her fathers toss in Friday Night Lights. 

The trio aims for authentic queer representation in the show. “Their queerness is a big part of who they are, but that’s not all of who they are,” Zelda said of her characters. “They have personalities beside their queerness.”

Lena Dunham, a fan of Daniel and Ben’s film Cake, is an executive producer. Zelda called her “an amazing mentor.” 

Added Ben: “We started developing this and it felt very much in her wheelhouse. So we approached her [Dunham] and it all took off from there.” 

As the traditional TV sports industry continues to recover from the COVID-19 shutdown of live events almost a year ago, it faces another body blow in the near future from the increasing migration of sports content to digital platforms. 

At its March 4 launch event, ViacomCBS’s Paramount Plus promised to offer a significant amount of live sports-event streaming in its new iteration, joining rivals such as NBCUniversal’s Peacock, Disney’s ESPN Plus and WarnerMedia’s HBO Max that are offering or are planning to offer live sports events previously available only to subscribers of the cable bundle. 

Despite disappointing ratings for several big-ticket sports events over the past few months — audiences for both the College Football Playoff Championship on ESPN Jan. 11 and CBS’s Feb. 7 Super Bowl LV telecast were significantly down compared to last year — sports remains one of the few television properties that commands a sizable live viewing audience. The genre’s loyal fan base is a desirable target for new, upstart streaming services looking to build their subscriber numbers.

“While sports ratings have dropped during a very difficult year, out of the top 100 shows last year, around 75 were sports events,” TV sports consultant Lee Berke said. “Every new television platform since radio has offered up sports, and that has replicated itself again and again. The streaming services are no different.”

That reality was made very clear during ViacomCBS’s Feb. 24 streaming presentation for Paramount Plus. The SVOD streaming service — which took over for CBS All Access on March 4 — plans to offer more than 1,000 live sporting events a year, according to ViacomCBS president and CEO Bob Bakish. 

This fall, Paramount Plus will stream all of CBS’s regular-season NFL telecasts and will become the new home of Inside the NFL, which currently airs on Showtime. Paramount Plus will also have UEFA Champions League and Europa League games, as well as live National Women’s Soccer League contests. Last month, CBS All Access live-streamed CBS’s broadcast coverage of Super Bowl LV. 

“Paramount Plus will be the leader in live sports,” CBS Entertainment Group president and CEO George Cheeks said during the presentation, adding that sports is the service’s No. 1 acquisition driver. 

NBCUniversal’s Peacock is already a major player in live sports streaming, having secured English Premier League games. NBCU’s decision to discontinue NBCSN will give Peacock more live sports content, although high-profile NBC Sports properties, such as the National Hockey League, will move to USA Network. The service will also offer live event programming from the Paralympics, including medal round action in wheelchair basketball, and is expected to be a major outlet for the Tokyo Summer Olympics. 

The $9.99-per-month Peacock ($4.99 with limited commercials) has also secured content from the streaming WWE Network, including rights to the pro wrestling outfit’s monthly pay-per-view events, including Wrestlemania. 

Other sports-centric services like ESPN Plus continue to secure high-profile events — the service currently distributes UFC pay-per-view events and has a long-term boxing agreement with Top Rank — putting continued pressure on traditional television networks to secure high-profile sports events in the future.  

Most observers believe events like the Super Bowl, NBA Finals, World Series and NCAA men’s basketball tournament will remain on broadcast and cable services in the near term. But valuable content, such as regular-season college and pro games, could make the move. 

“You’re going to reach a point in the next couple of years where viewers will begin to say there’s not a lot of difference between ESPN and ESPN Plus,” Lee said. “It’s an easy programming strategy — sports are exclusive, nobody else has it and it draws passionate fans that tend to shift to new technologies.” 

If there’s one thing the global COVID-19 crisis has made plainly clear, it’s that the world is a better place when we are treated as equals. And while equality for all people is the law of the land, there is also compelling research which demonstrates that parity is the bedrock for becoming a better, stronger, more profitable company.

Women’s History Month and International Women's Day provide the perfect opportunity to remind corporate leaders of the benefits companies reap when they place a premium on workplace equality. As the oldest and largest organization dedicated to empowering and advancing women in the cable media industry, Women in Cable Telecommunications understands well that our industry is fueled by data. That is why WICT is passionate about highlighting the data that supports the business case for gender diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), placing it front and center in our communications. 

We’re in good company, because many experts believe that stronger DEI is vital to a faster economic recovery in the face of the ongoing pandemic.  Organizations that treat DEI as a business imperative will enjoy demonstrable benefits. 

A way to do that is to follow the Four Pluses of Parity — increased innovation, profitability, recruitment and employee retention. 

Front-Line Workers

In our industry, many women are on the front lines of this pandemic helping to fortify and galvanize workforces. Women must have a seat at the table, in good times as well as bad, for companies to innovate at a faster rate than homogenous companies. According to human-resources consultancy Bersin by Deloitte, inclusive companies with women in all their ranks are more than one and a half times more likely to be innovation leaders in their market. And Boston Consulting Group found that companies with above-average diversity within their management teams have innovation revenue of 45% versus 26% for those with below-average leadership diversity. 

To experience a significant jump in innovation revenue, leadership teams need to be at least 20% female. And that increase jumps even higher when the percentage of diverse leaders increases.

When it comes to profitability, as noted in the World Bank’s 2020 Women, Business and the Law report, “Equality of opportunity is good economics.” In fact, it is estimated that women’s lagging participation in employment and entrepreneurship costs the global economy about 15% of GDP. And on average, within the first 24 months of appointing female CFOs, companies see a 6% increase in profits and an 8% better stock return, per Bloomberg. Furthermore, research shows that company profits and share performance can be close to 50% higher when women are well represented at the top, according to McKinsey & Co.’s Diversity Matters report.

At a time when workforces have been reduced amidst dwindling returns, recruiting top talent is more crucial than ever before. Today’s job seekers have access to a remarkable amount of information at their fingertips when undergoing a job hunt or career pivot. Companies that demonstrate their commitment to DEI have a distinct recruiting advantage over companies that do not. In fact, a recent survey from Glassdoor found that 76% of job seekers said a diverse workforce was important when evaluating potential employers. 

In this age of social awakening, with the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements at the forefront, workforce parity has become a mandate. In order to fill that ever-important pipeline of women rising through the ranks in the industry, we must strive to be more inclusive than ever before.

Finally, organizations that develop diverse teams and inclusive workplaces tend to be better at retaining their people. Retention is an important issue for companies due to the significant cost of replacing and retraining employees. 

Crisis Leaders

As we continue to navigate the pandemic, we hear many success stories of women leading skillfully during times of crises. These aren’t merely anecdotal accounts. New research from Harvard Business Review shows that having women leaders in a company’s ranks gives employees a greater sense of teamwork and higher workplace morale. The research found that the engagement level of those working for female leaders is significantly higher than average, showing that female leaders express more awareness of fears that subordinates might be feeling, show concern for well-being and demonstrate confidence in their path forward.

Our industry is in rare air and deserves a resounding shout-out for allowing WICT and our diversity partners at NAMIC to measure and benchmark workplace demographics and diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Not many industries are that forthcoming. Participation in the WICT/NAMIC PAR (Pay Equity, Advancement Opportunities and Resources for Work/Life Integration) and AIM (Advancement Investment Measurement) surveys demonstrates a commitment to transparency and a dedication to improvement. And because as we all know, what gets measured gets done, there is no better time than now to get it done. 

Maria E. Brennan, CAE, is president and CEO of Women In Cable Telecommunications.

HBO Max looks to offer an authentic view of the lives of diverse youth with its new original series, Genera+ion. 

Executive produced by Lena Durham and created by the father/daughter duo of Ben and Zelda Barnz, the series revolves around a group of high-school students trying to find their identities while fitting in within a conservative town. That reality is shown early in the pilot, when star athlete and popular gay student Chester (Justice Smith) is flagged by the school principal for his third dress-code violation in the first month of school for sporting an eccentric, midriff-cut shirt and tight pants. He’s sent to see a guidance counselor (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) who seems to connect with Chester, who isn’t as secure in himself or in his surroundings as he appears on the surface.  

Other characters, such as twins Nathan (Uly Schlesinger) and Naomi (Chloe East), unveil the ups and downs of relationships as both hold revealing sexually-themed secrets that threaten but ultimately strengthen their bond. 

Each episode reflects the perspective of one or more students, and at times those perspectives are derived from the same party or school activity, providing a unique view of how each character perceives the same sequence of events. 

Genera+ion, much like other teen-themed series from HBO like Euphoria, doesn’t sugarcoat the experiences of its teen protagonists, but instead gives an often dark but refreshing look at a diverse group of vibrant, troubled, sometimes excessive, social-media driven and ultimately impressive young people. 

HBO Max will stream three episodes of Genera+ion on March 11, two additional episodes on March 18, two episodes on March 25 and one episode on April 1. An additional eight episodes comprising the second half of the season will debut later this year. 

Game of Talents, a variety series that showcases the hidden talents of mystery performers, premieres on Fox Wednesday, March 10. It follows the season five premiere of The Masked Singer, and is hosted by Wayne Brady, who won season two of Masked Singer. 

On Game of Talents, contestants guess the talent of the performer — say, comedy, dancing or fire-throwing — before they perform. Produced by Fremantle, the show offers more than $200,000 in prize money each episode. “Can the contestants spot the fire dancer from the spider wrangler or the gospel singer from the contortionist?” said Fox. “Can you??”

Brady, who also hosts daytime’s Let’s Make a Deal, shared his thoughts on Game of Talents. “If [viewers] want a good time and want to escape and want to cheer some people on and see some ridiculous yet awesome acts, tune in,” Brady said. He spoke with MCN senior content producer Michael Malone.

What drew you to Game of Talents? Fremantle said they had a property that was part talent show and part game show, and they wanted my take on the talent piece. Helming Let’s Make a Deal for them for 12 seasons, I think they trust my taste and the fact that I know what I’m doing as a host. I’m a big fan of talent — I like to push people to the forefront. So it seemed like a really great fit. 

Who do you consider an influence among game show hosts? I never set out to be a game show host, so I don’t have an influence — I just do what I do. In my book, a great host is someone good at being a version of themselves instead of putting on the this-is-my-host persona. That rings very false to me. That’s why, even in the beginning, I was [hesitant] to even accept the job because I didn’t want to step into the Guy Smiley/game show host pattern. 

Any hosts you watch where you say, they’re doing a great job? Like all of America and the world, Alex Trebek. Alex, God bless him, was the standard in terms of what he brought to that position and the respect he had. I always felt that Alex Trebek knew all the answers; I always thought he didn’t even need to look at the card. He just filled you with ease. I think that’s the best thing about a host. 

What makes Game of Talents right for 2021? It’s a day and age when people need to feel good about what they’re viewing. You can turn on the TV and news channels or any social media channels to hear the bad news and see the horrible crap happening. But to be able to see people win money, which is what I enjoy doing on Deal.
On Game of Talents, we give people the opportunity to change their circumstance for a second and that’s a beautiful thing.
We give talent a chance to show themselves off and that’s another beautiful thing. Talent should be rewarded and should be high-fived. 

What’s your hidden talent? The ability to not cook well is my superpower. Don’t get me wrong: I can cook, for a bachelor. If there was one thing my mom made sure I could do before I left her house, it was, you will be able to cook for yourself. I can cook eggs. I can cook steak and eggs. I’m very good at peanut butter and jelly sandwiches — I’m super-adept at that. 

CBS TV STATIONS
CBS Television Stations
has named Darryll Green as VP and general manager of WFOR-WFBS Miami. He
had been VP and general manager of Scripps-owned
Fox affiliate WFTX Fort
Myers, Florida. 

DISNEY
The Walt Disney Co. has named 20-year veteran Susan Fox as senior VP, government relations, based in Washington, D.C. She had been VP, government relations, focused on issues affecting traditional and digital media interests.

DISNEY
Marc Buhaj was named VP of unscripted series and specials at Disney Branded Television, overseeing nonfiction content for Disney Plus and unscripted content for Disney Channels. He was senior VP, programming and GM for Disney XD. 

ESPN
ESPN has elevated Kaitee Dailey to VP.  Dailey, who joined the sports programmer in 2009, had been senior director, ESPN Social, and will continue to oversee the social media team. 

ESPN
Flora Kelly was upped to VP at ESPN, responsible for leading the new Brand Strategy & Content Insights team, with focus on the ESPN brand, content development, sports trends, fandom and audience expansion. 

NEXSTAR
Nexstar Media Group has named Chris McDonnell as VP and general manager of WPIX New York, which it runs under a local marketing agreement with owner Mission Broadcasting. He was VP and GM of KRON San Francisco. 

RITTER
Jeff Chapman was named VP and general manager of Jonesboro, Arkansas-based Ritter Communications’s fiber-to-the-home business sector. He was executive VP,  operations at NorthState Communications. 

SCRIPPS
Kim Williams has been named chair of the board of E.W. Scripps, effective as of the May 3 retirement of current chairman Rich Boehne. Williams served as a senior VP and partner at Wellington Management Co. 

WARNERMEDIA
Kim Howitt has joined WarnerMedia Kids & Family as senior creative executive, a new post. She comes from HMH Productions, the studio of publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, where she was head of development. 

WARNERMEDIA
Miranda Higham was named senior VP and head of communications, international, at WarnerMedia, the lead communications executive outside the U.S. She had been senior VP, corporate communications at 21st Century Fox. 

UNIVISION
Dan Reiss has joined Univision Communications as chief growth officer. He comes from Turner, where he had been executive VP of advanced advertising products, branded content, integrated marketing and head of Turner Ignite. 

UNIVISION
Univision Communications also added Dan Aversano as senior VP, analytics and advanced advertising. He had been senior VP, ad innovation and programmatic solutions at Turner prior to the AT&T acquisition. 

BRIEFLY NOTED

Other industry executives making moves

ABC Owned Television Stations promoted Chad Matthews to VP and general manager of WABC New York. He was the station’s news director for the past three years. … Jessica Burress has joined Accuweather TV Network in State College, Pennsylvania, as senior producer. She had been an executive producer at Spectrum News 1 North Carolina. … Mike Emanuel advanced to chief Washington correspondent at Fox News Channel. He had been chief congressional and senior political correspondent. … The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has named Carryl Pierre-Drews as senior VP, marketing and communications, and Jeff Murray as senior VP, public policy. Pierre-Drews had been VP of marketing at Fullscreen; Murray had been senior manager of government relations at Accenture. … NBCUniversal’s advertising sales and partnerships unit has hired Yusuf Chuku as executive VP, heading a new client insights and strategy team. He had been global chief strategy officer at ad agency VMLY&R. NBCU also promoted Jenny Burke to executive VP, advertising strategy, and Tom Stevens to executive VP, advertising and partnerships.

TiVo and its new parent company, Xperi Holdings, have renewed two more patents, inking intellectual property licensing extensions with U.K. telecom Vodafone and Korean consumer-electronics giant Sharp. 

Since TiVo settled its four-year IP battle with Comcast in November, the company has also struck deals with Cox Communications, TCL and Sony. 

Vodafone, which operates video services across Europe and parts of Africa, providing more than 22 million customers with TV/video, will continue to have access to TiVo products including content discovery, conversational voice and insight data analytics.  

“With this extension of TiVo’s services, Vodafone is maintaining its service offerings and keeping audiences engaged in the hugely competitive entertainment landscape,” Matt Milne, chief revenue officer for Xperi, said in a statement. 

Under its multiyear exemption, Sharp will use TiVo’s “G-Guide” products, including G-Guide HTML, G-Guide xD and remote schedule recording service, across compatible television and Ultra HD Blu-ray recorder products in the Japanese market. This includes the latest Aquos-branded 8K TVs.

Xperi, which controls more than 10,000 patents and patent applications, said during its third-quarter earnings call that it expects its IP licensing business to generate around $350 million in revenue in 2021. 

Xperi reports fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 23.

After much fanfare, ViacomCBS has launched Paramount Plus, its direct-to-consumer streaming service.

Paramount Plus may be the last of the big Plusses the industry sees for a while. Most of the other media companies have already dived into the streaming stream and the competition to scale up to the levels of Netflix and Disney will be intense.

From a distribution standpoint, Paramount Plus got off to a solid start, with a presence on the big streamers, including Roku and Amazon Fire TV. Comcast has it also. Unlike Disney Plus, HBO Max and Discovery Plus, Paramount Plus did not have a mobile partner offering it free to ramp up its launch.

The initial version of Paramount Plus, a bulked-up, rebranded version of CBS All Access, costs $9.99 a month and is ad-free, except for the live feed of CBS. A more ad-supported version, costing $4.99, is expected in June. It will not have the live CBS feed.

Subscribers will be able to watch more than 30,000 episodes and a large number of films from ViacomCBS’s brands, as well as live news and sports.

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run is available at launch along with Kamp Koral: SpongeBob’s Under Years. Paramount Plus also has its own, updated versions of shows ranging from 60 Minutes to The Real World. 

With the Paramount name on the door, the service will also be offering films from Paramount including A Quiet Place Part 2 and Mission Impossible 7 just 45 days after their theatrical release.

ViacomCBS told analysts it expects to increase its number of global streaming subscribers to 65 million to 70 million by 2024 from the current 30 million. It also expects streaming revenue to grow to $7 billion annually.

“Competitive pressures for the top spots in consumers’ video-subscription preferences only keep becoming more intense, and the path to profitability or the ultimate margin profile for ViacomCBS’s services remain unclear to us,” RBC Capital markets analyst Kutgun Maral said.

Netflix was the big winner at the 78th Golden Globe Awards, bagging top drama with The Crown and best limited series with The Queen’s Gambit, and with those series’ stars racking up prizes too. Schitt’s Creek, which premiered on Pop TV but built a mass audience on Netflix, got top comedy. 

Tina Fey hosted the primetime event from the Rainbow Room in New York and Amy Poehler from the Beverly Hilton, where a collection of vaccinated first responders were in attendance. 

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association awards the Golden Globes, and the consortium took some heat in the weeks leading up to the Feb. 28 affair. That there are but 90 members that vote for the Golden Globes has long made for oddball picks now and then, but the Los Angeles Times also reported that none of the voters are Black. 

Midway through the three-hour production, HFPA brass addressed the criticism. “Just like in film and television, Black representation is vital,” said VP Helen Hoehne. “We must have Black journalists in our organization.”

Black artists were nonetheless well-represented among the winners. The first prize, for supporting actor in a drama film, went to Daniel Kaluuya for his work in HBO Max’s Judas and the Black Messiah, about the battle between the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton, and the FBI. Kaluuya played Hampton. 

Kaluuya’s remote response initially had connectivity issues, setting an ominous tone for the virtual awards. Eventually his words came through. “We’re here to give until we’re empty, and I gave everything,” Kaluuya said. 

John Boyega got the next award, for best supporting actor in a series. He was in the Steve McQueen-directed Small Axe on Amazon. Later on, Chadwick Boseman got best actor in a motion picture drama for his work in Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Boseman died in August, and his widow, Taylor Simone Ledward, spoke on his behalf. “He would say something beautiful,” said an emotional Ledward. “Something inspiring.”

Receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Award, Jane Fonda cited Small Axe and Judas and the Black Messiah, among others, as projects that gave her empathy and opened her mind across this difficult past year. She pushed Hollywood to be more inclusive. “Let’s all of us make an effort to expand that tent so that everyone rises,” said Fonda. 

Norman Lear got the Carol Burnett Award for TV achievement. “He paved the way for all of us who follow,” said Tina Fey of the 98-year-old producer. 

“I’ve never lived alone,” Lear said. “I’ve never laughed alone.”

Catherine O’Hara got best actress in a comedy for her work in Schitt’s Creek and Jason Sudeikis got best actor in a comedy for Apple TV Plus’s Ted Lasso. 

Best actor in a limited series went to Mark Ruffalo of HBO’s I Know This Much Is True and best actress in a limited series went to Anya Taylor-Joy of Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit. 

The Queen’s Gambit got best limited series. 

Best actress in a drama went to Emma Corrin of Netflix’s The Crown, Corrin beating out Olivia Colman from the same series. Corrin plays Princess Diana. Best actor in a drama stuck with The Crown, as Josh O’Connor got the prize. He plays Prince Charles. 

The show was again saluted when Gillian Anderson got best supporting actress for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher. 

Best TV drama went to, yes, The Crown, beating out HBO’s Lovecraft Country, Disney Plus’s The Mandalorian and Netflix’s Ozark and Ratched. 

Upon getting best TV comedy for Schitt’s Creek, Eugene Levy called the award “a lovely vote of confidence in the messages the show stands for,” such as inclusion. Schitt’s won against Netflix’s Emily in Paris, HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant, Hulu’s The Great and Apple TV Plus’s Ted Lasso. 

Netflix, ‘Borat’ Rack Up Wins

Netflix did well in terms of the movie awards. Its The Trial of the Chicago 7 won best screenplay and Rosamund Pike won best actress in a comedy for I Care a Lot.

Best actor in a motion picture comedy went to Sacha Baron Cohen for Amazon’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. He joked that Donald Trump was contesting the result amidst reports of dead people voting. 

Borat then took best comedy movie. “This movie couldn’t have been possible without my co-star,” Cohen said. “I’m talking, of course, about Rudy Giuliani.”

Andra Day got best actress in a motion picture drama for her work in The United States vs. Billie Holliday.

Best motion picture drama was given to Nomadland (which, like Billie Holliday, is on Hulu). Director Chloé Zhao called the film “a pilgrimage through grief and healing.”

“We don’t say goodbye,” Zhao added. “We say, see you down the road.” 

Netflix was the big winner at the 78th Golden Globe Awards, bagging top drama with The Crown and best limited series with The Queen’s Gambit, and with those series’ stars racking up prizes too. Schitt’s Creek, which premiered on Pop TV but built a mass audience on Netflix, got top comedy. 

Tina Fey hosted the primetime event from the Rainbow Room in New York and Amy Poehler from the Beverly Hilton, where a collection of vaccinated first responders were in attendance. 

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association awards the Golden Globes, and the consortium took some heat in the weeks leading up to the Feb. 28 affair. That there are but 90 members that vote for the Golden Globes has long made for oddball picks now and then, but the Los Angeles Times also reported that none of the voters are Black. 

Midway through the three-hour production, HFPA brass addressed the criticism. “Just like in film and television, Black representation is vital,” said VP Helen Hoehne. “We must have Black journalists in our organization.”

Black artists were nonetheless well-represented among the winners. The first prize, for supporting actor in a drama film, went to Daniel Kaluuya for his work in HBO Max’s Judas and the Black Messiah, about the battle between the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton, and the FBI. Kaluuya played Hampton. 

Kaluuya’s remote response initially had connectivity issues, setting an ominous tone for the virtual awards. Eventually his words came through. “We’re here to give until we’re empty, and I gave everything,” Kaluuya said. 

John Boyega got the next award, for best supporting actor in a series. He was in the Steve McQueen-directed Small Axe on Amazon. Later on, Chadwick Boseman got best actor in a motion picture drama for his work in Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Boseman died in August, and his widow, Taylor Simone Ledward, spoke on his behalf. “He would say something beautiful,” said an emotional Ledward. “Something inspiring.”

Receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Award, Jane Fonda cited Small Axe and Judas and the Black Messiah, among others, as projects that gave her empathy and opened her mind across this difficult past year. She pushed Hollywood to be more inclusive. “Let’s all of us make an effort to expand that tent so that everyone rises,” said Fonda. 

Norman Lear got the Carol Burnett Award for TV achievement. “He paved the way for all of us who follow,” said Tina Fey of the 98-year-old producer. 

“I’ve never lived alone,” Lear said. “I’ve never laughed alone.”

Catherine O’Hara got best actress in a comedy for her work in Schitt’s Creek and Jason Sudeikis got best actor in a comedy for Apple TV Plus’s Ted Lasso. 

Best actor in a limited series went to Mark Ruffalo of HBO’s I Know This Much Is True and best actress in a limited series went to Anya Taylor-Joy of Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit. 

The Queen’s Gambit got best limited series. 

Best actress in a drama went to Emma Corrin of Netflix’s The Crown, Corrin beating out Olivia Colman from the same series. Corrin plays Princess Diana. Best actor in a drama stuck with The Crown, as Josh O’Connor got the prize. He plays Prince Charles. 

The show was again saluted when Gillian Anderson got best supporting actress for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher. 

Best TV drama went to, yes, The Crown, beating out HBO’s Lovecraft Country, Disney Plus’s The Mandalorian and Netflix’s Ozark and Ratched. 

Upon getting best TV comedy for Schitt’s Creek, Eugene Levy called the award “a lovely vote of confidence in the messages the show stands for,” such as inclusion. Schitt’s won against Netflix’s Emily in Paris, HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant, Hulu’s The Great and Apple TV Plus’s Ted Lasso. 

Netflix, ‘Borat’ Rack Up Wins

Netflix did well in terms of the movie awards. Its The Trial of the Chicago 7 won best screenplay and Rosamund Pike won best actress in a comedy for I Care a Lot.

Best actor in a motion picture comedy went to Sacha Baron Cohen for Amazon’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. He joked that Donald Trump was contesting the result amidst reports of dead people voting. 

Borat then took best comedy movie. “This movie couldn’t have been possible without my co-star,” Cohen said. “I’m talking, of course, about Rudy Giuliani.”

Andra Day got best actress in a motion picture drama for her work in The United States vs. Billie Holliday.

Best motion picture drama was given to Nomadland (which, like Billie Holliday, is on Hulu). Director Chloé Zhao called the film “a pilgrimage through grief and healing.”

“We don’t say goodbye,” Zhao added. “We say, see you down the road.” 

Is Paramount Plus going to be repackaged and resold through the respective “channels” businesses of Amazon, Apple and Roku, or will it successfully gain direct-to-consumer independence on these company’s OTT device platforms, just as Netflix, Disney Plus and HBO Max have?

ViacomCBS, which is planning a full download of Paramount Plus details on Feb. 24, hasn’t spilled the beans. But tech blog 9to5 Mac seems to be predicting which way the wind will blow. 

“Although not officially confirmed by either Apple or Viacom at this stage, it doesn’t seem like Paramount Plus will be offered as an Apple TV Channel inside the TV app,” 9to5 Mac reported. “This means customers will instead have to download a third-party ‘Paramount+’ app from the App Store to access CBS content going forward.” 

The report follows the scuttling of an Apple TV Channels promotion, kicked off in August, that gave the Apple TV app’s users the ability to subscribe to the ad-free version of CBS All Access (standalone priced at $9.99 a month) and Showtime ($10.99) for a bargain price of just $9.99. It was one of the better bargains in the streaming business. 

ViacomCBS is getting ready to replace CBS All Access with the bigger, broader, ostensibly better Paramount Plus on March 4. It’s a transition similar to the one WarnerMedia pulled off last year, when it added content from the broader Time Warner assets purchased by parent company AT&T to HBO Now and rebranded the service as HBO Max. 

WarnerMedia had difficulty extracting HBO from Roku Channels and Amazon Prime Video Channels. By some estimates, more than half of all HBO Now subscriptions originated from Prime Video Channels, and Amazon was said to be reluctant to lose a relationship that gave it a significant revenue cut, not to mention control of user data. 

HBO Max launched May 27 but didn’t get support as a standalone app on Amazon’s Fire TV platform until November. It didn’t get support for Roku until December. That stunted growth for HBO Max. 

As of the end of the third quarter last year, only 8.6 million of around 38 million total U.S. HBO subscribers had upgraded to the new “Max” experience. That number has now surpassed 17 million, with HBO Max now on the two biggest connected-TV platforms. 

Can we infer what will happen with Roku and Amazon based on what Apple does? Questionable.

The pricey Apple TV device is used in only about 2% of U.S. connected TV living rooms, according to Strategy Analytics research published last year. Apple untethered the Apple TV app from the Apple TV device last year, allowing it to run on both Roku and Fire TV, among other gadget platforms.

At least in terms of OTT device ecosystems, Apple probably has less leverage to keep ViacomCBS confined to Apple TV Channels, as users of the top OTT device ecosystems, Roku and Fire TV, have other ways of getting Paramount Plus.

Notably, both Disney Plus and HBO Max debuted as standalone apps on Apple TV. Apple simply removed HBO from Apple TV Channels in May of last year. 

Those who signed up for the CBS All Access/Showtime bundle have been unaffected by Apple’s move so far, 9to5 Mac reports. It’s unclear what will happen once the March 4 transition occurs. 

Apple TV Channels still allows users to purchase apps including Epix, Acorn TV and AMC Plus. But that offer is getting more and more niche as media conglomerates pull the bigger apps.

Superman & Lois debuts on The CW Tuesday (Feb. 23). It starts with the 90-minute series premiere, with Tyler Hoechlin as Superman and Elizabeth Tulloch as Lois Lane, then it’s special Superman & Lois: Legacy of Hope.

Clark Kent and Lois Lane face down their most imposing foes ever — their sons. 

Hoechlin gets a kick out of playing both Superman and Clark. He said there’s more “leeway” with Clark. “You can find those little subtleties, those things that are a little bit more human about him,” he said at a press event. “And it's a little bit more flexibility to kind of have some fun with it, because in a way he's putting on a show when he's Clark.”

Tulloch is pumped not only to play Lois, but to portray a journalist in 2021. “She has really represented someone who's incredibly dogged and determined and uncompromising,” said Tulloch. “And at a time right now when the profession of journalism has been under siege, as we have seen it for the last few years, it's especially important and timely and I take it very seriously.”

Superman & Lois is written and executive produced by Todd Helbing and executive-produced by Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and Geoff Johns. Helbing cited Everwood and Friday Night Lights as influences, along with feature films. “We approached this as much as we could like a feature, from the aspect ratio, to the cinematography, to the look, everything,” he said. “We're competing with these shows on streamers and cable networks, and we want to offer the audience something of equal quality.”

Punky Brewster, a redo of the ’80s sitcom about a young girl raised by a foster father, premieres on Peacock on Thursday (Feb. 25). Soleil Moon Frye reprises her Punky role. 

The new one sees grown-up Punky meet a girl named Izzy who’s in the foster system, who reminds Punky of a kid she used to know. “When she sees Izzy, she can’t resist bringing her into her family,” said Jim Armogida, executive producer, who added that Izzy is Punky “for the next generation.”

Cherie Johnson plays Punky’s pal Cherie and Freddie Prinze Jr. plays her ex-husband, Travis. Jim and Steve Armogida executive produce alongside Frye, Jimmy Fox and original creator David Duclon. 

The Armogidas mentioned how Frye still hears from fans who share how Punky Brewster helped them deal with tough stuff. They mentioned Frye saying that, if people still call her Punky when she’s 80, she’ll be thrilled. Jim called her “a real cheerleader” for the reboot. 

What makes the new Punky right for 2021? The way it addresses serious situations with warm humor, said the Armogidas. 

“I think America could use a bit of comedy with heart,” Steve Armogida said. 

U.S. broadband consumers are using more data than ever, while service providers have a proven economic incentive to cap their usage.

That’s the takeaway from a year-end report just published by OpenVault, a broadband analytics company serving the cable industry. The firm found that operators deploying “usage-based billing” yield 73% higher average revenue per customer (ARPU) compared with those using flat-rate billing. 

With most usage caps set at around 1 terabyte to 1.2 TB, that’s increasingly an issue for U.S. consumers.

OpenVault also found that 14.1% of U.S. high-speed internet subscribers, per weighted average, used more than 1 TB of data per month in 2020, a 94% increase over 2019.

Overall, internet consumption was up big in the 2020 pandemic year. Both flat-rate and usage-based subscribers consumed a weighted average of 482.6 GB a month in the fourth quarter, OpenVault said, up 40% over 2019.

Notably, usage peaked in the fourth quarter, rising to a 2020-high average of 483 GB, OpenVault said (see chart). The story was the same for upstream usage, which also peaked in December at 31 GB.

For the first time, OpenVault reported, more than half (53.6%) of U.S. broadband customers now routinely use more than 250 GB of data each month. Just a few years ago, OpenVault noted, the 250 GB level was considered power usage. 

Also for the first time, more than half (50.6%) of users subscribe to a speed tier rated at 100 megabits per second to 200 Mbps. The average downstream speed is 207.11 GB.

Notable as well is the significantly higher broadband usage in North America vs. Europe. Last year’s 482.6 GB of average total usage in North America compared to just 301.2 GB in Europe. 

There are a mountain of questions of about ViacomCBS’s plans to launch Paramount Plus, which might be the last big direct-to-consumer video service to enter the streaming wars.

Many of those questions will be answered soon. First, ViacomCBS will hold a streaming event for Wall Street analysts on Wednesday (Feb. 24). The service itself goes live in the U.S. on March 4. If you watched the Super Bowl, where Paramount Plus had four minutes worth of promo time, you might have heard about it.

Paramount Plus is a rebranded, super-charged version of CBS All Access. Dating back to 2014, CBS All Access was one of the first DTC products introduced by a company engaged in the pay TV universe. It found some success, exceeding expectations by growing to nearly 10 million subscribers, while offering its customers a combination of new and old CBS shows, original programming led by the Star Trek franchise
and sports, including CBS’s National Football League games.

ALSO READ: Roku's Tedd Cittadine: Gatekeeper to Streaming Success

As the rest of the TV industry pivoted to streaming, following Netflix’s lead, CBS and Viacom, both controlled by the family of aging media mogul Sumner Redstone (he died in 2020), were enmeshed in corporate intrigue that resulted in the two companies eventually being recombined at the end of 2019.

One of the rationales for the merger of CBS and Viacom was to build the firepower to compete in the streaming world where, as Redstone famously said, content is king. Having a lot of iconic TV shows and movies is important for keeping subscribers, but spending billions to create original content is what attracts new customers.

While The Walt Disney Co. went all in on streaming with Disney Plus in 2019, it’s still not clear that ViacomCBS is pushing all of its chips into the pot. It still might want to support the CBS Television Network, the Viacom cable channels and Showtime (which has its own streaming service). It also bought Pluto TV, an ad-supported free streaming service that is now an integral part of ViacomCBS’s streaming strategy.

“What we’re doing is progressively building a linked ecosystem of differentiated offerings across free and pay streaming,” ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish said in December at the UBS Global TMT conference. “And that ecosystem is centered on Pluto TV in free VOD and Paramount Plus and Showtime OTT on the pay side.” 

In the third quarter, ViacomCBS reported 17.9 million streaming subscribers, up from 16.2 million in the second quarter and 10.4 million a year ago. Combined with PlutoTV and other assets, domestic streaming and digital video revenue hit $636 million, up 56% from a year ago.

“Our domestic streaming and digital-video revenue is growing north of 50% and will generate $3 billion of domestic annual run rate revenue in Q4,” Bakish said. “Again, those are metrics you would invest in, and we’re going to invest in them.”

Netflix has 203.4 million global subscribers, while Disney’s streaming services combine for 146 million subscribers, including 94.9 million for Disney Plus, so Paramount Plus also has a mountain to climb.

Wells Fargo Securities media analyst Steven Cahall said his model forecasts ViacomCBS having 31 million subscribers in 2025. But he noted that the 57% increase in Viacom’s stock this year as of April 12, to $58.31 a share, implies that the market has a target of 56 million subscribers. Is that doable?

“It’s definitely a growing category,” Bakish told the UBS forum. “We see it continuing to grow. We do not believe it is a winner-takes-all market. We believe there’s a place for a number of streaming services to be successful. And in that kind of setup, this is why we believe in a differentiated approach, complementary approach. And in fact, we do have differentiated and valuable assets.”

In a survey conducted by Hub Entertainment Research this month, 42% of US TV consumers age 16-74 said they’d be very or somewhat interested in Paramount Plus after hearing a description of the service. Among 18-to-34-year-olds, interest was higher, at 51%. When asked what they considered to be the main strengths of the service they said they expected it to have high quality content, a wide variety of shows and movies, and a strong selection of their favorite shows.

Wall Street analysts and other industry observers will be listening as Bakish and his team provide more details to the strategy for building Paramount Plus. Here are some of the questions they want to have answered.

What will be the key franchises that Paramount Plus will use to lure new subscribers?

“Clearly they are pushing a lot of what is already on TV and in their catalog, including a live feed of CBS,” LightShed Partners partner and media & technology analyst Rich Greenfield said. “But the key question is, what are the must-have new franchises? When you look at Disney Plus, think Mandalorian or WandaVision. It’s not clear yet what the big franchise content will be to drive subscriptions.”

Leading up to the launch, Bakish has touted some new original programming including The Offer, about the making of The Godfather movie franchise; Lioness, a spy drama; Kamp Koral: SpongeBob’s Under Years, a new SpongeBob SquarePants series, and a Yellowstone prequel. Also coming are new versions of BET dramedy The Game, MTV reality staple The Real World, VH1 music docuseries Behind the Music and The Real Criminal Minds, a true-crime docuseries based on CBS’s scripted procedural.

How will ViacomCBS prioritize Paramount Plus versus its broadcast, cable and other streaming assets?

ViacomCBS licensed shows, including Showtime’s Ray Donovan, and films such as The Godfather to help launch NBCUniversal’s Peacock last July and sold the exclusive streaming rights to South Park in 2019 to HBO Max, which added other Comedy Central shows in October. 

Bakish told the UBS conference that “licensing is an important business.” He said the company doesn’t believe it “makes sense to keep all that content for only an owned-and-operated streaming service,” but added “our strategy is clearly evolving in a more O&O-based direction. In fact, the decisions we made at Paramount Plus, even though we don’t have it in the market, have already impacted our content licensing decisions.”

Will ViacomCBS put its movies on Paramount Plus?

AT&T’s HBO Max gained traction when the telco decided that its Warner Bros. studio would open all of its 2021 films simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max, starting on Christmas Day 2020 with Wonder Woman 1984. Disney has put some theatricals, such as Mulan and Soul, on Disney Plus, but is also putting some on premium video-on-demand on a case by case basis. 

Paramount Pictures has 12 films for 2021, including A Quiet Place Part II, Top Gun: Maverick, Mission: Impossible 7 and Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins. Paramount has already delayed the premiere of some films because of COVID, but others have been streamed.

SpongeBob: Sponge on the Run, originally slated for theaters, will be on Paramount Plus, and the Paramount Players label is going to be producing made-for-streaming content.

“I think the film category will continue to be strategic and valuable, but certainly is evolving,” Bakish told the UBS conference. “And again, that's giving us more flexibility, more optionality as we go unlock value for Paramount and for ViacomCBS writ large.” 

Can ViacomCBS make deals with distributors?

It turns out that after making plans to launch a streaming service, getting carriage on some of the key platforms can be a cliffhanger. HBO Max, launched last May, last didn’t make a deal with Amazon until November, slowing the new service’s growth.

The same goes for cable operators, who are slowly but surely making it easier for their subscribers to access streaming services without disconnecting from their set-top boxes.

It also helps when launching a streaming service, to make a deal to offer it free or at a discount on a mobile phone platform. Disney Plus got a boost from its deal with Verizon and Discovery Plus was counting on similar results from its Verizon deal. In a display of synergy, HBO Max is free to AT&T subscribers. 

ALSO READ: Streamers Look Outside the Lines

Bakish said ViacomCBS believes being distributed everywhere is important. “Our streaming strategy has also been based on ubiquitous distribution,” he said. “We have distribution through traditional operators. We have distribution through mobile operators. We have distribution through over-the-top players, whether that's channel stores or platforms.”

CBS All Access is now available via Roku, but a new agreement will be needed for Paramount Plus, said Tedd Cittadine, VP of content distribution at Roku.

“The successful streaming services we’ve seen take off over the last year have embraced an abundance mentality that recognizes the incredible growth-curve potential for their businesses through strong collaboration with their platform partners in all areas of the business such as user acquisition, customer retention, brand marketing, advertising and ad tech,” Cittadine said.

Exactly how that carries over to Paramount Plus will be a key to how fast it grows.

Will ViacomCBS’s technology support a bigger service and more advertising?

CBS All Access has been around for a while, so it has established that its technology is basically sound. “These days, the quality of the tech is not the first driver for subscribers,” Innovid chief technology officer and co-founder Tal Chalozin said. “It’s hard to say this platform is significantly better in terms of caching, or streaming technology or buffering, at least in the first 10, 20 million subscribers.”

Innovid has done a number of integrations with CBS All Access’s ad tech and Chalozin said the already hot connected-TV ad market will benefit from having more high-quality inventory. 

“With lower ratings in linear and cord-cutting, a lot more advertisers are jumping into the marketplace for CTV,” Chalozin said. “There is more demand than supply, so when a service launches like Paramount Plus that has a hybrid of ad and subscription, that’s good for the marketplace.”

Chalozin predicted that as the streaming market gets more crowded, there will be consolidation. It’s already happened with ad-supported streamers like Pluto TV and Tubi getting acquired. On the subscription side, he expects bundlers to step in to sell packages of streaming services. “CBS All Access was one of the first to team up with Amazon Channels,” he notes.

How much financial information will ViacomCBS disclose about how many subscribers it expects to attract, how much the service will cost and when it will break even?

When Disney decided to pivot to streaming in 2019, it called a special meeting for analysts and investors held at its Burbank studios. At the meeting, Disney unveiled what Disney Plus would look like, showed clips of the programming that would be on the service and introduced many of the people responsible for creating that content.

Disney also shared fairly detailed financial information with the analysts. It provided projections about how many subscribers it expected to attract, how much it would spend on programming, how much revenue would be lost because it wasn’t licensing content to others and when Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus would break even and start to generate profits.

The presentation helped make Disney stock a winner and shares have risen to record levels and Disney Plus has exceeded those initial forecasts.

“Disney has done a fantastic job on disclosure and sticking to it quarter in and quarter out,” MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson said.

Since the Disney Plus launch, NBCU has held a similar meeting for Peacock; AT&T did one for HBO Max; and Discovery Inc. held one for the launch of Discovery Plus earlier this year. The amount of detail varied and it remains to be seen how transparent ViacomCBS will be about Paramount Plus’s financial performance.

“I have suggested [a Disney-like] approach to Viacom and all my other companies,”
Nathanson said. “We should have a breakout of subscribers, RPU and revenues at the least. A P&L [profit and loss statement] is hard because of the way content is valued and sold intra-company … so at least we would love more revenue transparency.”  

ViacomCBS has $3 billion in cash on its balance before the sale of non-core assets, chief financial officer Naveen Chopra noted on its third-quarter earnings call in November. He said the company plans to use free cash flow to fund its streaming investments. 

Can Paramount Plus catch Netflix or Disney Plus?

Brian Wieser, the former analyst and now global president for business intelligence at GroupM,  thinks the streaming business is built on a fairly simple formula. 

“The thing that drives the business is your share of investment. Your share of spending on programming will generally drive your share of viewing,” Wieser said. “In an industry in which there's $100 billion of spending on programming, if you’re spending $5 billion on programming and all else is equal, you should expect about 5% of the viewership.”

Netflix spent about $17 billion on content in 2020 and is expected to spend even more this year. 

“If someone wanted to replicate Netflix’s success in terms of their audience share, it’s really quite simple,” Wieser said. “They just need to commit to spending as much as Netflix does on content.”

Wall Street has stopped worrying about signals that Netflix and Disney will continue to spend more money on programming to boost the numbers that seem to be driving stock prices. We’ll see how aggressively ViacomCBS wants to play the streaming game. 

 As we leave 2020 in our wake, let’s further explore the topics in my recent piece “Opportunities for Operators in the New TV Equilibrium.” In that article, I suggested operators have an important role to play as aggregators. However, to succeed they need to evolve their technology and business models while adopting a customer engagement mentality. Let’s dig a little deeper. 

With help from COVID-19, last year was a boon for video streaming. According to GoGlobe, video streaming accounted for 82% of all internet traffic in 2020. The good news is that the market chaos imposed by streaming on the traditional TV space will eventually subside. Those disrupted by the changes are making adjustments to their business models and investing in new infrastructure, while those doing the disrupting are coming to terms with the economic realities of the market.

The first key takeaway for operators is to worry less about the over-the-top SVOD services collectively (market economics will be your friend) and focus on making sure your service is in the top three choices consumers make for video. Let’s assume Netflix will have one of those slots. Your job is to make sure you win one of the remaining two. Here’s how.

Win the Aggregation Game

Content value is measured by the breadth and depth of the catalog with bonus points for exclusive content. The costs of content will unrelentingly increase and everyone will have to pay market rates for studio content and premium sports leagues. To affordably expand the content catalog and control total content costs, operators should look to differentiate against premium SVOD services in three ways:

• Exploit lower cost-content closer to home. Live, local content, especially sports, contributes in two unique ways. First, sports brings avid fans, and avid fans are influencers who bring their friends and can help with lowering churn. Creating “fan circles” is another way operators can start to add value around content.    

• Embrace OTT content and make it yours. Since OTT content will flow over your network no matter what, operators should partner when they can and link out when they have to. The vast majority of SVOD services will not be in the top three and they’ll be looking for operators to boost their distribution. Even without formal agreements, operators can become the app aggregator and leverage live content to be the starting point on the content discovery journey. Having live local TV gives operators a huge advantage over SVOD services or consumer platforms, because even when users go to other apps, they’ll always come home for live content.  

• Curate the niches. While there are plenty of channels on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and other sites covering many topics, they don’t make a compelling TV experience. By curating select OTT content that might be applicable to your local audience, and focusing on the best of the best, you can build on the two points above: local interest (fan base) and affordable (free) OTT content to build a catalog bigger than the biggest SVOD providers.  With such a massive trove of content to pull from, it is easy to rotate interesting content into the experience and use analytics to fine-tune selection.  

Engagement Builds Loyalty

Remember the days when “location, location, location” was the way to win in real estate? In TV’s streaming age, it’s “engagement, engagement, engagement.” Operators need to continuously refresh the user experience and promote popular content to keep the service top of mind. There are two ways to do that:

• Add value to the content. Sports is a key differentiator for operators to create unique value versus typical streaming services. Sports fans are rabid consumers and addicted to watching game or player highlights. Operators, with the benefit of cloud recording technology, can offer personalized highlight reels for sports fans. Have only five minutes for the best game highlights during an Uber ride?  Dial it in. Only care about a player on your fantasy league team?  Show highlights for just that player. 

• Add value to the experience. Several services have announced watch together features. Although it’s not something everyone will use regularly, it’s important for the big game or a play date with grandma. Unlike on-demand services, operators can also apply watch together to live programs (e.g., sports), where emotionally rich content makes watching together all that more satisfying.  

Promote and Merchandise

Content is still king and operators need to continuously remind their subscribers that they are the best place for the best content, and make it easy to buy more.

• Promote through personalization. Promoting content to customers who have already purchased your service reminds them its value, keeps them coming back, and contributes to your digital ad insertion revenue stream.  No eyeballs, no ads.  No ads, no revenue.  

• Merchandise premium packages and content.  Operators need to create a user experience that intelligently promotes content customers can already access, and introduces them to content outside their subscription package.

• Cross-sell other services. As operators, a key economic and retention advantage in your battle with OTT services is that you have multiple lines of business with a wide range of products and services. You also have free and direct access to the most important ad screen in the home. Dropping your own ads promoting faster internet or mobile phone service is as easy as putting a movie poster in the UI.

There’s no doubt the business of pay TV is harder than it has ever been.  But operators still have inherent advantages that others in the market cannot easily replicate.  Occupying that critical position between the customer and the content, operators uniquely fulfill the vital role of super-aggregator of content and customers. 

Matt Cuson is VP of product and marketing at Minvera Networks.

Students studying broadcast journalism usually want to be the next Diane Sawyer or Anderson Cooper. Not Erin Johnson, executive producer of CBS Media Ventures’ syndicated entertainment magazine Entertainment Tonight. She always wanted the job she has right now.

Johnson started her TV career as an intern at a station close to home in Dayton, Ohio, and quickly became a producer. But she always knew she wanted to be in entertainment journalism, so she kept looking for ways to get to Los Angeles. A call to a former co-worker who had moved to San Diego got her to Southern California as the executive producer for a local morning news show. Within the year, she had found a temporary job as a senior producer on Fox’s syndicated program, Dish Nation, which led to a permanent gig at one of the show’s producers, Studio City, where she led marketing campaigns and cut trailers for several syndicated shows. 

From there, she moved to a job at Sony Pictures Television’s Queen Latifah, which aired on the CBS Television Stations in the country’s top markets. Through that connection, her dream job landed in her lap: CBS Television Distribution, now CMV, reached out to see if she would want to join ET’s digital team. She started as ET’s director of digital video and programming in 2014. She was promoted to senior producer in 2015, co-executive producer in 2017 and executive producer in June 2019.

Johnson chatted with Multichannel News contributor Paige Albiniak about producing celebrity news in a pandemic, how she approaches producing entertainment news for social media and the value of Zoom.

What were some of the key things you did when you joined ET to create growth on digital platforms? With my background in marketing, I learned how to listen to an audience. I came to ET at a time when digital was being more prioritized so I had the opportunity to overhaul the digital business. The TV show only has a limited amount of time and you can’t always get into things as much as you can on the digital side. On digital platforms, we can let pieces breathe and tell the stories in unique ways that are additive for our audience. I think what brought my success on the digital side was embracing the content ET had always been doing and putting a different type of spotlight on it.

How do you decide which content is going to live where and in what format? We pay close attention to audiences on those platforms and we listen to what they want. So if we’re going to do a sit-down interview with Oprah, for example, we discuss what we need for the TV piece, and then for Instagram and other social media platforms. We always go into those shoots with a plan. I’ve seen that evolve in my time here at ET. It’s now something we talk about every single time. We circle up with people from each arm of our business to make sure everyone is getting what they need. 

What would you say is the next platform for ET? I really want us to do more on TikTok — it’s gotten me through quarantine. It’s a real opportunity to introduce ET to a completely different audience. I actually had an interview with a social media producer whose responsibility would be TikTok. It’s hard to expect the person running Instagram to also run TikTok. You need to have people in place to focus on the right goals and initiatives for that specific platform. 

How have you managed to produce interesting celebrity news during a pandemic in which there were no live events? I’ve been incredibly proud of how this team has risen to the challenge of still making the show still very interesting. We’re really pushing ourselves and we’ve found ways to do interviews in person. There are some positives to Zoom. Some stars are more comfortable in that setting. And we’ve gotten cool house tours on Zoom. 

What do you think you have learned during the pandemic that you’ll continue to do post-pandemic? Even though we all have a love-hate relationship with Zoom, I think we’ll keep using it. We have offices here in L.A., in New York and in Nashville. We jump on Zooms so often and I see that behavior continuing when we’re back in the office. It gives us a way to communicate so that we’re working in lockstep together even though we’re apart. 

BAI
BAI Communications has named Kathleen Abernathy as a non-executive director. The former FCC member also served as executive VP, regulatory and government affairs at Frontier Communications and as a Dish Network director. 

BECK
Beck Media & Marketing in Santa Monica, California, has promoted Tom McAlister to president and named him its first-ever partner. He had been a managing director, establishing Beck’s Austin, Texas, office. 

CHARTER  
Charter Communications has promoted Jessica Fischer to executive VP, finance, adding oversight of procurement, investor relations, internal audit and corporate planning. She had been senior VP, finance and treasurer.

DELOITTE
Deloitte has tapped Jana Arbanas to lead its telecom, media and entertainment (TM&E) sector in the United States. San Francisco-based Arbanas was a principal in Deloitte’s Risk & Financial Advisory (RFA) practice. 

FOX NEWS MEDIA
Suzanne Scott has signed a multi-year contract to remain as CEO of Fox News Media. Named Fox News’s first female CEO in 2018, she had been programming president of Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. 

HOPPR
Ad-tech firm Hoppr has named Georges Laplanche as head of network service providers and pay TV partnerships. The longtime Technicolor exec is tasked with  pushing Hoppr into European markets.

MTV
Lance McPherson was elevated to executive VP, deputy general counsel, business and legal affairs at MTV Entertainment Group, adding responsibility for studios and MTV Documentary Films. He was senior VP, business and legal affairs.

MTV 
MTV Entertainment Group also upped Bahareh Kamali to executive VP, strategic development. The 20-year Viacom veteran had been senior VP of strategic development and has played a role in company diversity efforts. 

NEWSMAX
Newsmax TV has hired Rob Finnerty as anchor of its new weekday morning show Wake Up America. He most recently had been an anchor and reporter at Tegna-owned CBS affiliate WTSP Tampa. 

NEWSMAX
Rachel Rollar has joined Newsmax TV as a national and international news reporter on Wake Up
America. She is the former co-host of Wake Up Charlotte on WCNC Charlotte, North Carolina. 

NEXSTAR
Nexstar Media Group’s Nexstar Digital unit has elevated Lori Tavoularis to chief revenue officer/executive VP of revenue operations. Tavoularis joined Nexstar in June 2019 and had overseen digital revenue and operations. 

TEGNA
Tegna has named Bill Dallman as president and GM of NBC affiliate KARE Minneapolis. He comes from Sinclair Broadcast Group-owned KOMO Seattle, where he had been news director since 2018. 

BRIEFLY NOTED

Other industry execs making moves

The American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) has added four new directors-at-large to its board: Vita M. Harris, chief strategy officer, FCB Global; Kate MacNevin, global chairwoman and CEO, MRM; and Megan Pagliuca, chief activation officer, Omnicom Media Group. … Fox Business Network has added Lydia Hu as a correspondent. She comes from Spectrum NY1 News in New York, where she was a general assignment reporter. … Mark Bauch has joined Imagine Entertainment’s film group as senior VP, features. He had been senior VP of Imagine Television, working on drama and comedy projects. …  Nexstar Digital elevated Jennifer Scilabro to senior VP, local digital sales, and Wil Danielson to senior VP, national digital sales, both reporting to Lori Tavoularis. … Video advertising software and insights provider Pixability has tapped Brian Atwood as chief revenue officer. He comes from video tech and data startup NOM, where he was CEO. 

Tedd Cittadine is VP of content distribution at Roku, the streaming device maker that has the biggest U.S. platform for home streaming services. Being on or off Roku can help or hinder a streaming service’s launch considerably, as NBCUniversal’s Peacock and WarnerMedia’s HBO Max learned when they launched without a Roku deal. Cittadine answered some questions from Multichannel News ahead of the launch of Paramount Plus on March 4. The Q&A was edited for length and clarity.

MCN: Does Roku carry CBS All Access? Does that contract carry over to Paramount Plus, or will Paramount Plus need a new, separate deal? 

Tedd Cittadine: Roku does carry CBS All Access. We don’t comment on any ongoing deal negotiations, but what I can tell you is that typically the launch of any new service requires a new agreement. Our goal is to offer our customers the broadest content possible. 

MCN: As these big media companies have come to Roku with their new, big streaming services, have each one of them sought a unique deal? Has the relationship between big-media company streaming services and Roku become more uniform now that five or six of them have come down the pike? 

TC: Given our position as the No. 1 TV streaming platform in America, we are in a unique position to help partners both big and small connect with audiences and grow their business.  The biggest change we have seen in the deal landscape in the past 12 months is that major media companies are shifting away from the legacy carriage mindset of diminishing returns where every dollar negotiated was seen as a potential dollar lost given the shrinking size of the traditional TV pie. 

ALSO READ: Cover Story: Parsing Paramount Plus

The successful streaming services we’ve seen take off over the last year have embraced an abundance mentality that recognizes the incredible growth curve potential for their businesses through strong collaboration with their platform partners in all areas of the business such as user acquisition, customer retention, brand marketing, advertising, and ad tech. This pivot towards focusing on how we grow together has played an important role in the growth of the biggest entrants in 2020 and will continue to shape successful future distribution agreements.   

MCN: How much has having these big media companies streaming their most popular and most expensive content helped Roku add users and generate revenue? 

TC: We believe that streaming is TV today. With one in three households cutting the cord and great new services creating fantastic content, we are clearly seeing strong shifts in consumer behavior away from traditional TV to streaming. What we saw in 2020 was many of the biggest names in entertainment go all in on streaming and this absolutely helped accelerate the shift away from traditional TV to streaming for consumers. Just looking at our platform helps to bring this shift to life.  In 2020 streaming hours on the Roku platform grew by 55% — topping 58 billion hours and we added approximately 14 million active accounts. Consumers now know that whether it is sports or news or blockbuster movies or just comfort TV, they can access all of the content they want on Roku’s platform. 

MCN: How is Roku's relationship with programmers and consumers different from the relationship between cable operators and programmers in terms of the difficulty in getting deals done, blackouts affecting customers and fees contributing to higher prices for subscribers and users? 

TC: This really speaks to the shift we are seeing from programmers in how they approach distribution deals with streaming platforms. The old cable playbook that was designed to capture maximum portions of a shrinking pie simply does not apply in the current era of streaming where growth is the mindset of the day. Those services that have leaned in and truly partnered with streaming platforms have been the most successful to date. 

The other key shift, as you mention, is the consumer. We are relentlessly focused on the value and experience we deliver to the consumer. The deals we negotiate enable us to create a fantastic product at an incredible value. Consumers know this about Roku, and they know that our only business is streaming. And therefore, our only focus is on developing that experience for the user.   

ALSO READ: Streamers Look Outside the Lines

MCN: After Paramount Plus, do you think we're done with major streaming service launches? Will there be fewer blackouts now that these relationships are established? 

TC: We have just entered the first year of what we believe is the streaming
decade. In the not-too-distant future, we believe a majority of households will have cut the cord. Change is going to be a constant. From the shifting theatrical model to how consumers balance their content viewing habits to navigate the incredible variety and diversity of content available to them, to new innovations in advertising that will unlock even greater consumer choices through AVOD models, the next few years will be incredibly exciting for our industry. I would say we are far
from ‘done.’

Cable One has agreed to buy the remaining 85% interest in Hargray Communications it didn’t already own in a transaction that values the company at about $2.2 billion.  

Cable One, based in Phoenix, swapped its Anniston, Alabama, system to Hargray for a 15% interest in the company in October. With the most recent deal, Cable One will own 100% of Hargray, contributing a mix of cash, equity and debt financing for the remaining 85%. The deal is expected to be completed in the second quarter. 

Publicly traded Cable One said the deal will give it an expanded presence in the Southeastern market — Hargray operates in 14 locations across Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina — and allows it to tap into Hargray’s fiber expertise. 

“This transaction will also serve as a potential platform for future organic and inorganic growth in the region as we look to continue to expand our footprint,” Cable One CEO Julie Laulis said in a press release. Cable One said Hargray generated about $128 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA, a measure of cash flow) on an annualized basis in Q4 and it expects to realize about $45 million in annual run-rate synergies within three years of the close of the deal. 

The purchase price represents a robust multiple of about 17.2 times Hargrave’s annualized EBITDA, and 12.7 times cash flow assuming the synergies are realized immediately. Recent deals, like TPG’s sale of Astound Broadband to Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners, were valued in the 14 times range. 

Cable One will fund the purchase with a combination of cash, debt and issuing new equity. The company said it has received a $900 million bridge loan from J.P. Morgan and Credit Suisse to finance a portion of the deal. 

Cable One has been an aggressive buyer of properties over the past few years. In October, it said it would buy a 45% interest in Mega Broadband Investments, parent of Vyve Broadband, for about $547.1 million. The most recent deal would be its sixth transaction since 2017, when it purchased New Wave Communications for $725 million

 Sinclair Broadcast Group has always done things its own way. 

It was among the first to scale up and to use hundreds of TV stations to extract cash from the networks and distributors it works with. It has often been a pioneer in technology. It has also known its share of controversy, from the lawsuits that followed a failed bid to buy Tribune Broadcasting to the commentaries on its newscasts that have cast the company as a right-wing partisan. But when Sinclair, one of the biggest station owners in the country, speaks, the industry listens.

Multichannel News talked with Sinclair president and CEO Chris Ripley about some of the industry’s big-picture issues, including retransmission consent, consolidation, regional sports networks, NextGen TV technology and stations getting into the national news business. The interview was edited for space and clarity.

MCN: We had several retransmission disputes at the end of the year, but I don’t think any of your stations are blacked out now.

Chris Ripley: We’re not in any blackouts now.

MCN: Are retransmission fees going to top out, or continue to keep growing as a source of revenue for stations and as a reason for MVPDs [multichannel video programming distributors] to get out of the video business?

CR: Look, nothing lasts forever. But the share shift that’s going on between cable channels is still going to be a trend for many, many years to come. Broadcast still has a very big disparity of its contribution to total viewership versus its share of the [subscriber] fee pie. That’s why you’ve seen such great growth on the retrans side. It’s going to increasingly come at the cost of some of these cable channels. I mean, who watches USA or FX or AMC? You get all of that stuff on the streaming services. When you take a look at what broadcast provides in terms of the quality of programming, it’s the most premium sports that there are; it’s local news, which is still very important. Primetime has suffered, but it is still as good as it gets and syndication still has a loyal following.

MCN: Are you concerned about the supply of quality primetime programming as the big media companies — NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS, The Walt Disney Co. and Fox — increase focus on streaming?

CR: It’s not a streaming thing. The increasing supply of entertainment programming really started with the cable channels two decades ago getting into original programming and that’s just continued now into streaming. It’s a big reason why at Sinclair we’ve chosen to focus on news and sports, because we just see this never-ending supply of new entertainment programming hitting the market, making success in that area very remote, especially for a company our size. We’re small compared to the big media companies and tech companies in that space. But we can compete in local news and sports, where we have core strength and we know there is a predicatible audience for that.

MCN: NBCU’s Peacock is an issue, with the network’s primetime shows streaming before they air on local stations. What’s your relationship with NBC over Peacock?

CR: We don’t have a lot of NBC stations, and I can’t remember which of their shows Peacock airs first. They’re annoyances. They’re not really big game-changers. You know the affiliate association and NBC will tussle over those issues and eventually come to some sort of compromise.

ALSO READ: Sinclair, Bally’s Rebrand Regional Sports Networks

MCN: After Sinclair acquired the Fox regional sports networks, the pandemic hit, shutting down sports for most of last year. [In January, Sinclair and its new partner Bally’s announced plans to rebrand the RSNs under the Bally Sports brand.] This spring, you’re looking for a fresh start and launching a new app. What will it do?

CR: Fox Sports Go will be replaced with a much-needed update, a new digital platform that will have editorial content, it will have streaming. The first version will have TV everywhere. It will be branded Bally Sports. And then the following year we will launch direct-to-consumer products on the same platform.

MCN: Will there be gamification [adding game-like interactive elements to programming] and actual gambling?

CR: The first version won’t have embedded sports betting for lots of reasons, primarily regulatory. Gambling has to exist in the Bally’s Bet [app] world, and there will be a lot of cross-connectivity and crosspromotion and deep links, but you have to go to a separate app to do sports betting.

MCN: So gamification alone will add interest and attention to the games you’re broadcasting?

CR: Oh yeah. All of the research points to a dramatic increase in engagement for people who do sports betting. Those who bet on sports are going to watch more sports at some staggeringly high number. If you’re a sports bettor, there’s a 97% probability you’re watching that event. The other great thing about sports betting, and I believe it’s true about gamification, is that it really skews young. So with 18-to-34-year-olds, about 60% are interested in sports betting or already doing it. If it became easy and it was on their phone and it was legal, that’s a huge number. We think that is a reflection of the video-game generation. They like interactivity. They like rewards. It doesn’t have to be monetary, but in this case monetary works really well. But we can have virtual rewards. We can have recognition. We can have status. If you think about  the social gaming marketplace, it’s a massive business where people are playing games for nothing but the recognition or virtual prizes.

MCN: When betting happens, you don’t get a piece of the handle. You got Bally’s stock and you benefit if it goes up, right?

CR: That’s right. They are going to buy a bunch of advertising and we benefit that way. They
pay us a naming rights fee. We benefit that way. The whole name of the game, the whole point
of all this, is engagement, right? If you do not have consumers engaging with your content, then you’ve lost. And that’s important to us.
That’s important to our team partners. The future of these sports relies on engagement and we need to have the younger generation more engaged with the games themselves. And this is the most potent tonic that we have out there to make it happen. It’s not like the younger generation doesn’t like these sports. They just are not as into watching full games as their parents are. We think they need a different experience for them to spend that time with the actual game content itself.

MCN: Are you going to add gamification to your new shows?

CR: We’re looking at that. Gamification is obvious for sports. We invested in this company called GreenPark Sports, which is taking it to a whole new level. It’s really easy to understand gamification related to sports. It’s a little harder as it relates to news. There are some things, quizzes and polls. There are definitely ways to gamify anything if you really put your mind to it. We generated a bunch of those ideas, but sports is first up in the queue. It has a larger opportunity for us, but we’re definitely going to add elements into news.

MCN: Will you add betting to Tennis Channel?

CR: Tennis is the second most-bet-on sport in the world, and really not that much in the U.S. It’s got a huge volume of content. Everyday there’s a tennis match somewhere with a player you probably recognize. And it has nice breaks in the action that allow for sports betting to happen. I think the U.S. will catch onto that. We’re getting good money from the various [gambling] players that want to advertise on tennis for that reason, and our partner Bally’s is working on specific games that will be tennis-centric.

ALSO READ: NextGen TV Hits Seattle, Its Largest Market Yet

MCN: How many of your stations are transmitting using the NextGen TV ATSC 3.0 standard?

CR: About a dozen. But what’s more important is that by the end of 2021, between us and what we know other [broadcasters] have planned, we should probably reach 60% of the U.S. population by the end of the year. Over half the U.S. population will live in an area that has a 3.0 signal commercially available, up and running. It will have Big Four affiliate content on there and you can have the more modern app-based experience you can have connecting television with the internet.

MCN: Was the upgrade expensive?

CR: It’s not too bad. The repack [related to broadcasters’ voluntarily giving up spectrum for the government to sell] ended up paying for a lot of upgrades. At stations with the latest and greatest antennas and plants, all you need to do is change the exciter card, which is not a very big expenditure. But a lot of people are sitting on 20-, 30-, 40-year-old plants, and that gets more expensive to replace. Eventually, you have to buy that stuff anyway. The new transmitters use way less power. They’re solid state. We still use vacuum tubes, believe it or not, in a whole bunch of transmitters. It’s sort of crazy.

MCN: When will ATSC 3.0 generate revenue? What is the low-hanging fruit?

CR: The low-hanging fruit is targeted advertising and sending additional content to the over-the-air populations. About 20% of the population we just way under-monetize, and so this will give us new opportunities to send new content to these people and monetize them better through targeted advertising, which gets a two to three times CPM lift versus nontargeted.

MCN: When will that happen?

CR: It probably starts to pick up steam in 2022, when you’ve got more than half the country covered and you’ve got people with sets that actually receive the data. But NextGen TV for Sinclair has always been about mobility and we’re very focused on getting mobile phones that receive our signals. Mobile phones turn over much quicker than televisions, so you can get up and running much quicker. We received our first prototype phone. You don’t need to plug anything in, no antenna required. It just looks like a normal phone and it receives NextGen TV signals.

Ultimately, we think the car is the ultimate mobile device. The auto manfacturers will want to upgrade their software one day. It’s too expensive for them to do that over 4G or 5G. This would be a great use case for NextGen TV. You can hit a whole bunch of cars with some big files in a very efficient manner and so they’re quite interested in that.

And when you think about self-driving cars, they need entertainment, information and data. So my prediction is that you’ll get some benefits on the core business by getting into mobile phones, but the next-level opportunity is a connected car application. It’s the killer app.

MCN: Does that mean you’re shifting into a data-delivery business?

CR: We’ve always distributed data over the air. Television, that’s just data. We’ll always distribute  some amount of video over the air. But mostly the new opportunities, the new businesses, will have nothing to do with the video business and everything to do with different types of data forms and distributing those to different devices.

MCN: You started the newscast The National Desk last month. You guys made a big deal about it being straight news. Is that a recognition that the commentaries you’ve been running on your stations are not good for business or the brand?

CR: No, it’s got nothing to do with that. We’ve had both conservative and liberal commentary on our stations. That hasn’t hurt our brand or hurt our business. But we get criticized for it. So we make sure we point that out just to avoid the criticism, which is total unwarranted in our opinion. But if we say we’re going to come up with a new news product, a certain set of people just assume that it has a bunch of commentary on it. We have to make sure we point that out, or else [commenters] won’t do the work, won’t watch the show and just write some crazy article. We know who we are and we know how people perceive us. And so we just have to message accordingly.

ALSO READ: Sinclair Set to Launch ‘National Desk' Jan. 18

MCN: Will the TV business continue to consolidate?

CR: It’s a tale of two cities. On one hand, you’ve got the Supreme Court case this summer. Every time the FCC’s tried to deregulate, it’s gotten stuck in the [3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals] spin cycle. The Supreme Court has the chance to break that, so that’s huge. 

On the other hand, a Democratic FCC is coming that’s likely going to have no interest in further deregulation. So the industry will still be encumbered from consolidating. It will be handicapped versus big media and big tech and will continue to be handicapped as it relates to our true competitors, which is unfortunate. It probably means less local news, less services, plus an inferior consumer experience. More consolidation will happen if it can happen and it needs to happen for the viability and the vibrancy and the survival of the industry. Unfortunately, that’s not happening anytime soon, despite the recognition that big tech is a wrecking ball that’s smashing right through the industry.

MCN: So is local TV still a good business?

CR: Yes, 100%. If you’re in the media business, you’re getting disrupted in a myriad of ways. At the end of the day, we have content that matters. We have local news that matters. We have sports that matters. It needs to be transformed and it needs to be on platforms where consumers want to find it. It needs to have new features, like gamification. All of that is easier said than done, no doubt about it. But it’s still a big business and it’s up to us as stewards of the business to transform it into the future. 

After an unprecedented 12-month run that saw broadband subscriber numbers reach record heights, the country’s top two cable operators urged investors to lower expectations for the current year as they focus on other avenues for growth.

Comcast was first out of the gate, reporting a fourth-quarter gain of 538,000 high-speed internet customers on Jan. 28. That was slightly below some analysts’ hopes for 550,000 additions, but it pushed the full-year gain to about 2 million, its highest total ever. Comcast warned investors that despite the strong growth — Comcast shattered subscriber addition records in the third and fourth quarters, driven mostly by pandemic-related stay-at-home orders — they shouldn’t expect more of the same in 2021. 

“High-speed internet customer additions remain healthy,” Comcast chief financial officer Michael Cavanagh said on a conference call to discuss Q4 results. “And we have all the pieces in place for 2021 to be a very strong year. We also have to remember that 2020 was exceptional on many accounts. And because of that, we view 2019, which was also very strong for us, as the more appropriate year against which to benchmark our performance.”

Not that 2019 was a bad year: Comcast added 1.4 million broadband customers in that year. At the same time, video customer losses doubled in 2020 for Comcast — a bit of a contrast to other operators that saw losses decline or, in the case of Charter Communications, become gains. Comcast lost a total of 1.4 million video subscribers in 2020, nearly double the 733,000 it shed in 2019. A return to those levels would be a welcome, although not quite feasible, outcome.

Video Gains at Charter

Charter ended the year with a net gain of about 19,000 residential video subscribers, rising to 56,000 if business customers are included. But it said it expects a return to video losses as the pandemic wanes. 

On a conference call with analysts on Jan. 29, Charter chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge said the video additions were a result of the company’s broadband growth.

“We had good results in video for two reasons,” Rutledge said on the call. “We had growth in connectivity and as a result of that, having market share shift to us from other video providers and they bought our broadband, we grew our video against a macro trend of declining multichannel video growth. That macro trend hasn’t gone away.”

Rutledge said he expects video subscribers to continue to decline across the industry in 2021, perhaps at a more moderate pace, while broadband growth won’t be the same this year as in 2020, which should pressure video growth.

“On the other hand, we’ve been able to grow with OTT products and smaller packages and we still have opportunities there,” Rutledge continued. “We’re forecasting our internal growth in those areas to continue to accelerate. So, the net of these two things is difficult to say, but I think we’ll do better than the industry in general, if you just look at multichannel video growth. Whether that will be positive or negative, I’m not sure.”  

ALSO READ: Broadband Drives Q4 Again for Comcast Cable

After a year when cable operators saw broadband demand increase as most Americans were forced to stay home for work and school as the pandemic rages on, a falloff in demand was expected. 

“The simple fact is that broadband results have been so good in 2020 that 2021 can’t possibly meet the same standard,” Moffett­Nathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett wrote in a research note. “Comcast’s blowout fourth-quarter broadband growth put an exclamation point on what was already a year for the record books.”

While no one expects cable operators to duplicate 2020’s growth this year, many analysts see last year’s milestones as laying the foundation for other potential growth areas. For Comcast, that could be Peacock, its video streaming service. For Charter, with ongoing footprint expansion and success in recent wireless spectrum auctions, it could be a combination of broadband and mobile gains.

Peacock, launched on May 27, already has 33 million signups as of the fourth quarter. Moves are being made to add more content to the service and bolster its paid subscriber ranks. The latest: NBCUniversal struck a deal with WWE to make Peacock the new home to the WWE Network SVOD service and its programming, including WrestleMania and pay-per-view events. NBCU’s USA Network and Fox would maintain their exclusive rights to WWE programming like Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown, respectively. 

Peacock Feathers Comcast’s Nest

Wrestling isn’t the only exclusive programming for Peacock. In January, Peacock began streaming The Office episodes, after the former NBC stalwart ended a rights deal with Netflix.  

On the conference call, NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell noted that since Peacock began offering The Office exclusively on Jan. 1, viewership is higher than it was when the show was on Netflix. Shell said the show has had a halo effect for other Peacock programming.

“What’s happening is we’re seeing that people who are watching The Office on Peacock are watching lots of our other comedies,” Shell said. “So it’s really driving Parks and Rec and really driving Brooklyn Nine-Nine, amongst others. So there’s kind of an ecosystem effect.”

NBCU has also been steering sports onto the streaming service. In addition to the WWE, Peacock began streaming some English Premier League soccer last year and will beef up the sports lineup at the end of this year when NBC’s cable sports network, NBCSN, shuts down. 

“WWE is kind of a perfect property for us because it allows us to [put] thousands of hours of programming that were behind a paywall that we’ll now put on the free service of Peacock, which will not only enhance the brand of WWE, but we can monetize in advertising,” Shell continued. “We get the events that were behind a paywall that used to be pay-per-view can drive our $4.99 premium version of Peacock. … So I think the model that we’ve constructed here to really kind of leverage our existing linear businesses and drive advertising is working. And I think comedy, sports [are] two of the success stories certainly so far.”

In a research note, Bernstein media analyst Peter Supino wrote that while Peacock still lags behind other streamers like Netflix and Disney Plus  in terms of scale, “its first year seems emphatically ahead of plan in terms of signups (33M) and engagement.”

The addition of programming like The Office, a deal with Disney to split carriage of Modern Family, and hopefully the Summer and Winter Olympics over the next 13 months, could pose an opportunity to attract significantly more viewers. 

Later, Shell avoided saying NBCU’s linear cable networks would become part of Peacock, but hinted that streaming content could be as profitable as linear content.   

“Cable networks obviously are a big part of the business, they are still the biggest EBITDA driver, and I don’t expect that to change anytime in the near future. But we’re looking at the two revenue streams of the business — subscription and advertising — as one business, broadcasting, cable and Peacock,” Shell said. “We’re programming it as such, we’re selling it to advertisers as one platform as such, and so over time it will be harder and harder to distinguish between the profitability of cable networks and the rest of our television business because we’re looking at it as one business.” 

Peacock is still losing money. Comcast said the streaming service generated about $100 million in revenue but lost about $700 million in 2020. Comcast expects that deficit to increase to about $1.3 billion in 2021. But that doesn’t mean it will keep losing money for long.

Flex Could Have Muscles

The increasing importance of Peacock in Comcast’s overall strategy was not lost on MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett. In a research note, Moffett pointed to Comcast’s broadband-only product, Flex, and how that offering could become a key piece of the company’s overall strategic puzzle.  

“In a perfect world, Flex could become a second Roku,” Moffett wrote. “They’ve already got the right content partnerships, and they’ve already got a distribution partnership agreement with Cox. If they could get one with Charter, Flex would have a national footprint, a prerequisite, it would seem, for both national advertising and national retail.”

Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said on the Jan. 28 earnings call that at least part of Peacock’s success could be attributed to Flex. And the hope is that influence will continue across the product line.     

“We’re seeing [that] other programmers are approaching us with their content and seeing what both the X1 platform and the Peacock platform and this Flex platform can do for them,” Roberts said, and Comcast continues to look for ways to take advantage of the Flex platform and possible bundling opportunities. “I think we’ll have more to talk about throughout the year.” 

Charter doesn’t have a Flex-type product, although Rutledge had hinted in 2019 that he would be open to licensing Flex at some point. For now, though, it seems that the second-largest cable operator in the country is focusing on expanding its footprint and the reach of its mobile services. 

ALSO READ: Charter Q4 Broadband Adds Light at 246,000, But Video Losses Improve

Charter ended the year with 53.3 million homes passed, an increase of about 1.1 million from the prior year and a clear acceleration from 2019, when it added 969,000 homes. Comcast added about 1 million homes, ending the year with 59.7 million homes passed.

Moffett said in a research note that Charter’s edge-out plans will help keep the broadband business humming and also could beef up the wireless rolls.  

Charter added about 315,000 wireless customers in Q4, below consensus estimates of 351,000 additions but well above the Q4 2019 total of 288,000. Charter ended the year with 2.4 million Spectrum Mobile subscribers, more than doubling its 2019 mark of 1.1 million wireless customers.

Charter Bulks Up Wireless

While Spectrum Mobile isn’t profitable yet, Charter has been acquiring spectrum to help boost broadband growth and cut overall costs in wireless. Charter was the top bidder in the recent RDOF auction and has amassed a large block of CBRS licenses. Moffett noted that both Comcast and Charter have amended their MVNO agreements with Verizon Wireless. The additional CBRS spectrum should help Charter offload some of its wireless traffic from the Verizon network to its own network, reducing expenses. 

“To the extent that they can offload a meaningful amount of traffic from their MVNO agreement, they will be able to reduce their variable costs more dramatically,” Moffett said of Charter.

On Feb. 1, Charter said it would spend $5 billion ($1.2 billion from RDOF funds) over the next several years to build out broadband service to about 1 million homes in 24 states within its footprint, in addition to current edge-out programs.   

Rutledge said that over the next four or five years, CBRS could potentially help Charter offload as much as two-thirds of its wireless traffic from the MVNO, depending on several factors. 

CBRS can also enhance the quality of the service, Rutledge said which in turn would enhance the consumer experience.

“That’s an unstated opportunity going forward and hard to quantify, but it’s part of our strategy,” Rutledge said. 

 A new Federal Communications Commission took over on Jan. 20 and is already being pressed to resolve an issue that has been percolating for several years: How to give broadcasters the best chance of leveraging the new ATSC 3.0 broadcast transmission technology while making sure MVPDs are not disadvantaged in the process.

Those on both sides of the issue have been pressing their case with FCC staffers over the past few weeks.

In 2017, when the FCC first voted to advance the new broadcast standard, commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who became acting chair on Jan. 20, said: “[W]e had better make sure that the high-definition signals we are now accustomed to when we watch a football game or our favorite film are not downgraded to standard definition in order to ensure broadcasters experimenting with ATSC 3.0 can simulcast two signals — one of which we can’t even see.”

ALSO READ: Noncom TVs Back NextGen TV Multicast Flexibility

Her bottom line: “The next transition should leave no viewer worse off, and leave all of us better off.” 

That consumer/viewer focus is expected to carry over, regardless who is named chair of the new commission.

Driving the push for resolution of the issue is a broadcaster petition, backed by both commercial and noncommercial (public) broadcasters.

The National Association of Broadcasters, in a petition for declaratory rulemaking filed in November, asked the FCC to declare that various multi-station arrangements for hosting and originating multicast streams in ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 are OK. The NAB has not asked the FCC to extend carriage rights to multicast streams, which are not subject to mandatory cable carriage. But the petition does say the FCC should exempt the new arrangements from broadcast-ownership rules, something to which pay TV distributors object.

Noncommercial broadcasters weighed in supporting the NAB petition, saying “clarifications” over the ATSC 3.0 rollout are needed, or the uncertainty would “hamper full [public TV] participation in Next Generation broadcasting and could prevent [public TV] stations from achieving all the public-interest benefits of ATSC 3.0.” Broadcasters refer to ATSC 3.0 as NextGen TV.

America’s Public Television Stations and the Public Broadcasting System told the FCC that public stations should not have to choose between continuing to broadcast their existing multicast streams and participating in the key new deployments of NextGen TV broadcasting.

While broadcasters are pressing the FCC to make a decision so they have more certainty about how they can roll out ATSC 3.0, MVPDs are arguing for a slower roll so the FCC can vet issues they argue remain unclear. 

ALSO READ: CEO Chris Ripley Likes Sinclair’s Gamble on Local Content

“If the commission chooses to move forward [with the NAB proposal], the commission should instead issue a Notice of Inquiry rather than a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking,” the American Television Alliance, a distributor group, told the FCC in comments on the petition. “This would give NAB a chance to better articulate its proposal.”

Gray Television, which is in the Pearl TV consortium of NextGen TV backers, said there needs to be regulatory parity between broadcasters continuing to broadcast in ATSC 1.0 and those moving to 3.0. Gray powered up its first ATSC 3.0 station in January.

“ATSC 3.0 host stations could be at a disadvantage if they do not transition all of their legacy ATSC 1.0 streams to the new standard,” Gray told the FCC. 

The solution, it said, is the NAB’s clarification that “whatever programming an ATSC 3.0 station transmits through its ATSC 1.0 partner(s) — even if not simulcast — is covered by the ATSC 3.0 station’s license.”

Rather than provide clarification and clarity, ATVA said the NAB petition muddies the waters. “[W]e are not sure that we fully grasp the parameters of NAB’s proposed rulemaking,” ATVA told the FCC. “We remain uncertain as to exactly what sort of arrangements and combinations NAB is asking the FCC to bless and cannot identify the public interest justification behind any such arrangements and combinations.”

Skirting Ownership Rules

ATVA does appear to grasp one possible outcome — broadcaster control of multiple stations in a market despite local ownership rules. The consortium said NAB’s proposal would appear to give a single station the ability to control “many multiples of its assigned 6 MHz bandwidth … regardless of local ownership limitations,” up to and including controlling “the spectrum and programming of as many other stations in the market as it would like, creating Big Four duopolies, triopolies, and even quadropolies”  without having to seek FCC approval, it said.

ATVA said that would mean consolidated retransmission negotiations and higher fees that would ultimately be passed on to consumers.

ATVA has pushed to close what it sees as existing loopholes in the local ownership rules, and is certainly not looking for the FCC to create any ATSC 3.0-related new ones.

Granting NAB’s petition would disincentivize broadcast services in favor of ancillary ones “by allowing a station the benefit of both additional 1.0 spectrum for programming and the ability to use most of its 3.0 spectrum for other services,” ATVA also argued. 

The NAB is telling the commission that broadcasters will continue to place the “highest priority” on preserving over-the-air delivery of stations’ primary channels “to the maximum extent possible.”

But broadcasters also stress the need to “highlight” new features of ATSC 3.0, including interactivity and data delivery — so-called broadcast internet. Doing both will require stations to be creative, a creativity they argue their petition will further.  

Dell’Oro Group analyst Jeff Heynen has revised the five-year forecast for global spending on broadband access equipment and customer premises equipment (CPE), and now estimates the market dropped just 2% in 2020. 

Heynen’s latest forecast, highlighted in a Dell’Oro Group blog post, revises a prediction made last summer that the market would drop 7%. 

“The combination of significant residential subscriber growth and increased capacity utilization rates noted by global broadband providers nearly offset the negative impacts of trade tussles, component shortages, and labor limitations,” Heynen wrote. 

ALSO READ: Looking Ahead to Post-Pandemic Tech

“In the first half of 2020, we heard from countless service providers that their projected capacity utilization rates for the entire year were reached by March or April,” he added. “A second surge in consumption in the fall, driven by children returning back to school and attempts at reopening economies, forced many operators to add even more capacity. With much of the world still dealing with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and with remote work and online education continuing well into 2021, we see no slowdown in broadband capacity utilization, forcing service providers to once again balance accommodating traffic growth with managing overall spending.” 

For cable operators, Heynen said the ample DOCSIS channel capacity that spiked network access equipment revenue in 2018 and 2019 helped operators as they sought to address sudden surges in both upstream and downstream usage. 

ALSO READ: Broadband Access Equipment Sales Down 7% in 2020

“In most cases, cable operators used the software tools available as part of DOCSIS 3.1 to ensure adequate bandwidth for all subscribers. In other cases, operators purchased additional DOCSIS licenses as part of accelerated node split programs to address systems with the greatest need,” Heynen wrote. 

“Regardless, after two years of underinvesting in infrastructure, the overall cable infrastructure market will see a steady increase in revenue throughout our forecast period, as mid- and high-split projects in North America and Western Europe, designed to increase upstream capacity, are accelerated,” Heynen added. “Investments in outside plant equipment, particularly new amplifiers and taps, will also continue as operators begin the multi-year process of preparing their networks for DOCSIS 4.0 and its ability to enable extended spectrum DOCSIS (ESD), low-latency DOCSIS, and full-duplex DOCSIS (FDD).” 

When the New Year’s Eve Ball dropped, ending 2020, the television industry was left licking its proverbial wounds after a year that saw a once-in-a-century pandemic leave an unprecedented mark on show productions and business operations. 

A silver lining through all the disruption was the growing influence of African-American images and storylines on those productions that did make the air. Sparked by the industry’s continued inclusion efforts both on- and off-screen — and fueled in part by last summer’s protests against social injustice — African-Americans continue to increase their presence across a wide spectrum of platforms and genres.

ALSO READ: Black History Month: What to Watch

“What we are seeing are more stories being told that reflect the African-American experience, and as such you are getting more positive representations of African-Americans,” OWN president Tina Perry said. “By the nature of it being more, you are absolutely getting more positive [portrayals] and better quality [content].”

Indeed, African-Americans have found success across the television spectrum both in front of and behind the camera. At last September’s 72nd Emmy Awards, African-American actors and actresses set a record for Emmys won in major acting categories for comedy, drama and limited series with seven. 

The achievement was led by Zendaya, who at age 24 became the youngest performer ever to win lead actress in a drama series for her role in HBO’s Euphoria, and Regina King, who picked up her fourth Emmy — tying Alfre Woodard for the most acting Emmys won by a black performer, according to the Los Angeles Times — for her leading role in HBO’s limited series Watchmen. 

More Representation, More Awards

African-American producers, directors and actors contributed to the 2021 awards-season buzz with several critically acclaimed original movies in 2020, including Netflix’s war drama Da 5 Bloods, directed by Spike Lee, as well as the Denzel Washington-produced film Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, starring Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman in his final role. More recently Amazon Prime Video’s One Night in Miami … produced by Regina King, has also received rave reviews.   

Black actors blazed their way into the superhero genre, with King’s Emmy-winning lead role in Watchmen, based on a 1986 DC Comics series; Anthony Mackie’s co-starring role in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, a Marvel Studios limited series launching on Disney Plus in March; and Javicia Leslie’s genre-shattering role as the female Caped Crusader in The CW’s Batwoman. 

Leslie said at last month’s CW Media Day that it’s frustrating that in 2021, her turn in Batwoman makes her the first African-American lesbian to star for a major studio. Breaking through that barrier now will only open the door for others to follow, she said. 

“When I was growing up I didn’t see versions of myself on the screen, especially a superhero, [in] movies and television shows,” she said. “I think that representation is so important, and I think that we deserve to have representation.”  

African-Americans also made strides in the horror/sci-fi genre, with directors such as Jordan Peele and Misha Green (Underground) producing HBO’s critically-acclaimed series Lovecraft Country — which on Feb. 3 picked up a Golden Globes nomination for best drama series —  and Whoopi Goldberg starring in the CBS All Access adaptation reboot of Stephen King’s The Stand. In 2021, Amazon will debut horror event series Them from director Lena Waithe (Showtime’s The Chi) as well as Ava DuVernay’s sci-fi thriller Dawn, based on Octavia Butler’s 1987 book.

Overall, Black actors accounted for the highest total share of screen among any racial minority group at 18%, exceeding their estimated 14% share of the U.S. population, Nielsen said in its December 2020 report Being Seen on Screen: Diverse Representation and Inclusion on TV.  The report, which examined the 100 most-watched shows each on broadcast, cable and SVOD services in 2019, also showed that 92% of those programs had some level of diversity — including women, people of color and/or LGBTQ+ individuals — in its cast.  

The data correlates with what has been a continual increase in the number of African-American images on-screen. The share of roles for Black actors on scripted shows during the 2018-19 TV season increased to 18% from 15.7% on broadcast; 18.2% from 17.5% on cable; and 11.9% from 10.1% for subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services compared to the year prior, according to UCLA’s 2020 Hollywood Diversity Report: A Tale of Two Hollywoods.

Demand for Inclusive Content

While African-American viewers have always over-indexed in television viewing — Nielsen’s Total Audience Report for First Quarter 2020 showed that Black viewers watched more than five hours of programming per day,  well above that of Hispanics (2 hours, 40 minutes), Asians (1 hour, 54 minutes) and Whites (3 hours, 43 minutes) — their representation on screen is beginning to reflect the reality of TV’s audience, according to Nielsen VP of diverse insights and partnerships Charlene Polite Corley. 

“With the demand growing for inclusive content, I think the trend of including Black talent on-screen is here to stay and I hope we see more of it,” Corley said. “What our data shows is that there’s so much opportunity to tell even more stories and to provide more opportunity for diverse talent, including Black talent.”

Eric Deggans, TV critic for National Public Radio, added that African-American viewers want to see themselves reflected on the screen, so it behooves distributors to provide inclusive content to draw not only black viewers, but all viewers. The 2020 Horowitz Research Group State of Viewing & Streaming survey reported that 64% of all viewers found it appealing to watch TV shows that tell the stories of diverse communities different from their own. 

“We’re at a point now where cable and broadcast television especially can’t
afford to take any viewers for granted, so it makes more sense for them to offer shows that feature Black casts,” said Deggans, author of Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation.

While African-Americans have experienced other blips of increased representation on TV only to see them dissipate over time, actress/comedian Kym Whitley said this time the movement within the industry feels like more than just a trend.

“We’re at the beginning of something great, so therefore there are opportunities I feel that have opened up,” said Whitley, who last year appeared in BET’s Twenties. “I believe that after all the [social injustice] protests and the speaking out of people saying that what we’re seeing is wrong, I think it’s becoming more evident that this moment has to take place. I believe the world has opened up and now everyone is looking.” 

Indeed, last summer’s protests sparked by the May killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers helped influence the further infusion of African-American talent both in front of and behind the camera. Industry executives said the movement and its focus on issues regarding racial inequities in education, law enforcement and employment have energized content producers to create programming that better reflects the voices and images of their audience. 

ALSO READ: Netflix, HBO Lead NAACP Image Awards Nominations

In the aftermath of the protests, industry executives said diversity initiatives such as last July’s CBS Television Studios and NAACP content production partnership‚ which sees CBS work with the civil rights organization to acquire, develop and produce more diverse programming — has fostered opportunities for more inclusive programming for years to come. 

“The industry has been talking about diversity and inclusion for some time now and we would have gotten to this point eventually, but I do think the George Floyd death last May quickened the pace and made everyone think more about race issues and racial justice in America as well as issues about diversity,” OWN’s Perry said. “In our industry people took it to heart, and some of the results we are seeing are about people being more thoughtful about those issues in light of a lot of the protests and conversations that happened last year about racial injustice in America.”

Added Nielsen’s Corley: “I think after a year like 2020, it can’t all help but be connected. We have seen audiences gravitate to content not just for entertainment but also a way to help be informed about some of the things that were happening, particularly after the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement.” 

Will Progress Stick? 

Still, some executives are not sure that the industry is fully committed to inclusion. 

“We’re seeing strides in the right direction, but I feel it’s too early to say if there is a real change happening or a moment coming out of everything that happened over the summer last year,” producer/writer and showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll (The CW’s All American) said on a panel during WarnerMedia’s January virtual Sundance experience. “This industry has so much to make up for because it’s been so systemic for so long that the jury is still out until I see where we are a few years from now.” 

OWN’s Perry said one way to assure that African-American images and stories remain at the forefront of the industry is for the top executives at the major studios and production companies to be inclusive.

“Inclusion and diversity has to be at the forefront of all hiring and programming decisions — that means writers, producers, directors, network and studio executives,” she said. “Empowering those people is the first step to ensuring that diverse stories are pitched, purchased, developed and presented about African-American life.”

Added Whitley: “I remember an executive producer told me that we hire who we know, but now you have to do a little extra work. Just because you don’t know us, we’re there. When you know better, you’ll do better.” 

Charter Communications hopes that Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) can soon divert a big chunk of its mobile data traffic off Verizon’s network, which it uses under a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreement. 

“I think over the long haul — meaning four, five years — [CBRS] could be up to a third of our traffic that’s ... currently [used] on an MVNO kind of basis,” Charter chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge told investment analysts Jan. 29 during the cable operator’s fourth-quarter and full-year earnings call.

ALSO READ: Charter, Comcast Set New Growth Paths After 2020 

Charter recently spent $465 million to purchase 21 CBRS priority access licenses. Rutledge said that 80% of Charter’s current mobile traffic is delivered over WiFi. It aims to soon have even more data usage defrayed from more expensive wholesale usage of Verizon’s network. 

“We intend to use those licenses, along with significant unlicensed CBRS spectrum on a targeted 5G small cell site strategy, with our [hybrid fiber-coaxial] network providing power and backhaul,” Rutledge said. “Those small cells, combined with improving WiFi capabilities, enable better throughput while driving significantly better economics for Charter. This year, we'll focus on scaling our systems to actively manage traffic on handsets using our MVNO, WiFi and CBRS spectrum. We will also build some targeted 5G small cell sites, which will help us learn how to pace our purely return-on-investment based CBRS deployment.”

Charter added 300,000 mobile lines in the fourth quarter and now controls 2.32 million total lines. Mobile revenue in the fourth quarter reached $428 million, versus $236 million in Q4 2019. 

The cable company is spending more on its mobile business these days: the wireless unit’s costs were up 40.5% year over year to $522 million. But Charter insisted that costs — and subscriber lines — aren’t rising due to device subsidy promotions. 

“We’re not giving away free phones to kick up wireless net adds,” Charter chief financial officer Chris Winfrey said, speaking alongside Rutledge.

ALSO READ: Charter Launches $5 Billion, Multi-Year Plan to Expand Broadband to 1 Million New Homes

As for CBRS, Rutledge said it will have an “opportunistic” role in Charter’s technology portfolio. “It depends on traffic flows, it depends on the quantity of flows and where they are and whether it pays for us to put out the capital to reduce those costs, but it is necessary. And if you think through our WiFi deployment as well, there is a mixture between WiFi and CBRS in terms of offload and how that works.”

Beyond pure economics, Rutledge said CBRS could improve overall user experience. “We’ve looked at CBRS strictly as a incremental opportunity from a return-on-investment point of view to move traffic onto our network, but it also does have the potential of increasing the consumers’ experience in terms of their satisfaction because of the quality of that connection,” he said. “And so that’s sort of an unstated opportunity going forward. Hard to quantify, but part of our strategy.” 

Cable programmers and streaming services will mark  the February-long commemoration with a slew of African American-themed original scripted series, movies, documentaries and specials. Here’s a sampling of what’s on tap.

Feb. 1

Bucket List
(Sports Documentary)
Crackle

Sew the Winter to My Skin (Movie) Crackle 

ALSO READ: Cover Story: Black Voices Rising

Feb. 5

Malcolm & Marie
(Movie)
Netflix 

Feb. 8

Whitney Houston & Bobbi Kristina: Didn’t We Almost Have It All
(Documentary)
Lifetime

Feb. 9

Black Art: In the Absence of Light 
(Documentary)
HBO 

Feb. 10 

Tuskegee Airmen: Legacy of Courage
(Documentary)
History

Feb. 12

Hip Hop Uncovered 
(Music Documentary) 
FX 

Judas and the Black Messiah (Movie)  HBO Max 

Feb. 16

The Black Church 
(Documentary)
PBS 

Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Farewell Play  (Comedy Special)  BET

Feb. 18

The March on Washington: Keepers of the Dream
(Documentary)
National Geographic

Feb. 21

Boiling Point
(Special)
BET

Disrupt and Dismantle 
(Special)
BET

Feb. 22

Mr. Soul! 
(Documentary) 
PBS 

ALSO READ: Netflix, HBO Lead NAACP Image Awards Nominations

Feb. 23

OWN Spotlight: They Call Me Dad
(Special)
OWN

Feb. 26

The United States vs. Billie Holiday 
(Movie) 
Hulu 

Black Renaissance  (Special)  YouTube Originals 

Feb. 28

The Undefeated Presents: A Room of Our Own 
(Special)
ESPN

Don’t Waste Your Pretty  (Movie)  TV One 

After consuming so much doom and gloom on TV for the past year, including news reports of COVID-19, the election and the Capitol invasion, viewers want warmer fare when they’re looking for entertainment. Producers and programmers say they are focused on delivering happier programming to an audience fed up with all the misery. 

“It’s definitely leaning much more into love, fun, wish fulfillment, hopeful, aspirational,” said a development veteran who spoke on background to give an accurate read on pilot season. “It’s, the world is a good place.”

Epix dramedy Bridge and Tunnel came to be from a conversation between creator Edward Burns and Epix president Michael Wright about creating something that will leave viewers in a good mood. Burns’s goal for Bridge and Tunnel, about young adults just out of college in 1980, is to make people smile in the way early Beatles songs do. “We need to do a show that makes you feel when you hear ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ or ‘Eight Days a Week,’” he said. “Songs that make you feel great.”

ALSO READ: Edward Burns Period Piece ‘Bridge and Tunnel’ Hits Epix

News consumption is sky high in these troubling times, and it may spark a commensurate craving for warmer entertainment. “If you spend a whole day watching cable news, you think the world will come to an end tomorrow,” media consultant Bill Carroll said. “You look for things that help you escape, things that are a little lighter than what you see on cable news.”

As a result, NBC comedy Young Rock, a series about the life of Dwayne Johnson that launches Tuesday, Feb. 16, may find itself launching at the right time. “2020 has been a hard year for everyone, and the show has inherent optimism and hopefulness,” executive producer/co-showrunner Jeff Chiang said. 

Game Time

A summer staple, game shows are up and down the dial across the winter, whether it’s The Wall and Weakest Link on NBC, Celebrity Wheel of Fortune and The Chase on ABC, The Masked Dancer and Name That Tune on Fox and primetime The Price is Right and Let’s Make a Deal on CBS. 

On cable, TBS recently launched Go-Big Show and a new season of The Misery Index. Brett Weitz, general manager of TBS, TNT and TruTV, mentioned “the comradery of friendship” and “fun escapism” as elements of the networks’ winter offerings. 

Game shows simply suit America right now. “Everyone’s happy, it’s overlit, they want you to win,” Carroll said. “It’s just fun and games.”

Trish Kinane, executive producer and showrunner on ABC’s American Idol, believes the singing series is well-positioned to find a large audience when it returns Sunday, Feb. 14. “People just want to watch something that’s positive, fun, warm, normal, uplifting — all that stuff,” she said. 

ALSO READ: TBS Goes 'Big' With 10-Hour Order for Extreme Talent Show

Of course, development is a long game, and the true fruits of viewers’ shifting taste may become more evident next season, when current shows being developed make their premieres. Projects in development include Fox’s The Big Leap, a dramedy about a group of underdogs competing to be on a reality show putting on a modern Swan Lake; NBC’s Ordinary Joe, which shows the three parallel lives of a character based on a decision he made at a crossroad in his life; and ABC drama Epic, which will present reinvented fairy tales. 

After the success of Bridgerton on Netflix, romance is in demand by programmers, and so are shows that are just plain fun. 

Holding Out for an Antihero

The top series on cable have long been defined by saturnine antiheroes, whether it’s Tony Soprano or Don Draper or Walter White. Time will tell if the current trend will affect the scowling cable staple. “It’s always cyclical,” the development veteran said. “That will be back.”

Not everything is happier and lighter. CBS’s major mid-season debutants include edgy drama The Equalizer and The Silence of the Lambs spinoff Clarice. “Clarice is not a fun fairy tale,” said Carroll. 

But even the darker dramas can offer bright spots. Snowpiercer debuted on TNT in May, and some surely wondered if viewers, stuck at home amidst the pandemic, would tune into a series about people stuck on a train following an apocalypse. They did. 

Season two started Jan. 25. It “develops a strong theme of hope and the strength it takes to have hope,” said Graeme Manson, showrunner and executive producer. 

Programmers have long spoken of offering happier and lighter fare during pilot season. This time, it’s more than words. “I do think it’s truly happening right now,” said the development vet. “I definitely think people are really trying this time.” 

ALIBI MUSIC
Alibi Music in Los Angeles has elevated Tim Hare to VP, business development. Hare, who joined Alibi in 2017 as a director, has held posts at Extreme Music, Sonic Librarian and Artist Arena. 

CROWN MEDIA
Hallmark Channel parent Crown Media Family Networks has named Jordan Neyer as senior VP, corporate strategy. He comes from Metrixlab, where he was VP of media and entertainment leading commercial strategy.

EMBRIONIX
Montreal, Canada-based Embrionix has named David M.H. Workman as global OEM (original equipment manufacturer) sales manager. He comes from Telemetrics, where he was director of sales and business development. 

NEWSMAX
Newsmax TV parent Newsmax Media has named Brian Peterson as senior VP of communications and marketing. The PR veteran has worked at Fox Cable Networks, Fox Regional Sports Networks, NFL Properties and Esri. 

NICKELODEON
Brian Keane has joined Nickelodeon Animation Studios as a New York-based executive VP of production and operations. He had been chief operating officer and executive VP of Blue Sky Studios. 

NICKELODEON
Jennie Monica has been named to the new post of VP, series production, at Nickelodeon Animation Studios. With Nickelodeon since 1998, she is co-executive producer of SpongeBob SquarePants. 

NICKELODEON
Nickelodeon Movies has named Kara Lord Piersimoni as VP, production, managing all aspects of physical production for theatrical films. She most recently was VP of production at GURU Studios. 

SCRIPPS
Jon Marks was named chief research officer for E.W. Scripps’s national TV networks business. Most recently a consultant, Marks headed programming and marketing analysis at Turner Entertainment Networks for 14 years. 

SCRIPPS
Michael Teicher was named chief revenue officer for the national television networks business at E.W. Scripps. He comes from 20th Television, where he had been executive VP, media sales, overseeing Fox and Debmar-Mercury shows. 

STARZ
Starz has elevated Karen Bailey to executive VP, original programming, based in Santa Monica, California. Most recently senior VP, the longtime executive joined Starz in 2006 as an executive producer. 

TVU NETWORKS
Allan Delaurier has joined TVU Networks as VP, sales, for Canada and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region, based in greater Toronto. He comes from Avid, where he was sales manager for Canada.

WHIP MEDIA
Whip Media has elevated London-based Paul Hastings to senior VP, global sales, a new post leading global sales strategy and overseeing the global sales team. He had been senior VP, sales, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

BRIEFLY NOTED

Other industry execs making moves

Inae Wilson was promoted to executive VP of broadcast distribution and marketing at Fox. Wilson, who has been with Fox for 22 years, had been senior VP. … Lightpath has tapped Chris Morley as its new CEO. The 20-year telecom veteran most recently was senior operating adviser for Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners. … Meredith has named Diane L. Parker as VP, diversity and inclusion. She had been director, staffing, global diversity and inclusion for the Associated Press. … E.W. Scripps has named Jeff Kiernan news director of WXYZ and WMYD Detroit. The local news veteran most recently was senior director of local content at Scripps-owned WTMJ Milwaukee. … Jeffrey Lewis was named chief compliance officer at Sinclair Broadcast Group, supervising regulatory, code of conduct, competition and privacy functions. He is the former senior VP and chief accessibility officer at AT&T. … TV Azteca has named Rafael Rodríguez Sánchez as CEO. He had been the Mexico-based broadcaster’s legal director. 

For more than two decades, Andrew Schwartzman ran Media Access Project, a nonprofit that battled media ownership deregulation in the courts (including the U.S. Supreme Court) and dealt with issues before the FCC and Congress. Since July 1, 2019, he has been senior counselor at the Benton Foundation Institute for Broadband & Society, as well as maintaining a consulting practice. Throughout, he has fought tirelessly for his and his clients’ view of the media’s public-interest obligation. He spoke with Multichannel News senior content producer, Washington, John Eggerton. 

ALSO READ: Supreme Court Probes Broadcast Dereg Arguments

What is your role at the Benton Foundation Institute? Along with Gigi Sohn and Jon Sallet, I serve as Benton’s eyes and ears in the D.C. policy process. I also represent Benton in FCC rulemakings and litigation. Following the day-to-day evolution of the policymaking process is more labor-intensive today. My mission includes sharing my five decades of experience on legal and policy advocacy as a mentor to other public-interest advocates.

You participated in the lower court oral argument on media-ownership rules, which recently got a Supreme Court hearing. Isn’t focusing on broadcasters fighting the last war? I think broadcast-ownership limits remain very timely. These rules ensure a diversity of voices and perspectives at the local level. The industry quite rightly says that over-the-air TV and radio continue to be the most important source of news and information, especially at the local level. CNN and FNC [Fox News Channel] don’t help people decide for whom to vote for on the City Council, and they don’t provide high-school football scores or local weather. Social media have become a means of redistributing news generated by others and TV and radio websites are among the major sources of forwarded links about local issues.  

How does having to do oral arguments remotely change the dynamics? The Supreme Court’s temporary use of telephonic oral arguments significantly changes the dynamic.  … In the COVID-era telephonic system, each justice is called on according to seniority and gets a few minutes to ask questions, one on one. Not only do the advocates have less opportunity to determine the direction of their presentation, but they lose the benefit of seeing the facial expressions and body language of the justices. This makes a very big difference.

ALSO READ: Sen. Amy Klobuchar Introducing Big Tech Antitrust Bill

Should the government start regulating big tech? Why or why not? I have supported the idea of creating a new specialized agency to regulate competition in the tech industry. The question of what to do when a few companies control a major sector of the economy is hardly a new one, but traditional antitrust concepts and remedies are not fine-tuned for digital technologies. We need to explore the best way to preserve free speech values in a system that is dominated by a few large companies.  

What would you like a Biden FCC to concentrate on once it gets a majority? The immediate challenge is dealing with the impact of COVID. Thus, extending broadband access support for lower-income communities must be its first priority. Like many other industry sectors, I expect large broadcast groups to claim the pandemic somehow justifies lifting ownership limits.  While I share the concern of finding ways to promote local journalism, I believe that allowing additional local concentration would hurt, not help. Promoting a healthy and diverse local media environment is a long-term issue. We can start by inviting new entrants through expanding opportunities for people of color and women to enter the business. 

The following is an excerpt from a Jan. 26 speech made by FCC commissioner Geoffrey Starks at the State of the Net 2021 Conference. 

 Early in the pandemic, many of us quickly recognized how critical home broadband access would be to our coronavirus response. Months of staying home has meant taking our daily activities — work, school, medical care and connecting with loved ones —
online. But not for everyone. Even before the pandemic and the economic devastation it has caused, tens of millions of Americans did not have an adequate home broadband connection. Our longstanding digital divide has morphed into a monstrous COVID-19 divide. 

ALSO READ: The Capitol Siege: Images That Linger

But let us speak plainly. In 2021, Black Americans and other people of color are still, by a wide margin, significantly less likely to have a home broadband connection than their counterparts. This cannot stand. We can no longer defer the hard work on digital equity and believe that a future group and time will solve this issue. This is the time, and now is the moment. When we focus on broadband in America, we must focus on the smoldering front that communities of color constitute in our battle against internet inequality.

A Chance to Connect

As we look to our shared future — an unprecedented crisis and an unparalleled opportunity — leaving households disconnected will hurt our ability to rebuild the economy and our workforce; diminish our ability to keep Americans and our healthcare system safe by advancing telemedicine; and dim the educational horizon of young learners everywhere who fall further and further behind. With widespread vaccination on the horizon, we are all beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We also know, as the president and his medical advisers have emphasized this week, that we have many difficult, challenging months ahead. That is why my top priority for the coming weeks is getting emergency broadband access to as many Americans as possible.

Late last year, Congress passed omnibus appropriations and emergency coronavirus relief legislation, which provides $7 billion for broadband internet access. That funding will cover, among several important priorities, a new $3.2 billion Emergency Broadband Benefit for low-income families. The goal is to connect low-income households, especially households with school-aged children, to broadband networks at affordable rates. Broadband providers will be reimbursed up to $50 each month per low-income household they serve. If the household is on tribal land, the reimbursement is up to $75. The providers can also be reimbursed up to $100 for furnishing the household with a connected device like a computer or tablet if the household also contributes towards the device.

Congress also created several eligibility criteria to ensure the program reaches those most in need during this coronavirus crisis. The Emergency Broadband Benefit supports people who are eligible for the FCC’s existing Lifeline program (generally households at or below 135% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines) or the free or reduced-price school lunch or breakfast programs; people who have received a Federal Pell Grant; and those who have experienced a COVID-related loss of income.

A Plan to Reach Out

I have great expectations for this program. If we’re successful, the Emergency Broadband Benefit will reach more disconnected low-income people and households of color than any previous FCC effort to close the digital divide. But Congress has — quite reasonably under the circumstances — given us just 60 days to set up the program. 

There are lots of details to work out, and I am focusing most immediately on two issues: 

First, how will we get the word out? As many of you know, and I have long been exasperated about the poor job the FCC has done in recent years to get the word out about the Lifeline program. Only about 20% of Lifeline-eligible households actually subscribe. For the Emergency Broadband Benefit to succeed, we’re going to need to do much better. That means a broad, collaborative outreach effort that must coordinate across the federal government and also include state and local governments, broadband providers, nonprofits, philanthropy, educators and direct service providers. I’ve heard from many organizations that are planning to get involved and I’m eager to support and amplify their efforts. 

ALSO READ: FCC’s Geoffrey Starks: Digital Disparities Must Not Stand

The second issue is encouraging broadband providers to participate voluntarily. Last year, I was heartened by the large number of providers that participated in the Keep America Connected pledge, so we know many providers want to help their communities get through this difficult time. In the coming weeks, I will be working to make sure the rules for the Emergency Broadband Benefit are as clear and simple as possible and that providers get their questions answered quickly.

I have also started outreach to providers and their associations — something all of us can do. If you care about getting emergency relief to every eligible American, reach out to your broadband provider and the companies that serve your constituents, and let them know that their participation is important. 

Clarice starts on CBS Feb. 11. It’s a deep dive into the story of FBI agent Clarice Starling, one year after the events of The Silence of the Lambs. 

Rebecca Breeds plays Clarice. 

“In The Silence of the Lambs, she was somehow able to go down into the dark and find the human and the monsters and then pull out the light,” executive producer Jenny Lumet said.  “And I thought, as I watched her, ‘This is a woman with a lot of secrets. I like that.’ ”

Breeds spoke of the challenges Starling sees in the workplace. “She’s come into this new job and this guy will just not take her seriously,” she said. “She’s worked so hard to be here and she just wants to be given her shot.”

Executive producer Alex Kurtzman described himself as a “crazy, rabid fan” of the film, directed by Jonathan Demme. “As we were writing it, the tagline for the show, which we had in our minds, kept pushing itself to the foreground: ‘The Silence Is Over.’ ”

Season four of ABC’s American Idol is on Feb. 14. This season’s talent came to be after virtual auditions amidst the pandemic.

Zoom “custom created” a platform for the singing hopefuls, said Trish Kinane, executive producer and showrunner. Auditions happened in all 50 states, and everyone got time in front of a producer. Former contestants, including David Cook and Justin Guarini, offered the singers audition tips as they waited to perform. 

“You really were getting your voice heard,” Kinane said. “We got to see a much greater diversity of talent.”

The at-home auditions also offered a unique glimpse at the singers. “We also got to see houses and dogs and moms,” Kinane said. 

Singers invited to Hollywood will connect with friends and family via a 180-degree video screen, since loved ones could not accompany them.  

Asked what has enabled Idol to stick around for 19 seasons, Kinane mentioned its uplifting vibe, viewer votes and basic format. She called American Idol “a simple Cinderella story.”

It may stick around for a bit longer. “Kids are turning 15 every day,” Kinane said. “So there’s always new talent coming up.”

Fox Visits the Last Frontier 

The Great North rolls on Fox Feb. 14. An animated comedy about a family dealing with the elements, and each other, in Alaska, it has Nick Offerman, Will Forte, Megan Mullally and Alanis Morissette in the voice cast. Morissette is an imaginary friend to daughter Judy. Teen girls “want someone in their life to speak about their dreams to,” said Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin, who runs the show with sister Wendy. 

Morissette was in right away. “She’s a musical icon,” Molyneux-Logelin said. “But she’s also a really funny person.” 

AMC
Christina Spade has joined AMC Networks as executive VP and chief financial officer. The longtime CBS and Showtime Networks executive most recently was executive VP and CFO of ViacomCBS. 

CINEDIGM
Cinedigm in Los Angeles has elevated Gary Loffredo
to president, responsible for day-to-day management. He will continue in his current roles as chief operating officer, general counsel and secretary. 

CINEDIGM
Yolanda Macias has been elevated to chief content officer, Cinedigm Entertainment Group, responsible for global content acquisition across all platforms and content marketing. She had been executive VP of CEG. 

INSP
INSP has promoted Tara Brown to senior director, media relations, leading a team responsible for all press and media activities for INSP series and films. She had been the network’s director of media relations. 

NBCU TELEMUNDO
NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises has added Ezequiel Fonseca Zas as senior VP, revenue strategy and distribution. He was GM of streaming platforms and senior VP of mobile partnerships at ViacomCBS International. 

NBCU TELEMUNDO
Malu Carmona-Botana was tapped as VP, content monetization at NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises. She comes from A+E Networks, where she worked as director of content distribution strategy. 

NEXT MEDIA
Chris Falkner has joined Next Media Partners as a partner. He is the former
VP of advanced TV at Cuebiq and a former senior VP, advanced TV and next generation TV strategy at NBCUniversal. 

NEXT MEDIA
Next Media Partners has added Patrick Donoghue as a partner He is a former VP, ITV product management at Time Warner Cable and senior VP, user experience and emerging products at Cablevision Systems.  

UNIVISION
Univision Communications has named Pierluigi Gazzolo as president and chief transformation officer. He had been president of streaming and studios at ViacomCBS Networks International. 

UNIVISION

Luis Silberwasser joined Univision Communications as president, Univision Television Networks Group. He was president of NBCUniversal’s Telemundo Networks from 2014 to 2018.  

UNIVISION
Donna Speciale was named president of advertising sales and marketing at Univision Communications. She most recently worked at Warner­Media, where she was president of Turner Ad Sales.

WHIP MEDIA
Whip Media has named Sherry Brennan as executive VP and general manager of its content licensing technology division. She was  senior VP, distribution of Fox Networks Group before becoming a consultant in 2019.

BRIEFLY NOTED
Other industry execs making moves

Adaptive Spirit, cable-industry organizer of the annual Denver benefit for the U.S. Paralympic Ski Team, added two board members: Colleen Langner, senior VP of field operations, Cox Communications; and Ewam de Freitas, VP of product and technology, Liberty Latin America. … Erick Opeka was named chief strategy officer of Cinedigm Corp. He will continue as president  of the Cinedigm Networks unit. … White-label over-the-top service OTTera has tapped Daniel Barnathan as executive VP, ad sales. He comes from Media Solution Worldwide, where he was president. … Sinclair Broadcast Group promoted Billy Robbins to VP and general manager of WBFF Baltimore, with oversight over the company’s provision of services to WNUV Baltimore. He had been WBFF’s station manager. … Cloud communications provider Vonage has named Jay Bellissimo as chief operating officer. He had been general manager of IBM U.S. Public and Federal Market. … Univision Communications promoted Amy Tenbrink and Glenn Dryfoos to co-interim general counsel and Friday Abernethy to executive VP, content distribution and partnerships. 

South Korea’s LG Electronics — the No. 4 Seller of smart TVs to the U.S., controlling around 12% of the market — has made a major upgrade to the operating system controlling those sets. 

Version 6.0 of webOS will power LG’s OLED, QNED Mini LED, NanoCell and UHD smart TVs. The software will be paired with an upgrade to the remote control packaged with these sets, dubbed Magic Remote. 

The previous iteration of webOS featured a simple shortcuts bar with apps, HDMI destinations and other key data on the bottom of the screen, letting users see the programming as they worked the OS. Users could select, say, a specific streaming app from the shortcuts bar, and another row of data would appear, highlighting what was on that service.

ALSO READ: CW Launches App on Vizio SmartCast Platform

For webOS 6.0, the software now has a full, dedicated home screen, like most other OS platforms — a homogenization notably lamented by tech reviewers, who preferred the simplicity of the previous iteration. 

Programming recommendations sit above a horizontal row of favorite apps. Other horizontally configured lists, such as live TV picks, unfurl below the apps list. 

"The new home screen provides faster access to the most frequently used apps and streamlines content discovery with the ability to receive recommendations based on the user’s preferences and viewing history,” LG said in its announcement. 

WebOS 6.0 will support voice commands for both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. 

The new Magic Remote, meanwhile, includes dedicated buttons for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus and LG’s curated channel. 

“The latest version of our user-friendly open TV platform webOS 6.0 represents the most significant update since we first introduced webOS in 2014,” said Park Hyoung-sei, president of LG Home Entertainment, in a statement. “With the new edition of webOS, LG is demonstrating its commitment of offering services, products and technologies that respond to the needs and wants of our valued customers.” — DF

Season two of Snowpiercer is on TNT Jan. 25. About a train whizzing around the world carrying the world’s last survivors, Snowpiercer has Daveed Diggs, Jennifer Connelly and Sean Bean in the cast.

The series premiered in May. With so many people stuck at home due to the pandemic, a yarn about people trapped on a train offered a unique take on escapism. Showrunner/executive producer Graeme Manson mentioned “an all around sense of watching something close to home,” and said he was pleased with how Snowpiercer landed. 

“It made it feel of the zeitgeist,” he added. “There were political parallels going on at the time, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I like to squirm.”

Season two offers some hardy head-to-head battles, including Connelly’s Melanie and Bean’s Mr. Wilford. 

Snowpiercer shoots in Vancouver. Manson doesn’t ride trains much in his “walkable” nabe, he said, but mentioned having crossed Canada twice on trains and digging the experience. “I love train lore and I love train songs — a Western song with a train in it,” he said. 

Dark as it may be, Snowpiercer also shows the decency of humankind. “Season two develops a theme of hope,” said Manson, “and the strength it takes to have hope.”

Resident Alien starts on Syfy Jan. 27. A mix of comedy and drama, the series follows Harry, an alien that crash-lands on Earth and passes himself off as a doctor in a small Colorado town. 

Chris Sheridan, longtime Family Guy writer, is showrunner and exec producer. The folks at Amblin sent him the graphic novel to gauge his interest in adapting it. “I loved the story, I loved the character, and I could see it as a show,” he said. 

Alan Tudyk plays Harry. Sara Tomko, Corey Reynolds and Alice Wetterlund  are also in the cast. 

Sheridan notes “slight similarities” between Resident Alien and Family Guy, but “very different worlds.” Producers can get away with stuff on Family Guy because the characters are animated, he said, and on Resident Alien because the main character is an alien. 

The series begins with Harry trying to kill a boy who knows he’s an alien. “That’s not a likeable trait, wanting to kill a kid,” said Sheridan. “But you forgive him, and the horrible things he might do, because he’s an alien.”

While Harry is on Earth, he’s searching for a device he lost when he crash-landed. He needs the thing to complete his mission, according to Sheridan. 

He called Fargo an influence. “We go for a similar tone,” he said. “Resident Alien has dramatic things in it and it’s also got some dark comedy. And the setting is specific to the show.” 

Apple TV Plus goes behind the scenes of the cinematic creative process in its alluring new drama series Losing Alice.

The Israeli-produced series follows Alice (Ayelet Zurer), a successful film director who, at 48 years old, has decided to settle down and be more of a traditional wife to her famous actor husband David (Gal Toren) and mother to her young children.

Her creative juices are rekindled after meeting a 24-year-old upstart film director, Sophie (Lihi Kornowski). Sophie is a big fan of Alice’s edgy films. In a chance meeting with Alice on a train during the pilot episode, Sophie confides that she acted out a provocative sex scene from one of Alice’s films. Sophie tells Alice that she envisions Alice’s husband starring in her film. 

ALSO READ: Apple TV Plus To Debut 'Losing Alice' on Jan. 22

Already feeling somewhat irrelevant and dismissed by the industry since stepping away, Alice begins to obsess over Sophie’s script as she sees her younger self in Sophie’s youthful exuberance and unbridled passion for life and the filmmaking craft. Alice soon begins to emotionally and psychologically re-enter the life she once knew, leading to very dark and unintended consequences for Alice. In later episodes, Alice becomes more hands-on in the development of Sophie’s movie, creating a love triangle that threatens to test the relationships and careers of all involved. 

Losing Alice is a creative and sexy psychological drama that takes the viewer on a dark but seductive trip through the psychosis of an aging female director willing to do almost anything to rediscover her past self and triumphs. Zurer delivers a great performance as the troubled protagonist, while the erotic chemistry between Zurer and Kornowski will have viewers glued to their screens. The eight-episode series also stars Shai Avivi, Yossi Marshak and Chelli Goldenberg.

Epix premiered the Edward Burns dramedy Bridge and Tunnel Jan. 24. Set in 1980, Bridge and Tunnel revolves around a group of recent college grads on Long Island, getting set to chase their dreams down the road in Manhattan. There are six half-hour episodes. 

Burns said the idea came to be in a conversation with Michael Wright, Epix president. The pair spoke about “the terrible state of the world,” Burns said. “We both thought it would be great to create a show that put a smile on your face.”

ALSO READ: What's Premiering This Week (Jan. 18-24)

Setting the series in 1980 came to be because “it’s a time period we both romanticize,” Burns said. The New York City music scene — punk, rap, new wave — was booming, and people did not peck away at their mobile phones. Burns said his young cast members asked what people would do with their friends in those days, and Burns replied that they’d sit in the backyard or on the hood of a car at a park and simply chat. “We’d be bullshitting for hours,” he said. 

The cast includes Sam Vartholomeos, Caitlin Stasey, Gigi Zumbado, JanLuis Castellanos, Brian Muller and Isabella Farrell. Burns sought out actors with authentic New York accents, though the Australian Stasey pulled off a convincing Lawn Guyland patois. “I’ve always been a stickler for New York accents,” said Burns, who noted how Stasey stayed in character throughout the shoot. 

Vartholomeos mentioned to Burns how he lamented not being able to shake his Queens accent while in acting school, only to be told by a professor to keep his eyes open for an Ed Burns project down the road. 

Burns has appeared in Saving Private Ryan, A Sound of Thunder and The Groomsmen, among other features, and directed films such as The Brothers McMullen, She’s the One and Purple Violets. He created, produced and starred in drama Public Morals, which aired on TNT in 2015. 

Burns initially envisioned Bridge and Tunnel as half set on Long Island and half in Manhattan, until COVID hit. With a chunk of his budget dedicated to pandemic defense and New York City not giving out many film permits, he retinkered his scripts and set it all in the suburbs. An eight-episode season was trimmed to six. 

ALSO READ: Order a Pizza, Get 30 Days of Free Epix

Asked about influences on Bridge and Tunnel, Burns mentioned how deftly The Big Chill used popular music from its era to spice up scenes. Burns sprinkled “forgotten classics from the ’70s” into Bridge and Tunnel, he said. Michael Wright pushed Burns to rewatch Diner, and study the rapport of the friends hanging out in the diner. 

Burns also mentioned 1967 classic The Graduate, “if Benjamin had five friends to hang out with, instead of Mrs. Robinson.” 

Bridge and Tunnel is set in “a more simple time” than the present, Burns said, when
face time was an actual thing, not an app. “We weren’t tethered to our phones,” he added, “and maybe we talked to each other a little more.” λ

El Rey Network on Jan. 1 shut down its cable network feed after seven years, but will look to continue to reach its underserved, youth-targeted audience digitally. 

The English-language El Rey, founded by director/producer Robert Rodriguez and production company FactoryMade, launched in December 2013 as one of the first four minority-owned networks Comcast promised to launch in seeking government approval to acquire NBCUniversal in 2011. In some 40 million homes at its peak, according to published reports, El Rey was in 13 million households when it shut down linear network operations about two months after financial partner Univision Communications pulled out of the channel.  

ALSO READ: Representing Hispanics On Screen and Off

During its run, El Rey aimed for underserved millennial and Latino viewers through such shows as wrestling show Lucha Underground; soccer-themed scripted series Matador, with Gabriel Luna and Alfred Molina; and interview programs such as The Director’s Chair with Robert Rodriguez and politically themed Maria. 

El Rey also served as a vehicle for diverse actors and actresses and a venue for directors to tell their stories and showcase their talent. 

Co-founder Cris Patwa and Maria host Maria Cardona discussed next steps for the El Rey brand. An edited version of the interview appears below. 

MCN: How much did Univision’s decision in November to pull financial support of the network influence El Rey’s move to stop its linear feed? 

Cris Patwa: We just had two different agendas. That partnership was great for the first seven years, when it was about doing these cable bundle deals where they could negotiate for all of us on our behalf. But everybody now is turning to streaming, so it just makes more sense for us to be with a streaming partner to reach English-speaking viewers. Seventy one percent of the Latino community has proficiency in English, and that is where we have always been. So that’s kind of where we are in the process of what we're calling chapter two amongst ourselves. Robert has already started to see success in that — his We Can Be Heroes movie on Netflix was the No. 1 movie [on the platform]. There is no way a network like ours could get the kind of distribution to be in front of that many eyeballs, much less get that many people viewing in such a short period of time. Netflix has already commissioned a sequel to We Can Be Heroes, and there’s more work to be done with Netflix with [Rodriguez’s Spy Kids movie franchise]. The more we got to understand the streaming world, the more we realized that the mission is better actually served where all the eyeballs are going. We are going to be able to reach that many people who are Latino and hold to our mission of inclusivity. 

MCN: Was El Rey successful in accomplishing its mission during its cable run? 

Maria Cardona: When we launched El Rey, it was there to not just to help Comcast and NBCUniversal meet the obligation that they had promised to meet in order to get approval for their merger, but it was a really important mission for Robert Rodriguez. He was adamant that he didn’t want this to just be a place where people went for great entertainment. He wanted it to be an incubating mission, meaning that he wanted to make sure that El Rey Network was a place where young Latinos and young multicultural talent from actors to screenwriters, to directors, to producers, to showrunners, could have their voices heard. The other side of this is that El Rey was launched with massive support from the community and from grassroots activists, because they knew what a huge hole El Rey was going to be filling in terms of being the voice for Latinos in English. Robert created a diversity council [headed by Cardona] that was made up of the highest level of Latino leaders who advised him on how to navigate the sea of the political spectrum as well. We were at his side every step of the way from the creation of El Rey to, frankly, how it wound down and in looking at what the next iteration of [the company] will look like. 

MCN: Will you maintain the El Rey brand as part of any agreement you reach with a streaming service? 

CP: That is really part of the discussion. You can imagine some streamers have sub-brands within their brand where they try to delineate Black and Brown voices or diversity on screen, so I think each one is experimenting. El Rey Studios will continue to exist, but the streamers are all taking a different strategy so we’re talking to all of them. 

ALSO READ: El Rey Network Debuts Maria Cardona Talk Show 'Maria'

MCN: Will any streaming deal also include El Rey’s library product? 

MC: We have hundreds of hours in library content, so there’s so much content that I think others are interested in, whether it’s the Lucha Underground show or even the Maria show. The network has something that people have been interested in and could live under another brand or live under the El Rey brand. Also, another beauty about working with Robert is that El Rey is so connected to him, but the real brand is really Robert Rodriguez. Everything else El Rey does will be able to be uplifted just because it's connected to him. 

CP: Each streamer is different. Some might be interested in the Lucha, some are interested in the network’s documentary programming and some are interested in the talk stuff like the [The Director’s Chair] and Maria. We’re curious to see after they really dive into each one to see what they think could be an interesting fit and how they would go about looking at this with us.

MCN: What is El Rey’s legacy within the industry?

CP: Just as BET spawned the careers of so many through their platform, El Rey has given opportunities for Latino actors and directors to shine. The great thing is they come back to the community and build more stories and they bring more Latinos into their stories. They are reaching into the culture that’s here, not something that’s bought and imported from abroad. 

MC: Before Gabriel Luna was the Terminator [in the film Terminator: Dark Fate], he starred in one of El Rey’s first original series [Matador]. He may have never received that kind of exposure had he not gotten his start at El Rey Network. There are so many stories similar to that one, but I think that one really paints the picture of what Robert wanted El Rey to be. 

Despite having announced adoption of managed WiFi technology, Charter Communications is, increasingly, an outlier among U.S. telecoms for having yet to launch an actual service.

The eighth-largest cable company in the U.S., Atlantic Broadband, recently became the latest MSO to launch managed WiFi based on a cloud-based technology developed by Plume, OpenSync. 

Atlantic Broadband, which reported 492,212 broadband customers as of the end of September, is now offering these subscribers “WiFi Your Way.” Powered by Plume’s HomePass technology, the new service includes AI-driven optimization features, which adapt router settings to customer usage patterns to deliver better speed and performance over time. There are control and personalization features that let parents shut down and enable their kids’ devices from their iOS and Android smartphones. 

ALSO READ: WiFi Gets Its Biggest Upgrade in Decades

There are also online security features, as well as home security enablements, such as motion detection. 

The Atlantic Broadband announcement comes about 14 months after Charter, the No. 2 U.S. cable operator, said its Spectrum operations would deploy managed WiFi based on Plume’s core technology, the open-sourced, cloud-based software OpenSync. 

But Charter still hasn’t deployed the managed WiFi service, which it calls “Advanced In-Home WiFi,” to key markets such as Los Angeles. 

For its part, Charter just published a self-produced Q&A with its top technology executive, Stephanie Mitchko-Beale, who said the company is “in the process of launching” Advanced In-Home WiFi “throughout our footprint.”

The service, she said, will enable Charter’s more than 28.6 million home internet customers “control over their security and privacy by letting them see every device that’s connected to their network and how it’s being used.

“Throughout the year, we plan to make Advanced WiFi available in more markets, and we continue to expand the availability to our own Spectrum-branded WiFi Pods to enable customers to maximize network connectivity throughout their home,” Mitchko-Beale added. 

ALSO READ: Netgear Debuts Pricey WiFi 6E Router

Asked which Charter markets have seen Advanced In-Home WiFi deployments,
a representative for the MSO referred Multichannel News to the Mitchko-Beale statement. 

Notably, top U.S. cable operator Comcast, an early investor in Plume, has been offering managed WiFi services based on OpenSync to 30 million-plus broadband customers for several years. 

For now, the limited penetration of managed WiFi doesn’t appear to be curtailing Charter’s overall proliferation of broadband services, with the cable operator adding 537,000 high-speed internet customers in the third quarter.  

With the hours running out on the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission, Charter Communications withdrew its petition that the commission end two conditions on the company’s merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.

That petition was one of the issues that appeared to be left hanging as FCC chairman Ajit Pai’s tenure drew to a close. He exited on Jan. 20, with President Joe Biden naming Democratic commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel as acting chairwoman the next day. 

Pai was never a fan of merger stipulations, which he sees as attempts to regulate via condition.

“At this time, the bureau will no longer consider filings specific to this petition,” said the Wireline Competition Bureau, “but the docket will remain open for additional filings, such as those required by Charter or the Independent Compliance Officer.”

Charter has been looking to get out from under the “no charging for interconnection” and “no usage-based/data caps” pricing conditions. A court threw out the first condition, so that request was essentially moot, but the second is still in force. Those conditions were set to expire in May 2023 but Charter wanted them to end in May 2021.

FCC approval could have had a major impact on Charter’s over-the-top video strategy. In imposing the conditions, the agency said they were to ensure Charter could not “hamper or prevent its current and future online video rivals from expanding, becoming more competitive, or starting up in the first place.” Charter had suggested those OTT rivals hardly need protection from the company given that rival internet service providers have not had similar conditions and the over-the-top marketplace is flourishing.

ALSO READ: Charter Free to Charge Streaming Video Companies Interconnect Fees

Charter likely saw the handwriting on the wall with the upcoming change in administrations. FCC Democrats now in control were fans of the merger conditions.

One of those commissioners, Rosenworcel, now acting chairwoman, voted against deregulating internet providers and has called for the return of rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization, as has fellow Democratic commissioner Geoffrey Starks. She and Starks have also voted against eliminating broadcast regulations.

Until Democrats can confirm a new fellow party member to fill the seat of the exiting Republican chair Pai, the commission will be at a 2-2 political tie, meaning noncontroversial items are likely on the docket at the outset.

Rosenworcel could become permanent chair down the road, though Biden could have simply designated her chair had that been the plan. With the Senate controlled by Democrats, it will be easier for Biden to pick someone else, who might still need Senate confirmation. Rosenworcel, though, has plenty of fans inside and outside the commission, particularly on Capitol Hill. 

The following is excerpted from the Jan. 13 Federal Communications Commission open meeting statement of commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who was named acting chair of the agency on Jan. 21: 

I worked for many years in the Capitol. I know its towering heights, secluded corners, and labyrinth hallways. But it’s not the loftiness of those spaces that I find most compelling. It’s what’s down below on the floors. I’ve traversed them too many times to count, heading back and forth, clicking on the tiles in less-than-sensible work shoes. I think the most beautiful floor tiles in the Capitol are the mid-19th century encaustic mosaics. The clay is inlaid, so the colors in the tiles are especially vibrant and diverse.

It’s like the metaphor for our union is right there on the ground. Even where these mosaic floors are uneven and worn, what strikes you most is the durability. They have survived so much in our history.

History, of course, is always being written. The violence done to the Capitol last week is an especially ugly chapter. To see those sacred spaces desecrated stings. To see those gorgeous floors smeared with feces and hate hurts. To see the Confederate flag paraded across those tiles sears and burns. And to watch those disowning the hatred that brought us here when for too long they walked too casually alongside it is difficult. It was Martin Luther King Jr. who said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.” Now we have an opportunity to lean into the light.

As a nation we need connections — physical and digital — that strengthen our mutual bonds. We need connections that remind us that our states are united and our interdependence is powerful. And as if on cue, a new appropriations law has provided this agency with authority to help do just that.

Congress directed us to establish an Emergency Broadband Benefit to expand access to high-speed connections and assist those struggling in the ongoing economic crisis. It tasked the agency with expanded support for telehealth and provided funding that will make our networks more powerful and more secure. We also cannot forget the millions of students caught in the homework gap because they lack high-speed service at home and are locked out of the virtual classroom. In short, we have real work to do. Work that helps ensure that safe, reliable, and affordable communications reach 100% of this country — rural areas, urban areas, and everything in between. 

Rosenworcel was not the only commissioner to weigh in on the siege. Ajit Pai, FCC chairman until last Wednesday (Jan. 20), addressed it in an interview for C-SPAN’s The Communicators series:

The scenes we saw were outrageous and extremely disappointing to those of us who cherish American democracy, one hallmark of which is the peaceful transition of power. I think it was a terrible mistake to suggest that the results of the election, and particularly the process that culminated in the Senate and the House [the vote to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory] could in any way be changed. That was a terrible mistake and one I do not believe should have been indulged.

Given the circumstances that we saw — armed guards defending the Senate chamber, people wielding Confederate flags in the seat of the United States government and other actions like that — were completely unacceptable and completely outrageous and, as I said on Twitter in real time, we must be governed by the rule of law, not by the rule of the mob. Law and order must be restored and democracy must be respected. These are the bedrock expectations of every American citizen and it is what distinguishes American democracy from other governments around the world and I believe that to my core regardless of political affiliation.

FCC newcomer Nathan Simington, an immigrant to this country, also weighed in on the violence as his first public statement as commissioner, with the preamble that he was someone who had “embraced the gift of citizenship.” He condemned the violence and urged everyone to work together for a peaceful transfer of power, suggesting working together begins at home, home being his new one at the FCC:

I look forward to working in the public interest with my colleagues commissioners [Brendan] Carr, Rosenworcel and [Geoffrey] Starks, as well as the president-elect’s new nominee. Our mandate at the commission is to work for the benefit of all Americans. Should we disagree on some issues, we would do well to remember Thomas Jefferson’s words at the time of another presidential transition, the first in which the Administration changed parties: “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle.” 

Cable operators smashed records in 2020, adding more than 4 million customers in the first nine months of that year, fueled in part by the pandemic. But as hopes rise that COVID-19 will loosen its grip on the country, sending more people back to offices and schools and potentially softening broadband gains, many providers are looking toward the fringes of their footprints and extending their networks deeper into less-populated areas for growth.

Extending the footprint, or making “edge-outs,” is nothing new for the industry. Many operators have occasionally extended their reach within certain territories as populations shifted or new businesses have emerged in less dense areas. But only recently have large and small operators focused on the fringe as a potential growth area, encouraged by improvements in technology and the availability of federal and state funds to extend their networks. 

It appears that 2020 was a breakout year for broadband. Residential broadband subscriptions from all providers, already rising at a healthy pace in 2019, grew by about 4.7% in Q3 2020, or 2 percentage points above the prior year, according to MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett. Overall broadband penetration grew another 2 points during the year to 85%, per Sanford Bernstein media analyst Peter Supino. 

For cable operators, the growth trajectory was even more dramatic. According to Moffett, cable broadband subscriber additions rose 50% to 1.4 million in Q3 2020. Overall, broadband subscriptions increased at a 7.4% pace, nearly 3 points higher than a year before, in Q3 2019, and the fastest growth rate since 2009, according to Moffett. 

Telco broadband providers lost nearly 1% of their customers, that sector’s best showing since 2016.

Practically every cable operator broke broadband subscriber records in 2020. Charter Communications led the pack with an astonishing 850,000 customer additions in Q2, a nearly fourfold increase over the prior year. Lockdowns and work-from-home orders, coupled with school closings across the country, increased the need for ubiquitous broadband availability. Comcast, the largest cable operator in the country, added 633,000 broadband customers in Q3, its best showing ever. Smaller operators like WideOpenWest, Atlantic Broadband and Mediacom Communications also reached milestones.

Atlantic Broadband, which has about 492,000 subscribers in 11 states from Maine to Florida, added 23,475 broadband customers in the first nine months of fiscal 2020, a 25% increase over the prior fiscal year. The company has supplemented its edge-out efforts with federal and state grants, and has also partnered with municipalities to share the cost of extending the network. And the efforts go beyond just pushing service boundaries.  

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“We are not only pursuing edge-outs and working to connect new subdivisions,” Atlantic Broadband spokesman Andrew Walton said in a statement. “We also are finding creative ways to connect established, previously unserved subdivisions that due to distance from existing plant would not meet traditional build criteria.  By working closely with homeowners’ associations, we have found creative ways to minimize risk, share costs and improve the rate of return on costly projects, including sharing construction costs with HOAs and obtaining service commitments from residents.”

Increasing speeds also helps boost service take rates, Walton continued, adding that more than 90% of ABB’s footprint has access to 1 Gigabit per second service. The rollout of its new managed WiFi offering also is expected to attract customer interest. 

WOW added 27,400 broadband customers in the first nine months of 2020, more than it has in all of the past two years. Mediacom added 97,000 high-speed internet customers, the largest three-quarter increase in its history.

While the early months of the pandemic drove big increases, that pace started to slacken for some operators in Q3: Charter had 537,000 broadband additions in the period. The pace is expected to have slowed further in Q4. According to Supino, Comcast should add about 515,000 broadband customers when it reports Q4 results on Jan. 28, ending the year with nearly 2 million additional customers. Charter should end Q4 with 350,000 broadband additions when it releases results on Jan. 29, adding nearly 2.5 million for the year. Altice USA, which hasn’t yet set a date to deliver Q4 earnings, should add 15,000 high-speed data subscribers in the period, pushing full-year gains to nearly 200,000.

Edge-Outs Have Surged

Charter and Comcast both have stepped up initiatives to expand their networks in the past two years. According to Moffett, footprint expansion had been flat or about 1% annually for the top four publicly traded cable operators prior to 2019. 

Charter and Comcast began to meaningfully increase that pace in 2019, though, to around 2%, adding nearly 1 million homes to their respective footprints during that year. In the first nine months of 2020, Charter added another 868,000 homes and Comcast added 764,000 homes, suggesting it should meet or surpass its previous pace. 

Part of the Charter increase can be attributed to the approval conditions for its purchase of Time Warner Cable in 2016, in which it agreed to build out about 2 million additional underserved homes across the country.   

During its Q3 earnings conference call with analysts, Charter chief financial officer Christopher Winfrey said that the overall effect of the edge-out program has been “meaningful, not material,” but he was nevertheless pleased with connection rates in those expanded areas. 

Charter has seen a “high level of consistency in terms of our ability to get to very high terminal penetrations when we build into markets,” Winfrey said. “And so, that’s what gives us confidence in our ability to go extend that investment concept.”

At the Morgan Stanley Virtual European Technology, Media and Telecom conference in November, Winfrey said that despite quarterly differences, 2020 was shaping up to be a very strong year for broadband.

“What we’ve said is that our quarterly net adds, our quarterly performance, isn’t what matters,” Winfrey said. “What really matters is the totality of the year and where are we going. And if you look at 2020, no matter what happens over the last two months of Q4, we’re going to end 2020 with a much higher amount of customers than any of us ever expected.” 

He said he was optimistic that the company’s edge-out plan will be worth the effort.

“We’re investing in areas where the economics and the payback are challenging to begin with for the first operator to come in,” Winfrey said at the Morgan Stanley conference. “There really isn't any ROI [return on investment] for the second operator to come in which means you can have a lot of confidence in terms of where your penetration ultimately will land, and we’ve seen that already. To be fair, the cash-on-cash payback for these projects is much longer than what we typically do. But the IRR [internal rate of return], because of your ability to have confidence in the penetration curve, is actually very high. We think it’s an attractive investment to make and we think there’s a bunch of other tangible and intangible benefits that we’re not even baking into our analysis.”

Comcast has kept its plans closer to the vest, but has said that driving connections by extending the network via line extensions is one of four pillars of growth.

Smaller operators are also seeing the benefits of edge-outs, and more of them are stepping up their plans. 

At WideOpenWest, edge-outs have been a key part of overall broadband growth, according to CEO Teresa Elder. In WOW’s third-quarter conference call with analysts, Elder said that footprint expansion accounted for about 1,900 of the 10,200 broadband customers the company added in Q3, its best showing in that category since Q3 2018. For the immediate future, the company said it will focus on its existing markets. 

“While it continues to be important, we are now more focused on increasing the penetration rates in current markets rather than spending additional capital to push new ones, especially during the pandemic,” Elder said. The numbers back up that strategy. On the call Elder said that broadband penetration rates in communities that were edged-out in 2018 increased to 19.6% in Q3 from 18.5% in the previous period, while rates in communities that were expanded in 2019 grew to 14.8% from 13.6% in Q2.

Economics Have Improved

Increased penetration metrics is one reason cable operators of all sizes are rethinking the decision to expand their reach. In the past, pushing the network out to less densely populated areas was too costly. But a combination of better technology and stronger rural subscriber characteristics makes extending into less populated areas more feasible.

In a research note, Moffett estimated that it can cost between $1,000 and $2,000 per home to extend fiber into an urban market. For rural markets, where the runs are longer and the homes farther apart, that cost could balloon to $4,000.

But rural markets, with fewer competitors, have a much higher opportunity to sign up passed homes for service. While 40% to 50% penetration rates could be assumed for urban builds, Moffett added, in rural markets 80% penetration rates are not unreasonable. That return on investment makes the higher costs more manageable. An urban market with a 50% penetration rate implies a cost of $4,000 per home, while a rural market with 80% penetration implies a cost that is just 25% higher, Moffett wrote. 

According to Kagan, the media research unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence, smaller markets are taking broadband at an accelerated pace. Kagan found that although there was a nearly 30 percentage-point gap in wireline broadband take rates between rural and urban markets, homes in less populated areas were increasingly signing on to service when it became available.

According to Kagan, the wireline broadband take rate in areas with 1.1 homes per mile was about 54.3%, compared to 83% in areas with 280 homes per mile.   

“Wireline broadband penetration take rates in rural America are likely impeded by limited service access due to uneconomical cable and telco deployment, inhospitable terrain or a combination of both,” Kagan determined.

But as service is deployed over time, the take rates rise. According to Kagan, broadband networks with as few as 6.8 homes passed per mile saw a 2.4 percentage point increase in the take rates between 2016 and 2019, with the largest jump (4.9 points) being in communities with 48.5 homes per mile. In the densest markets, those with 280 homes per mile, the increase was just 3.4 points. 

“Of note, the most urban group shows only the fourth-largest gains in penetration during the interval under consideration, reminding industry observers that wireline broadband maturity challenges loom,” Kagan said in
the report.

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National Cable Television Cooperative VP of broadband solutions Jared Baumann said the Kagan data points to the strong demand for reliable high-speed service in rural areas, and also signals how new products take time to take hold in small communities. He pointed to the early days of the pandemic, when many rural residents used their cellphones as hotspots for home internet connections. But as work-from-home orders dragged on, they flipped that stance.

“Now they’ve realized that when they’re home and need service, a cellular or mobile provider is not adequate for that, you really need a landline connection,” Baumann said. “More than ever you need a landline connection.”   

Smaller operators are spending big money on wireless spectrum to extend their reach, which many see as a more economical way than fiber to push broadband out to the hinterlands. 

Mediacom Communications has spent about $30 million for CBRS spectrum in federal auctions, according to senior VP of government and public relations Thomas Larsen. That additional spectrum should lead to more broadband subscribers, as the company plans to target communities that have access to high-speed data speeds of less than 50 Megabits per second, replacing it with a service with speeds of 100 Mbps upstream and 20 Mbps downstream. 

“We’re going to try to roll out a 100/20 service so that in those areas we are a significant upgrade to whatever they have today,” Larsen said. “We think we’ll do OK in those areas. That is fertile ground.” 

Funds to Add Rural Homes

Although smaller operators have used edge-outs for years, the difference today, beyond the fact that there is more and more competition from overbuilders than in the past, is the availability of government funds, like the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF).

“In places that just would never make financial sense to build with private or corporate monies, you can supplement some of that with the funds that are coming from RDOF or other government stimulus programs,” Baumann said. “It’s great for people who live in these areas, because these areas have traditionally been vastly underserved and in some cases, unserved.”    

Mediacom has also taken advantage of state grants for broadband expansion. It received grants for about a dozen communities in Alabama, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota last year and expects to apply for more this year.

“That’s an area where I think with the $3.2 billion that went into the last round of the [federal COVID-19] stimulus, you’re going to see companies jump on board. And that can come from rural or urban areas,” Larsen said.

The RDOF program, which will hand out  $20 billion in Universal Service Fund (USF) subsidies for rural fixed broadband over the next decade, also should help grease the deployment skids. Charter was the biggest winner in the RDOF auctions, snagging $1.2 billion in awards in phase one, winning just over 1 million of the 5.2 million locations available.

At the virtual UBS Global TMT conference in December, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge said he couldn’t talk specifically about plans for the RDOF funding, because of a quiet period, but he did comment on the idea of rural expansion.  

“We think it’s good for us financially to extend our broadband network and all of our network capabilities to as many people as possible,” Rutledge said. “And we think working with the federal, local and state authorities to improve access to poles and rights of way, along with the proper subsidies, can get it done, and that we can have a bigger customer base and the communities that we serve can be expanded. 

“We think it’s smart for our company to do that,” he continued. “We think it can be done in an economically efficient way and by working with regulatory authorities, state and federal authorities, that we can expand our network and have a bigger footprint. We’ve embraced that and we’re participating in various programs around the country to expand the amount of serviceable footprint that we can reach. And we think if we do that, we’ll end up with more customers, and a happier customer and a better relationship with the total community."

Mediacom, which won about $2.5 million in phase one of the RDOF reverse auction, agreed, adding that extending the footprint not only potentially brings unserved or underserved homes into the fold, it can create new businesses.  

“Piece by piece, we’re going to inch our fiber out deeper, pick up more homes and when you combine it with the CBRS spectrum, hopefully we close massive gaps in the coverage area,” Larsen said, adding that the opportunities are huge even in states where Mediacom has a strong presence.

As an example, he pointed to Iowa, where Mediacom has large clusters in larger areas like Cedar Rapids, Des Moines and Iowa City. Outside of those markets are vast swaths of territory that are underserved.

“If you look at an Iowa broadband map, a lot of the geographic areas of the state look like they’re unserved because there is a lot of farmland,” Larsen said. “Every mile, you may have four houses or six houses. Those don’t have a wireline broadband provider today, so if we can get them a 100-Mbps wireless service quickly, that’s a new house passed.   

“Ultimately, we would love to figure out a solution, using that same wireless service, to be a provider to the farm itself as a business operation,” Larsen continued. “So, if they have water sensors or they have tractors or combines or whatever that are moving around the farm and we can connect wirelessly to them from the towers, that would be another business opportunity.”  

Nathan Simington got the unexpected nod from outgoing President Donald Trump last fall to join the Federal Communications Commission, a nomination he says he was surprised to get but is clearly determined to make the most of. 

In this exclusive interview, his first as FCC commissioner, Simington talks about his road from rural (and urban) Saskatchewan to a seat on the FCC, talks about the best way to spur broadband deployment and explains his take on the hot-button Section 230 debate and more.

MCN: Briefly tell us how you got from a rural community in Saskatchewan, Canada, to the FCC.

Nathan Simington: My family has always split its time — six months in each place — between my family farm in Kincaid, Saskatchewan, which you will have trouble finding on a map because it only has two or three hundred people, and Saskatoon, which is one of the principal cities.

I originally moved to the United States in 1999 when I was offered a scholarship to a college in Wisconsin. I went back to Canada for a couple of years for grad school but returned to the United States in 2003, and I guess this time it stuck. [Simington is a naturalized U.S. citizen.]

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My background was originally in academia. I was planning to become a professor. But along with a lot of people between 2006 and 2008 [the economic meltdown] when there were a lot of changes in society generally, I decided to try something else. I received my green card in 2007 and after working for a year in the market research industry I decided to go to law school, which eventually led me here today.

MCN: You were at the National Telecommunications & Information Administration for only five or six months before being tapped for this post. What was your role there?

NS: I was the senior adviser in the front office, which means I was working daily with the deputy assistant secretary and assistant secretary to formulate policy and responses on a wide variety of issues. But my primary focuses were wireline issues, spectrum issues and internet governance issues.

MCN: How did you find out you had been nominated to the FCC?

NS: I must say I was surprised. I understand that the White House spoke to a number of people trying to determine who they wanted to nominate. I got a call that they had decided to offer me the candidacy. I think they had been interested in a number of the reforms and interagency cooperation initiatives that I had discussed. Even so, there was a lot to learn and a lot of people to meet with and convince. Somehow that wound up with me being here today.

MCN: Let’s talk about internet governance and Section 230. The Democrats have said that it was your work on that issue [Simington worked on a petition to the FCC mandated by the president] that got you the FCC job. You say the nomination surprised you. Why do you think the president picked you? Was your Section 230 expertise part of the reason?

NS: I would not claim to have been a Section 230 expert when I was hired by NTIA. I developed a certain amount of experience with 230 and knowledge of the related legal and regulatory issues during the course of my appointment there. But, frankly, you could find any number of people in August or September of 2020 who would have been much more prominent in the Section 230 world than I was.  I had never published on it and never participated in a single conference on it. 

Until as recently as October, I don’t think the position had even emerged that Section 230 was within the FCC’s regulatory competence. Obviously, I have become identified by both parties with the Section 230 controversies. To the extent there is any basis for that identification, I want to point out that it is now moot. 

Whoever is the new chair or acting chair will be the person with the agenda-setting ability and chairman Pai has said no 230 item is going to come up during his tenure. [President Joe Biden named Democratic commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel as acting FCC chair on Jan. 21.]

So, what the future holds for Section 230 remains extremely unclear. That
ties into the larger question of how, if at all, the U.S. government is going to
choose to regulate social media. So, I suspect this is going to be the focus of legislation for some time to come as Congress hashes out how, if at all, it wants to address the question. 

MCN: Do you think social media needs regulating?

NS: On the larger question of a social media regulatory regime, I don’t think
the FCC has any broad power in that area. As far as whether I would like the FCC to take up a Section 230 rulemaking, I think we would need a very detailed consultative process to determine whether, in the end, that was wise. 

MCN: What is your regulatory philosophy?

NS: Coming from private industry rather than the D.C. telecom bar, I put a lot of emphasis on the effect of capital management on business and the difficulties of doing so in an uncertain regulatory environment.

On my regulatory philosophy generally, obviously the FCC has a mandate from Congress to act in the public interest and the FCC has an obligation to do so and not to allow its judgment to be clouded by other considerations.

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MCN: What is the best way for the government to promote broadband adoption and should broadband speeds or affordability — including price regulation — be part of that conversation?

NS: As far as price regulation for broadband, I think that is a little bit of a dangerous route to go down. Price regulation can be seen as a way of immediately capturing benefits for the consumer because they are able to get more of the upsides of a given infrastructure investment than they would have been able to otherwise. But if it has chilling effects on further infrastructure investment then you can wind up capping the structural ability of that sector to absorb capital and, if that is the case, then that one-time bonus is never going to be repeated.

As far as other aspects of how to roll out broadband better, I think that it is clear that more Americans have more and better broadband than has ever been the case, and this is true year after year. So, again, this becomes a question of progressing to the end of that and identifying the remaining obstacles.

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I am very excited about the proliferation of broadband technologies in just the past few years. LEO (low earth orbit) satellites were the number two winner in RDOF [the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund subsidy auction] and you have heard great things from very remote and underserved communities that suddenly find themselves with broadband where they had nothing prior.

So that is an example no one would have predicted a few years ago. But keeping our thumbs off the scale has allowed investors to find enough confidence in this to make the billions of dollars in investment up front to make it.