Dish Media said it is enabling advertisers to access national linear TV inventory using real-time programmatic technology it developed with Beachfront and Seachange International.

The technology is more flexible for buyers and allows the to plan linear alongside their digital and over-the-top buys for a more holistic view. It will also bring a bigger range of buyers to linear TV, the companies said. 

“Pioneering this new capability is another step in our effort to build more open and interoperable solutions for our advertisers,” said Kevin Arrix, senior VP, Dish Media. “The television marketplace is evolving, and providing our valuable linear TV inventory via programmatic technology is another positive step in this direction.”

Also Read: Beachfront, SeaChange Enable Programmatic for Cable Operators

Viant is the first demand-side platform to use the new technology, Dish said. 

“This exciting new offering is a great option for digital-first buyers who want to expand their reach and take advantage of Dish’s linear footprint,” said Jonathan Ahuna, senior VP of operations, Viant. “It delivers a one-two combination of being able to buy ads seconds before the ads’ airing, then, through the power of Viant’s Adelphic DSP, quickly report out on the buy, vastly reducing the traditional delay of linear reporting.”

Dish’s National Linear Programmatic capabilities covers 7 million households with Beachfront providing its sell-side ad serving built for convergent TV, and Seachange providing video delivery and ad insertion.

“Enabling new and incremental advertising capabilities for DISH TV with our Advanced Advertising Platform is a true milestone in our quest to optimize ad yield for operators globally. Adopting the principles of addressability and automation from the digital landscape to enable real-time auctions for linear TV through industry-standard digital advertising marketplaces is a gamechanger and a growth milestone for the industry,” said Chris Klimmer, president, SeaChange. “Together with Beachfront, we will continue our mission to optimize ad yield for operators by attracting additional advertisers, enabling real-time bidding and automating ad sales.” 

Also Read: Beachfront Brings Systems Together to Make Linear Ads Programmatic

“Having Dish-TV deploy an automated solution is truly going to accelerate the growth of programmatic capabilities in the industry, particularly for TV media buyers, programmers, and distributors,” added Beachfront CEO Chris Maccaro. “Advertisers are constantly looking for the fastest, most efficient use of time and money. Having access to DISH TV’s national linear TV inventory with the tools required to get a campaign live in a day will provide a lot of new flexibility.” ■

Cable operators will be able to dive into the linear TV programmatic ad pool thanks to technology created jointly by Beachfront Media and SeaChange International.

The technology, already being used in the U.S. by a global operator and a regional cable company — both unidentified — will enable multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to tap into hundreds of millions of dollars being spent over automated platforms.

“Linear TV inventory has long been excluded from programmatic marketplaces due to technical limitations and infrastructural challenges,” SeaChange president and CEO Yossi Aloni said. “In partnership with Beachfront, we’ve completed the difficult work of connecting modern, digital-oriented ad buyers to linear TV inventory. This is a major milestone for the media and advertising industry, which we expect will serve as a major catalyst for improving the CPMs for our cable operator and media owner partners.” 

ALSO READ: AMC Networks Moves Ad Tech to FreeWheel

The companies say their combined technology can also help direct-to-consumer and over-the-top video services sell their advertising without going through a middleman.

Beachfront has been building advertising technology that works with the set-top boxes employed by cable operators. Last year, Beachfront enabled the programmatic buying of commercials in set-top-box video-on-demand programming. The new technology extends that to linear TV.

Beachfront’s technology will interface with buyers and demand side platforms. Advertisers can activate this linear TV ad inventory — along with VOD, connected TV, mobile and desktop inventory — much faster than traditional direct buys through the use of real-time bidding.  Beachfront will connect with VOD vendor SeaChange’s equipment, which provide information about available advertising, handles insertions and sends invoices. SeaChange also has the data about viewers needed to create targeted campaigns.

Despite the changes in TV viewing, linear TV is not going away. In fact, Aloni points out ad-supported on-demand streaming services are creating linear channels so people can continue to be couch potatoes.

The problem is that a lot of linear inventory remains unsold. On top of that, for many MVPDs, their sales units are old and expensive.

“These guys are actually using phones, and they’re calling customers and they have a cutoff date for commercials that’s three days ahead of when they go on-air,” Aloni said. “We are moving them into the 21st century. Not only are we enabling them to monetize their inventory, we are also enabling them to reduce their costs.”

The companies said the technology has already been tested with public service announcements, and some real clients have put real money through the system to prove the concept works.

ALSO READ: NBCU Opens Digital Ad Inventory to Local Business

“It will start generating very meaningful revenues in the next few months,” Aloni said, first internationally, then increasingly in the United States.

Beachfront CEO Chris Maccaro said what’s holding back programmatic buying for traditional TV is “a bunch of legacy executives who want to protect the way things have been done for a long time. I think you’re starting to see a transformation and consolidation on the agency side where teams are collaborating holistically on where budgets are going.”

Maccaro said Beachfront and SeaChange are giving buyers a lot of new flexibility. Instead of needing days to mount a campaign, “you can get a campaign live and buy it today.”

“What will accelerate the growth of this programmatic capability is how quick the inventory can be used in addressable campaigns,” Maccaro said.

“The quicker we get to addressability for this supply — whether it’s linear or VOD or even [connected] TV, which generally is addressable — and the more it looks familiar to how [demand side platforms] buy it, then demand starts flying into these channels,”
he said. 

Video delivery technology company SeaChange International has announced the purchase of Danish streaming solutions vendor Xstream A/S for $5.5 million.

The deal combines $4.6 million in cash and 541,738 shares of SeaChange stock. Acton, Mass.-based SeaChange will be taking over Xstream’s signature product, MediaMaker, an end-to-end OTT platform.

“Xstream provides us a managed service, over-the-top video solution that already serves more than 5 million active subscribers globally and generates approximately $6 million in annual SaaS revenues,” said SeaChange CEO Ed Terino, in a statement.

Xstream has offices in Copenhagen, Denmark and Warsaw, Poland.

“Xstream’s engineering resources are in close proximity to our engineering and development organization in Warsaw, which will enable an accelerated integration and provide for increased velocity of roadmap deliveries,” Terino added. “We anticipate achieving several million dollars of cost synergies from the combination of our organizations within the first half of fiscal 2020. In addition to leveraging Xstream’s experienced engineering resources, we expect to realize cost synergies in sales, marketing and administrative functions, including the consolidation of multiple locations into our Warsaw offices this fiscal year.”

SeaChange continues to look for its footing, as its client base shifts to over-the-top delivery methods for video.

In December, SeaChange reported a 21% revenue decline in the third quarter of 2018 to $18.6 million.

Multiscreen video tech company SeaChange International said it is monetizing its investment in Layer3 TV, the MVPD recently acquired by T-Mobile, to the tune of about $6.7 million.

RELATED: T-Mobile Closes Layer3 TV Acquisition

SeaChange, an investor in Denver-based Layer3 TV and announced as one of the tech partners for Layer3 TV’s in-home platform, said it has received an initial payment of about $4.6 million, with another payment of $2.1 million being held in escrow.

RELATED: Layer3 TV Taps SeaChange For In-Home Platform

SeaChange announced the return on its investment almost a week after T-Mobile closed its acquisition of Layer3 TV. With Layer3 TV’s technology and talent in hand, T-Mobile is now setting to work on a “disruptive” OTT TV service that’s expected to debut later this year.

RELATED: T-Mobile Promises To Stir Up Pay TV Market (subscription required)

“We are very pleased that we have realized a significant return on our investment in Layer3 TV.  The proceeds from this investment will further strengthen our cash position and balance sheet and provide additional support for our efforts to continue to improve SeaChange’s financial performance,” Ed Terino, SeaChange CEO, said in a statement.

Founded in 2013, Layer3 TV raised about $100 million prior to being acquired. Other Layer3 TV investors include Altice USA (inherited from its acquisition of Suddenlink Communications), Paulson Co., Evolution Media Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners.

T-Mobile has not yet disclosed what it paid for Layer3 TV. 

SeaChange International said one of its key customers, Liberty Global, will use the vendor’s Adrenalin multiscreen video platform to help power the MSO’s next-gen, cloud-based “Horizon 4” services.

SeaChange announced the deal on solid Q3 results. Shares were up 60 cents (21.43%) to $3.40 in after-hours trading Wednesday.

Financial terms of the new Liberty Global deal were not disclosed, but it keeps SeaChange firmly engaged with a major global operator with deployments across Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America.

The cloud-based approach will support a virtualized video platform architecture for Horizon, and enable Liberty Global develop and deploy services at a faster pace, SeaChange said.

“As video platforms transition to virtualized cloud infrastructure and enable advanced capabilities such as replay TV and network DVR to multiple devices, SeaChange will continue to support customers like Liberty Global to monetize their video assets and modernize their video delivery platforms,” Ed Terino, SeaChange’s CEO, said in a statement.

SeaChange, which has been undergoing a restructuring and facing calls by an investor to sell the company, announced the deal as it disclosed Q3 financial results.

RELATED: Investor Pushes SeaChange to Sell

SeaChange posted Q3 revenues of $23.4 million, up 17% year-on-year, and GAAP income of $900,000 (3 cents per fully diluted share), versus a year-ago loss of $8.4 million (24 cents per share). It ended the period with cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and marketable securities of about $37 million, and no debt outstanding.

“SeaChange's financial performance in the quarter represents excellent progress in reaching our year-end goals more quickly. Across all metrics - revenues, gross margins and non-GAAP EPS - we outperformed our guidance,” CFO Peter Faubert said.

SeaChange expects Q4 revenues of $20 million to $24 million, and a loss from operations of $0.03 per basic share to operating income of $0.05 per fully diluted share.

For the full fiscal 2018, SeaChange raised expected revenues to the range of $77 million to $81 million, and a narrowed GAAP loss of 14 cents to 22 cents per basic share.

Multiscreen video software specialist SeaChange International said it has made changes to its board of directors, including the naming of a new chairman and the appointment of two members, “in response to shareholder feedback.”

William Markey, the company said, has been named chairman of the board, and previous chairman, Steven Craddock, “has decided to retire from the Board.”

Markey, formerly a director of the SeaChange board, is also president of Relevant C Business Group (RCBG), a private consulting firm he founded in 2002, and is a co-founder of Ucentric Systems, a software company acquired by Motorola in 2005.

Joining the SeaChange board are Mark Bonney and Andy Sriubas.

SeaChange said Bonney is “in independent director with substantial experience in turn-around and merger and acquisition situations,” and that his appointment follows an agreement with one of SeaChange’s largest shareholders, VIEX Capital Advisors.

Sriubas, who started his career with Citibank, has been an advisor to the SeaChange board since May 2016, and has chaired the company’s Advisory Board that works with the management team on strategic and technology matters, SeaChange said.

Bonney’s appointment will be presented to shareholders for a vote at the company's 2018 annual meeting, and Sriubas' appointment will be presented for a vote at the company's annual meeting in 2019.

The board-level changes come a few weeks after a SeaChange investor, Roumell Asset Management, scolded the board for the SeaChange’s “poor operating results and weakened balance sheet” and urged the board to pursue a sale of the company. SeaChange, now under new CEO Ed Terino, is in the middle of a restructuring that aims to return the company to profitability. 

RELATED: Investor Pushes SeaChange to Sell

“We are very pleased to have strengthened our board with the addition of Mark and Andy, both of whom bring skillsets that we believe will be important to enabling SeaChange to continue its transformation and growth within the evolving media marketplace,” Markey said in a statement. “Being responsive to our shareholders is important, and I appreciate that we have developed a constructive relationship with Eric Singer at VIEX as part of this effort…At the same time, we are grateful to Steve [Craddock] for his five-years of service on the board of SeaChange, and his many contributions in assisting in the company’s progress.”

"I believe the actions the SeaChange board has taken around reconstitution will ensure the best governance framework to support the company's progress in achieving higher value for all shareholders," Singer added. 

An investor in SeaChange International submitted a letter to the company’s board of directors urging the multiscreen video technology company to seek a sale while the company remains in a position that would be attractive to potential suitors.

“It should be obvious to the Board that SeaChange's small, sub-$100 million revenue base is insufficient to warrant remaining an independent going-concern,” Roumell Asset Management, explained in a release about the letter. “We have talked to industry participants and believe the demand for SeaChange's assets would provide shareholders a meaningful premium to the company's current share price.”

Selling SeaChange is hardly a new idea. SeaChange has been the subject of M&A rumors for several years. TiVo and Rovi, which merged last fall, were once among those that were poking around SeaChange.

Roumell Asset Management, which says it owns 1.2 million shares of SeaChange or roughly 3.3% of outstanding shares, also shared some harsh words about the company’s “poor operating results and weakening balance sheet” and placed a good portion of the blame at the feet of the SeaChange board.

SeaChange has been asked for comment about the letter.

SeaChange, under new CEO Ed Terino, is in restructuring mode amid a plan to return the company to profitability. As part of that, SeaChange, which counts Liberty Global as its sole 10% or greater revenue contributor, has been cutting back staff and transferring its engineering responsibilities from the Philippines to Poland and pivoting some of its professional services capacity to third parties.

RELATED: SeaChange Pushes Back Restructuring Wrap Up

Terino was named CEO in April 2016 after the board ousted previous CEO, Jay Samit, who orchestrated SeaChange’s troubled $24.5 million acquisition of Timeline Labs, a social media analytics company, in late 2014. SeaChange later discontinued and shut down Timeline Labs.

Roumell Asset Management is also expressing its views after long-time board director Tom Olson, resigned, effective July 18. According to this July 13 SEC filing, Olson, a member of the SeaChange board since 2001 and a past CEO of National Cable Communications, received 13.2 million votes for election, and 16.6 million against.

 That vote, the investment firm suggested, is an indication that “shareholders are finished with the company's ‘business as usual’ culture.”

“We believe the Board needs further reconstitution,” it added. “Candidly, individuals who participated in some of these glaringly inept decisions should consider stepping down. It's clear to any independent observer that new blood is needed in the boardroom.”

SeaChange’s current board includes chairman and former Comcast exec Steve Craddock; Terino; William Markey, president of consulting firm the Relevant C Business Group (RCBG); Mary Cotton, previously CEO of VT iDirect and a former exec with SAP; and Ed Wilson, the co-founder and executive chairman of Timeline Labs, a founding partner at New Form Digital, president and CEO of Dreamcatcher Broadcasting, and a media exec late of Tribune Broadcasting, Fox Television, NBC, CBS and Sony.

Roumell Asset Management had praise for Terino, citing his landslide re-election to the board and his decision to streamline and to build the tech team in Poland, and said SeaChange’s base of customers for Adrenalin (its multiscreen video backoffice platform), relationship with Liberty Global and its equity investment in Layer3 TV “are enviable assets.”

“We believe Mr. Terino's approach of protecting the company's balance sheet by reducing expenses, while focusing on discrete market opportunities, is the correct one and will ultimately position the company for a successful sale,” the investor noted.

Shares in SeaChange dropped 7 cents (2.48%) to $2.75 each Thursday. It has a market cap of about $97.15 million.

Multiscreen video specialist SeaChange International expects to wrap up a restructuring program a quarter or two later than originally expected, but doesn’t believe the delay will affect its grander plan to return to profitability.

“We now anticipate that some restructuring actions will be delayed into Q3 and Q4 of fiscal 2018,” Ed Terino, SeaChange’s CEO, said Tuesday on the company’s fiscal Q1 call.

Originally, SeaChange hoped to complete the restructuring by the end of fiscal Q2.

RELATED: SeaChange Eyes End of Restructuring Process

“While there may be some slippage in cost savings in fiscal 2018, we do not believe that our goal of achieving profitability in the second half of fiscal 2018 is in risk due to these delays,” he said.

When the program is complete, SeaChange expects to have about 300 employees (versus the 660 it had at the end of fiscal 2016), and to have transferred more of its engineering responsibilities from the Philippines to Poland and shift to some of our professional services capacity to third parties.

SeaChange posted fiscal Q1 revenues of $16.7 million and a GAAP loss of $5.5 million (16 cents per share), versus year-ago revenues  $21.6 million and a loss of $9.6 million (28 cents per share). Q1 GAAP result  included charges of $3.8 million, primarily comprised of severance and other restructuring costs.

Liberty Global was SeaChange’s lone 10% or greater revenue customer in the quarter, representing 28% of revenues in the period. International revenues accounted for 58% of total revenues.

On the product front, Terino said SeaChange is ahead of schedule for NitroX, its multiscreen user experience for set-tops and connected devices that was introduced last year.

The first half of the year, NitroX wrapped support for the iPad, Android tablets, certain smart TVs, Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV, with support for Apple TV, Roku and web browsers on deck for the second half of SeaChange’s fiscal year.

The exec said SeaChange is also moving ahead with upgrades to Adrenalin, its multiscreen backoffice platform, to include time-shift TV and network DVR.

Bigger picture, Terino said SeaChange is seeing more opportunities with mobile carriers and expects to “close several of these greenfield opportunities in the next several quarters.” He said the company also has about 30 opportunities in the pipeline for OTT deals, with quotes out for about half of them.

Switzerland-based The Quickline Group has picked SeaChange International to provide the key tech underpinnings of a new multiscreen TV service that offers catch-up TV, network DVR and personalization components.

The service, called Quickline TV, will run on SeaChange’s multiscreen-capable Adrenalin video backoffice platform and tie into set-tops outfitted with Nucleus, SeaChange’s set-top box software that uses RDK-V, the video-facing version of the Reference Design Kit (RDK), the software platform for gateways being managed by Comcast, Liberty Global and Charter Communications (via its acquisition of Time Warner Cable).

SeaChange said it also helped with the deployment of Android and iOS apps for the Quickline TV service.

On the personalization end, the new multiscreen service will also support individual subscriber profiles.

Quickline uses a centralized video platform to support 25 independent regional cable operators that serve about 400,000 homes.

“With Quickline’s groundbreaking achievements in personalization, ease of enjoyment and RDK implementation, we believe the eyes of the media world will be on Quickline TV as a new ideal for video service provider evolution,” SeaChange CEO Ed Terino, said in a statement.

Midco, a cable operator that serves more than 385,000 residential and business subs in parts of Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin, is upgrading its VOD platform with Adrenalin, SeaChange International’s multiscreen backoffice platform.

Midco has been delivering VOD services on SeaChange’s legacy backoffice product, Axiom. The MSO plans to shift to Adrenalin by the first half of 2017, as it looks to centralize its on-demand operations for set-top boxes, and pave the way to deliver VOD to smartphones, tablets and other IP-based devices.

SeaChange said Midco is also set to deploy the vendor’s AssetFlow content management software, which automates the ingest, tracking and metadata handling for on-demand content, including movies and TV shows.

“We’re pleased to continue our longstanding collaboration with SeaChange to continue Midco’s popular ON Demand services and have the ability to expand our foundation for advanced capabilities in the future,” Bill Chatwell, Midco’s video systems manager, said in a statement.

In December, SeaChange said more than 20 customers had been “quoted for upgrades” to Adrenalin.

SeaChange International disclosed this month that it is making deeper cuts as the multiscreen video tech and software company moves ahead on a plan to return to profitability.

In an 8-K document filed Feb. 3, SeaChange said it was implementing cost-savings moves tied to its North American operations and a workforce reduction that will result in annualized cost savings of about $8.1 million, once complete. Those actions will also result in restructuring and severance charges of about $1.5 million, the filing added.

SeaChange did not say how many people were to be affected by the reduction mentioned in the 8-K, but SeaChange CEO Ed Terino told the Worcester Business Journal that the company has cut more than 200 jobs on a global basis within the past year. He said SeaChange now has fewer than 500 employees, down from the more than 700 that were with the company when Terino took over the CEO post in April 2016.

RELATED: Terino In, Samit Out as SeaChange CEO

SeaChange on Wednesday issued this statement from Terino to Multichannel News:

“The actions over the past year associated with our turnaround, including recent reductions in the US, will provide anticipated cost savings of over $30M as we continue to keep our focus on video service providers, while improving operations and targeting a return to profitability within our current fiscal year.”

SeaChange is trying to pull off that turnaround amid an ongoing tough stretch. In  December, it announced a 31% drop in revenues driven largely by lower service revenues, but said then that more than 20 customers were “quoted for upgrades” to Adrenalin, a multiscreen video backoffice that succeeds SeaChange’s Axiom platform. Terino also noted then that Rave, SeaChange’s OTT platform, has about 30 opportunities in the pipeline, and that the company recently NitroX, a multiplatform system that delivers a common UI across multiple devices, including set-tops, Android TV-powered boxes, smartphones and tablets.

The 8-K also detailed the recent promotion of Jonathan Rider to SVP and COO that includes an annual base salary of $325,000 per year, a one-time equity award of 100,000 stock options, eligibility to participate in an annual bonus program worth up to $260,000 and a change-in-control severance agreement.  

Cable Onda, a service provider based in Panama City, Panama, is developing a next-gen multiscreen video service that will rely on a unified backoffice and integrated content management and advertising systems from SeaChange International.

For the deployment, Cable Onda will upgrade to SeaChange’s Adrenalin backoffice and deploy the vendor’s AssetFlow content management and Infusion advanced ad solution for a service that will integrate its traditional pay TV service and OTT offerings and support apps such as a network DVR. Cable Onda’s been running its VOD and ad business on prior-gen SeaChange technologies and systems since 2009.

“By upgrading to SeaChange as our unified and centralized back office foundation and ad revenue engine, Cable Onda will unite operations for HFC, OTT and IPTV service to achieve our vision for a Next Generation Subscriber Experience that keeps subscribers entertained and engaged across all their video devices,” Charlie Brown, Cable Onda’s SVP of operations, said in a statement.

On its Q3 earnings call, SeaChange CEO  Ed Terino said the vendor has more than 20 customers “quoted for upgrades” to Adrenalin, a multiscreen video backoffice that succeeds SeaChange’s Axiom platform.

Multiscreen video specialist SeaChange International said it has hired industry vet Mark Tubinis as SVP of engineering and global services.

Tubinis most recently was SVP of strategic solutions at Savant Systems, a IoT and home automation systems company. Prior to that, he was CTO and SVP for Cedar Point Communications, an IP voice pioneer that was acquired by Genband in 2011. He is also late of Alcatel, Innovative Telecom, Summa Four and Charles River Ventures.

He comes aboard as SeaChange moves ahead with a cost-cutting initiative and as the company introduces a new range of products related to OTT and its multiscreen video backoffice platform.

“Mark is extensively accomplished and deeply connected with SeaChange’s core video service provider market,” Ed Terino, SeaChange’s CEO, said in a statement. “With his background in continuous development methodologies, cloud products and IP networks, I anticipate Mark will quickly enhance the ability of our global engineering and service operations to optimize performance and produce new capabilities for our customers.”

RELATED: Terino In, Samit Out as SeaChange CEO

Tubinis also serves as an advisory board member for Airfusion, PeerApp and Starscriber.  He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Boston University and an M.S. in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  

Shares in SeaChange International dipped more than 7%  Tuesday after the company warned of a significant revenue shortfall in Q2 due to delays in the estimated time to complete some work and delays in closing other deals due to shifts in customer schedules.

In prelim Q2 results released today, SeaChange said it expects revenues to be in the range of $18.3 million to $18.5 million, below previous guidance of $23 million to $25 million. The company also expects a Q2 loss of 19 cents to 23 cents per basic share, widened from prior guidance of a loss of 10 cents to 15 cents.

Ed Terino, the CEO of SeaChange who took over for ousted CEO Jay Samit in April, said Tuesday on a call about the prelim results that about $4 million of the shortfall is attributed to changes in the estimated time to complete work on existing deals, and about $1 million tied to delays in getting deals closed.

To a lesser extent, Q2 results were impacted by a longer than expected time to “get our expanded sales team productive,” he added.

Terino said he is positive that better days are ahead as SeaChange builds its revenue pipeline in the second half of its fiscal year, noting that it will announce an OTT win with a “major content owner in Europe” at next month’s IBC show in Amsterdam.

He also said SeaChange, as part of its plan to reach financial targets by fiscal Q2, will implement new cost-saving measures during its fiscal Q3. Terino said more info about the cost-reduction plan will be revealed on the company’s scheduled Q2 call on September 1.

Peter Faubert, SeaChange’ recently appointed CFO, said the company was making good progressing positioning its in-home software development from Milpitas, Calif., to DCC Labs, the Warsaw, Poland-based company SeaChange acquired in May for $8 million.

That group, led by DCC Labs, has reevaluated the time to complete several projects and is expected to complete that current set of work at about one-fifth the cost that could be achieved by the California-based division.

As for deals that are delayed, Terino said a handful were tied to migrations or upgrades from SeaChange’s legacy Axiom video backoffice to the new multiscreen-focused Adrenalin platform, as well as a new customer. 

SeaChange shares were down 25 cents (7.68%) to $3.07 each in mid-day trading Tuesday. 

Following on hints dropped earlier this month, SeaChange International has issued a new release of its multiscreen video “Adrenalin” backoffice platform that adds support for 4K/Ultra HD content, binge-watching models, and a “geographic failover” element.

SeaChange said initial deployments of the latest Adrenalin is underway with “several large video service providers,” include those that are converting from the vendor’s previous-gen Axiom VOD systems.

On the binge-watching front, Adrenalin has added bookmarking and entitlements, which lets viewers pause a series on a mobile device and resume it in at the same fram on a set-top box, or share a TV series with family members using other devices.

To get a handle on video headends and networks that can be impacted by power failures and other disaster recovery events, Adrenalin can also be backed-up in a separate geographic location. SeaChange said this assures a complete multiscreen service function failover and resumption within 15 to 30 minutes, and is key for service providers that centralize their back office operations for multiple geographies.

"Using Adrenalin for centralized video operations, our service provider customers are expanding their offerings, adding content, and enabling rich user experiences seamlessly across networks and devices," said Paul Crann, SVP of product management, in a statement. "Adrenalin's latest features help our customers quickly deploy new services to stay ahead of consumer's shifting habits and capture incremental revenue opportunities with a highly scalable and unified video delivery back office."

SeaChange International has paid $8 million in cash to acquire DCC Labs, a Warsaw, Poland-based software developer and integrator for set-tops and multiscreen devices that, SeaChange said, will also strengthen its Reference Design Kit (RDK) product strategy.

SeaChange said it closed the deal on May 6 and expects DCC Labs to contribute “an additional several million dollars of revenue annually,” with an anticipated one-year payback through synergies and cost savings that SeaChange will begin to realize immediately. The transaction also includes a lock-up provision for the SeaChange stock that unwinds over a three-year period, the company said.

It said the deal will also help SeaChange to optimize the operations of its In Home business, which includes the SeaChange Nucleus home video gateway. DCC Labs has also developed a  software stack for Europe’s DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) community and an HTML5 framework for user interfaces.

In conjunction with the acquisition, SeaChange said it has also started a workforce reduction within its In Home engineering and services organization that aims to achieve $8 million in annualized cost savings. DCC Labs CEO Marek Kielczewski, meanwhile, has joined SeaCahnge as SVP of consumer premises equipment software and will lead the SeaChange In Home division.

Shiva Patibanda, formerly CTO and GM of in-home products at SeaChange, left the company last year and recently joined Ericsson’s TV and media group.

SeaChange said DCC Labs has more than 70 engineers and has won projects supporting millions of set-tops, mobile devices and smart TVs, and has development expertise that includes Android and  Linux operating systems as well as the Reference Design Kit (RDK), the preintegrated software stack for set-tops and broadband devices that’s managed by Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Liberty Global.

SeaChange and DCC Labs have a business history, as SeaChange engaged with the Warsaw-based company last year to support a major set-top development project for a “large European cable operator” that resulted in deployment of a user interface and an RDK 2.1-based home video gateway for field trial tests within four months of the initial engagement. SeaChange said it also tapped DCC Labs to assist with improving quality and providing enhancements for another European cable operator’s deployed home video gateway.

“Through our successful collaboration in the field, SeaChange determined that DCC Labs’ experience and strengths are exceptionally well-aligned with our strategy to operate more efficiently and rapidly roll out high-value, front-end product innovations,” Ed Terino, the company’s recently named CEO, said in a statement. “SeaChange is now better positioned to serve the global RDK licensee community, as well as fulfilling service providers’ growing desire to focus on a select set of vendors to support their video infrastructure from the back-end all the way through to set-tops, mobile devices and the subscriber experience.”

Software and video multiscreen firm SeaChange International has appointed Tony Dolph to senior vice president of marketing.

Dolph, who reports to COO Ed Terino, will head up the company’s marketing and communications efforts and work closely with SeaChagne’s business development and inside sales operations.

Dolph most recently was president and CEO of software-as-a-service Hubcast, and is also late of Artel Video Systems, Media 100 and Idiom Technologies.

“SeaChange is focused on growing our business by investing to ensure superior operational performance and execution in our core markets, and by extending our reach into adjacent and emerging markets for premium video delivery, content management and monetization,” Terino said in a statement.  “I’m very pleased that SeaChange continues to attract top talent like Tony Dolph to help us increase our potential through greater capabilities in marketing, sales and strategic partnerships.”

Dolph holds a BA from the University of Massachusetts and certificate of matriculation from Beijing Foreign Studies University.

SeaChange International said revenues on new products climbed in Q3  as the multiscreen video specialist continued to shed most of its financial reliance on older, legacy products and technologies.

“We continue to grow our new product revenue, while effectively managing the decline in our legacy revenue, which now accounts for just 3% of our total revenue,” CEO Jay Samit said Thursday on the company’s earnings call. “We are delighted that the significant declines in our legacy product revenue which have impacted our results over the last few years are now largely behind us.”

By comparison, new products accounted for 86% of product revenue in the quarter, and 19% of total revenue. 

As for the legacy side, Samit reiterated SeaChange’s plans to end-of-life its Axiom backoffice platform as it secures more deals for its multiscreen-focused platform, Adrenalin, which now serves iOS and Android mobile devices with live TV, as well as its Nucleus gateway software and its new, OTT-focused Rave offering.

Axiom is still in use by more than 50 customers serving about 10 million subs, Samit said. “The fact that we’ve told everybody that they’ve got to move off it and we’re sun-setting it has made many active discussions and you’re going to see many transitioning next year off of it and into Adrenalin,” he added.

Liberty Global is one of SeaChange’s marquee customers for Adrenaline, and has it rolled in parts of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Australia, with Chile on deck for later this month.  Samit declined to confirm an analyst’s belief that Liberty Global systems in the Netherlands and Belgium are also on the docket.

Samit also shed some light on the progress being made at NewCoin LLC, a data-focused venture with Fox,  Tribune Media, Univision and Timeline Labs, that aims to improve local market TV audience measurement across linear and digital platforms. Timeline Labs, acquired by SeaChange about a year ago, is providing the software platform to analyze the data.

“NewCoin goes into beta this month,” Samit said, noting that partners are talking about how they might fund and expand the operation in 2016.

On the financial front, SeaChange posted Q3 revenues of $28.7 million, down from $30 million a year earlier, and a loss of $11.8 million, or 35 cents per share, widened from a year-ago loss of $5.9 million, or 19 cents per share.  Without non-GAAP charges of $12.2 million, non-GAAP income from operations for Q3 was $400,000, or 1 cent per diluted share.

SeaChange International, the video software and services specialist, announced Monday that it will reduce its global employee base by 10% as part of an effort to streamline operations that will result in annualized cost savings of about $11 million when the process is completed.

SeaChange said it implemented the workforce reduction in the U.S. and, in order to comply with non-U.S. legal requirements, will implement the moves on an international basis “over the next several fiscal quarters.”

SeaChange did not disclose the number of employees that would be affected. It finished its last fiscal year, ended Jan. 31, 2014, with 723 employees worldwide, including 382 in the U.S.

SeaChange said it also expects those actions to result in restructuring and severance charges of about $1.3 million in its fourth quarter for fiscal 2015. SeaChange is scheduled to report its fourth quarter and full fiscal 2015 results in early April. 

SeaChange, which has become a software-focused company in recent years, is making these moves after building two next-gen products – Adrenalin, its multiscreen video backoffice platform, and Nucleus, a software platform for set-tops and gateways that includes optional support for the Reference Design Kit (RDK), the project being managed by Comcast, Time  Warner Cable and Liberty Global.

Those products are now deployed and in a “mature state,” said SeaChange CEO Jay Samit, who was appointed to the post in October 2014, succeeding Raghu Rau.

Samit said the streamlining was necessary in order to keep SeaChange growing, expand its toolsets and to ensure it’s in a position to innovate.

“Our industry is in a major shift,” he said, referring to a new wave of OTT products from new players and traditional MVPDs, and amid a trend that is seeing more and more programmers develop direct-to-consumer products. “All of these people need our technology.”

Of recent note, SeaChange acquired Timeline Labs last December, adding a California-based firm that helps broadcasters, cable channels and other media companies keep tabs on social trends and track audience engagement.

On the product side, the Acton, Mass.-based vendor has rolled out Rave, a platform targeted to “premium” over-the-top video that relies on Adrenalin. SeaChange also announced that Nucleus will be used by Layer3 TV, an emerging “virtual” MVPD based in Denver that’s expected to launch a product later this year.

SeaChange International has entered into an agreement to obtain TLL, LLC, which does business as Timeline Labs.

Timeline Labs is a California-based SaaS company that helps local broadcasters, national news organizations, cable news channels and other media companies and brands to find and air social trends, track audience engagment, as well as dissect social media messages in real-time. 

Through the agreement, SeaChange will pay $14 million in cash and $8 million in shares of SeaChange stock. There will also be up to $2.5 million in deferred performance-based consideration, which are payable in shares of the company's stock.

Fox Television Stations, Sinclair, Media General, Tribune broadcast television stations, and online providers like 120Sports.com are among Timeline's customers.