As streaming becomes the dominant way people consume TV, a shift toward programmatic buying is accelerating. The increasing availability of biddable inventory, combined with the flexibility that programmatic offers, is prompting some to question the necessity of a TV upfront that demands hefty ad dollar commitments.

It’s reasonable to speculate that a world where a few networks sell upward of 75% of their linear ad inventory for the upcoming year in just a few short weeks may not make long-term sense. However, advertisers will always negotiate commitments to exercise their spending leverage and ensure they aren’t shut out of inventory crucial to the success of their brands. 

That said, the methods used to achieve these goals via commitments are likely to evolve significantly from the TV markets of the recent past. If anything, the upfronts are poised to be revitalized thanks to the growth of programmatic technology.

In the “early days” of this fast-growing medium (i.e., just a few years ago), most marketers bought CTV in the same way as traditional TV — through direct deals. By last year, though, we saw the “early majority” of brands shift from direct I/O toward programmatic and this year we predict that the “late majority” will consolidate their CTV upfronts within a demand-side platform (DSP).

In fact, Advertiser Perceptions found that 69% of advertisers plan to utilize programmatic guaranteed and 56% plan to use private marketplace (PMP) buys in the next 12 months, compared to only 53% planning to use direct I/O. This shows us that TV buying behaviors are changing and mixed, hybrid buying methods are more popular than ever.

Buying TV directly or programmatically is only the first of many decisions buyers must make as they prepare their upfront strategy. Here are my predictions and how advertisers can capitalize on the growing shift toward programmatic.

1. Consolidate TV buys in a softer market: One main reason buyers want to participate in the upfront is to guarantee their share of coveted inventory. The challenge arises when this leads to a proliferation of direct deals that may target the same household too many times. 

One of the biggest advantages of programmatic campaigns with a DSP, specifically via PMPs, is that you can consolidate CTV buys into a unified buying method. This allows you to understand and manage reach and frequency holistically and reduce overlap between CTV and linear, as well as overlap between publishers to maximize reach. This saves advertisers money while making for a better customer experience.

2. Uplevel audience strategies in a converging landscape: As an industry, we like to bucket TV into “linear” and “CTV,” but it’s all just TV to the consumer. The challenge for advertisers is connecting the dots between both channel types to understand things like holistic reach and frequency and who is being exposed to your ads regardless of what viewers are watching or how they are accessing content on their TVs. 

With programmatic, these insights can be leveraged for advanced TV targeting that goes beyond basic demographic audiences. This starts with a foundation of diverse and holistic data, such as combining high-quality ACR data with set-top box data. This allows for a unified approach to TV. It also enables advertisers to reach their audiences more effectively by better understanding viewing behaviors and powering use cases, such as suppressing linear audiences on CTV to drive incremental reach. 

3. Aim for identity-based supply at scale: All of these strategies are only effective if you can actually reach the right audiences. This is why having a foundation of identity within an ad platform — which powers more precise reach — is critical.

While cookie deprecation may seem irrelevant to TV buyers, it sets the stage for other signal deprecations, such as IP addresses. A lack of an “identity spine” also makes connecting measurement between digital channels and inventory difficult. That’s why TV buyers will increasingly value future-proof TV activation backed by robust identity.

Despite initial reservations, the industry is witnessing a significant shift toward programmatic buying, with a hybrid model proving to be particularly effective. As this trend continues, advertisers who embrace these changes will likely find themselves better positioned to reach their desired audiences more effectively and precisely. 

Leading a local media company is not for the faint of heart. Everywhere you look, there is change — technology, regulation, audiences, partners, employees. In these rough seas, we have a light to help guide us through the storm. It is a focus on mission.

Plenty of businesses have written mission statements, but few have the kind of North Star shared by a media company practicing journalism. 

The E.W. Scripps Co. mission statement says, “We do well by doing good — informing, entertaining and engaging the audiences we serve.” Every business decision we make will be better if we keep that mission in mind.

No matter how your company puts it into words your purpose is likely to make your communities better, keep people informed, and hold the powerful accountable. Democracy itself depends on our ability to meet the task. Still, we often lose sight of our purpose in the hustle and bustle.

Also Read: Local News Close-Up: Nashville Newsrooms Catch Their Breath

Clarifying our mission creates a touchstone for better business decisions. At Scripps, we have been evaluating resources at our stations, prioritizing field journalism and increasing our investment in newsgathering. Does that mean we set lofty goals and do not worry about the business fundamentals? The opposite is true. Because we must have margin for the mission, our focus on the bottom line should be relentless. Both cuts and investments can be guided by our “why.” Our station in Nashville invests in investigative journalism. Our chief investigative reporter, Phil Williams, has been honored in recent months with the DuPont Award, the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism and the Lifetime Achievement Award from RTDNA. John Oliver featured him on Last Week Tonight. Phil has reported on everything from lead in drinking water to sexual assault on school buses, but his specialty is government accountability and abuses of power. He recently received an oversized thank you card, signed by local leaders, grateful that he revealed a  candidate’s ties to white supremacists. Both the honors and card confirm that we are helping our neighbors and being true to our mission.

Live Event: Attend The Business of TV News Event in Washington, D.C.

Another key area of our mission-focused investment is literacy for children. Nearly all employees give to our “If You Give a Child a Book …” campaign. The Scripps Howard Fund and our viewers make contributions and the Nashville Predators match our donations. We have given more than 50,000 books to students in high-need schools in Tennessee. It is the first time many of them have owned a book.

In a less traditional example of business decisions guided by mission, WTVF commissioned a downtown Nashville mural called “Embrace.” It features imagery designed to encourage caring and community. NewsChannel 5 describes the mural as a gift to the city we love, and the city has responded. Everyone from ordinary citizens to celebrities has taken and posted photos of the mural. 

Clarity of mission takes more than a mural. It requires living by your touchstones daily and making sure your team does the same. This is a key strategy to attract and maintain a talented team when talent sometimes seems scarce. If you ask people early in their media careers how they chose their path, most will

say they wanted to make a difference. Team members, tenured and new, likely came in the door full of enthusiasm to do work that matters. When we stop pointing out their impact and reminding them of mission, their fire can die out. Station leaders have the power to rekindle that fire, making decisions that support it, and clarifying each person’s role in the team’s highest calling. 

Making It Better 

In Nashville, leaders talk about mission and impact during the hiring process, and keep it front and center in staff meetings and coaching conversations. Not coincidentally, the station’s rate of turnover is low with remarkable tenure in key positions.

No person or business gets it right all the time, but we share a basic desire to leave an imprint, to know we have made things better. When we align our strategies and teams around the importance of our contributions, we will tap into energy that improves our business performance, elevates our work and gives us strength. Nashville’s June Carter Cash was a famously strong woman. When people asked how she was doing, she often replied, “I’m just trying to matter.”

Same here, June. Same here. 

As the sun rises on 2024, a lot of light is shining on the future of sports and its relationship with broadcast television. For fans, things seem to be getting more complicated. Many games are only available through subscription, be it cable, satellite or a streamer. For the first time ever, most of the country had to pay to watch an NFL playoff game in January.

The immediate risk of going behind paywalls might not initially seem huge for some teams. Devoted fans are likely to follow their teams wherever they are — and the beat goes on … for now.

But where do the new fans come from? How does someone become a fan of something they can’t sample for free? What happens to franchises that are still in the process of establishing rabid fan bases?

And as of right now, streaming isn’t working for everyone — and that is going to impact the casual fan. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the NFL playoff game I mentioned earlier — Kansas City Chiefs vs. Miami Dolphins, streaming on Peacock — was the lowest-rated wild-card playoff game dating back to 1991-92.

Built by Broadcast

It’s important to remember the NFL wasn’t always the juggernaut it is now. There was a time it was firmly behind baseball and the product was — for quite a while — considered to be inferior to college football. The legend of the NFL’s growth dates to December 28, 1958, when Johnny Unitas led the Baltimore Colts to the NFL championship in a nationally televised game that changed the future of the league. A fan base — and the NFL’s legacy — was truly born that day. Less than a decade later, the Super Bowl existed and the marriage of broadcast TV to professional football was forged.  

Could that have happened behind a paywall? 

There are reasons for optimism for broadcast sports. Our sister Gray Television station in Phoenix is now showing Phoenix Suns and Mercury games over the air across the state. Here in Atlanta, we’re proud to be showing 10 Hawks games across our stations in early 2024 — returning the NBA team to WPCH, where it aired over 30 years ago. 

The reaction on social media when we announced this over the holidays was tremendous: “Awesome News!!” “That’s Outstanding.” “People should always be able to see some of their local teams’ games on TV, period.” “Awesome. About time.” 

It’s not just viewers who are excited. Our sales team is talking to new advertisers who want to be a part of live sports.

Live and Local

We’ve also launched the Peachtree Sports Network with the goal of sharing live sports all across Georgia — from pro basketball and hockey to lacrosse and the Ultimate Frisbee Association, as well as high school sports. The idea is to give fans the games they want but also to grow more fans — people who can watch a game for free, then watch another game, then another …

I grew up in a household of casual sports fans just interested enough to know who won each game in some sports, but certainly not watching nightly. Would I have become the crazy sports fan I am if I hadn’t watched football, baseball, basketball and hockey for free on broadcast television as a kid? Televised games on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and evenings were what did it.

At their best, sports bring the people in this country together. We root for our teams, buy the gear, read about them, watch and listen to shows that talk about them. In many cases, we even pay the taxes that help fund stadiums and arenas. All of that became possible once fans didn’t actually have to attend the games to be part of the action. From listening to reports of the World Series over the telegraph to the evolution into radio and television, mass broadcast created mass fan bases. 

Now, suddenly, we’re at a crossroads. Are sports going to remain something that everyone can be part of, or will they become private games played in publicly financed buildings available only to people willing to swipe their credit card?

The promise of rights fees may be alluring, but teams that go behind paywalls are  putting a ceiling on how big their businesses can be. In the end, no matter what someone is selling, if people don’t know what the product is, they’re just not going to buy it. 

A curious thing has evolved in the world of digital consumption. On one side, there’s the rapidly growing world of YouTube, a platform that has carved its niche with consumers globally. On the other side, connected TV (CTV) — anticipated to be the better successor to linear TV — is chugging along slowly. What gives?

A report by WARC Media a couple of months back shined a light on this slower-than-expected growth. While Generation Z fully embraces streaming, spending almost the same amount of time as on linear TV, the CTV market overall is fragmented. The potential of connected TV is vast, and the projections are certainly bullish. However, when stacked against YouTube, which is predicted to have 17.4% more ad revenue year-over-year in 2023, the comparison is a stark reminder of the different trajectories of these platforms.

YouTube has become a behemoth not just for the sheer volume of content it hosts, but also for the granularity with which advertisers can target audiences. YouTube has had years to understand, refine and perfect its advertising algorithms, and it shows. 

YouTube Shorts, and the bite-sized video content it provides for younger, shorter attention spans, is another advantage that CTV providers haven’t been able to match. If marketers have learned anything from the past 25 years of advertising on interactive platforms, it’s that the attention marketplace rewards shorter bites. The younger audiences and premium demographics so many marketers want to reach spend more time on TikTok than on Netflix, Prime Video and all other CTV platforms combined. As most parents of teens can attest, it’s rare for a teenager to sit through a 90-minute movie without simultaneously scrolling through social channels.

At any given time, roughly 50,000 campaign flights are active on YouTube. Most of them are paid for by credit card. YouTube simplifies the ad-buying process more effectively than any other platform. It aggregates a nearly infinite amount of video content while enabling marketers, even those as small as local supermarkets, to target messaging as narrowly as they’d like. If other CTV platforms want to build this sort of ease into their platforms for marketers, they might already be a decade behind. 

It’s Still Early Days

The CTV landscape is still in its infancy. Just 20 years ago, Netflix’s primary business was sending out DVDs in red envelopes — a practice it finally shuttered in September. What may seem archaic is actually pretty recent. 

Overall, the clarity with which brands can engage on platforms like YouTube is missing on CTV platforms. It's not just about scale, though that's certainly a factor. It's also about the nuance of delivery. When advertising on CTV, brands reach households, but what about individuals? Can the advertiser be sure which viewer is on the other side of that screen? 

The evolution from linear to CTV might not be the revolution many expected. But in advertising, where content appears matters most. While CTV promises mass reach, YouTube actually provides it while also offering context. For brands to navigate this landscape, they need to recognize the inherent strengths and limitations of the platforms. It’s not enough to know where the audience is. Advertisers need to know exactly who they are. 

Whether CTV can catch up to YouTube remains to be seen. Understanding and relevance will drive the future. 

The world of digital advertising is no stranger to debates and controversies. Consider YouTube's recent brush after an Adalytics report claimed adult ads are being served in kids’ content. Amidst the chatter, Google launched a counterstudy to shed more light on its technology. 

On the surface, all of this might seem like just another swipe at the tech giants. Given their size, many assume that companies like Google must be cutting corners, denying them the benefit of the doubt. And meanwhile, Google staffers are scratching their heads, asking, “Why are we suddenly the villains?”

But it also brings up a crucial, central question: Can — and more importantly, should — advertising on platforms like YouTube ever be fully automated? If not, where is the proper boundary between machine influence and human oversight?

The immense potential of machine learning is undeniable. We can now sift through vast data sets, identify patterns and target ads with incredible precision and speed. 

But precision doesn’t always translate to brand relevance or safety. Just because a machine can target an adult watching a children’s video doesn't mean it should. Context, after all, is king.

With controversies like the one we’ve seen with YouTube, we start to see some machine-learning pitfalls more clearly. Machines lack nuance. They can’t discern context the way humans can. For instance, while a program can recognize that a video is geared toward children, it’s pretty close to impossible for it to discern whether an adult is watching alongside them, leading to misplaced ads and wasted dollars. 

That said, here are some ways machine learning and process automation can add real value to YouTube advertising:

• Customizing Inclusion Lists: Brands want to ensure their content is running alongside the channels they approve. But with 51 million channels on YouTube, growing at year-over-year rates of over 35%, that's a heavy lift for a human. Enhanced toolsets here could refine advertiser control.
• Optimizing Campaigns: Machine learning can tailor optimization recommendations, enabling brands to hone their campaigns more effectively, so that they resonate better with target audiences.
• Pacing Budgets: It’s crucial to keep your ad spend on track. With the aid of automation, campaigns can better align their spending, ensuring they’re not overspending or underspending the allocated budget.

The value of automation becomes murkier when we move beyond these processes. While automation can manage a bid or predict a user’s next click, it can’t yet grasp the subtleties of human experience or the broader cultural context. We’ve seen machines falter when it comes to recognizing potentially harmful or inappropriate content. 

Remember when ads were routinely placed next to extremist content? Or the gun ads that kept getting past rules that supposedly prohibited them? Those were machine oversights. Targeting ads to kids? Another tech hiccup.

So where does this leave us? As in most areas, the future of YouTube advertising likely lies in a marriage between human and machine. That blend of human strategic expertise, honed through daily interaction with the platform, can provide insights and guidance that transcend basic metrics. Automation can handle the heavy lifting, but you need people to catch the nuances machines might miss. 

In the current landscape, relying too much on YouTube’s tools — or any single platform’s automation — isn’t just risky, it’s potentially reckless. The appetite for automation is growing, but so are the stakes. As the industry moves forward, brands and advertisers will have no choice but to recognize both strengths and limitations of automation — and adapt accordingly.

The reluctance of broadcasters to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is not without justification. A complex labyrinth of risks lies ahead, ranging from potential legal nightmares to perceived threats to product quality and the attendant danger to brand reputation. Resource challenges are also formidable. Moreover, a consumer base already skeptical of news organizations in general is suspicious of AI’s role in the newsroom.  

Consequently, many in the industry have only dipped their toes in the AI waters, while others have entirely sidestepped the revolution. This conservative approach is justifiable, but it cannot continue indefinitely. If local media organizations don’t move with haste to define how their human resources will optimize their performance with AI, AI will define how their human resources are optimized.

Keeping Ahead of the Curve Is Vital

The impact of AI on businesses, as various studies have prognosticated, will be immense, precipitating widescale economic disruption and job displacement. But broadcasters need not concern themselves with these projections. A quick look at the landscape today without even considering technology makes it easy to see: Stations are already smaller than in the past and getting smaller. Without significant innovation, industry dynamics will continue to put pressure on costs and resources, whether AI becomes a part of the operating model or not. So why not invest in defining and using tailored, customized solutions that can dramatically increase efficiency and product quality?

The customization process will be time-consuming and labor-intensive, which lends urgency to broadcasters’ need to adopt AI in meaningful, strategic ways. The goal here is not a race to see who can use AI solutions like ChatGPT or Bard fastest in their newsrooms. For all the bluster about the capabilities of these Large Language Models (LLMs), they’re really not that smart out of the box. They’re not sentient. They can’t think. They fill in blanks similar to the text completion you use every day on your smartphones and tablets, albeit in a much more sophisticated manner.

The public has also discerned the limitations of AI. After a mad rush to OpenAI’s ChatGPT made it the fastest-adopted technology in human history, visits fell off as users wondered, “What do I actually do with this?”

AI can’t answer that question. Humans need to answer that question and then be meticulous about how their tools are trained, what data and inputs inform the desired outputs, and how they will interact with it to achieve the efficiency and quality nirvana that is so often touted. As the adage goes:  garbage in, garbage out. This has never been truer than with AI. Broadcasters will need to be intentional and disciplined while using customized tools, or the effort won’t add up to much more than headaches.

The flip side to the challenging customization process is massive potential. AI could help journalists, salespeople, leaders and others significantly enhance their businesses without adding to a sea of sameness, opening the door to legal liability, or adversely impacting brands. 

Wordsmiths Hold an Advantage

In fact, the need to direct AI tools and technology in refined ways may actually put broadcasters in an enviable position, given their skill in communicating. Whereas directing technology used to strictly be the domain of programmers, the natural language basis of AI gives an advantage to those — like journalists — who are good with words.

According to Magid research, an increase in AI literacy results in greater consumer acceptance and enthusiasm towards AI utilization in journalism. Broadcasters would undoubtedly benefit from embracing this sentiment.

Implementing such sweeping changes will indeed be a challenging task, redefining skill sets, resources and tools within local stations. However, with proactive planning and steadfast determination, broadcasters could herald a new era of relevance and prosperity via AI integration. 

Business careers don’t always go as planned. Including in show business.

But when they so go well — as they have for the 15 media leaders we salute here as Wonder Women of New York and for Woman of Influence Margaret Brennan — they can teach many lessons. 

Scanning the Wonder Women profiles gathered here, some themes are familiar.

TV can be a great career, although not everyone is cut out to anchor the evening news like Katie Couric, which was Suzanne Sullivan of Fox’s dream (that or becoming an architect). Instead, like Sullivan, you might find out your superpower is keeping the news anchors on the air by successfully selling ads. 

Media careers can help women help society, as AMC’s Marnie Black discovered early on at MTV, working on civil rights and sexual health campaigns, and as Charter’s Sharon Peters has learned through company programs like Spectrum Internet Assist. Black noted that “Judy McGrath, who was chairman of MTV, used to say we had an obligation to use our superpowers for good.” And Peters said, “I love to work on projects where you feel like you are helping people get what they need.” 

Many Multichannel News Wonder Women have persevered through mergers and acquisitions, followed by cutbacks and reorganizations. That can put a strain on any leader — but the ones who help their organization find their way through can really earn their co-workers’ respect (as TCM’s Pola Changnon has done). 

I interviewed both Changnon and Telemundo’s Karen Barroeta and came away impressed that both moved up to important new roles at their companies in early 2020, right about the time employment for so many changed to working from home. If you can make it as a leader in those circumstances, you can make it anywhere. 

What you read here is only a fraction of what these Wonder Women of New York have accomplished. It’s also just the beginning of what they have to tell us. More will be revealed at the celebration of their award, on Thursday, March 23, at the fabulous Ziegfeld Ballroom in Manhattan. The inside stories of their skill and longevity await that coming-out party.

In the meantime, take a lesson in self-confidence from TV One’s Rori Peters (“I’m stubborn. I say, I know I can do this, fix a problem, change someone’s mind”) and in self-belief from A+E’s Michelle Strong (“I wish I knew then all the wonderful things I know now about perseverance and not listening to people that crush your dreams and how you should keep going on with that passion”). 

Wonder Women have learned much, and have much to pass along. ▪️

Chicken Little alarms were recently voiced in the U.S. Supreme Court that eliminating or narrowing the immunity from suit social media platforms enjoy for third-party postings under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act would cause the sky to fall on their operations. Based on oral arguments held on February 21 and 22, the twin cases, Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh, are likely to leave the blanket immunity for social media behemoths completely or virtually undisturbed. 

What’s wrong with this picture?

I am a small business owner of broadcast properties valued at a miniscule fraction of Google’s $1.16 trillion current capitalization or Twitter’s $41 billion. Yet I have no liability immunity for defamations broadcast on my programs or properties. Ditto for newspapers or other social-media competitors. We buy libel insurance. Why can’t Google and Twitter do the same? Why should these giants be given a leg up under Section 230? Isn’t that like giving Secretariat a head start over competitors at the Kentucky Derby in 1973?

Section 230 was passed in 1996 when social media was in its infancy. It was speculated that without legal immunity from defamation, invasion of privacy, or related tort claims for third-party postings on their digital platforms, social media companies would capsize into bankruptcy.  But no proof or logic was forthcoming. It was a postulate without proof either then or in the ensuing 27 years.

The relevant text reads as follows:

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as a publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

In contrast, newspapers, broadcasters, cable companies and satellite transmitters are subject to liability for content provided by third parties. But the law, liability insurance and the practicalities of litigation provide formidable defenses that adequately protect against adverse judgments or insolvency leaving a wide margin for free speech. None of these industries have become insolvent from tort liability.

The Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) and its progeny has erected virtually insurmountable First Amendment barriers to successfully suing public officials or public figures for defamation, invasion of privacy or similar speech. A plaintiff must shoulder the burden of proving, by clear and convincing evidence, that the defendant published a false statement of fact with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard of whether it was true or not. Opinions are completely off-limits. And simple negligence in publishing a falsehood does not trigger liability. The defendant must be shown to have entertained a conscious awareness that the allegedly offensive publication contained a defamatory fact.

Moreover, defamation damages must be proven. But loss of reputation characteristically finds expression in business that never surfaces. Proving such a negative is commonly insurmountable.

Even more important, plaintiffs are ordinarily reluctant to sue to avoid providing a free and ruinous judicial platform for further distribution of the defamatory falsehood. Defamation suits are customarily costly and lengthy because proving the state of mind of the publisher and the reputation of the plaintiff is complex. A plaintiff’s entire life, warts, skeletons and all, are fair game in discovery. Unless you’re a saint, a defamation lawsuit may further ruin your brand. Thus, President Franklin Roosevelt persuaded his chief emissary Harry Hopkins to refrain from suing the Chicago Tribune for a story likening him to Rasputin, villainous courier to Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra. 

It is unsurprising that successful defamation or invasion of privacy suits against traditional media are extremely rare, like unicorns. Even a wealthy plaintiff like Sarah Palin was crushed in her defamation suit against The New York Times in Palin v. New York Times Company (2020).

Even before the constitutional protections of New York Times v. Sullivan and its progeny were inaugurated, tort liability judgments against traditional media were few and far between. Take investigative journalist Drew Pearson, whose “The Washington Merry-Go-Round” appeared daily from 1932 to 1969. He won 119 of 120 libel cases. None deterred his muckraking columns as chronicled in Donald Ritchey’s Leaks, Lies, and Libel in Drew Pearson’s Washington.

Repeal of Section 230 would still leave social media platforms with the thick layers of constitutional protections enjoyed by traditional media that have safeguarded free speech, viewpoint diversity, and aggressive scrutiny of government. Even if the section was plausibly justified at birth 27 years ago because social media was embryonic, it is as obsolete today as the horse and buggy. Repeal will not cause the sky to fall. It would create an even playing field with social media giants still inheriting a competitive advantage from the twenty-seven years of liability immunity they have already enjoyed under section 230. I would wager that if the section were repealed, the impact on the stock prices of Twitter, Facebook and Google or their parent companies would be tiny. To believe otherwise is to believe Chicken Little. ■

Free ad-supported TV (FAST) is quickly moving from fringe to mainstream in the race to displace traditional cable with over-the-top (OTT) and connected TV (CTV) services, and with good reason: consumers will not pay for all their TV content.

Today, FAST provides a familiar linear viewing experience for consumers while enabling rightsholders to more widely distribute content and unlock increased ad revenue opportunities. Many rightsholders utilize FAST as a cost-effective way to maximize audience reach by monetizing a relevant part of their catalog content. For advertisers, the growing streaming model is equally as enticing, providing them with a highly targeted way to reach viewers at scale.

FAST viewership hours more than doubled in 2021. Fueled by an influx of new premium content, growing audiences and fresh advertising dollars, the FAST market in the United States is poised to reach 216 million monthly active users in 2023, according to a study from nScreenMedia. 

\With 92% of U.S. households reachable via CTV open programmatic advertising, CTV is a scarce and coveted ad positioning for advertisers in the marketplace today. According to a 2022 CTV/OTT Advertiser Study from Advertiser Perceptions and Premion, 25% of respondents called CTV/OTT the most valuable media type in 2021, and 84% said the inventory is at least as valuable as primetime TV. As such, CTV ad spend is expected to increase by 22% in 2022.

It’s important that content owners and rightsholders be strategic in growing their FAST business so they can fully capitalize on the platform’s benefits and increase their value to advertisers. Here are three prongs to a successful FAST plan of action:

1.) Clearly define your content strategy. Be strategic about the content package you offer viewers on FAST services. Why this content, why in FAST? If you’re a sports league, for example, at this current moment it’s likely not smart to put your top-tier live games on FAST, but you can strategize about how to leverage catalog content to create a compelling consumer experience in a linear format.

2.) Promote discoverability. FAST channels don’t adhere to the “if you build it, they will come” ideology. Driving viewers to your FAST channel is a deal-making and marketing challenge. Be thoughtful about how you’re working with FAST service partners to get promotion and valuable placement on the screen and within their programming guide. You should also be leveraging your own channels, such as social media, to alert your audience about your FAST offerings. If you don’t focus on building an audience across your FAST ecosystem, you won’t.

3.) If you haven’t already, get involved now. FAST in its current state is reminiscent of the early days of YouTube; right now, there’s still tremendous opportunity to build your audience and establish your brand without competition from all angles. In the next 12 to 18 months, content owners and rightsholders should have a strategy to incorporate FAST into their media mix alongside social, licensing, and OTT plays. With seismic shifts expected in the FAST arena in the next 24 months, content owners joining the game too late could face limited FAST inventory and end up at the mercy of FAST platforms’ requests for content rather than driving their own channel placement and scheduling.

The Future of FAST

The TV ecosystem is undergoing unprecedented change. Will the future of TV consist of a combination of FAST services, a few bespoke SVOD/AVOD apps, and aggregation/bundled services? Perhaps. It’s likely to somewhat resemble what we have today, albeit in a more convenient content delivery method. As with any entertainment model transitioning from fringe to mainstream, it takes the big content owners and rights holders to come in and cement that model’s viability and positioning in the marketplace. We are seeing this happen very quickly with FAST.

As FAST offerings continue to increase their share of entertainment time, rights holders will flock to engage viewers with not just catalog material but, increasingly, fresh, premium content. It’s possible we’ll start to see top-tier content like live sports games on FAST channels, akin to a free-to-air partner today, in the not-so-distant future. For rightsholders and advertisers alike, FAST is ripe with opportunity and worth exploring as a key part of your direct-to-consumer business. ■

I found myself in a classic “chicken or the egg” TV industry debate at a recent business dinner. 

The conversation centered on whether the internet and connected TV led to innovations in television or whether the massive revenue increases from advanced TV advertising led to investments in innovations like CTV, streaming and a move toward digital-first distribution. 

How the bits make it from point A to point B on a screen doesn’t matter, whether it’s a set-top box, tablet or mobile phone. Under the hood, CTV is still just television that happens to be delivered over IP. And FAST? Besides a cool-sounding acronym, free ad-supported television is still the traditional broadcast model. I don’t pay to watch CBS broadcast TV free over the air — advertisers do! 

Somebody at the dinner table pushed this starry-eyed view: “You don’t need standards in CTV.” 

On the contrary. To build any kind of industry, you must eventually have standardization. Every growing sector has two choices: 1) you standardize and have an industry or 2) you don’t standardize, and you have a monopoly or, worse, an ad hoc conglomerate. 

I know about this cycle. My own company was one-half of an addressable advertising tech duopoly and we’ve now grown as much as we can in the U.S. We must now work to standardize and build an industry so that we can work with the other partners in the space to grow it. That’s the only way forward.  

The entire television industry is based on this classic business arc. RCA was once an early example of vertical integration, owning content creation via NBC, transmission through station-group ownership and manufacturing, making cameras and television sets. When the move to color was happening, the Federal Communications Commission held a competition and RCA’s NTSC lost to the Color Wheel developed and backed by CBS. When RCA threatened to go its own way due to its market dominance, the FCC reversed course and adopted NTSC as the “standard.” 

Program-guide software in cable television is another example. The guide technology was held by a single company that charged exorbitant fees and became a roadblock to new technologies that cable operators wanted to deploy. The solution? A major cable operator invested heavily in developing its own hardware platform and software stack, effectively putting the guide company out of business and commoditizing the set-top box industry at the same time.  Another monopoly tumbled. 

Free markets abhor monopolies. They’ll put up with them for a little while but eventually everybody hates paying the freight because monopolies can charge whatever they want and stifle innovation. At some point, someone will break in and disrupt your model just to steal market share because monopolies are unstable.  

CTV and FAST may be today’s dangling shiny objects to many in the industry but they did not magically appear overnight. They both followed the classic monopoly-to-standardization pattern that started with the internet’s birth in the ’60s. The internet was a Defense Department and university monopoly until the creation of the Ethernet protocol and HTML as its everyday language, standards that allowed everyone to participate, not just a privileged few.  

The tech monoliths have created their own monopolies by building impenetrable silos for advertisers, but even those are slowly starting to crumble.  

Google’s ad monopoly started being chipped away the second the IAB and major advertisers banded together to create header bidding and threw pebbles into the Google Ad Manager gears. Suddenly, the playing field was leveled, and Google was forced to work with companies they never had to before, pushing it toward transparency and universal standards. 

Meta’s time is certainly going to come. It offers a platform to create campaigns that can exist only on its own network and nowhere else.  

Still, marketers believe they have to spend money with them. There are too many users there and they can’t afford to ignore them. 

In the short term, Facebook will continue to attract advertising dollars But in the long run, like many other content companies, its walled strategy will become a loser and it will have to conform with standards just like Google.  

The tide is turning against Facebook on two fronts:  Advertisers are tiring of making endless calls to multiple ad tech ecosystems to reach their desired audiences, especially when they want to know exactly what they are getting in return for their investment and added work.  

At the same time, Facebook’s prime demographic is moving out of the age group that advertisers really care about, pushing the company into an identity crisis, even trying to make themselves look like TikTok. Parent company Meta’s stock price spent much of 2022 beaten down on weak earnings, and their metaverse strategy is looking like a very expensive albatross. 

We may be seeing the writing on the wall that being a monopoly forever is not in the cards for many technology-driven brands, including those in television. 

Make no mistake: CTV is here to stay and there are lucrative businesses to be built around it. They may seem sexy as the new shiny tech gadgets. Taking pages from the Google and Facebook playbook, they’ve built up many silos and we have seen how those monopoly cycles eventually fail. Expect chaos in the short term as competing technologies ultimately create a stable business ecosystem. 

However, the hockey stick of growth will not come for CTV until everything works the same way when standards are in place, even if it is “the Wild West of the internet.” ■ 

Television has changed a lot over the past 30 years. Our nation’s TV laws have not.

October 5, 2022, marks the 30th anniversary of the 1992 Cable Act, and American consumers continue to pay the price for these outdated regulations still on the books.

Just as the 2020s are an era of transformational change, so were the early 1990s. The Hubble Space Telescope launched, the World Wide Web debuted, the Soviet Union fell, and the United States elected a new president with fresh ideas and a new approach. And Congress enacted new cable legislation.  The goal at the time was admirable — Congress wanted to protect consumers and promote localism. But what remains today of this outdated law does neither.

The Cable Act established retransmission consent fees or “retrans fees,” which are payments that TV providers make to local broadcasters to carry their TV channels. When broadcasters lobbied Congress to create retransmission consent, they told Congress the fees would cultivate localism and help local affiliates. Today, however, those fees mostly flow to network conglomerates and satisfy ever-increasing Wall Street demands.

• Today, the “Big Four” national broadcast networks have largely seized their local affiliates’ control over retransmission consent decisions. They often dictate the terms under which consent can be granted and demand a huge cut of the stations’ retrans fees — called reverse retrans.
• Retrans fees represent the fastest-rising portion of consumer pay TV bills. Over the last 30 years, big broadcast conglomerates have collected more than $74 billion in retrans fees.
• On recent earnings calls, broadcasters have trumpeted the success of their retrans cash hauls. America’s largest broadcast company, Nexstar Media Group, is twice the size of its nearest competitor and reported $4.6 billion in 2021 revenue — 52% of which is from retrans fees. Standard General and Tegna together reported $1.38 billion in retransmission fees from their 2021 revenue sum of $2.7 billion. Gray Television’s retrans revenue topped $1 billion in 2021, reporting total revenues of $2.6 billion. An increasing amount of these fees are going to hedge funds like Apollo Global Management and Standard General, who buy broadcast stations to collect these fees. 

Worse yet, if pay TV subscribers do not concede to these demands for higher fees, broadcast conglomerates pull their signals — again, something the broadcasters promised would never happen back in 1992. This leaves the pay TV provider a choice: to either pay up or go dark. Either way, consumers lose with increased prices or by suffering through broadcaster blackouts.

Retrans blackouts are near epidemic levels, with consumers enduring more than 1,500 blackouts since 2010. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when consumers needed access to local news and information the most, there were more than 350 broadcaster blackouts — a record for a single year — affecting tens of millions of pay TV viewers. Broadcasters continuously weaponize TV blackouts, deliberately targeting live sports and other must-see TV, blacking out the Super Bowl, NFL and college football postseason games, the World Series, the Grammys, and network TV premieres. When blackouts finally end, consumers get their programming back, often at a higher cost.

As often happens when regulating any industry, it’s difficult to predict its future. In 1992, Congress couldn’t have envisioned the creation of Netflix or YouTube — or foresee watching TV on a cell phone or tablet. Congress couldn’t understand how this new framework would eventually fail consumers.

Today, we live in an instant, on-demand digital world. Consumers have unparalleled choice and competition for video content. The market has changed. Retrans is broken. The American Television Alliance looks forward to working with members of Congress to pass video marketplace reform that benefits consumers.

It’s time to modernize the rules that favor broadcasters at the expense of consumers. It’s time to bring America’s television laws into the 21st century. ▪️

The way Americans get their news has undergone a revolution in the past two decades. This transition is not slowing; it is accelerating, with significant implications for civic engagement and public discourse. At the local level, hundreds of daily and weekly newspapers have vanished, decimated by a media ecosystem that has migrated from print to online. The void created by the challenges to print publications, however, has created a huge opportunity for local television stations to be relevant to the daily lives of Americans by bringing them not only the news of the day but also buttressing the accountability of public and private institutions.

Since 2004, an astonishing 1,800 newspapers have shuttered, including more than 60 dailies and 1,700 weeklies, according to the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina. The number of print readers has declined even more precipitously, as publishers shrink their publications and scale back on distribution, particularly in rural areas. 

Also: Unions Try to Block Tegna-Standard General Deal

The relentless decline of local print media does not mean people no longer want news. They continue to care about local weather, traffic, and sports of course. News consumers remain focused on how local officials are spending their tax dollars, along with zoning, development, regulatory issues and shifts in the cultural and political environment. Video news is more essential than ever. The question is how to deliver this information.  That is where local broadcast news comes into play, filling a vital vacuum in communities and cities across the United States. 

In 2011, the Federal Communications Commission issued a report that essentially called on broadcast media to fill the void left by the hollowing out of local print journalism. As newspapers struggle to stay in publication, many local TV stations have found success by delivering quality local news and other content. By 2017, local and regional television stations were employing more journalists than newspapers

There is an essential convergence between the need for robust and probing journalism in America today and the role that local television can play in helping to achieve this goal.

Strengthening American democracy nationally depends on more engaged and informed citizens at the local level. Too often, digital media, including digital editions of local newspapers, simply aggregate wire service stories and deploy editorial content which reflects the polarizing national political debates we see on cable news and on social media platforms. Moreover, misinformation runs rampant on social platforms, often leaving both objectivity and accuracy on the cutting room floor. The bottom line: In today’s media environment, there are fewer credible options for consumers to turn to for their news.

Broadcast Can Lead a Resurgence

Local broadcast news can fill this void, and lead the way toward a resurgence of independent American journalism. Many important local policy matters dealing with education, transportation, and public works are not inherently partisan. Honest reporting can be the catalyst for restoring trust among citizens and enable more responsive and effective governance.

Also: Standard Media CEO Deb McDermott Tells Tegna Staff News Jobs Won’t Be Cut

I believe in the power, value, and purpose of local news. In February, Standard General announced its purchase of Tegna, which currently owns stations across 51 media markets. The new company will be a leader in preserving and enhancing community news, investing in newsrooms and programming targeted to local audiences, and adapting in a rapidly changing technical and competitive environment. We have made good on our commitments before, making significant capital contributions in our previous local broadcasting investments that spanned over 70 stations at Young Broadcasting, LIN Media and Media General, and currently Community News Media. Local management makes stations more responsive to the communities they serve, as does understanding the nuances of each market to determine what is uniquely needed to chart the best path to each station’s growth.

As local newspapers disappear, the lack of reliable information poses a risk to our already fragile civic life. Local television stations, bolstered by investments in technology, people, and substantive reporting on issues that matter to consumers represent possible green shoots in news deserts across the country. 

The future of an informed electorate and engaged communities is paved by investment in and commitments to diverse, local journalism. ■

Because we live in an increasingly divisive world, it is more important than ever before to disagree agreeably. That is the only way to achieve the best solutions. Unfortunately, when it comes to President Biden’s nomination of Gigi Sohn to the Federal Communications Commission, disagreements over policy have turned personal and political, far removed from disagreements over public policy.

Claims that Gigi Sohn would “actively deter minority media ownership” are fundamentally false. I have worked with Gigi for many years and she has been a champion for diversity in media ownership and tech before, during and after that time, including as a top adviser to chairman Tom Wheeler. She also worked long and hard with me and within the Federal Communications Commission to address the outrageous and excessive prison phone rates that regularly harm so many communities of color. 

I am not alone in my support for Gigi. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights led a coalition of some 25 civil rights and civil liberties organizations in a joint letter saying that “throughout her career, Ms. Sohn has dedicated herself to the public interest.” The groups pointed to her long-time “advocacy for policies that promote diversity and competition.” 

“She will establish a collaborative process and dialogue with the civil rights community, as well as consult with the community members who are often left out of commission deliberations,” they said, and they also recognize that she would make history as the FCC’s first openly LGBTQ commissioner. 

Gigi’s support of strong policies prohibiting discrimination by internet services providers should be praised, and not belittled. Her opposition to media and telecommunications consolidation and any evasion of media ownership rules that provide fewer, not more, opportunities for minority ownership should be commended, and not ridiculed. It defies reason that Gigi’s support of competition and greater entry into the media and telecommunications industry by those traditionally shut out would be labeled as “anti-business.” Throughout her entire career, Gigi has helped underrepresented voices in industry gain access to communications platforms, be they broadcasting, cable or the internet. This isn’t “anti-business,” it’s pro-competition, pro-inclusion, and pro-opportunity. 

Also: Gigi Sohn’s Confirmation to the FCC Will Undermine Minority Media Growth and Achievement

Often overlooked is Gigi’s leadership in hiring and promoting people of color into the field of communications policy. When she left Public Knowledge in 2013, nearly one-third of the staff were people of color. She brought two of those people to the Federal Communications Commission and another staffer of color is now the successful CEO of Public Knowledge. I expect that if confirmed, her staff at the FCC will be similarly diverse.

Have Gigi and I agreed on every issue? The answer is a thunderous no. But like you, I pick my friends and stay loyal to my family not because we see eye to eye on every single issue, but because we believe in many of the same things.

The Multicultural Media and Telecom and Internet Council said it best: “Gigi is a leading public advocate for open, affordable and democratic communications networks” and the Senate should confirm her without delay.

And on that, we should all agree.

When I wonder about our country’s direction, I often think back to my family’s story. My father was a South Carolina farmer, and over the course of just a single generation, his son was able to graduate from the family farm and become a writer, public thinker, content creator, and owner of one of the country’s largest minority broadcast companies.

It’s become a bit of a cliché to say that such stories can “only happen in America” — but that’s because the idea rings powerfully true, for generation after generation. The Left persists in telling the public that systemic barriers in this country hold everyone back, but its narrative willfully ignores the only-in-America type stories like those of my family’s and so many others.

I was reminded of this when I learned that Gigi Sohn was being nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as one of five FCC commissioners. The reason for my concern: Sohn believes in and advocates for policies that would make stories like my own increasingly rare in our country. Her policy preferences would actively deter minority media ownership and depress the investment in broadcasting needed to elevate minority voices — and she should not be confirmed to the FCC.

Also: Gigi Sohn’s Years of Support for Inclusion Deserve Confirmation 

My company, Howard Stirk Holdings (HSH), is one of only two African-American commercial television station licensee enterprises in the United States today. I have seen just how hard it is to grow and build HSH, and I do not want an FCC nominee to saddle the industry with unnecessary, harmful regulations.

Sohn’s positions would limit opportunities for minorities to thrive in the media industry. Sohn and the organization she co-founded and ran as CEO from 2001 to 2013, Public Knowledge, advocated restricting the growth of television and radio companies at all costs—even if it upends the hard-fought gains that minority content creators have made. 

For instance, Public Knowledge opposes joint sales agreements that enable minority broadcasters to benefit from the better-resourced and more well-established advertising infrastructure of larger broadcasters. While at the FCC, Sohn worked to restrict “sidecars,” an arrangement that helps minority and up-and-coming broadcasters manage the significant costs of operating a station by sharing resources with larger companies. 

When a chorus of content creators sounded the alarm on Sohn’s plan to allow Big Tech companies like Google to effectively steal minority content—by monetizing it without paying licensing fees—she simply ignored those concerns and forged ahead. In doing so, she added to the noxious history of minority labor bearing fruit for everyone other than the creators themselves. (Importantly, Sohn was only stopped in this effort when another FCC commissioner, Jessica Rosenworcel, took the time to understand the issue and wisely refused to support the plan, denying it the votes it needed to proceed.)

In both her policy positions and rhetoric, Sohn has demonstrated a lack of understanding and appreciation for minority voices. Time and again, Sohn has been dismissive—and borderline insulting—when discussing the policy positions of diversity and civil rights-oriented groups including the Congressional Black Caucus.

Consider, for instance, an episode in 2009, when Blue Dog Democrats and the Congressional Black Caucus took a more moderate position on net neutrality than Sohn. Rather than understand their concerns, she resorted to accusing these groups of betraying Americans and being bamboozled by the telecommunications industry. 

In 2010, amid a debate about the proposed acquisition of T-Mobile by AT&T, Sohn’s head of communications at Public Knowledge stated that “the saddest part of the whole affair to date is the role of groups representing minority populations. For whatever reason–whether they believe what the Big Telecom companies tell them or not–many organizations seem to land on policies that hurt their constituencies and fall into ludicrous traps one suspects are not of their making. Despite the fact that minorities would be the most impacted by the transaction representing 46% of the workforce of AT&T and 60% of T-Mobile’s.”

Note the patronizing implication: If you disagree with Sohn and her organization, you have been swindled. You have been misled. You are gullible. Sohn regularly and casually deployed this sort of rhetoric toward minority and civil rights organizations who do not fall in lockstep with her.

It’s one thing to have such a person running a non-profit organization on the fringes of the debate; it’s quite another to have such a person at the FCC, as one of five people determining the future of the airwaves. As a minority media owner, I am flabbergasted that the Biden administration would move forward with such a person.

Time and again, Sohn has prioritized an anti-business ideology over the practical realities of what it takes for minorities to succeed in this industry. The FCC ought to be led by people who encourage minority media ownership, support those at the margins, and encourage private sector growth and development. At a minimum, FCC commissioners should communicate in a tone that implies respect and the acknowledgment of honest disagreements—not someone who implies that those who disagree with her are too ignorant to participate in the debate.

The solution here is obvious: the Biden administration ought to withdraw Sohn’s nomination with haste. Failing that, the Senate must stand up and reject a nominee that undermines everything that I and so many others have fought for over the years. ■ 

We’ve seen this movie before — three times.

In the early 1990s, cable positively disrupted the television industry by rapidly developing and deploying video delivery standards and technology at scale. Almost overnight, new digital TV networks and customer premises equipment enabled hundreds of channels to be delivered across America and around the world — where only 10 or fewer channels had been available.

Then in 1997, cable operators disrupted another well-established industry — telecommunications — and created the DOCSIS multimedia Internet delivery standard. The resulting products outperformed dial-up and nonstandard cable modems to launch a new realm of always-on high-speed internet connectivity that made us leaders in the business of broadband. 

Again in 1999, cable disrupted the landline telephone phone industry with the DOCSIS 1.1 standard. The triple-play bundle of digital TV, internet and telephone reigned supreme. Cable soon became the dominant global provider of residential and small business phone service, beating incumbent telcos at their own game. Penetrations of cable modems and cable phone service skyrocketed and in record time, more than 2 billion modems were produced, revolutionizing how we live, work, love and play all around the globe.

Today another established industry — electricity — would benefit from cable disruption. With overall energy costs doubling and grid power outages increasing nearly 800% in the last 20 years, rapid deployment of newly developed Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) standards and technology can raise the resiliency and efficiency of the grid, contain costs, create new revenue streams and accelerate the safe transition to renewable energy sources. The standards enable a new lucrative triple play in modernizing the grid by providing optimization of electric load shaping, sensing and forecasting.

Severe weather has resulted in more frequent and catastrophic grid outages that, when combined with an aging power infrastructure, lessen reliability and raise electricity costs. The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post are filled with stories on the inabilities of the antiquated and increasingly failing electric power grid. Ivan Penn headlined the problem in The New York Times as “Old Power Gear Is Slowing Use of Clean Energy and Electric Cars.”

Extremely hot and cold temperatures created unprecedented and unmeetable demands for electricity during the western North America heat wave over the summer and during the February Texas power crisis. Severe storms are ever-more-effective battering rams that destroy grid infrastructure, as seen in August during Hurricane Ida in New Orleans.

In addition, the grid suffers from inefficiencies that are so extreme that only one-third of the energy from burning coal and natural gas is converted to electricity — the rest is rejected into our environment as waste heat. Along with transportation, power plants are responsible for nearly two-thirds of all anthropogenic heat and carbon emissions. Two-thirds! Furthermore, the process of boiling water to make electricity is so inefficient that steam power plants are the No. 1 consumers of water, using nearly half of fresh surface-water withdrawals — more than agriculture.

Efficiency Is Crucial

It is posited that the only way to reduce severe weather is to cut carbon emissions drastically. If this is true, then power plants are our most severe existential threat — human survival depends on rapidly decommissioning the most inefficient generators. These should be replaced by energy-efficiency measures in homes, and businesses along with managing distributed storage of renewable energy sources like wind, solar and other forms of clean power. In 2020 in the United States, of all energy used, a mere 5% came from wind, solar, and geothermal power and 3% came from hydro power. 

Cable can accelerate the use of renewables from hobby status to mainstream. In 2021, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the SCTE developed the ANSI/SCTE 267 2021 standard, Optimum Load Shaping of Electric Vehicle and Battery Charging. SCTE 267 allows cable operators to cut electric bills and create new revenue opportunities by reversing the traditional electricity supply-follows-demand relationship first popularized by Thomas Edison.

It may be hard to imagine that flipping a light switch results in a thimbleful of coal being thrown on an already gigantic fire at a power plant, but such is life. Just as Edison did in 1882, utilities today add more fuel to the fire to increase the output of central station generators to meet increasing electrical demand.

To instead ensure that electricity demand follows supply, SCTE 267 enables cable operators, other businesses and residences to modulate and time-shift electric loads to maximize the use of renewable energy and the efficiency of power plants — and minimize congestion in the last mile of the grid. Building energy management applications that are compliant with SCTE 267 will be increasingly important to ensure safe, reliable and low-cost electric power.

Following the Cable Network‘s Lead

Much of the cable industry’s expertise, developed while transitioning our network from one-way to two-way with content creation and storage at the edge, is directly applicable to transitioning the grid to have energy production and storage at the edge. Solar energy produced at homes and business is wasted, if not transferred immediately to the grid, used locally or stored for future use. But how much power can the grid absorb and distribute before congestion results in overheating of wires and transformers, causing more catastrophic outages and wildfires? The grid does not know because it is sensor-starved — but cable knows. Like canaries accompanying coal miners, the broadband network follows the grid’s secondary distribution network everywhere it goes — and provides early warning signs of grid issues. 

With the SCTE 267 and 271 standards, the bases are loaded and energy is at bat. It’s time for cable’s grand slam. While the cable industry continues to make advances in traffic engineering and capacity planning to calculate how many cable modems, 4K, and 8K streams can be supported in a serving area, it’s time to broaden its reach to the 3,400-plus U.S. utilities. They’re almost completely in the dark in measuring grid utilization and can use broadband to actively manage the load on the grid and maximize rooftop solar and EV chargers at hundreds of millions of grid interconnections. Let’s do this!

Today’s entertainment consumer has more choice — and more power — than ever before. 

Customers are jumping from one service to another, from AVOD (ad-supported video-on-demand) to SVOD (subscription VOD) to TVOD (transactional VOD), depending on which offer best suits their needs at that particular time. Churn is an issue and minimizing and mitigating it is more realistic than eliminating it. An active approach to customer-relationship management can curtail it and keep the customer under a larger company umbrella. By quickly developing a number of flexible options — in terms of both product and monetization — content providers can keep customers in the fold and reduce foreboding churn rates.

How to Meet the Customer Where They Are

The days of the aggressive cable-TV representative are over. To improve customer retention, content providers must deploy a nuanced, personalized approach that aims to meet the customer where they are. Here are four strategies that can lead to decreased cancellation rates and improved customer loyalty:

• Constant offers and promotions: Sales events and unique offers, previously a seasonal occasion for content providers, should now take place on a routine basis. Content providers must take advantage of the data and digital tools at their disposal, designing campaigns and experimenting with A/B testing to determine which promotions are most effective in boosting retention. 

• Flexible monetization strategies: Not every customer will want to maintain a video subscription indefinitely. Rather than lose that customer to a competitor, one content provider should offer multiple monetization strategies, allowing a subscriber to switch seamlessly to AVOD or TVOD without losing their business entirely. 

• Expanded payment options: A successful content provider will make it as easy as possible for a customer to pay for their service. In today’s sales environment, that means accommodating as many payment options as possible. Beyond standard credit and debit cards, content providers should consider adding online services such as PayPal, or even emerging payment methods like cryptocurrencies. 

• Innovative events and opportunities: The streaming video service of tomorrow doesn’t have to look like the service of today. New event formats can engage customers with enticing content and keep them coming back in search of new experiences. Over the past year, some content providers have experimented with a festival format, offering one-show, one-day or multi-day tickets to a package of premium content. Devising creative bundles and one-time opportunities will cause the customer to view a specific service as more exclusive than others, a vital consideration when it comes time to trim down the number of subscriptions. 

The consumer video experience continues to evolve rapidly, and without agility and an appetite for change, content providers will risk falling further and further behind. Active customer management will maximize lifetime value, boost brand loyalty, and keep a popular service top of mind amid a sea of competitors.

 The pandemic has changed everything — the way we socialize, celebrate, communicate and how we work. 

In the content and connectivity industry, the challenge was twofold: to quickly equip a remote workforce and ensure that people worldwide stayed connected. Proudly, the industry rose to the challenge, exhibiting agility and innovation in a time of crisis. But now that seas are starting to calm, what will organizations continue to do to ride the wave of change?

I talked to industry learning and development experts Diana Monk, VP of learning solutions at Charter Communications; Martha Soehren, former chief talent development officer at Comcast and current executive development adviser and coach; and Allyson Crawford, VP of talent management at WOW! Internet, Cable & Phone, so they could share their thoughts on how the pandemic has changed workplace practices, behaviors and culture. 

Spoiler alert: Even change caused by a global crisis can create opportunities for the future.

Trust, Freedom Speed Innovation  

While most organizations like to say they grant their employees the freedom to innovate, this principle wasn’t really tested until the pandemic caused a sudden and dramatic shift in the way people work. Leaders had no choice but to allow people at all levels to do what they needed to do to get their work done. 

Rather than the feared outcome of remote workers becoming disengaged and unproductive, the new flexibility increased engagement and productivity. “There were a couple of factors that felt very prominent during the pandemic, and one of those was how we built a trust factor that people would get the work done, that they would do what they needed to do,” Soehren said. “And the second of those was that we gave people the freedom to create a new way of working, a new way of being productive, a new way of interacting and I think that those capabilities will help us immensely moving forward in a more intrapreneurial world.”

The Need for Agility Activated Culture Change  

Large industry organizations tend to have bureaucratic cultures, which means big change happens slowly. At the start of the pandemic, organizations needed to adapt extremely quickly, so decision hierarchies and lengthy processes were thrown to the wind — with surprising results.

“It’s amazing to reflect on how quickly we were able to move some employees — for example, our call center agents to their homes,” Monk said. “I was talking with some members of our IT team, and they said, ‘If someone had put a project plan in front of us and said how long will it take you to move your call centers to 50% at home and 50% in the office, the answer would’ve been somewhere around nine months.’ We did it in less than two weeks because we had to. The lesson on the need for agility there is pretty strong.”  

Empowered, Engaged Employees

If employees are given the freedom to try new things without fear of reprisal, the result is greater engagement. Some organizations have realized the benefits of this shift and are planning to build greater agility into their cultural touchstones moving forward. 

“We’re making decisions more quickly,” Crawford said. “It’s exciting. We’re seeing engagement increasing. We’re empowering our employees, our leaders, to make decisions at a different level.” Added Crawford, “I think the real gift of the pandemic is we’re seeing a lot more generation of ideas by even our frontline employees because we’re asking for more opinions.” 

Cultivating leaders from within and engaging high performers are essential to holding on to top talent. Engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their organization, and this is especially important in the new competitive employment market.

The pandemic has been a crash course in the need for organizations to demonstrate agility and empower employees. Now, our job is to take what we’ve learned and use it to ride the wave of change — lest we risk going under. 

The world of streaming is fragmented and complicated. It’s hard to keep track of all the providers and ways of accessing OTT.  It turns out it is also hard for consumers to keep track of their streaming subscription costs. We found that most consumers are underestimating their monthly expenditure on subscription services by 35%.

We asked 1,000 consumers to estimate the amount they spent on streaming services each month, then calculated their actual costs based on the services they then reported paying for. The average estimated spend was about $49, while the average calculated expenditure each month was $66. 

Everyone’s Undercounting

For both estimated and calculated payments, the average spend was about $15 higher than the median spend. This indicates that some people pay a lot for streaming services, pushing up the average. Slicing into the data, we can see that two groups in particular pushed up the averages — those with high wealth and parents. Both groups tended to far underestimate their spend, with high-wealth groups spending an estimated $60 monthly and parents $56. For both groups, calculated spends were over $85 per month.

While parents and wealthier consumers are paying a lot more than they think, on average, all groups of consumers are miscalculating their monthly expenditure on streaming services.  There is one exception, though — seniors are the one group spending less than they think they are, with a monthly bill $14 less than their estimated spend of $48. Why would seniors think their streaming content costs more than it does? They also tend to have a cable subscription.  The premium price of a cable bundle and use of smart TV remotes may cause seniors to lump all services into one number in their heads. 

Across all consumers, clear patterns emerge for SVOD penetration and subscriptions. Which services are adding up to that average of $66 per month? Netflix is the clear dominant SVOD; three out of four people had watched it in the last 30 days. Amazon Prime was the second most popular SVOD and growing the fastest in penetration over the past year. From a total viewer perspective, Hulu rounded out third place in reach. However, the vast majority of Hulu’s viewers were reachable by ads, either in the Live TV service or VOD with ads. In fact, only 10% of Hulu’s viewers were not reachable by ads, confirming the scale advantage many advertisers are seeing on Hulu. 

Apple TV Plus had the smallest reach of any subscription-only streaming service, with just 11% of our respondents paying for it. Like many Apple products, we also saw a coastal geographic skew of Apple TV Plus, especially New England and California. HBO Max followed this same geographic pattern, but had almost three times as much reach as Apple TV Plus. 

Parents are strong SVOD users, but are more or less willing to watch ads depending on how old their children are. Households with kids under 8 were the most likely to watch SVODs. Households with older children were slightly more likely to watch ad-supported content types. 

Parents Avoid Ads

Like avoiding a street when the ice cream man arrives, we know parents might be sensitive to exposing small children to ads. However, teenagers may be a factor in adoption of newer free media sources, driving penetration numbers up in those households. 

For some groups of viewers, we can see there is low price sensitivity to streaming subscriptions.  For parents, the value of ad-free content seems established, and we can expect services to move from new additions to necessities. Seniors may be anchored by the premium price sticker on cable and be less sensitive to bundled services. As marketers, we know consumers will always pay for choice if they can afford it, as we’ve seen with higher wealth households seeing the value in access to all streaming content.

For other groups of viewers, we can expect that the piling on of services will add up to some serious price shock and increased interest in cheaper ad-supported alternatives. Younger, single-person and lower income households will take the time to hunt for deals and alternatives. 

The price anchor is untethered for both price-sensitive and more tolerant streaming viewers. As the industry figures out consumers’ tolerance for subscription fees, it’s important to consider that most consumers haven’t yet decided on their price tolerance, either. 

Let’s take the Wayback machine to 1984. Television impressario Merv Griffin decided to revive Jeopardy!, a game show that he had created, which ran in daytime on NBC from 1964-1975 and had failed when it was offered in syndication to television stations around the country in 1974, only to stay on the air for a single season. Griffin knew he had one more shot before the show would be confined to the dustbin of video history.

So he began a months-long series of on-air tryouts with network news personalities, actors,  professional football players and even some medical doctors. Then he closely watched the ratings for each and obsessively monitored the tsunami of Twitter feeds from millions around the country who were more than willing to voice their opinions — particularly praise or scorn — about potential replacements for Art Fleming, who had been the show’s host since its premiere. 

Wrong.

Without the technology and pressure of social media, Griffin could ignore the white noise about his pending decision with impunity. He also had no need to parade a bunch of notable celebrities onto the screen to audition them in real time for the permanent host slot. Merv Griffin had ears and a gut that were the only tools he needed to head down a momentous path.

Contrast this with the months-long drama that followed the death of beloved host Alex Trebek in November 2020.  Sony Pictures Television, which now owns the rights to Jeopardy!, decided to begin an extended process that was akin to a beauty contest, or as some cynics have noted, more like the selection of a new Pope. So Savannah Guthrie, George Stephanopoulos, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Aaron Rodgers, and LeVar Burton, among others, took their place on the set’s podium to soberly pose the answers to a new group of contestants.

As Ravi Ahuja, Sony’s chairman of Global Television Studios and Corporate Development noted, “ A tremendous amount of work and deliberation has gone into it, perhaps more than has ever gone into the selection of hosts for a show — deservedly so because it’s Jeopardy! And we are following the incomparable Alex Trebek.”

That work included poring over “footage from every episode” (more than 8,200 when Trebek hosted), along with analyzing the ratings of the guest hosts (former contestant Ken Jennings, who had 74 consecutive wins on the show, posted the highest Nielsen numbers) and of course, closely monitoring which way the winds were blowing in the Twitterverse.

Not surprisingly, the white noise now continues after the recent announcement that the show’s current executive producer, Mike Richards, would become the permanent host of the nightly syndicated version of Jeopardy!, and that Mayim Bialik would become host for the show’s primetime version and for spinoffs such as Jeopardy! National College Championship. Although some have expressed online satisfaction with these choices, others have amped up their withering criticism about the selection process and the successful candidates themselves.

Flash back to 1984. Merv Griffin knew he had a momentous decision to make if the show was ever to have a future on television again. But as he pondered who to choose, he also knew that one of his close friends knew about as much as anyone else about what makes television viewers happy and loyal. Her name was Lucille Ball, and her place in television history is much like the regal status in music of Aretha Franklin as the Queen of Soul. Lucy also was an avid viewer, and sometime contestant, on a variety of game shows, so she had a real sense of the chemistry that a host needed to have with the studio audience and those watching at home.

So in simpler times, Griffin picked up the phone, called Lucy, and asked for her advice. He was pleased to hear that she had someone strongly to recommend — a Canadian-born game show host with a bushy mustache and a mop of curly hair. He was a familiar face to many, but also had failed to catch fire on a series of failed game shows, including Battlestars, Double Dare, Lucky Numbers and The $128,000 Question. He also had hosted High Rollers on NBC’s daytime lineup, a game where contestants tried to win prizes by rolling dice. Lucy had appeared on the show and came away with a very favorable impression of how Alex Trebek had helmed it. She instinctively thought that he could move into the more challenging duties of Jeopardy! and was direct in telling Merv just that.

Griffin had the only focus group he needed. He did not look at his phone again for guidance since all it could do then was make and receive calls. But he used it to call Alex Trebek and offered him the hosting job. Trebek’s mastery of that position — which he held for 37 seasons, during which Jeopardy! won a record-setting 41 Emmy awards — was monumental, and anyone who follows inevitably will be judged by his solid gold standard.

But in a larger sense, the way he got the job also remains important to remember for our everyday lives. An intimate knowledge of what would work best was the most direct route to success — remember, Merv Griffin’s first game show was called Play Your Hunch.

And when the Jeopardy! board opens to Merv Griffin and Lucille Ball, players at home now have the question ready at hand. “ How was Alex Trebek ever selected at all?”

A new level of resolve to bridge the digital divide has emerged in 2021, resulting in an unprecedented amount of government programs and consequent funding being operationalized at every level of government. Equally dramatic is the shift in decision-making on where and how program money will be spent. In addition to the traditional approach of a national program designed and administered by the Federal Communications Commission, a new approach has evolved, in favor of allocations directly to states, counties, municipalities and tribal areas, empowering them to determine priorities and service providers with whom to partner.

Granted, the Treasury Department still sets guidelines for compliance, but the steering wheel is genuinely in the hands of those closest to the market. For example, 3,233 U.S. counties were allocated a total of $65.1 billion through the Coronavirus State and Local Recovery Act; amongst the many eligible uses for the funding is “necessary investments in water, sewer and broadband infrastructure.”

An additional $65 billion is earmarked directly for broadband in the infrastructure bill.

Accelerate Planning Process

With some funding in hand and anticipating more to come, communities are now pushing hard on service providers to accelerate the path to upgrading broadband to the underserved and the unserved. The pressure on service providers is to understand where to prioritize, how to build most efficiently, how to craft win-win public-private partnerships, and who else might be breathing down their neck within and tangential to their footprint.

The ramifications are enormous and the timeline is concise. These awards will be depleted within months, not years. Where service providers decide to focus their energy and resources today will impact their market share and profitability for years to come.

Therefore, moving rapidly to build a solid analytical framework and populating it with accurate data is critical to enabling intelligent decisions. The framework should incorporate the following:

1.) Identification of the underserved and unserved within and tangential to their existing footprint, including those whose upload speed is insufficient for today’s economy.

2.) Assessment of viable deployment options within these communities. For example, in a rural area, are there utility poles suitable for aerial fiber deployment? If the distance between homes is dauntingly large, what is the propensity for service with fixed wireless?

3.) Definition of viable project boundaries and rough order of magnitude (ROM) cost to serve.

4.) Identification and analysis of the competitive landscape, especially winners of Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) awards; assess the value of the award against the ROM.

5.) Weighting these attributes and then simply running the math to identify
the opportunities with the highest possibility of success.

With this data in hand, the service provider will be equipped to prioritize and focus energy on the communities that rose to the top of the list.

Designing an Efficient Plan

The next step is to drill down further by designing the most efficient network plan possible to expand and/or enhance broadband to the targeted communities. A comprehensive build out plan should identify and consider the following: 

• Which locations or census blocks might a community have surveyed and designated as underserved? 

• Conduct a review of the new National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) maps with the community to validate the applicability to broadband in extended areas beyond the Form 477 disclosures. 

• Are homes with school-going children served? Create a plan to serve them first.

• What is the average cost for a robust fiber-to-the-home network?

• What level of subsidy would be needed to make it a winning proposition for both the local government and service provider?

• Are there any outlying locations that could drive the project cost to be sky high? 

• Would fixed wireless to the more remote locations be a viable alternative to achieve the goal for everyone?

• Are there additional households or businesses along the new network path, that expand the addressable market and improve the business case?

• Where should the build start to assure the strongest cash flow?

• Validate if the RDOF winner in the area has plans to build in the near term.  Confirm the RDOF win value against the cost to build the distribu­tion network.

Service providers armed with these detailed plans will be ready to productively engage with community leaders on a path to most efficiently and effectively assuring significantly better broadband for all in the community. 

The pandemic has created a new sense of urgency about closing America’s digital divide, elevating it from something that is desirable to something deemed essential. Not surprisingly, we’ve seen an outpouring of proposals for ways the government should assist, which vary greatly in the levels of recommended funding and the methods for allocating government dollars.

President Joe Biden recently agreed to a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan that includes $65 billion for building out broadband across the nation (a substantial reduction from his $100 billion proposal for broadband). Now, the package needs Republican support to pass the Senate.

Achieving universal broadband by equipping every American with the transformative power of digital tools, social networks and online platforms would be a milestone accomplishment, but simply appropriating funding does not guarantee success, and with a decreased amount of funding, expenditures must be judiciously planned. As lawmakers sift through a myriad of ideas on how the funds should be spent, ensuring the best use of taxpayer funds and carving the most efficient path toward universal connectivity should be top priorities.

Here are three guiding principles for allocation of federal dollars to close the digital divide.

Don’t miss the forest for the fiber: America’s broadband infrastructure investment should be based on techn­ology-neutral criteria, allowing for a combination of solutions that are adapted to local needs and can be rapidly and cost-effectively deployed. With limited funds to tackle all three parts of the digital divide  —  deployment, affordability and adoption  —  ensuring the most efficient use of funds is critical. For deployment, while policymakers may reasonably favor the use of fiber optics where feasible, they should resist the urge to foreclose other next best solutions, especially in those hardest-to-serve areas where, even with government subsidies, it may be uneconomical to lay miles and miles of fiber to serve a single household.

To get infrastructure legislation passed, now’s the time to make practical funding allocation decisions to ensure that the gap between digital haves and have-nots can be closed with the federal dollars made available. Fiber costs $20,000 per mile, by some estimates, and connecting every home with fiber in rural, mountainous and sparsely populated locations would prove prohibitively expensive.

In short, fiber should be deployed when reasonable, based on geography and population density. It may not make sense, for example, to bring fiber to Supai, Arizona, which can only be reached by foot, pack animal or helicopter. In some cases, subsidizing satellite internet services could prove more cost effective than reaching every end point with fiber.  

Use market mechanisms to maximize broadband deployment: Federally funded broadband deployment should be structured in a market-sensitive way. Over the past decade, the Federal Communications Commission has developed a competitive funding allocation process, via reverse auctions, to ensure broadband projects produce the greatest benefit for the dollars expended. The auctions maximize efficiency as bidders compete against one another to offer the lowest price at which they are willing to provide their services.

It would make sense to hold a series of auctions, rather than a single auction, to benefit from lessons learned from previous bidding rounds. Additionally, holding multiple auctions would help ensure that unserved communities don’t fall through the cracks, in the event that there is no round-one bidder for certain areas. 

The more bidders the merrier: In order to encourage a highly competitive market, all qualified, proven and capable bidders should be welcomed into the process. Strong guardrails should be put in place to ensure entities seeking to bid have the resources required to deliver on their promises. Once these standards are met, the more bidders the better.

No priority or favoritism should be given to any category of bidder based on for-profit or not-for-profit status. The goal is to get the job done, and it’s in Americans’ interest that the entities best suited to build and operate broadband networks be trusted with taxpayer dollars.

The digital divide has been a problem for the past quarter-century. Closing the gap is now a national priority, and bipartisan support for a solution has never been stronger. With the appropriation of federal dollars for broadband now likely, a well-considered allocation plan along these lines is the next essential step.

Rick Boucher was a Democratic member of the U.S. House from Virginia for 28 years and chaired the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and the Internet. He is honorary chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA).

The negotiations around whether YouTube will remain on the Roku platform offer a great lesson. Both sides are posturing and blaming the other for the breakdown in decision-making. Roku has spent a lot of time and money building a platform that boasts more than 53 million subscribers. YouTube is a powerhouse that has both the eyeballs and powerful Google search algorithms to back up the popular service. 

The real news for TV service providers is how this spat highlights the growing popularity of free and freemium models. It also points to the value of personalized ads and their growing importance in the world of TV advertising. These ads are specifically tailored for an individual and based on what we know about their viewing habits. YouTube has always used this model to drive higher CPMs. Roku also started off this way and has never been tied to the one-to-many broadcast advertising model. Traditional TV will need to figure this out or risk being skewered by viewers looking for more relevance in the 20 minutes of ads they’re forced to watch during an hour of their favorite shows.

I could rattle off a ton of stats that point to the power of personalization but to save time and word count, here are just two. Accenture reports that 83% of consumers are willing to share their data to create a more personalized experience. And 90% of consumers are willing to share personal behavioral data for a cheaper and easier experience, according to SmarterHQ. The net here is that while we may not love the thought of ads invading our world, personalization can make them less irritating — and for some, dare I say, enjoyable.

As the roughly $70 billion per year in U.S. broadcast ad spending moves to streaming and gets spread out over more and more content sources, new distribution and revenue models are needed. Digital ad markets don’t have the limitations of traditional broadcast advertising, where programs act as proxies for targeted demographic segments. Now the focus is on the user and ads are focused on views. 

Any time any person views any content on any device anywhere, it creates a personalized ad opportunity. Even niche content can generate meaningful revenue, since advertisers can target potential buyers directly rather than using content audience type as a surrogate. Dynamic ad insertion (DAI) brings advertisers, content owners, operators and consumers together in a win-win-win-win group hug.

Offsetting Program Costs

It’s not just free or freemium services that benefit. YouTube TV started at a cost of $35 per month. They hiked it to $40 with the addition of the Turner networks. Then it went up to $50 and most recently, $65. The service keeps adding more and more content while being pressured to keep its subscription rates low. Even Google, the inventor of digital advertising business models, can’t ignore the rising cost of content. The easiest way to offset cost is to get a higher price per impression, and you do that through personalization. 

Broadband and mobile service providers see video as a way to make their service stickier and drive revenue. By moving to a hosted managed cloud service, they eliminate the upfront investment cost and pay only for subscribers they sign up. This investment model sets up nicely for an ad subsidized free or freemium video service. Even if free means it isn’t first-tier premium content, people will still watch tier two entertainment. And providers can make money using dynamic ad insertion while gaining access to free, ad-supported content. Once a foothold is established with a free service, subscribers can then upgrade to premium packages. 

As Roku and Google continue to argue over content availability and revenue splits, it behooves operators to heed the wisdom of famous movie lines like “follow the money.” Some OTT apps have shown they can win with a subscription-only model, but let’s not ignore the ad revenue potential of secondary content. While it may have a narrow niche appeal for some, there is a lot to choose from and the content owners are willing to give it away for a share of ad revenue. 

Free and freemium content has become a viable and proven business model. It’s time for operators to embrace the future

Viewpoint author Matt Cuson is VP of marketing and product at Minerva Networks.

2020 taught us that a broadband connection is essential. The proposed American Jobs Plan provision of building high-speed broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas is a magnificent objective. While billions of public and private dollars have already been spent, with many more billions promised, the vision of connecting everyone in our country to broadband is a lofty goal of significant importance.

We are now seeing the determination to connect America play out in a series of bills debated in Congress, initiatives implemented at federal agencies funded through emergency relief spending bills and in the Biden Administration’s proposed American Jobs Plan.  On May 6, at a House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing on broadband access and affordability, Ranking Member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said, “We all want to close the digital divide, but the only way to truly achieve this is to have solutions that will produce results.” This is exactly why before fully endorsing the entire designation of these dollars, the plan requires a careful examination and consideration regarding which policies actually get consumers to where they need to be.

Lack of Broadband Brings Challenges

During the challenges of the past year, we’ve seen how so many have faced extraordinary challenges because they didn’t have broadband.  Kids fell behind in school, parents couldn’t do their work, individuals out of work couldn’t search for new jobs, and older adults were isolated in their homes without any opportunity for social contact and unable to get groceries and medicine.  Life without an online connection is bleak indeed. 

The administration’s plan prioritizes municipal broadband providers and electric co-ops for broadband series, with the objective to open and expand opportunities for competition. The plan presents an enticing picture of low prices, new competition and the subsequent result of all consumers served. Local governments and electric co-ops may have a role to play in achieving connectivity, but while they can potentially be viable options, over the years municipalities have entered broadband markets with a history of mixed results and for the benefit of consumers and competition, careful consideration needs to be made regarding best practices.

It is also critical that consumers have the opportunity to continue to receive the benefits private-sector internet-service providers (ISPs), which have invested billions of their own dollars to build broadband networks. It is vital that any plan does not tie their hands in the marketplace.

ISPs have continued to make huge investments to build broadband networks throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and have invested in broadband networks and programs to connect low-income communities throughout 2020 and into 2021.  The efforts have helped kids connect to online classes at school and older adults get connected, reducing isolation. 

In 2021, AT&T announced $2 billion to expand affordable broadband to help close the digital divide.  In addition, this year Comcast’s Internet Essentials dedicated $1 billion to reach 50 million low-income Americans with tools they need to succeed in the digital world. In February, Charter Communications announced a $5 billion multiyear commitment to deliver high-speed broadband to more than 1 million low-income consumers. 

These commitments follow decades of investing trillions of dollars to build the most reliable networks that served most of the country during months of stay-at-home life during the pandemic. At last week’s Congressional hearing, Rodgers attributed the “critical investments made by broadband providers [as leading] to high speeds, high performance, job creation, and a drop in broadband prices.” While all this funding for low-income consumers is critical, according to a recent poll, consumers also trust these companies to give them the best at-home internet service.

Offering an open, competitive marketplace with reliable providers makes sense for most consumers. However, for low-income consumers struggling to make ends meet, a government subsidy program is still needed.  As we can see by the excitement around the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) program, it is possible to develop a new approach, and to solicit a whole host of companies offering to serve those in need. 

Time for Collaboration

Now is the time to work together to determine the next step to extend this program for low-income communities, and that should be a part of any plan to connect America.  In addition to subsidizing the cost of broadband for those in greatest need, it is also important to help them with their digital learning, a particular area of need for first-time tech device users such as those in the older adult community. Digital readiness should be an added component of the plan. Chairman Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) agreed, stating at the hearing, “We need to address programs that expand digital equity, programs that provide outreach and digital literacy and training skills. The opportunities and resources provided by this technology are wasted if you don't know how to use them.”

Yes, it is time to connect everyone to high-speed broadband. While some local governments may offer attractive solutions in the short term, there is no need to hinder others trying to make the investments in the broadband networks of today and tomorrow. A winning strategy does not favor one competitive interest while handcuffing another, particularly one that has earned the trust of a large majority of consumers.

Debra Berlyn is the president of Consumer Policy Solutions, a firm focused on developing progressive policies for consumers in a competitive and innovative marketplace. She is also executive director of the Project to Get Older Adults onLine (Project GOAL), whose sponsors include NCTA–The Internet & Television Association and its member cable companies. 

Too often, media properties’ inventory goes unsold or impressions unfilled and they end up filling their logs with promos, slates and PSAs or run bonus weight for clients (i.e., free spots). While this may help them with client relations or channel promotion, what it doesn’t do is generate revenue. Lost ad inventory is gone forever. 

As viewers are more fragmented than ever, there’s even more unsold or underutilized ad inventory. Media properties with multiple channels, digital channels or streaming services provide more opportunities for revenue generation, but often have huge chunks of unsold time going unused.

With OTT platforms and streaming services, viewers often wind up seeing the same spot over and over again, as frequency capping can be hard to manage across multiple DSPs. Not only does excessive repetition inhibit viewing, but it can also cause viewers to form a negative impression of the advertiser. Sometimes the ad slot isn’t even filled at all and viewers are presented with a 30-second “we’ll be right back” billboard. This creates a less-than-optimal viewing experience, driving away viewers and devaluing the platform.

When media properties have the ability and flexibility to fill their underutilized inventory with ad variety, it breaks up the monotony and keeps viewers engaged while generating additional revenue.

Filled Inventory Leads to Revenue Opportunities

When ad buyers see repetition, pods filled with promos, or PSAs in high-profile time slots, it screams there’s open inventory. Buyers often use this knowledge to drive down rates on advertising buys or request media property run extra spots at no charge.

Media properties have also learned the hard way that when they give too much bonus weight to advertisers as value add, it ceases to be effective. Free spots can become guaranteed spots in future negotiations, which lowers the average spot rate.

Filling remnant ad inventory with different creative doesn’t just generate revenue, it also sends subtle messages to advertisers. When they see that ad pods are full of variety — and often filled with high-quality spots — it improves the perceived value of the media. 

Partnering and Executing

To monetize remnant or unsold inventory effectively, media properties need to have partners who can help by streamlining the process and maximizing inventory value. The ideal media partner has national reach, deep connections to advertisers, and an optimized system for delivery.

Media properties need a partner that provides a unique solution for stations using short-form CPA (Cost Per Action) advertising. Media properties run the ads during unsold inventory and fill logs at their discretion. They get paid when viewers take action. Each ad has a unique call-to-action specifically attributed to the media property airing the spot – such as a unique promo code redemption and/or URL visit, or by calling a toll-free number, ensuring media properties have accurate attribution for revenue with no additional work on their part. Spots are 15, 30 and 60 seconds long and can be delivered in any format needed.

Some of the best CPA offers are lead-generating, spanning a variety of categories:

• Business/finance

• Education

• Healthcare

• Insurance

• Mass torts

• Products

These advertisers don’t traditionally buy local stations, station groups, fragmented streaming properties or local networks, so media properties can access revenue by attracting dollars they otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunity to obtain and won’t siphon dollars away from the marketplace.

Media Properties Maintain Flexibility

One of the advantages of using CPA ads is that stations and media properties maintain total control and flexibility. In addition, they benefit in numerous other ways:

• Optimize the revenue they generate from CPA ads by seeing which spots generate the most revenue and running those as frequently as they want.

• Traffic managers and sales managers don't have to submit pre-logs, post-logs, or performance affidavits. 

• The business office doesn’t have to generate invoices and statements or worry about collections.

• When viewers call a phone number on a CPA ad, go to a custom URL or use a promo code, this action is automatically recorded and posted to the media properties account.

Maximize Revenue, Keep Viewers Engaged

The right partner and the right solution can lead to maximized revenue for the station and increased satisfaction for the viewer.

Everybody wins.

Steve Schachter is senior VP of Business Development & Distribution for Cannella Media DTC.

It’s hard to predict what will happen next in the streaming wars. Just when the world was beginning to wonder if the market and consumers were approaching “peak subscription,” the pandemic hit and the streaming wars were given a new lease of life. 

Netflix — arguably the biggest name in streaming — announced that it acquired 15.7 million new subscribers in the first three months of 2020, almost double the number it gained during the same period in 2019. More recently, its competitor Disney Plus reached 100 million subscribers just 16 months after its launch: a number that Netflix took 10 years to reach, albeit while pioneering the burgeoning streaming market.

It was an unanticipated but welcome boost. But it will be difficult to sustain this level of growth.

A Pain in the CPAs 

Streaming services are caught in a marketing arms race. They are under immense pressure to grow their subscriber base and keep shareholders happy — but the wider they cast their net searching for prospective new users, the higher the CPA (cost per acquisition) typically becomes. This is clearly an unsustainable model for long-term growth. Like in any arms race, the consequences for those involved are often MAD, or mutually assured destruction. 

Instead of attritional marketing warfare, streaming brands need to identify clever ways to decrease churn and increase engagement. And the best way to maximize efficiency is to craft experiences that leverage data-driven personalization.  

Here are three things to consider when using personalization to make scaling subscribers more palatable and effective.  

Leverage optimized landing pages and sign-up flows: Personalization within the streaming platforms is an effective way to reduce churn and it should define the experience from the very first touchpoint. 

Landing pages should be at the forefront of this strategy. They should be customized and personalized to reflect a user’s unique journey. If someone arrives on a landing page after clicking on an advert for a specific show, then this show should be the thematic template for the page and define the copy and hero images used — with other personalized content suggestions orbiting dynamically around it.  

The landing page should also have a close relationship with the sign-up process. Poorly signposted sign-up processes quickly spark friction and frustrate users. 

The UX of the signup process is crucial. Brands should remember that:

• Visual progress indicators are more intuitive than text-based progress indicators; 

• It must be clear what subscription tier users are signing up for;  

• Keeping a consistent message across the platform for users with no active subscription is the best way to re-focus these users to sign up

Beyond this, streaming services should recognize that for customers, signing up doesn’t end with the payment form. New trial sign-ups should be optimize through personalized experiences, customer data mining and predictive modeling in order to execute more efficient media across platforms.

Personalizing recommendations: From Spotify, to YouTube or Amazon, consumers expect to be met with intelligent recommendations based on their preferences. Research from Accenture found that 91% of consumers are more likely to engage with brands that provide offers personalized to them. 

Streaming services are broadly wise to the powers of personalization. In 2019, Netflix experimented with an AI tool which would edit trailers based on user data, so different users would see different trailers depending on their likes and preferences. 

While personalized ads and landing pages may get users into your ecosystem, providing reliable recommendations is a strong way to build trust, and consequently longevity, between the streaming brand and the user. The services that can crack when and what content to present to each user will do better at retention.

Shifting the focus to LTV and predictive modeling of customer data: Streaming services also need to have a holistic view of their customers and their habits. Understandably each service sits on a treasure trove of data: what shows are being watched, did they complete or drop off, and what did they watch next?

The main point here, though, is not how much fancy data services have, but how that data is activated to make smarter decisions within their customer acquisition strategies. This should naturally lead brands to be more inquisitive and open to a lifetime value (LTV) based marketing model.

At this moment in time, every advertiser should be considering moving to an LTV model. It will help take a brand’s marketing strategy from short-term metrics to a long-term advanced approach to acquisition.

There are five steps to take here:

1. Unifying customer data 
2. Data preparation and modeling
3. Understanding the drivers of LTV
4. Understanding customer clusters and audiences
5. Activation in audience and bidding

With LTV, brands can better target high-value audiences more likely to subscribe to their service. Campaigns, ads and keywords are measured by their LTV performance using a data-driven conversion attribution model, and the brand can optimize activity accordingly. The LTV metric can also be used for automated bidding, to get the right messages to the right customers at the right time.

This is a hyper-competitive moment in the streaming wars. To continue to grow, streaming brands will need to embrace marketing tactics that combat churn and engage new users — all without getting caught up in a marketing arms race. This means investing in understanding what customers are doing on their services — and crafting experiences that reflect these needs from the very first moment. 

Kris Tait is managing director of the U.S. business at global digital marketing agency Croud. 

I was speaking recently to an agency president. He shared his strategy for this year’s upfronts: “Buy TV like you watch TV.” It’s a mandate that captures the accelerated shift from traditional TV to streaming TV in the last year. More than one in three Americans no longer has pay TV. The average age for the big three broadcast networks is now more than 60.

However, how are marketers making “buy TV like you watch TV” reality? Here are three lessons from brands who are going streamer-first:

1. TV streaming has broadcast-level reach

2020 was pay-TV’s worst year in history, with the major providers losing a collective 7 million subscribers. Marketers want the ability to build scale, connect with new audiences, view campaigns holistically and optimize in real time. According to the Harris poll, for the first time ever, more Americans now report spending more time streaming than watching traditional pay TV. Importantly, the growth in streaming is not additive to overall viewing time. Average reported streaming hours increased 19% year over year while average traditional TV viewing hours decreased 13%, according to the survey results. The broad behavior shifts toward streaming and away from linear is here to stay, and smart marketers are gaining access to profound reach and scale.

2. Big TV moment storytelling must go beyond the 30-aecond ad

Tentpole sports events like the Super Bowl and March Madness illustrate how TV viewership has changed.  Consider that this year’s Super Bowl received the lowest ratings since 2007, but CBS reported a new streaming record on average 5.7 million viewers per minute, up from 3.4 million last year. This trend extends beyond sports moments. According to Roku internal data, during Oprahh Winfrey’s historic interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, reach for channels carrying the interview increased 7.3% week-over-week. Also, while the audience for this year’s Golden Globe Awards got older, the streaming audience was younger than traditional linear TV.

Just as brands embraced streaming as their preferred way to watch on-demand movies and TV shows, users are shifting towards streaming as their preferred way to watch live sports events. Streaming not only delivers audiences to brands at scale,  it provides them with powerful ways to bring storytelling to life beyond the 30-second ad. Brands can take advantage of multiple interactive and immersive ad formats only found on TV streaming to deliver their message in fun and engaging ways. 

3. The TV Screen Is Now Full Funnel

The big screen is no longer just focused on the upper funnel. No matter the type of marketer, from a large consumer packaged goods (CPG) brand to a direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand, TV streaming allows an advertiser to quantify what happens after a customer sees the ad. There is no guesswork. Consumers are willing to watch ads if they’re relevant and captivating. This is where working platforms with a direct relationship with the consumer will be crucial. Without this, marketers are left speculating on performance.

Streaming provides not just a holistic view into performance, but advertisers can easily optimize a campaign in real time. We’ve passed the tipping point. As we head into a busy upfronts season and prepare for another record year in streaming, leading marketers are already shifting their TV upfront commitments. Those left out will need to pick up the pace. As viewership continues to shift, marketers that focus on where consumers are heading will be well-positioned no matter what the future holds. 

Alison Levin is VP of global ad revenue and marketing solutions at Roku.

The marquee matchup between Gonzaga and Baylor provided a fitting end to an exciting March Madness tournament. As the two teams strived to create history (Gonzaga chasing a 32-0 perfect season and Baylor looking for the elusive national championship crown), TV networks and online sports books were creating milestones of their own.

After a break year, March Madness, the 68-team NCAA Division I Men’s College Basketball Tournament, is back with a bang. TV ratings during the early rounds of this year's tournament saw historical jumps compared to the 2019 season. Viewership for the regional semifinals was up 12% compared to the Sweet 16 round in 2019. The 2021 regional semifinals averaged 12.9 million viewers across TBS and CBS delivering the best Sweet 16 viewership since 1993, while TBS and truTV accounted for a gross viewership of 7.6 million viewers during the first four rounds, the highest recorded viewership for the tournament’s early stages ever.

And, while critics may point at double-digit declines during the Elite 8 games held during the work week, the resurgence in sports viewership among U.S. audiences should be putting a smile on the face of advertisers looking to use live sports as part of their media plans this year.

The tournament might be over, but it has left some learnings for marketers in its wake as we head into a new action-packed sports season. Here are some of the key takeaways for marketers from this year’s tournament. 

47M Americans Placed Their Bets

The American Gaming Association (AGA) predicted that more than 47 million, or 18%, Americans planned to wager on the NCAA tournament this year, with a 206% increase in the number of people looking to place the bet online. 

The dramatic growth in sport betting popularity could be attributed to the expansion of the legal market, as 73.6 million more Americans in 14 new legal jurisdictions could safely place bets on March Madness this year compared to the 2019 tournament. A 180% increase in online activity across betting domains in North Carolina (where betting was legalized March 18) compared to the 2019 season was a clear testament to this as well. 

A higher interest in online betting has further translated into increased activity around college basketball content online, with audiences across all age groups reviewing stats from the historical college basketball season. Young sports enthusiasts (18-to-34-year-olds) were 1.63 times more likely to conduct thorough online research before making a wager. The betting audiences with bigger bankrolls were also comparatively more likely to follow college basketball this year than before.

Americans aged 25-44 with a household income greater than $75k per year displayed a higher propensity (1.68 times the average) to place a bet online. A majority of these wagers were made over mobile platforms with an average user accounting for 17 sessions on gambling domains in March, a 54% month-over-month increase.

Cross-Platform Viewership Is Growing

The elevated interest in college basketball isn’t just about gambling. Ardent sports followers are also tuning in now more than ever just to catch the action live. TBS and TruTV accounted for a gross viewership of 7.6m viewers during the first four stages of the tournament, the highest recorded viewership for the stage of this tournament ever. CBS and Turner sports also reported record viewership numbers for the Sweet 16 stage, pulling in 12.9m viewers on an average (a 12% lift compared to 2019) indicating elevated levels of interest among college basketball followers.

While the scheduling of Elite 8 games on weekdays meant a smaller section of the fans were able to tune in to the live telecast of these games, increased demand (+18% week-over-week) for short match highlight reels on YouTube and online game summaries (+13% week-over-week) meant that audiences were finding new ways to stay in touch with the game even on workdays.

The top 20% of March Madness viewers consumed an average of 23-24 games through the tournament, consuming over 20 hours of live March Madness programming with a median sitting time of over 23 minutes. Casual audiences (the bottom quintile) tuned in for just a single game consuming just over 20 minutes of March Madness action. In terms of commercials viewed, the average ardent follower (in the top quintile) consumed close to 500 TV commercials during March Madness programming on average.

Linear TV continued to account for the bulk of March Madness viewership, with over 8 in 10 households engaging through traditional channels. But OTT and streaming audiences for sports programming has grown significantly - and continues to grow. Not only are more people tuning in through OTT, but OTT audiences are more engaged than traditional audiences when watching the game.

Increase in Second-Screen Opportunities

While more people are tuning in, their attention is more divided than ever. We observed a significant increase in cross-screen opportunities among March Madness audiences. Almost a quarter of March Madness viewers who tuned into the live telecast or stream were also found to be active on an alternate device. 40% of impressions generated on second screens were on the phone while almost half of second-screen opportunities were on desktops.

On average, three impression opportunities were generated on second screens during games. The most active online audiences (the top 10%) could be reached by up to 15 digital impressions per game. News, travel, and food and drinks domains were popular content categories among March Madness viewers during the game, while more people logged in for sports content post-game than before or during. Online activity was elevated on games scheduled on workdays indicating a lot of audiences tuned in to the game as they worked.

Phone usage during the game was higher among people aged 25-44 with higher relative household incomes, while older audiences were the least likely to be on another device. Those tuning in on weekdays seemed as if they were working while watching — the laptop/desktop activity was 11% higher as a percentage of all second-screen activity among households tuning in during the Elite 8 compared to the Sweet 16 and Final Four rounds. 

More Online Food Orders 

Continuing a trend from the Super Bowl, 21% more Americans looked to order food online during the tournament this year compared to the 2019 tournament. The apprehension around mobility and gathering in crowds continues to be a big driver for the elevated interest. Mid-income ($50K- $100K) millennial audiences (25-44) without any kids displayed a higher proclivity towards ordering in on game days. Activity across online gaming platforms during the tourney also saw a considerable increase (+26%) this year compared to 2019.

Social Engagement Up

General interest around college basketball on YouTube has also grown considerably this year, with more audiences interacting with game highlights and tutorials on “how to set up the perfect March Madness brackets.” Apart from increased engagement across YouTube, we also saw a 31% lift in engagement around the official social March Madness handles compared to the 2019. Gonzaga, Florida and USC are undoubtedly the online fan favorites, followed by Baylor and Michigan.

Methdology

We used MiQ’s proprietary Advanced TV integration with LG and Vizio to track the activity of more than 3 million households that tuned in to March Madness programming this year. These household profiles were further mapped to our ad serving integrations to create digital profiles of 7.8 million distinct March Madness followers, which were then used to analyze audience behavior online.

Rebecca Rosborough is chief marketing officer at MiQ, a programmatic media partner to marketers and agencies.

The rise of internet-delivered TV has produced an explosion of new services in the United States, and we’re beginning to see the same in the United Kingdom. Acronyms like AVOD and FAST are now part of our daily jargon, but occasionally they seem interchangeable.  To some degree, that’s understandable as AVOD can also sometimes be offered alongside FAST, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same.  And for reasons I’ll explain, it’s important to understand the difference.

Crucial Differences  

Where AVOD (advertiser-supported video-on-demand) is a purely on-demand experience, FAST (free, ad-supported streaming TV) mimics the linear TV experience. What unites these two platforms is the means of delivery (internet) and that they are both free and ad-supported. To make matters more confusing, both can target niche audiences. But the critical difference is that one requires the viewer to take the lead and choose what they’re going to watch and when, while the other does not. AVOD invites the viewer to become an active participant, while FAST openly declares itself to be a “lean back” experience.

This distinction matters because one of the key reasons that digital video advertising has continued to grow in spite of the pandemic’s chilling effect is its ability to reach specific audiences in a way that traditional TV advertising cannot — that is, in a way that actively engages the viewer.  There is nothing new in the notion that advertisers want to reach engaged audiences and they’ll pay a premium for higher levels of engagement.  So when we turn our thoughts to the difference between AVOD and FAST, AVOD services clearly come out on top in terms of engagement. 

But let’s back up a bit. FAST channels were born largely out of Americans’ desire to cut the cord (and save a ton of money in doing so) while maintaining the feel and massive amount of choice that linear cable subscriptions provided. It wasn’t quite the same here in the U.K., however, as we never really reached the same level of cable penetration as seen in the U.S., and we already had a lot of free TV options.

But like the U.S., the U.K. has seen the uptake in OTT services explode. The volume of views on OTT services has risen nearly 50% year-over-year. Still, AVOD choices are few here and most free VOD is catch-up content provided by broadcasters and therefore limited. AVOD that offers a wider range of genres, or specific niche content, like IMDbTV, Fubo and Tubi in the U.S., are ripe to take off in the UK. A recent survey revealed that the majority of UK consumers (60%) say they would watch ads to be able to access content for free. And according to a Valassis study, 54% of consumers 25-54 said that ads on streaming services were more relevant than those on traditional networks. 

Customization Is Key

So while it’s likely that U.K. viewers will embrace FAST and AVOD, or hybrids therein, as audiences have in the U.S., the success of these platforms will come down to the ability to capture and keep viewers engaged and advertisers happy. When our team at YouLook.tv set out to build a better AVOD for the U.K., we recognized that quality content curated for the U.K.’s diverse audiences would be key to the advancement of ad-supported services here. Overall, the on-demand environment is better suited to provide viewers with a more customized experience while also providing advertisers with a way to reach those “lean forward” viewers in a credible, relevant way. 

David Smyth, a former 20th Century Fox and BSkyB exec, is founder and CEO of YouLook.tv, a new AVOD platform in the U.K. and Ireland.

Charter Communications’s efforts at promoting diversity and inclusion are led by its SVP and chief diversity officer, Rhonda Crichlow. By supporting an increasingly diverse workforce and by targeting investments in local businesses and communities within its service footprint, Charter hopes to create a more inclusive environment that better serves both its employees and customers of color.

Crichlow spoke with B+C senior content producer R. Thomas Umstead about
Charter’s diversity efforts at the March 16 CultureX Conversations conference. Their full discussion, along with other content from the event, can be viewed on-demand by registering at the event website, culturexevents.com. Here are highlights of the conversation. 

B+C: Why are diversity and inclusion so important to Charter Communications at this time?

Rhonda Crichlow: I think it’s really important to us because we feel that our customers really deserve the best products and services that we can afford. Our philosophy around diversity and inclusion really stems from our focus on our business. We really try to develop a strategy and an approach that is designed to enable stronger business success and business performance. We recognize that, as an organization, we have the benefit of serving a fairly large footprint in the U.S. We operate out of 41 states, with 96,000 employees and roughly 31 million residential and business customers. We also recognize, frankly, that all of those customers have very unique perspectives, needs and desires and the products and services that they receive.

B+C: At this point is, Charter satisfied with where the company is regarding diversity and inclusion efforts, and if not, how do you get to that point? 

RC: I would say we are satisfied with the progress that we’ve made to date, meaning that we have been able to accomplish a lot since introducing our strategy almost three years ago. We’ve seen significant progress in terms of our ability to engage with diverse suppliers;  we’ve introduced a number of new initiatives internally to continue to diversify our workforce externally to support communities across our footprint. Are we happy with our progress to date? Yes. Are we satisfied? No. I think we recognize that as an organization, we have more that we can and should do. We’re very proud of the fact that 48% of our workforce, for example, represents people of color. What we’d really like to do is continue to push forward with ensuring that level of diversity is also represented at every management level within our organization and continue to grow the diversity and inclusiveness of our leadership teams within the organization. 

B+C: What are you doing specifically to allow your employees to be part of the inclusion effort? 

RC: We have a number of programs that we’ve introduced over the course of the last few years, very similar to the way many other companies approach diversity and inclusion. We have network groups, which we refer to as business resource groups, [that] are open to employees of all backgrounds and experiences, irrespective of whether they have the affinity of the group. We also launched a speaker series — Charter’s version of a TED Talk, called Charter Inclusion Talks — where, to celebrate cultural and identity months, we will either invite external speakers in or tap into our employees to talk about some aspect of diversity and inclusion and or provide career advice for employees who attend those sessions. 

B+C: Did the events of last year and the racial reckoning that the country experienced affect some of the things that you’re looking to do going forward? 

RC: I would say it absolutely did. I think, writ large, one of the benefits of the experience that we had over the course of the last year is I do feel that it has raised a level of awareness outside of communities of color, of some of the very real and significant challenges that people still face in our country. I think there is also a recognition that people aren't able to necessarily divorce their experience and how they perceive their external environment from the way that they come into the office. So I think it’s required all of us in the diversity and inclusion space — and frankly leaders across all companies — to really think about what is it that we need to do to ensure that we’re creating inclusive and equitable workplaces for all employees, and what is it that we could do to continue to help people to understand that unique backgrounds and experiences of those employees.

We have a curriculum that we have been working on that we decided to make some tweaks to in light of what took place last year to make sure that we felt the content was very relevant to help our leaders and managers engage across lines of difference. We introduced a really interesting philanthropic initiative called the Spectrum Community Investment Loan Fund. Last year, we introduced that program about a month before the pandemic hit in February, and we started with a $10 million commitment designed to work with community development [and] financial institutions to provide loans and other resources to businesses and underserved communities, which we now recognize by virtue of the pandemic and some of the social unrest have been disproportionately impacted by the events of last year. 

I’m really proud to say this since we started that program, we’ve actually more than doubled the investment. We created a very unique partnership with the National Urban League and the National Action Network where $10 million of those funds will be invested specifically in programs and businesses in Black and Brown communities to really help revive those communities across our footprint.

B+C: Is upper management invested, and how are they participating in some of the things you’re working on? 

RC: I would say they’re incredibly invested. What I’m very pleased about is that our executive leadership team has been incredibly supportive and engaged since I joined the organization. I think they manifest their commitment to diversity and inclusion in a number of different ways. One, we do have an internal council that we call our executive steering committee for diversity and inclusion. It consists of our executive vice presidents, our head of communications, myself, inclusive of our CEO and president. We meet on a quarterly basis where we review our progress against diversity and inclusion. Our CEO is a regular presence at those meetings. We present annually to our board of directors. 

This year, we are really excited because we have started to really try to more deeply embed our strategy, particularly around our talent and inclusion objectives. We’re working hand in hand with every executive VP and their leadership teams on diversity action plans that they have created, which allow them to really look directly at their workforces, understand where they have areas of opportunity, understand where they have opportunities to perhaps facilitate a more inclusive work culture within their organizations. We’re working on developing specific plans with them and implementing those plans this year. 

 At the CultureX Conversations virtual event on Tuesday, March 16, Rich Ferraro, the chief communications officer of GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, will engage in a discussion about LGBTQ characters and storylines on television, a topic the organization has been studying for years and honoring at its GLAAD Media Awards since 1990. Ahead of the event, Ferraro and GLAAD shared some topical questions and answers about the subject for Multichannel News. 

MCN: We have seen a shift over the past several years in the number of LGBTQ stories that have been told on TV. Do you think the growth in LGBTQ stories as a whole accurately reflects the diversity of the community? What stories are still underrepresented on TV? 

Rich Ferraro: Over the past several years, we’ve certainly witnessed an overall growth in LGBTQ representation on television, but it’s no secret that many of those stories have centered on white cisgender gay or lesbian experience. Not until recently have we started to see a larger expansion of LGBTQ stories about people of color, as well as stories that spotlight diverse identities within our own community. Shows like Pose, Veneno, Vida, 9-1-1: Lone Star, Love, Victor and many others have paved the way for more diverse stories about LGBTQ people of color to be told. 

A promising finding from this year’s Where We Are on TV report was that racial diversity of LGBTQ characters is up on every platform, which is something GLAAD has been calling on from the industry for years. However, we’re still seeing underrepresentation of many groups within our own community, including bisexual and transgender people, disabled LGBTQ people and people living with HIV. Specifically, this year’s report found that there are only three characters on television who are living with HIV — all appear on FX’s Pose — which is down from nine characters the year before. Earlier this year, GLAAD announced that it is calling on the industry to erase stigma through authentic storytelling by introducing no less than three new regular or recurring LGBTQ characters living with HIV each year.

MCN: How have LGBTQ stories and characters evolved since you started at GLAAD in 2008? 

RF: When I started, it was a major news story when a gay character was introduced and we often worked with publicity teams to prepare crisis communications plans to anti-LGBTQ backlash. Just a year after I started at GLAAD is when Modern Family premiered on ABC. At the time, it was revolutionary for a gay couple to be depicted in such a positive and multi-dimensional way on broadcast television. Each week, Cam and Mitchell’s relationship appeared on TV screens across the country, most likely introducing many Americans to their first gay parents.

Now those crisis communications plans are not only not needed, but LGBTQ characters are the root of extremely celebratory earned media and social buzz. Series like Pop TV’s Schitt’s Creek, which has a pansexual character as a lead and a gay man as an EP, has been sweeping the biggest award shows in Hollywood. Groundbreaking shows like FX’s Pose and HBO Max’s Veneno have made history for trans representation, both on and off screen, and continue to highlight the importance of spotlighting and amplifying trans voices of color.

The GLAAD Media Awards recognize LGBTQ media images that grow acceptance and the first awards I ever took part in had five nominees in Drama and Comedy Series categories, with many of those shows including minor representation. At this year’s Awards, we have 10 nominees in these categories and introduced an Outstanding Children’s Programming category to recognize inclusive stories on shows aimed at young kids, because all families should see themselves reflected on screen. 

The “backlash” now happens when a LGBTQ story is not handled well or when LGBTQ people are kept intentionally invisible. The GLAAD Media Institute consults with networks and content creators on LGBTQ inclusion and we are not hearing if LGBTQ inclusion should happen, but how to do so in responsible, fair, and entertaining ways. 

MCN: The GLAAD Media Awards are coming up on April 8, and you just announced that they will take place virtually for a second year, this time streaming on GLAAD's YouTube and for the first time ever on Hulu. How has the virtual format changed the show, and what can we expect to see this year?

RF: At the GLAAD Media Awards, we work with the world’s biggest notables to send messages of LGBTQ acceptance around the world. Premiering on Hulu will allow these messages, including ones from our host Niecy Nash, to reach an even larger audience. LGBTQ youth are isolated at homes and so many Pride festivals and other LGBTQ safe spaces have been canceled because of the pandemic, so we are excited to bring messages of inspiration to LGBTQ youth. We have 198 nominees this year, more than ever before -- and we use these nominations and awards wins to raise the bar for inclusion. Suddenly if you are a network jockeying for a nomination, you not only need to include LGBTQ people, but to spotlight diverse segments of our community.

MCN: Last year, GLAAD and P&G released the first-ever ‘LGBTQ Inclusion in Advertising & Media’ study, which found that consumers are extremely comfortable with LGBTQ images in media and look favorably on brands who include LGBTQ people in their ads. How does this research shape the focus of GLAAD’s work to improve LGBTQ inclusion with networks and advertisers moving forward?

RF: The findings of this study send a clear and powerful message to brands that including LGBTQ people in ads, TV and films is good for business and good for the world, and should act as a catalyst for greater inclusion across industries. Nearly 70% of non-LGBTQ people who saw us in film, TV or ads said they favored a brand that included us.

In advertising, we know that significant work still needs to be done given the absence of LGBTQ representation. GLAAD will soon begin work with P&G and the Association of National Advertisers’ Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing to develop a set of best-in-class practices and standards for brands and companies to follow when approaching LGBTQ inclusion in advertising, specifically focused on prioritizing impact and ensuring accurate and authentic representation. λ

For more information about the CultureX Conversations event, go to CultureXevents.com.

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.

 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.

With former President Donald Trump’s impeachment acquittal by the United States Senate, the door remains ajar for Trump to run again in 2024, as many of his supporters are encouraging him to do.

But there was a more conclusive prohibition that was meted out against him only days before — namely a resolution passed by the SAG-AFTRA National Board that preemptively denied any potential readmission application to the talent union by Trump. His SAG-AFTRA membership enabled Trump to host The Apprentice and its successor series, The Celebrity Apprentice, which provided massive public exposure for more than a decade that he leveraged for his successful 2016 White House bid.

As SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris noted, “Preventing Donald Trump from ever rejoining SAG-AFTRA is more than a symbolic step. It is a resounding statement that threatening or inciting harm against fellow members will not be tolerated. An attack against one is an attack against all.” The union’s membership includes virtually all the television journalists who covered Trump while he was in office, some of whom he called the “enemy of the people.”

Facing a disciplinary hearing, Trump already had voluntarily relinquished his membership on Feb. 4, a day before it was to be held. In his resignation letter, the former president expressed pride in his movie and television work, capped off by “one of the most successful shows in television history, The Apprentice.”

The Apprentice premiered on NBC during the 2003-2004 television season. It finished seventh among all primetime network programs then. The series dropped to number 11 in its second season, and continued an annual downward slide to number 113 by the 2010-11 television season, its last (the highest ratings ranking for The Celebrity Apprentice, which then ran with Trump as host until 2015, was No. 48).

One suspects that when the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library is finally opened, there may be a whole wing devoted to The Apprentice, since it looms so large in Trump’s own list of lifetime achievements. Trump earned more than $200 million from the series and its spinoff over 14 seasons, and millions more from enhanced product licensing, as his name and image became more profitable. It would not be surprising to see both a replica Oval Office and a reconstructed boardroom set with a wall of video screens in the background playing episode clips on an endless loop.

His TV career prospects have been permanently shattered by the SAG-AFTRA board resolution. Starting a much-rumored Trump TV network from scratch or acquiring an existing cable network such as One America News Network might not offer much regular screen time either, if it was covered by SAG-AFTRA rules; even if not, the ability to attract top on-air union talent would be severely limited by these rules. 

In short, Trump’s September 2005 declaration to host Billy Bush on his Access Hollywood bus hot-mic moment that went viral again and again — “When you’re a star, they let you do it” — no longer will ring true. The only people who still might agree with this boast are those senators who voted for acquittal at the impeachment trial, along with those who supported the outcome. Their hope is that whatever is left in its wake, the show must go on.

Stuart N. Brotman is the former president and CEO of The Museum of Television & Radio, now known as the Paley Center for Media.

As the nation continues to celebrate Black History Month, a number of television distributors are making sure that the recognition of African-American contributions to the country echo loudly on the small screen beyond February.

National Geographic on Feb. 10 said it will mark the 100th anniversary of the devastating Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre in which white racists burned down a thriving Black community in the city. The documentary, Red Summer, recounts the two-day massacre that left as many as 300 Black people dead and more than 10,000 homeless and displaced. The documentary will air in June as part of Nat Geo’s celebration of Juneteenth, when the last African-American slaves in the U.S. learned of their emancipation. 

Until recently, this dark period in the United States was all but buried in the history books. National Geographic Global Television Networks president Courteney Monroe revealed during her TCA Winter Tour opening remarks that she had only recently become aware of the incident. “This tragedy was the most visible during a period in the early 20th century when Jim Crow laws were at their height and the [Klu Klux Klan] was resurging across the nation,” she would add. 

ALSO READ: Black Voices Rising

Nat Geo will also pay homage to the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, through its March limited series Genius: Aretha. It’s the third installment of the network’s Genius franchise, built around prominent and creative historic figures, and the first featuring an African-American legend. Nat Geo will follow up Franklin with a Genius focused on Martin Luther King Jr. 

HBO in March will sing the praises of a legendary female R&B singer, Tina Turner, in Tina. The documentary charts the singer’s career of more than five decades, recounting her early fame, her personal and professional struggles, including her tumultuous marriage to Ike Turner, as well as her even more improbable resurgence as a global star in the 1980s. Also in March, Lifetime will air a movie chronicling the life of iconic gospel singer Mahalia Jackson — the first of four films the network will develop with Good Morning America host Robin Roberts. 

Making Awards History

African-American images and stories are teeing up history in the upcoming awards season as Black actors and projects garnered a record-setting number of nominations. For example, four of five SAG Awards best film nominations are led by people of color — three of them with predominately African-American casts: Netflix’s Da 5 Bloods and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Amazon Video’s One Night in Miami. 

Other Black historically themed shows, like HBO’s Lovecraft Country — which weaves the negative history of the 1950s Jim Crow period within an equally scary sci-fi tale — Hulu’s The United States vs. Billie Holiday and Judas and the Black Messiah, which focuses on the government’s infiltration of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, drew multiple nominations in major categories across nominations for Screen Actors Guild and Critics Choice Awards.

Black History Month has arguably taken on greater significance this year in light of the social justice movement ignited by the death of George Floyd last May. TV One president Michelle Rice said that the continued proliferation of content created about, by and for African-Americans will help ensure that the history, stories, images and messages resonate throughout the year. 

“Even though TV One targets black people and we feel like we get that message out to our audience every day, I think it’s also important to get that message out to consumers who are not Black,” she said. “When you talk about this whole anti-racism movement, it’s really about educating and getting people to understand that our stories are part of the fabric of this country.”

Former President Donald Trump lived by the sword of angry tweets and made-for-video rallies and statements, and if the House impeachment managers' case against the president is any indication, his reputation may die on that sword.

Tweets and videos from a host of media outlets, many of which had been branded enemies of the people by Trump, were used extensively last week to build the House impeachment managers’ case against Trump as the instigator of the Capitol insurrection through months of claims on social media and in videos — White House-produced and otherwise — of a stolen election and a Joe Biden victory that could only be the result of widespread fraud.

Throughout his presidency, Trump’s advisers had reportedly warned him that his avalanche of social media posts, early on identified as official statements from the president, were stepping on his message and distracting from his agenda, though arguably that agenda also included rallying his base against what he saw as a media out to get him in league with Democrats. But the consequences of his reliance on the media he reviles to connect with his base could prove more serious and longer-lasting.

The House impeachment managers’ argument was a highly emotional one, rooted deeply in the sobering and shocking videos and tweets, which played a prominent if not dominant role in the prosecution.

And while legal commentators pointed out that the audience was about 10 Republicans who would needed to be swayed if the president were to be convicted, the wider TV and online audience for the Senate trial, which was being covered wall-to-wall online and on cable news and heavily on broadcast, was also likely the millions of people the Democrats were looking to persuade of the unsuitability of Trump to high office.

Since conviction was unlikely from the outset, conveying the horror of the day — with Capitol police mauled and the mob calling for Vice President Mike Pence’s hanging and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s murder, while the President remained relatively silent — clearly also had the secondary goal of convicting Trump in the court of public opinion. That’s because the end game, as much as accountability, was ensuring the former president cannot be re-elected in 2024. 

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.” 

It’s a new year with a new outlook, but the pandemic has forever changed how businesses will think, prepare and operate for the inevitable future. When the world shut down last March, media and broadcast companies in particular, found themselves at the forefront of this pivotal change as they navigated how to continue delivering and producing content for audiences in a virtual capacity.

Major productions were quickly moved remotely and on-air personalities from both news and sports broadcasts continued working from home as we, the viewers, all watched these unprecedented shifts take place in real-time.

As the world increasingly turned to news for information, pined over the return of  live sports and ramped up its consumption of streamed content, broadcast  companies leaned heavily on advancements in technology. These included remoting solutions, online editing applications and collaboration tools, to name a few, allowing them to seamlessly deliver under these unprecedented circumstances.

A recent study from Teradici offered insights from nearly 700 information technology decision-makers across global organizations following the first wave of COVID-19, and found that tech and media and entertainment companies expect more than 50% of their teams to continue working from home even after the  pandemic is over. Both industries plan to increase their investment in the technology necessary to sustain a remote model by more than 200%.

The Network Pivot

Many big networks found themselves with production projects hanging in the balance. Some companies had only begun their early exploration of solutions that would prepare them for a remote work future, but the crisis accelerated that timeline and applications were quickly deployed to support their new virtual workflows.

For some media companies, like ESPN, the impact was immediately felt across the editing teams. When COVID hit, editors working on the Michael Jordan docuseries The Last Dance were only in the early stages of completion. As they navigated  working from home to successfully complete the project on time, they quickly looked at new workflows and tools. ESPN engineering soon found a way for its artists and audio technicians to access their workloads through a virtual desktop in the cloud.

In the scenario where productions were in the middle of on-set shoots with actors, it becomes more complex to finalize that content. The NBC production team and actors of The Blacklist experienced this very challenge. While they were forced to hold on further in-person production during the mandated stay-at-home period, they came up with a plan to complete the final episodes of the seventh season. In only five weeks, NBC teamed up with Proof animation, where its artists created comic-book-like scenes that would combine with those live-action shots to fill in the final pieces of the show. With technology that compresses and encrypts data, sending it to a user’s end-point device, animators working with NBC’s editing team were able to collaborate on this graphic intensive content to complete the project.

For other networks, it was more about the ability to continue their creative output without major interruption. For example, A+E Networks U.K. relied on editing  solutions from 7FiveFive to help scale its capacity for remote editing. This allowed its artists to continue their work in a secure and compliant environment while working from a remote location.

And following the final episode of Picard season one, the CBS All Access team had to find a way to continue creating season two as they were forced to quarantine. In less than a week, they discovered and deployed remoting technology to enable the team of artists to quickly and securely log on to virtual machines from anywhere and continue to create future seasons of the new Star Trek spinoff. 

Remote Sports for the Win

After sports were put on hold early on, collegiate and professional leagues went into deep discussions about how to return safely. As they considered the details of getting teams back on the field and courts, major production teams were presented with an added technical challenge: bringing live sports production to viewers and airing the highly anticipated NFL draft.

With control rooms shut down following stay-at-home mandates last April, NFL Media quickly shifted gears to rethink its approach to its post-production process. Specifically, NFL Network was able to produce content using virtual software from BeBop Technology and AWS cloud computing services. This solution allowed the network to continue producing recorded editions of NFL Path to the Draft and the NFL Mock Draft early on, and also deliver the first-ever live remote NFL Draft, where both players, coaches and the commissioner engaged virtually versus the traditional live, on-stage and in-person format.

Companies like Fox Sports have been flexing their remote editing muscles when they used PCoIP (personal computer over internet protocol) Zero Clients during the FIFA Women's World Cup 2019. During the pandemic, this approach was taken a step further, as technicians couldn’t sit in the traditional on-site production trucks. The team at Fox Sports hit a home run in delivering the 2020 World Series by scaling its remote editing capabilities using technology to virtually edit the broadcast content from home.

The pandemic unfortunately isn’t going away soon. While media and entertainment and broadcast companies felt its jarring impact in real time, these companies  prevailed in innovating their remote-first approach to continue bringing information and much-needed entertainment to viewers worldwide.

The year that was…

2020 was a year like no other. The pandemic drove an unprecedented acceleration of digital enablement, as companies and organizations of all types adopted virtual substitutions to in-person experiences, such as remote work, online education, and telehealth. This drove a massive consumption of bandwidth, upstream and downstream, and led cable operators to add 1.32 million subscribers in 3Q 2020 alone.

Broadband service providers have added capacity at a furious rate in 2020 to meet the exploding demand. Due to the short-term circumstances, some broadband providers, and more specifically cable operators, had to temporarily put aside their longer-term plans, such as virtualization and the re-architecture of the access network, and use more traditional tools to add capacity. 

The massive need for capacity in the upstream has prompted operators to reconsider tools they had in their arsenal, such as mid-split, which allocates 85 MHz of spectrum to upstream, and high-split, which allocates up to 204 MHz but may require the spectrum to be extended to 1.2 GHz to preserve downstream capacity. Another technology that received renewed attention in 2020 is orthogonal frequency division multiple access, which is part of the DOCSIS 3.1 specifications and improves spectral efficiencies, resulting in added capacity.

The year ahead

High levels of bandwidth consumptions will continue

Although the level of growth will taper off in 2021, high levels of bandwidth consumption will continue in 2021 as some of the digitally enabled business models will persist and evolve to become an essential part of the strategic framework. For example, many companies will retain some version of flexible work arrangements well beyond the pandemic, and some predict that about 20% of remote work will never return to in-person; another example is healthcare where the limits on in-person treatment drove almost a five-fold increase in telehealth-based treatment. Healthcare regulation is expected to continue to be relaxed in 2021, and telehealth utilization is expected to persist, and indeed grow, as the industry evolves business models toward more comprehensive virtual care modalities that include solutions such as remote patient monitoring and age in place. In addition to driving bandwidth consumption, these solutions will over time accelerate the comprehensive re-planning of the communications and computing infrastructures.

Technologies that gain traction in 2021

Mid-split and high-split: The trend that started in 2020 will continue, as the need for capacity in the upstream will exceed the capacity of most existing cable access infrastructures.

Low latency DOCSIS: More and more applications, such as gaming, are demanding latency as low as 5–10ms. New applications are emerging where continuous remote health monitoring of patients in their homes complemented by real-time remote data analytics that inform medical treatment may also require low latency data in the near future. Furthermore, augmented reality and virtual reality (VR) applications are increasingly finding important applications in medicine. For example, at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Beverly Hills, California, a study is focused on using VR for a nondrug approach to treating lower back pain.

The Distributed Access Architecture (DAA): DAA took a relative backseat in 2020 as operators used largely proven methodologies to meet capacity demands. However, continuing to add capacity with node splits and more hardware in the headends is not sustainable over the long term. Therefore, DAA remains the most viable architecture over the long term, with fiber moving ever closer to the customer. The debate between Remote-PHY and Remote MACPHY seems to have subsided somewhat, and the recently introduced Flexible MAC architecture, which gives operators flexibility in the location of the MAC, is gaining industry traction. 

Virtualization and cloud native implementations: As operators raced to meet the capacity surge, a clear shortcoming they faced is their inability to elastically scale capacity with demand. If the level of demand does not sustain at the level for which they planned, some of the capacity added will not be utilized, resulting in stranded capital. One of the main advantages of virtualization is the velocity and flexibility that operators gain in introducing new services and features, in scaling capacity with demand, and in gaining more visibility into their networks, leading to fault mitigation and better reliability. The move toward a virtualized headend, already under way, will continue and even gain momentum as the operators exit fire-fighting mode. 

DOCSIS 4.0: As demand for upstream bandwidth continues to grow, operators will need capacity beyond mid-split and even high-split. The DOCSIS 4.0 specifications, released in early 2020, enable operators to increase upstream capacity to 6 Gb/s. Although field implementations are still years out, operators will begin to decide their DOCSIS 4.0 strategy. Operators have two approaches to consider: Extended Spectrum DOCSIS, which involves increasing the highest plant frequency from 1.2 GHz to 1.8 GHz and later to 3.0 GHz; and Full Duplex DOCSIS, which works within 1.2 GHz using overlapping frequencies for upstream and downstream but may impose restrictions on the number of amplifiers and other legacy equipment between the node and the subscriber.

Passive Optical Networks (PON): Another approach that operators are considering for achieving 10G capacity is FTTx implementations via PON solutions, which allows them to build on their HFC investments to deliver even higher speeds. 

WiFi 6 and 6E: The need for more capacity and performance will continue to drive deployments of WiFi 6, and as WiFi 6E is introduced in 2021, which delivers even more capacity, operators will start supporting the new technology.

Automation: The recent pandemic, social distancing requirements, the increasing complexity of the networks, for example DAA deployments and 5G backhaul densification, will drive operators to implement more automation in the networks.

New business models will be explored

As bandwidth consumption shifts to homes and other locations, and as bandwidth is increasingly used to replace in-person activities, new frameworks around who pays for broadband will start to be explored, as discussed in a prior blog.

Beyond broadband networks

Although the focus has been on bandwidth capacity, and justifiably so, major currents are underway in the broader telecom industry. As digital enablement accelerates, companies in many verticals and consumers in their homes will need increasingly complex applications. Delivering connectivity, while essential, will no longer be sufficient. Offering complex solutions that include connectivity, computation, automation, and generic and vertical-specific application modules will emerge; service providers have the opportunity to play a major role in this emerging area. However, this will require investments, new partnerships, and innovative business models.

Guest blog author Liliane Offredo-Zreik is a principal analyst at ACG Research, where she is responsible for cable access infrastructure market research and consulting practice. Offered-Zreik is also president and founder of boutique advisory firm The Sannine Group.

Cable and satellite providers have traditionally relied on a model of too-good-to-be-true offers that expire after a promotional period and fall short soon after. After that, it becomes a struggle to retain the new customers they obtained during the promotional period once their service agreement runs out.  And as customer service issues are steadily building up during the global pandemic, there could be a major storm brewing — the result being that cable and satellite providers could experience a mass customer exodus. 

The main question then becomes: how can cable and satellite providers prepare for a sudden jump in the number of customers abandoning them? If they act before it’s too late, they actually might not have to experience that jump.  

Turning to AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been part of the customer retention toolkit for a while now, but it’s more critical than ever before that organizations take full advantage of AI’s capabilities. With AI, cable and satellite providers can proactively identify the most vulnerable customers who are likely to experience payment difficulties further down the line or are experiencing service issues and provide helpful interactions — such as advice and services — before it’s too late. AI can also help providers offer more personalized services, such as modifying service offers through plans that provide value but don’t jump in price. 

It is also important to remember that contact centers continue to experience disruption and customers are less willing to visit newly opened retail stores, which can cause more frustration and lead to less engagement. To ensure customers remain engaged, pre-emptive, AI-powered outbound communication through multiple channels can forge long-lasting relationships with customers.

By using AI to detect customers experiencing service issues, cable and satellite providers can prioritize their retention efforts on those individuals. Engaging proactively with empathetic, suitable retention offers that address customers’ issues in the moment can help build the relationships and trust required for long-term loyalty. 

Focus on Lifetime Value

With people relying on digital channels more than ever, it is time for cable and satellite providers to develop a better engagement model for their own channels and optimize the use of inbound channels more. For example, launch “digital experts” such as web self-service, mobile apps, and intelligent assistants (e.g., chatbots, email bots) to deflect questions from the call center and automate request completion and fulfillment. This not only provides customers with more choices on how to engage with their provider, it also frees up customer service representatives to more urgently assist customers who need help most. 

In times of need, cable and satellite providers can no longer offer temporary promotional packages that increase in price after a year. Instead, they need to find ways to offer similar value for an extended period of time, or packages with more value for the same price that target customers with different variations based on their propensity to upgrade or indication of intent to churn.  This type of strategy will help organizations tailor their approach for an individual customer in a specific context addressing the customer’s need at the exact right time. This helps organizations drive or maintain a higher level of customer lifetime value through the variation of these offers.

Empathy also plays a critical role in communicating difficult conversations. Cable and satellite providers must drive meaningful experiences to help bolster customer lifetime value. These interactions keep the customer engaged, which will help drive loyalty and likely stop a customer from jumping to another competitor.   

Identify Pain Points With Data

Making the most of customer data and putting it to good use will also be fundamental in reducing customer churn. Static customer data is no longer sufficient to personalize engagement in the digital world. Data usage today revolves around understanding the customer’s intent to take relevant action in real time. Cable and satellite providers need to leverage and analyze their extensive customer data from a variety of sources — owned digital, paid digital, outbound, social media, or agent-assisted channels.  

Traditionally, cable and satellite companies would offer a next-best-action from static data, which is no longer enough. These companies need to analyze data and context to come up with an appropriate plan of action with individual customers based on where they currently are on their journey. Re-decisioning based on current, contextual data provides service agents with an empathetic, contextual and conversational experience for the customer to quickly and efficiently resolve their issue or enhance their current service.  

Review Pricing

In the long-term, cable and satellite providers also need to reassess their pricing, as consumer spending power has the potential to decrease during times of economic uncertainty. Using AI to identify customers who could be price-sensitive and preparing to encourage those customers to stay through offers that increase the value of their existing plan, lower the price based of their current needs or even suspend payments for a set period, can be the difference between a lifelong customer or one who cancels their service agreement.  

The use of promotional pricing vs. a reasonable, sustained pricing model has caused many customers to leave for streaming services. Adopting strategies that leverage different price points for the same service based on a customer’s willingness to pay offers another path to creating stable revenue growth.  Harnessing AI will better prepare organizations to handle an economic downturn and brace for the impact of streaming services.  

For cable and satellite providers to realize these strategies, they must take advantage of technologies available to them, particularly AI. Making this investment can help create the right offers and engagement strategies to develop real relationships with customers navigating this difficult period. 

As we move into 2021, media and entertainment leaders will be operating in a landscape that has been permanently changed by the pandemic. U.S. consumers have adopted new habits and preferences while the forces buffeting the industry have increased in intensity. Here are five trends to watch in the year ahead as we shift — eventually — into a post-COVID world.

Industry Under Renovation

EY research released in January 2020 found that 50% of media and entertainment executives believe they can no longer rely on traditional business models to drive future growth, highlighting the imperative for strategic and operational reinvention.  

The impacts of COVID-19 accelerated and amplified long-running secular changes, including streaming growth, cord-cutting, fading movie attendance and an increased focus on the price-value relationship by media consumers. COVID-19 also resulted in shorter-term cyclical shocks. Lockdowns and travel restrictions walloped virtually every business that relies on the physical aggregation of people. Industry executives are responding by taking bold steps to reposition their companies to align with new market realities.

Looking ahead, the sweeping restructuring actions already announced by several media majors will take hold throughout the industry. A primary motive is cost reduction, of course. However, the changing nature of the industry is forcing companies to rethink how they are structured and how they go to market.

The steps taken by media and entertainment companies to streamline their operating models for efficiency and effectiveness will remain on center stage as the entire industry plots a course through disruption.  

Time to Partner Up

Consolidation catalysts for media and entertainment companies are clearly defined. Most notably, they include the strategic necessity to acquire content to fuel streaming growth and the tactical reality that increasing size enables efficiencies and unlocks incremental investment capital. However, the window may be closing for studios and network owners hoping to sell to larger players in media or adjacent sectors due to questions around feasibility and demand. 

Media competitors that lack mega-scale face a crucial choice: attempt to forge ahead alone through turbulent waters or move rapidly to tie up with a similarly positioned peer to improve competitive and financial positioning. They must also set their strategy while navigating the uncertainty arising from the pandemic.

In 2021, we will likely see further combination activity involving midsized and smaller network owners and studios, motivated by the need to create a bigger platform to fund the investment in content, marketing and technology required to make the pivot to a direct-to-consumer model.  

Connection Has Value

Cable companies are achieving record results from their high-speed data offerings as consumers rely more than ever on fast internet connectivity for work, school and entertainment. Pay TV packages, once the cornerstone of the subscriber relationship, are being deemphasized in favor of broadband speed tiers and other connected services. According to EY’s 2020 Digital Home study, 40% of respondents purchase internet-only packages from cable companies, up 8% year-over-year, further reinforcing the market dynamics.

Going forward, cable companies will seek to expand more deeply into the household by deploying a broader suite of products that build on the core internet connection, including in adjacent “smart home” areas such as home security, a variety of connected devices – thermometers, doorbells, appliances — and potentially telehealth applications.

Embedding further into the household makes good strategic sense for cable companies as wireless providers begin to roll out 5G networks at scale.  

Live Events Return, Differently

In-person events will see a robust return in 2021 as the human need for shared experiences remains uniquely powerful. We are already seeing this at selective sporting events where limited crowds are back in stadiums cheering for their teams. Even so, absent a fully distributed vaccine for COVID-19, mitigation strategies will be required as fans return. This will change the dynamics for events — and will potentially open innovative new channels to enhance the consumer experience.  

Business conferences will continue to utilize digital platforms to extend reach and include remote participants who remain wary of business travel. Music venues will push ahead with creative audience layouts to encourage attendance, while also promoting interactive options. Owners of large stadiums will utilize their vast capacity to design ticket blocks that meet social distancing guidelines. Theme parks will promote safety measures and offer attractive deals to drive admissions.  

While serving as a bridge to a full reopening, these solutions also will keep audiences engaged and establish new multichannel, customized connections — mobile and powered by sophisticated data analytics — that will become part of the consumer value proposition.

Gaming, Esports Level Up

Esports and video gaming will build on a user base that multiplied in size during the pandemic. When sporting events were shuttered, teams, leagues, athletes and promoters embraced esports competitions involving simulations of “IRL” [in real life] events to maintain fan engagement and fill broadcasting slots. From auto racing to basketball, to cycling and even horse racing, millions tuned into virtual events, opening a wide new consumer engagement pathway that we expect to grow in 2021.  

Meanwhile, video game revenues have almost doubled over the last five years. New game launches from publishers — combined with the growth of in-game microtransactions and advertising — are leading to another record year for the industry. Upcoming releases of next generation consoles and the launch of gaming cloud streaming services will further stoke demand well into 2021.

Success in 2021 will depend on industry leaders adapting strategies to meet unforeseen market opportunities and threats. With disruption as the constant, the only way to survive and thrive in exceptional circumstances is to build systemic agility and execute at lightning speed. In 2021 and beyond, companies will be successful not because they are better at predicting the future but because they can better orchestrate a wide-ranging ecosystem of in-house talent and external partners and pivot in a timely, confident manner. 

The 2020 U.S. presidential election was likely one of the most-watched televised events in recent history. Since multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) won’t report subscription numbers until closer to Inauguration Day, networks won’t know who subscribed to their services for election coverage for as long as three months. Until then, they remain in the dark on the distribution revenue generated by the historic vote — or any content, for that matter.

As networks perpetually play catch-up, other sectors like finance, retail and manufacturing are leveraging technology not only to understand revenue in real time, but to predict future customer behavior. Fortunately, networks can harness tech in the same way.

If networks had systems in place that could pull data from past noteworthy events — say, presidential and midterm elections from 2004 through 2020 — they could then forecast how subscriptions likely rose ahead of voting, more accurately predict the revenue they’re likely to see and use that information to make more informed financial decisions and also in negotiations with their distributors.

That capability would be welcome at any time. But it’s especially game-changing at a time like right now, as networks negotiate new licensing agreements with MVPDs before their current deals expire, many of which will be at the end of this year.

A Negotiating Edge

At present, networks won’t have November’s subscriber data in time to leverage it to negotiate license fees. But if they had AI to learn from and make predictions based on past years’ data, networks could enter these negotiations armed with predictive data based on prior subscription numbers. Further, those predictive analytics could save networks from the significant revenue adjustments that will take place once the MVPDs ultimately do remit subscription numbers. In sum: content creators would make better financial decisions, and potentially more revenue.

MVPDs are not the bad guys here. They have not reported subscriber data from the November election because they are taking their time to close out their books. (They need to manage their customers and cash flow, too.) And most, but not all, are doing it all with desktop tools that were invented as far back as 1985 (e.g., Excel), when distribution revenue models were far less complex and the appetite for data and analytics far less than is the case today.  

The industry has outgrown these delayed and manual workflows, though, and the financial implications are severe. Given the lack of timely information available, projecting revenue is extremely difficult and often painful for networks to do. Understanding how distributors are performing — and using that information to negotiate licensing agreements, make business decisions, and create compelling content to retain customers — consumes significant overhead. Additionally, when MVPD data finally becomes available to creators, it’s in multiple formats stored in multiple locations and typically with very limited insightful data points. 

Organizations that can find a solution to these dilemmas have an advantage. Although media companies may not be in a position to displace outdated self-reporting models that depend entirely on decentralized data, they do have the opportunity to leverage centralized AI tools that not only predict performance but also automate data storage, revenue workflows and financial analysis, reducing operating costs and yielding higher returns. That shift entails a wealth of productivity measures, too, like moving workflows from desktops and on-premise tools to cloud platforms, enabling tighter user access controls, remote collaboration, streamlined reporting, reduced accounts receivable cycle times and better decision-making.

Layering the power of AI into these processes creates opportunities for networks to analyze distributor performance, consumer trends and countless other data points that can be leveraged to strengthen their financial position. As it accumulates data, AI can additionally predict future scenarios and help networks adapt to fast-moving trends among viewers, subscribers and other stakeholders in the media landscape.

Making Data More Valuable

AI can’t eliminate MVPD reporting delays, but it can dramatically increase the value of the data that is already available and that which will become available. The financial service teams responsible for revenue management have long been underserved by technology. We’re overdue for solutions that can analyze, predict and achieve the revenue outcomes that networks need to thrive in a competitive environment. That’s intelligence that can be the difference between growth and the alternative.

The first TV station in the United States began broadcasting on July 2, 1928, ushering in a new medium for storytelling, news and advertising. Television’s entrance into the mainstream brought together a new business ecosystem made up of content creators, advertisers, distributors and viewers. 

Ninety years later, the key roles in the television landscape haven’t changed. But the advent of streaming has inspired new players, new business models and with them, new winners and losers. As the thrashing market nurtures some businesses while starving others, a new equilibrium will emerge. In that new equilibrium, how will operators survive, or perhaps even thrive?

As with many business questions, the answer often starts with a line from a Hollywood script: “Follow the money.” Advertisers historically have been the financial engine behind television entertainment, and their influence is still apparent in spite of the seismic market shift. Back then, as now, content was king and advertisers paid accordingly. Brand managers and ad agencies used to commit a full season’s worth of spending in advance without a clear understanding of how a new show would perform. Advertisers bore a lot of risks and, in return, they got Nielsen reports. On paper.

For a long time, the only thing that changed was the price of content. And with the higher price of content came the demand for higher advertising revenues. Both the costs for ad spots and their frequency increased. High market-entry barriers allowed runaway content-cost increases that were passed on to advertisers and viewers.

Ripe for Disruption

Fast-forward through decades of fossilized business models and you see why the ecosystem was a prime target for disruption by the rise of digital advertising. The explosion of real-time ad markets and troves of audience data significantly lowered ad costs and provided better targeting, tracking and analytics. Three-martini, Mad Men-style lunches became obsolete as advertisers pulled back commitments in favor of web and mobile advertising. To keep advertisers, television service providers need to offer more targeted access to customers, along with better tracking and analytics.

In the meantime, ad-free Netflix burst onto the scene and the direct-to-consumer (D2C) business became a thing. This threw another wrench into the TV ecosystem equilibrium. At first blush, D2C looks like a win-win-win-lose proposition. Content owners win by cutting out the middleman. Advertisers get one-to-one engagement and real-time feedback. Viewers get lots of choices and can cut the cord (and spend it instead on four to six over-the-top apps). Operators, as the distributors, appear to lose out.  

So the question becomes, “What problems still exist today that also existed 90 years ago that operators are uniquely positioned to solve?” After all, with hundreds of available apps and subscribers maybe only signing up for four to six, content owners still need access to consumers in order to attract advertisers and subscription revenue. Consumers still want their entertainment to be easy to access and enjoy. This brings us back to our original question: Is there room for operators to survive or thrive?

Operators need to focus on two important areas. First and foremost, they need to embrace the role of master aggregator by providing content from all sources. This goes beyond traditional studio content and includes OTT sources as well as hyper-local and niche content. Television entertainment is now a one-to-one experience, and the content catalog has to be as diverse and eclectic as the community it serves. While there are plenty of contenders trying to be the master aggregator of content (e.g. Apple TV, Android TV, Fire TV, Roku, etc.), none of them can address the local community as effectively as the operator. Operators also aggregate consumers for the content owners and advertisers. It is this second role as an aggregator of subscribers that really gives them staying power in the market. Operators help lower overall distribution costs while lifting retention rates. With churn rates for OTT frequently as high as 50% or more, any pure D2C play becomes very expensive and hard to sustain.

Think Engagement 

The second point for operators to focus on is adopting an engagement mentality. Service providers need to evolve from their role as passive distributor in a one-to-many pipeline to an active participant in the one-to-one marketing model. This is accomplished by creating a more personalized experience that brings people together with the content they love. This approach requires a combination of innovative features and more flexible business models and service bundles. Success can be found with a heightened emphasis on promotion and merchandising to keep great content front of mind and to encourage upselling. And, of course, personalized advertising helps capture every source of revenue to help keep consumer prices low. 

At the end of the day, operators still have an important role to play as aggregators — aggregating content on one side and consumers on the other. But in order to maintain relevance, they need to evolve their technology platform and business models and embrace a customer engagement mentality. Content owners want to keep making great content. Advertisers want real-time access to consumers. Consumers want easy access to a variety of content for a reasonable price. Operators will maintain relevance by efficiently bringing all of them together. And so, the dance continues. 

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

 The pandemic has pushed decision-makers across numerous domains to reconsider their marketing and advertising spend. This spring and summer, we’ve seen brands completely canceling, pausing and reallocating their ad budgets across ad channels. Proven to be a surviving — and steadily swelling — channel, connected TV (CTV) keeps growing and attracting more viewers, marketers, and ad investments.

Now the holiday season is not far off, and as advertising-based video-on-demand (AVOD) viewing time hits record levels, savvy marketers just can’t leave CTV ads out of their holiday timetables. The primary reason is that streaming video time has almost doubled since last year, attracting one in five U.S. internet users (about 57 million people) who access AVOD. Besides, with 66% of shoppers planning to buy online more this year, it seems this holiday shopping season will be a blast for e-commerce.

Streaming and Buying Behavior 

Along with the overall time spent on video streaming, the correlation between shoppers and streamers increases as well. According to a recent Roku report, so far, in the U.S. alone, 85% of households are streaming video. But what’s even more interesting is that the majority of U.S. buyers-and-streamers (79%) are going to increase their holiday spending significantly compared to non-streamers (55%).

The rise of CTV viewership and shoppers’ New Year’s resolutions to buy more have given marketers every reason to be where their consumers are. Moreover, to win buyers’ attention and count on some part of their holiday budget, marketers should start their campaigns ASAP. While considering how to get the most out of CTV campaigns, it’s essential to take a closer look at several peculiarities of the promising streaming and buying audiences.

The lockdown has become a critical factor prompting adjustments to streaming and online shopping hours. Streaming hours shifted to traditional workday times, peaking during the slot between 1 p.m.
and 4 p.m. So did online shopping hours: now 62% of buyers make their purchases between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Simultaneously, buyers tend to purchase from the brands and shops that offer them discounts as well as free or cheap and fast delivery. 

As for specific goods, more than 40% of shoppers in the U.S. plan to purchase a new television this year as a gift to themselves or their families, so they’re exploring various smart-TV options. With more time spent at home working, exercising and learning, homeware, sports goods, toys and other stay-at-home related categories will be spiking during the holiday season. 

With these insights, marketers had better hop on the holiday shopping bandwagon as about 40% of shoppers have already started their purchases for the holidays in early November, and 30% more buyers will join them before Black Friday or Cyber Monday. 

What makes CTV advertising a cornerstone of media strategy, especially during the upcoming holiday season, is the immediate value it brings to marketers. Since streamers mainly watch CTV content simultaneously using smartphones or tablets, they are ready to purchase right away. Very recent findings by Roku show that 44% of streamers shop online while streaming. Besides, two-thirds of the millennial streaming audience pauses a streaming ad to go online and shop for the product. This is completely reshaping the traditional path to purchase.

What are the specific actions marketers can take this festive season to get the most out of CTV advertising? 

Start with the audience. Use the power of streaming video and consumer behavior insights. Explore your audience carefully: know if they prefer streaming live or binge-watching; if they use a smart TV or a smartphone; if they interact better with display, shoppable or other types of ads. These precise insights will help you allocate your budgets wisely and think in a multi-channel dimension.

Split and test. Split your target audience into different segments depending on product categories they are interested in and run a separate campaign for each segment.

Think cross-device. Since holiday shoppers are using several devices while watching CTV content, brands need to establish their presence across all the screens gift seekers interact with. Thanks to the advanced metrics CTV provides, you can build accurate cross-device paths and track conversions properly and clearly.

Take advantage of CTV retargeting. Reach out to your online store visitors and potential buyers who abandoned shopping carts with persuasive ads over a CTV screen. Use CTV advertising to get them back to the products they were exploring.

Come up with compelling ad creative. A concise ad message wrapped up in eye-
catching creative and transmitted in an engaging format makes an essential part of the CTV advertising strategy. In-stream, pause video ads, QR code ads and more are just a few of the rich assortment offered by the CTV environment.

Although we presumably won’t see familiar in-store mobs sweeping goods off the shelves on Black Friday and in the run-up to Christmastime, online shopping seems to be a rush for both consumers and marketers. Intelligent marketers ready to enhance their omnichannel media strategies with CTV ads and armed with consumer behavior insights will undoubtedly reach their consumers and drive action effectively. 

Daniel Elad is chief strategy officer at TheViewPoint, a New York-based advertising technology company. 

This fall, streaming services scored another revealing first in the battle with linear networks for market-share dominance. I’m not highlighting another cord-cutting milestone, though it is estimated that a record-breaking 6.6 million households will cancel their pay TV subscriptions in 2020, exacerbated by the pandemic.

I’m talking about a major shift in the balance of promo campaigns for new series, new seasons or original movies and specials — a metric on-air marketing research service CMOintelligence has been analyzing for 40 linear and streaming services daily since 2015.

Something unusual happened in the last week of August. For the first time, there were more new (or “first occurrence”) streaming campaigns than linear campaigns. While it was only a 14% difference at first, it was enough to catch my attention. 

Two weeks later, the streaming numbers jumped again, this time by 29%, and by the following week, they had climbed to 61%, with the total number of campaigns for both linear and streaming services more than doubling.

In the fall, I expect to see a significant increase in new series and season campaigns as the broadcast networks roll out their programming. And, during this time, cable networks do tend to slow their introductions, but I’ve never seen the streamers ramp up this much this quickly. 

Just to further qualify the data, I took a more predictive approach, turning to CMOmarketplace to analyze real-time activity between media companies and the creative agencies that produce their promo campaigns. What types of marketing campaigns were getting the most views?

Pulling the numbers for September, I found another telling shift. Seven of the top 10 most-viewed promo/marketing projects were for streamers such as Disney Plus, Peacock, Netflix, HBO Max, Topic and Amazon.

So what’s really driving streaming’s surge in promo campaigns? As I see it, there are several factors at play:

1) A year ago, there was no Disney Plus, HBO Max or Peacock. 

2) These services have linear channels that can act as barker channels with cross-channel promotion. Amazon, Netflix, Apple TV Plus and other independent streamers must buy airtime in national or local ad breaks. 

3) CMOintelligence tracks 25 linear general entertainment channels, but only eight of those are significant general entertainment streamers (Amazon, Apple TV Plus, CBS All Access, Disney Plus, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix and Peacock). Doing the math, nearly one-third of these entertainment brands — the streamers — accounted for more than 60% of the marketing campaigns for new series, seasons, specials and movies.

In sharing these findings with media companies, I suggested that we had “crossed the Rubicon,” referencing the river that marked the point of no return for Julius Caesar.

John Miller, chairman of NBC Universal Marketing, responded: “Lee, we didn’t just cross the Rubicon. The streamers flooded the TV landscape!”

What Happens Next?

Looking ahead, I predict that media companies will continue to significantly reduce the amount of cross-channel promotion to linear channels and shift that inventory to promoting their streaming services.

Certainly, with the recent management restructures at the major media companies, and the across-the-board philosophical shift to streaming solutions, that would be expected. But it’s more about efficiency. Most streaming services host content from the multiple linear channels as well as the company’s back catalog. Promoting content on one streaming service gives you more bang for your buck than running multiple content spots from multiple linear channels. Add that to the campaigns the independent streamers, Amazon, Netflix, Apple TV Plus, and the like will continue to run, and I believe, as John Miller said, “it’s not just a flood, but a complete sea change.”

Lee Hunt is a TV marketing veteran and a co-founder of CMOintelligence, a platform that tracks the on-air marketing of 32 networks plus Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. 

Donald Trump has proved himself to be uniquely ill-suited to the challenges of his job and to this difficult moment in history, a moment whose difficulty is, in part, of his own making. 

The president has systematically undercut the other branches of government that
are meant to be the checks and balances on his power. 

At a time when the country is politically divided, he sows even more division with tweets and statements that often have a problematic relationship to the truth, on the order of a distant cousin several times removed. The truth matters, and what the president says matters not just to him, but an entire country.

His attacks on the media, including his assertions that reporters are enemies of the people in league with his opponents and could, perhaps, use a good roughing-up by his supporters, have consequences he either doesn't acknowledge or tacitly approves.

Back in the weeks before the 2016 election, the Committee to Protect Journalists declared then-presidential candidate Donald Trump a threat to press freedom “unknown in modern history.” He has done nothing as president to leaven that harsh assessment.

The president pathologically refuses to accept responsibility or criticism, and appears to weigh everything by whether he can take credit for it as a personal “win” or reframe defeat as victory. Those who can’t concede their mistakes can’t learn from them and can’t help repeating them.

Taking a page from the Nixon White House, then rewriting it for the digital age, President Trump has used his position to try to get back at a host of perceived media enemies, whether it is suggesting the AT&T-Time Warner merger should be blocked because he doesn't like CNN, or threatening broadcast licenses when a story airs that rubs him the wrong way, or going after social media with a broad brush dipped in vitriol, or taking his marbles and going home when, after contracting COVID-19, he backs out of a  virtual televised debate.

Trump promised to be more presidential than any president. That definition apparently includes obstructing a national referendum on race relations by preventing any government contractor, and there are many of them in the communications business, from conducting diversity training classes that even suggest there is a history of systemic racism or sexism in this country. There has obviously been a big push by industry, including cable and broadcasting, to address that undeniable racism — discrimination, for example — has prevented minorities from having access to broadcast licenses and the boardrooms and back rooms where secondary deals, and billions of dollars,
were made.

In an executive order issued Sept. 22, the president called it a “pernicious and false belief” that the country is “an irredeemably racist and sexist country.” The order requires clauses in government contracts preventing diversity training that includes that belief. The “irredeemably” in that order is an overstatement meant to shield the order from the condemnation it so richly deserves. Diversity training is all about the belief that the country is redeemable through education and understanding, followed by a collective acceptance of responsibility for past action or inaction, ideally then followed by a commitment to create a fairer and more just society for all. The president’s order attempts to short-circuit that process.

We applaud NCTA-The Internet & Television Association for standing up to the president and that executive order. It signed on to a letter earlier this month that said the president’s order was disconnected from reality, that reality being “ongoing racial inequality and inequities in America.”

On the issue we are, selfishly, most interested in — a vigorous and free press — as we have said on this page before, the media is hardly above criticism in the passion play of Donald Trump’s rise to the highest office in the land. But that is a separate issue from this president's petty and dangerous digital broadsides in rally speeches and mean tweets, which would be troubling in times without a pandemic and a racial reckoning.

We said back in April the president needs to stop. He hasn’t. It is time for the voters to escort him out.

Fresh Start? 

But we want to end on a hopeful note. At the end of last week’s hearings on a new Supreme Court nominee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, who was strongly opposed to both the nominee and the timing of the Republican-backed effort to place her on the court ASAP, called the hearings some of the best she has ever participated in and praised Chairman Lindsey Graham for the way they had been conducted. She said it left her with some hope for bipartisan legislation on other topics in the future. For his part, Graham told Feinstein she was a “joy to work with.” He also said whatever happens in the presidential election, if he returned to the Senate he was committed to “starting over” and trying to find common ground.

Whoever returns to Congress and the White House after the Nov. 3 referendum on the last four years on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and the Hill, may it be so.

The nation’s only program aimed at helping low-income American families afford mobile communications is known as Lifeline for a reason. Through a federal subsidy of $9.25 per month, Lifeline helps those most in need obtain the phone or broadband service that the pandemic has made a necessity of everyday life.

Unfortunately, the program is so tied up in red tape that it’s cumbersome and expensive to administer, which reduces the number of participating providers and makes it difficult for consumers to access the benefit. Because of the shortcomings, the program is substantially underutilized, evidence that Lifeline in its current form is inadequate for making broadband available to the less financially fortunate. The Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Administrative Co. estimates that there are about 38.6 million Lifeline-eligible households, but only around 9.6 million participate, meaning that only one in four eligible households is taking advantage of the program subsidy.

Modernizing and simplifying the Lifeline Program could extend the benefit to more families in need and open up the program to many more competitive service providers, such as cable broadband operators.

A multitude of companies offers telecommunications services in the United States. They range from small, local companies such as the Hot Springs Telephone Co. in Hot Springs, Montana, to large industry leaders like AT&T and Verizon Communications. American consumers have a buffet from which to choose, but because many companies have decided not to participate in the program, Lifeline beneficiaries order from a limited menu.

Costly Middleman Mandate

The program saddles service providers with the burden of acting as middlemen between the federal government and consumers, an unnecessary and costly responsibility that has greatly reduced the number of participating carriers. Companies are discouraged from taking part by a broad list of Lifeline regulations, including multiple annual audits, many years of required record-keeping, and the necessity of filing reimbursement claims to the Lifeline program for each customer served. Participating providers are also required to bill customers directly and then seek reimbursement from the Lifeline program. This cumbersome and costly process is totally unnecessary.

A structural change could make the Lifeline program far more useful and let it play a larger role in closing the digital divide. The monthly benefit should be converted and greatly simplified, opening the door to use of the program by a larger number of service providers and Lifeline beneficiaries.

Beginning in 2014, I began advocating for the current Lifeline structure to be scrapped. Service providers should no longer be required to engage in extensive record-keeping and submit invoices to the government for reimbursement. Instead, the monthly Lifeline benefit should be provided directly to consumers in the form of a “Lifeline Benefit Card,” a debit-like card that would automatically reload each month. Consumers could then use the benefit card to shop among carriers in order to select the carrier and specific services that best meets the consumers’ needs, and they could choose between telephone service or broadband service or some combination of the two with the monthly benefit defraying all or a portion of the total bill.

SNAP Offers a Model

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is proof that the provision of government benefits through a debit card is highly workable. Not only would a direct-to-consumer Lifeline Benefit Card empower subsidy recipients to shop among providers, it would also make the program far more attractive to carriers by eliminating the carrier costs associated with record-keeping, auditing and billing. More carriers would be willing to participate, and more participating carriers would increase competition in the marketplace, benefitting consumers by substantially expanding their range of service provider choices.

With internet access now required for working from home, learning virtually, shopping on e-commerce websites and being entertained through the ever-expanding program offerings of a variety of streaming services, subscribing to a broadband service has never been more necessary for everyday living. The Lifeline program can help to provide that essential service to millions more American homes — but only through a modernized program that attracts more carriers and is more accessible to low-income Americans.

Home internet and media service providers face a unique opportunity to meet the unserved needs of an increasingly important and overlooked market segment — value-conscious consumers. The second annual EY report on the digital home is based on a survey of 5,000 U.S. households, with 43% representing the value-conscious Segment, defined as those with an annual household income between $10,000 and $50,000.

This is the cohort hit hardest by COVID-19, with 29% saying they have difficulty paying for their home internet service. As a result of the pandemic, this group is set to grow in both size and influence as value becomes an increasingly important driver within the digital home.

Here are five notable trends driving value-conscious consumers and some actionable recommendations on how providers can respond to their unique needs:

1. Leading the next wave of cord-cutting — putting mobile first. Value-conscious consumers are considering cutting their fixed internet connection in favor of mobile. Nearly a third (32%) of value-conscious consumers agreed they would be willing to drop their fixed home internet connection if a mobile option could meet all their needs, up seven percentage points from last year.

This reflects the finding that value-conscious customers tend to look to mobile first for connectivity, with 11% saying they use their mobile phone as their primary internet provider, compared to 3% for other income groups.

This preference is now being compounded by COVID-19. Of the households planning to switch their home internet providers as a result of the pandemic, 28% are planning to switch to mobile-only connectivity and cut their fixed internet services.

2. Unbundling the bundle — flexibility is crucial. Value-conscious consumers are increasingly unbundling from traditional pay TV packages in favor of streaming services. Forty-three percent of value-conscious consumers said that streaming is the primary way they watch TV/films at home, and 58% strongly agree it is a better value than pay TV. The value-conscious consumer prefers a la carte internet connectivity and entertainment to bundles — 40% do not purchase any other service from their home internet provider. Nearly half (46%) of value-conscious consumers said they are unlikely to bundle their home internet and wireless service. The top reasons for not wanting to bundle include: the discount is not large enough to warrant it (33%); customers don’t want to consolidate billing information for wireless and home internet (21%); and don’t want to pay for all communications services at the same time every month (16%).

This highlights two compelling drivers for this segment. First, they want to be able to add and drop services as their household finances change, rather than being tied to lengthy fixed-price schedules. They also require products that can adapt to a more transient lifestyle, preferring to access connectivity on-the-go rather than having it tied to a property address. This trend is underscored by data that shows value-conscious consumers are twice as likely to switch internet providers, compared to other households.

3. Low budgets do not mean low expectations — quality counts: While it’s tempting for providers to remove barriers to entry for this segment by offering low-cost, lower quality options, that would be short-sighted and unappealing for the value-conscious consumer. These customers don’t want the cheapest products, they want the ones that offer the best value. Nearly half (49%) of value-conscious respondents said the quality and functionality of the equipment that comes with an internet service played a significant role in choosing their provider. This is a crucial learning point for service providers, which have traditionally offered this segment stripped-down products and services.

4. New technology adoption is driven by value, not awareness: Value-conscious consumers own fewer smart-home devices than higher-income households, but this is due to a lack of perceived value rather than a lack of awareness. Only one in four value-conscious respondents said that the prices of smart products are reasonable. Although these consumers are not early adopters of new technology, they are not laggards either. They look for a strong value proposition before purchasing new technology and services.

It’s a similar story with 5G — 43% of value-conscious respondents said they are aware of the features and benefits of 5G mobile technology, not far behind high-income respondents at 47%. However, only 30% are interested in upgrading to a 5G mobile plan because they don’t see a tangible value-add for their needs.

5. Privacy and data security concerns are universal: Value-conscious households have similar adoption rates for data-protection tools as other income groups and are equally aware of the impacts of data privacy and security. Nearly a quarter (23%) of value-conscious households said data security/privacy products were an important factor when looking for a new internet provider — up 5 percentage points from the previous year and only just below high-income households (26%). 

Providers have the opportunity to adjust their go-to-market approach and value proposition to meet the needs of the value-conscious consumer, and not just because of the pandemic. Such consumers are driving new consumption and adoption trends that are going mainstream. Thirty-three percent of respondents of all income levels said they are trying to pay less for their communications and content services during the COVID-19 crisis.

Instead of basic “budget” services, value-conscious consumers want services designed around their specific needs. Providers should also consider offering customized services and payment schedules that can adapt to changing household cash flows and lifestyles. 

There’s no doubt that fully meeting these needs will be a challenge for service providers. However, those who embrace this growing segment and create products and services specifically tailored to them will be rewarded with a unique opportunity to capture market share, build brand affinity and generate new avenues to growth.

Peacock TV has landed in my living room, after some anxious days of wondering if I would be compelled to use a laptop or mobile phone to watch the English Premier League soccer I am paying extra to receive. 

It is the latest lesson in leverage. I had none: I complained on Twitter but no one listened. Roku had some. The Comcast NBCUniversal conglomerate had the most.

You probably saw how quickly it came about after weeks of seemingly no progress. Peacock launched nationwide on July 15 as a direct-to-consumer service, with a free ad-supported version and premium (pay) renditions.

It’s delivered on the internet: No video package needed from cable or satellite. Remarkably, though, the little black box near my TV, a Roku 4 device, didn’t have Peacock as a channel. (A few clever free channels sprang up, though, like a Peacock screensaver, to entice customers searching for it.)

Comcast NBCU is seriously committed to Peacock as a vehicle to reach consumers with ads and new monthly subscriptions. NBCU’s EPL matches, shown here on weekend mornings and some weekday afternoons, have bounced around from channel to channel, linear and streamed, but have lately been funneled to the Peacock pay version. That’s a traditional form of leverage: buying sports rights and charging cable companies more to show the games, or charging consumers directly to view them. 

Problem for NBCU is that Roku is more than just a sidecar device to deliver internet channels to the TV. It’s the most popular such device in the country, and has its own criteria for enabling that access. Whatever those terms are — they have been reported to be a share of the revenue charged for the channels — they were unacceptable to NBCU. (NBCU still has a standoff with Amazon over Fire TV access.)

Stuck in the Middle

On Sept. 18, with the second day of EPL matches ahead, NBCU pulled another traditional lever programmers use in spats with distributors. It informed Roku that it would soon lose access to the NBC app and “TV Everywhere” extensions of NBCU cable channels like USA, Syfy and CNBC. Those are extensions only available to viewers who have those channels on cable, anyway, so that’s not as potent a threat as, say, pulling CBS or Fox signals ahead of the Super Bowl. 

But the ice seemingly broke. By the next day, Roku and NBCU came to terms over the NBC apps, including, crucially, Peacock. A couple of days after that, Peacock strutted onto Roku’s channel lineups.

By now, consumers are used to these kinds of blackouts caused by dollar disputes. Some of them are only for a day or two. Some last for years. Los Angeles Dodgers baseball local-TV rights were acquired by Time Warner Cable and the games were put onto a new regional sports network in 2014 that most distributors in the L.A. market (other than TWC, now part of Spectrum) refused to pay for. That persisted until April of this year, when DirecTV parent AT&T signed a carriage contract that also includes the online pay TV service AT&T Now. 

Cable companies — which only started paying cash to carry broadcast networks in the early 2000s, believe it or not — feel oppressed by the leverage that broadcasters have to charge them more and more. Broadcasters respond that their programming is valuable and, besides, in many cases, cable is the only real provider
of high-speed internet service that reaps huge profits for cable, so operators can afford to pay.

The best way around these impasses that squeeze the consumers caught in the middle is to have alternatives. If your cable company has lost a local broadcaster, get a digital antenna or switch to an online “virtual MVPD” that still has it. If you’re unhappy with your cable internet, if you can, switch to a competitor. At some point, 5G should provide wireless competition.

It’s a bit galling, maybe even ironic, to see these gatekeeper situations extend to direct-to-consumer services, and to see Roku or Amazon or Apple TV stand in the way of me and English Premier League soccer. I was pleased to see cooler heads prevail in this particular dispute.

Now, about HBO Max …

How much content is too much content? Research shows that the average U.S. adult takes 7.4 minutes to make a selection on over-the-top services. According to further research, the average U.S. household has three streaming services and 70% of survey respondents agreed that they often struggle to figure out what to watch next. So, it’s not so surprising that 21% of all viewers decide to give up and not watch anything at all. 

How can providers put an end to endless scrolling and provide accurate recommendations that put relevant content in front of viewers, so all they have to do is press play? It has to be a two-way street.

While OTT providers can make greater strides to using accurate metadata to give the algorithm and recommendation engine the best information to work with, viewers also need to reconsider how much they’re willing to share with providers in order to get the accurate recommendations they’re looking for. 

There was a time when U.S. viewers had very limited TV channels to choose from: the “Big Three,” CBS, NBC and ABC, dominated broadcasting and decisions on what to watch came from the radio, newspapers or magazines. From this, viewers were given the ability to record programs, first on a VCR and subsequently a DVR, and then watch them at any time, creating far more choice.

Navigating Peak Content

This vast library of content that suddenly became available quickly presented another challenge: How could this new volume of choice be made easier for viewers to navigate? It was clearly time for operators to address this, but with so much content to present on either a TV screen or a mobile device, this was no easy task. 

One way to solve this was through introducing algorithms that, when based on a set of rules, could determine which content to present to viewers. For example, if one viewer had watched a film with a certain actor, the algorithm could determine that they might also like other films or TV shows featuring that actor. However, this is not a sophisticated or accurate method of recommending content. 

These algorithms have the ability to increase their accuracy by adding more rules, but this model still makes a lot of assumptions. In fact, in 2009 Netflix awarded a $1 million prize to a developer team for an algorithm that increased the accuracy of the company's recommendation engine by just 10%. Technology has moved along a lot in 11 years, but the challenge remains the same. 

Furthermore, this only gets more complex when subscription credentials are shared between family or friends. One-third of U.S. subscribers admit sharing their streaming service subscriptions with one to two other people, and more than a quarter of subscribers with three to four people. 

While a recommendation engine can form patterns between content watched at certain times of day — for example, cartoons between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. — when the lines get blurred and cartoons are watched at different times of the day, and suddenly cooking shows are watched at 4 p.m., there is only a degree of intelligence that the engine can refer to. 

These algorithms and rules have little potential to create the experience viewers crave without rich metadata behind them. The deeper and richer that metadata can be, the more chance the recommendation engine will have of finding a piece of content that the user will want to watch. However, to surface a sufficient recommendation, users also have to be willing to give a little something back.

It’s predicted that by 2023, there will be 257 million U.S. social media users. In this current age, consumers share everything about themselves on social media. But when it comes to sharing data or information with a TV provider, data capture suddenly becomes out of the question. A 2019 survey of U.S. consumers showed found respondents are less likely to share personal data than they were the year before. 

Yet these are the same consumers that seek these personalized recommendations. If consumers want to be able to discover content more easily, they must be prepared to share personal information with their TV provider. It’s a two-way street; the provider needs to be able to use viewing history to suggest new programs or films line with a viewer’s tastes. But in order to do this, the operator needs to be able to convince the viewer that they will get a better experience as a result.

A Time-Consuming Chore

There is only so much content that can be presented on a TV or mobile screen, and if that content isn’t what the user is looking for, then searching behind the scenes for something more relevant can be a very long process. 

When a program possibility is found and if the short trailer isn’t enough, the viewer could then commit to as much as an hour spent finding out if they like the program or film. That’s a big ask. By giving the user more of a snapshot of what they’re about to watch, or creating shorter form content like recently launched Quibi, users can spend less time scrolling and more time watching content to decide if it’s a good fit. 

There are multiple ways to fix the content discovery conundrum, but one thing will make a big difference: confidence. 

Confidence must come from the viewers that the operators are doing their best to give them accurate recommendations and they must trust they are using their data in the right way. Operators must have confidence in the quality of the metadata behind the algorithms to ensure that quality recommendations will be given as a result. λ

The following is an excerpt from “Political Advertising 101: A Refresher Course for Very Busy People” by Wiley partner John M. Burgett.

Stations must sell time to federal candidates throughout their campaign and cannot set any predetermined limits on the spot inventory made available to federal candidates. The only exception is that stations can exclude federal candidate spots from news programs.

Stations cannot censor or edit a candidate’s ad, except to provide the required sponsorship identification information (discussed above).  

Unless the spot is obscene or otherwise violates a felony statute or another Federal Communications Commission rule, a station must broadcast a candidate’s ad uncensored — no matter how offensive, distasteful or defamatory the ad may be. Because stations cannot censor candidate ads, broadcasters are immune from civil liability for the content of such ads.  

Keep in mind, however, that the FCC’s rules only apply to “legally qualified candidates” who have fulfilled all of the requirements to run for a particular office. Whether a candidate is legally qualified is usually pretty obvious; however, if you’re not sure, it’s OK to ask for proof. It is up to the candidate, not the station, to demonstrate that he or she meets the candidate requirements under applicable federal, state or local law.

Third-Party Risks

On the other hand, the “no censorship” rule (and, hence, the station’s shield against potential liability) does not apply to third-party ads, so stations may refuse to air such ads or demand edits if they’re uncomfortable with the ad’s content.

The “no censorship” rule and a station’s immunity from civil liability do not extend to third-party ads. Accordingly, before airing third-party ads, station management should be sure that it is comfortable with the content (and it can demand that changes be made to the content as a condition to airing the spot), since the station is not immune from defamation suits or copyright infringement claims arising out of the content of such ads.

A situation that occurs with increasing frequency — and intensity — as Election Day nears is this: A station runs a third-party ad that attacks a candidate, and then the candidate tells the station that the ad is a pack of lies and threatens to sue the station if it doesn’t stop running the ad. So what is a station to do? First, if the station doesn’t already have it, you should immediately request that the sponsor of the spot provide you with documentation of its claims.  Second, we strongly recommend contacting your attorneys to assess the risk of continuing to the run the ad while you investigate the matter and also to help you determine if the documentation provided is sufficient to support the claims made in the ad.

Keeping in mind that a broadcaster is always free to decline running a third-party ad if it is uncomfortable with it, we note that most political ads — while they may be replete with nasty political hardball — generally do not rise to the level of defamation. More often than not, the alleged defamatory content proves essentially to be a matter of interpretation, rather than an outright falsehood. Moreover, although the target of an attack ad often will argue that the station is responsible for the truth or falsity of all material aired on the station — which is technically true — the FCC has been disinclined to saddle stations with the burden of examining and verifying the merits of every political claim.  However, when a third-party ad veers from political issues into attacks on a candidate’s personal character or integrity — e.g., accuses him or her of having an affair, committing a crime, etc. — stations should be extra cautious.

We strongly recommend that all station staff handling political buys and/or maintaining the [FCC] political file brush up on the key rules governing political broadcasting. 

Wiley partner John M. Burgett represents broadcasters, including TV and radio group owners, before the FCC on a host of matters including political advertising.