YouTube is still in the process of building a "channel" store that lets users subscribe to third-party streaming services through the YouTube app, just as they do through Amazon Prime Video Channels, the Roku Channel, Apple TV and Verizon +play. 

The Wall Street Journal is the latest to report on YouTube's plan, but The Information  first offered details on the service back in 2020. 

WSJ describes YouTube parent Google/Alphabet as "advancing" its plan for the service, which it refers to as the "channel store."

Last month, Christian Oestlien, VP of product management for YouTube, told The Verge, "I think whether content is distributed in a bundle, or where over time we explore other ways of distributing it, I think YouTube can be a great partner there. We've never looked at the world as these binary choices between us and partner services ... we think all of us can coexist in a really healthy way."

The subscription streaming business has recently done a 180-degree turn in regard to disaggregating its apps through wholesale "channels" distribution on big platforms. 

HBO Max provides the best prototype of that somewhat dramatic pivot. Erstwhile parent company WarnerMedia once received a huge amount of  customer signups for the legacy HBO Now service via Amazon Prime Video -- up to 40%, according to estimates. 

But when it launched HBO Max in May 2020, Warner decided it didn't want to share revenue, data and the overall customer experience with Amazon, which delivered service to HBO Now users acquired via Prime Video Channels via the Prime Video app. 

Warner's decision to keep HBO Max out of Amazon Channels led to a nine-month delay in the SVOD service launching on the Amazon Fire TV connected TV OS, as the two companies worked out a big change to their relationship.

Further, WarnerMedia estimates that it lost nearly 5 million users when it finally pulled legacy HBO out of Amazon Channels last summer. 

Data published last week by research company Antenna -- shown here in the first chart in this story -- reveals just how bloody the extraction was for HBO Max. HBO still has fewer DTC users in the U.S. than it did when it extracted from Amazon Channels a year ago. 

Jump forward to the $43 billion spinoff and merger of Warner with Discovery, and there's been a dramatic pivot. Under longtime Discovery chief David Zaslav, Warner Bros. Discovery seems to be looking for any wholesale distribution for its apps it can find. 

Last week, for example, Sling TV announced that it would sell subscriptions to Discovery Plus via the Sling TV app. 

With only 92 million direct-to-consumer subscribers between HBO Max and Discovery, WBD has decided that achieving global scale is more important than controlling the customer experience at this point. ▪️

The editorial board of News Corp.’s The Wall Street Journal continued its push to defeat the nomination of Gigi Sohn for the fifth Democratic seat on the Federal Communications Commission.

Without that Democratic majority, the commission can't restore the net neutrality rules both FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel and President Joe Biden both favor or potentially restore broadcast ownership regulations thrown out by a federal court.

In an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, a News Corp.-owned property, the paper's editorial board added the Fraternal Order of Police opposition — which dates from March — to Sohn as the latest weapon in an ongoing campaign. The Journal said the FOP’s stand appears to have put a trio of Democratic votes in doubt, specifically Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Mark Kelly of Arizona and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. If so, that would definitely be a blow to Sohn’s chances.

Also: Sohn Says She Has Been Subject of Unfair Attacks

The paper pointed to Sohn’s past tweets, cited by the FOP in March, of calls for reforming or defunding the police (in Sohn's case, specifically defunding police surveillance) following the killing of George Floyd, which arguably put her in the mainstream of progressive Democrats at the time. Fox News Channel hosts have generally been critical of the Black Lives Matter protests and calls for defunding the police.

News Corp. already opposes Sohn for her association with the Locast streaming service, a point it also made again in this week's editorial. Locast asserted its right to deliver TV station signals — including those owned by Fox Corp., which, like News Corp., is controlled by Rupert Murdoch and his family — without seeking permission or paying a carriage fee. A court ultimately ruled Locast was not entitled to the copyright exemption it thought it could use.

The editorial also again pointed to Sohn’s tweets — as a private citizen — critical of Fox News. Sohn has pointed out that all her tweets were personal and would have no bearing on how she would make decisions at the FCC, which would be based on the facts in each case.

The editorial concedes that business groups are not strongly opposed to Sohn, arguing that perhaps broadcasters and broadband providers are resigned to their re-regulatory fate under a third Democrat, whoever it is. ■

At least in the formative, largely quarantined first full year for the more recently launched U.S. subscription streaming services, big event programs produced spectacular subscriber gains, but only around half of those who signed up stuck around after six months. 

These were the essential findings of research company Antenna, which sampled 5 million U.S. streaming subscribers and published its data in The Wall Street Journal. 

Antenna found that when Disney Plus debuted its prerecorded iteration of Broadway smash Hamilton in July 2020, around 400,000 new customers signed up for the service within the first three days of the premiere.

When HBO Max bowed its first Warner Bros. day-and-date release, Wonder Woman 1984, the following December, it also generated more than 400,000 new signups within 72 hours. 

And when Apple TV Plus premiered the Tom Hanks World War II sea-hunt thriller Greyhound in July 2020, it produced more than 60,000 new sign-ups — an explosive number for an SVOD service that was operating on a different scale in its first year after launch. 

In each case, around half of the new subscribers had left the respective streaming service within six months. 

So what can this widely published data tell us about the nature of tentpole programming on the major U.S. SVODs and churn?

Something, but not everything. 

It's notable that each of these events centered around one-and-done movies. And it's also worth mentioning that every supplier of video programming faced the challenge back in 2020 of having too little programming to sate rabid audiences amid pandemic-related production shutdowns. In many cases, consumers moved their subscriptions around freely, taking advantage of launch promotions and finding shows any way they could. 

Antenna also published findings on original series debuting one episode weekly. There, retention was a little better. For example, 60% of those who signed up for Hulu specifically to watch The Handmaid's Tale stuck around after six months. 

The deeper library of Netflix also seems to have helped. Nearly 80% of those who signed up for Netflix to see the December 2020 release of David Fincher's Oscar-winning Mank kept their subscription past 180 days. ■ 

On Saturday (January 29), The Wall Street Journal published its fourth — fourth — editorial opposing the Federal Communications Commission nomination of Gigi Sohn. The editorial accuses Sohn of “prevarication” about the TV service Locast” But the facts in the Journal’s own editorial show that she told the truth — the settlement money came from Locast’s parent, Sports Fans Coalition of NY. Yes, the court judgment was larger than the settlement. But the plaintiffs reasonably settled for taking every last penny that SFCNY had!

As a lifelong broadcaster and Disney copyright advocate, I agree with the plaintiffs against Locast on the merits of the copyright issue. But these are legitimate questions about the law on which reasonable people can disagree.

Ms. Sohn’s association with Locast itself should not be disqualifying. For example, the prominent media and internet entrepreneur Barry Diller, former business partner of the WSJ’s owner, was associated with a venture almost identical to Locast called Aereo. I doubt that the Journal would editorialize that the highly regarded Mr. Diller is unfit for a prominent federal nomination.

Gigi Sohn is among the most qualified nominees in the history of the FCC. As a former News Corp. senior exec, I am at a loss to explain News Corp.’s all-out offensive against Ms. Sohn in both the WSJ and the New York Post! ■

It may have just been a coincidence, the gods trying to tell me something, a search engine recognizing that I’ve been searching a lot of Comcast stories lately, or given today’s political climate a dark, foreboding conspiracy, but for some reason a Morgan Stanley ad from way back in May (Exceptional Leaders, Exceptional Ideas) popped into the front of my Twitter feed this morning. Featured was a month-old interview between the investment bank’s top media analyst Ben Swinburne and Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts. And though it was obviously somewhat self-serving -- it was an advertisement, for criminy sake -- it nevertheless showed a bit of an insight into the mind of the guy who runs the largest cable operator in the country.

Roberts and Comcast have been at the center of a bit of a firestorm in the wake of a June 23 Wall Street Journal article that hinted that the Comcast chief is looking for ways to jump start its streaming business, and considered purchasing Roku or ViacomCBS. The article stated that Roberts, who declined to be interviewed for the story, has been telling people close to him that he does not see a need for a deal but is looking at all of his options. One of those options, the article stated, is a “potential tie-up” with ViacomCBS or an outright acquisition of Roku. 

So, on the surface, it looks like Comcast doesn’t really see a need to buy something big, but that it’s keeping its options open, and a couple of people who asked not to be named think that it would be a good idea if they bought something. Gee, I wonder who they might be?

Comcast stock dropped about 5% ($2.72 each) to $54.91 per share in early trading June 23 as a result of the fear that it would again spend too much money for an asset -- the other time was its $40 billion purchase of Sky PLC in 2018, according to some analysts.

The stock has rebounded slightly -- it closed at $56.06 on June 24, $56.42 on June 25 and slipped to $56.10 on June 28. Today, (June 29) it was trading at $56.97 this afternoon. 

Despite the speculation that Comcast would pursue another big transaction, the company has been pretty straightforward in saying that major deals are not top of mind. At the J.P. Morgan virtual Technology Media & Communications conference in May, Comcast chief financial officer Mike Cavanagh said that “M&A is not an answer.” 

“We like the hand we have without M&A, but we'll obviously do what's right for shareholders as time passes,” Cavanagh continued. 

Look, I’m no ingenue here. I know that companies sometimes say they don’t want something and then a week later seemingly can’t live without it. It has happened countless times in the history of the media business. And I know that any CEO who hasn’t been at least considering potential pairings to improve their lot in the new streaming paradigm is not doing his or her job. 

I also know that the standard response to “What are you going to buy?” is almost always “We’re looking at everything, but we don’t feel the need to do anything.” Saying anything more or less would run the risk of appearing to act in ways not beneficial to shareholder interests. Show me a company that says we definitely don’t want to buy or sell anything and I’ll show you a class action suit just waiting to happen. 

But sometimes, in the immortal words of Sigmund Freud, a cigar is just a cigar.

Analysts have pointed to three items that they believe will keep Comcast out of the deal market, at least for the time being: regulatory concerns; its aggressive share buyback plan and the seeming failure for any of those potential deals to move the needle that much. 

In Q1, Comcast said it would restart its share repurchase program after a three-year hiatus as it tried to deleverage in the wake of the Sky acquisition. In a research note, Bernstein media analyst Peter Supino wrote that attempting a major acquisition at the same time would be “borderline psychotic.” 

Others have noted the prohibitive size of a potential Roku deal because, with a market cap of $55 billion, any potential bid would have to come in around $75 billion. Most believe that Comcast is probably better off just giving its 29 million broadband-only customers a free Xfinity Flex box, at the much, much lower cost of about $1.5 billion.

They further pointed out that a deal to buy ViacomCBS would face regulatory problems because both own broadcast networks (CBS and NBC). And while Comcast could buy Viacom’s Paramount studio and/or its cable networks, many analysts aren’t sure how far that deal would move the needle for either company. 

Comcast has a history of earth-shaking deals from AT&T Broadband in 2001, to NBCUniversal in 2009 and 2013. But Comcast also has known when it was time to back off -- abandoning its 2004 takeover attempt of Disney, giving up its pursuit of MediaOne in 1999, and more recently abandoning efforts to purchase 21st Century Fox assets in 2018 and Time Warner Cable in 2015. According to cable legend John Malone, Comcast also took a peek at WarnerMedia content assets, opting against a bid because of regulatory fears. WarnerMedia agreed in May to combine with Discovery Inc. in a deal valued at about $43 billion.  

Roberts spent a lot of time during the Swinburne interview talking about the past, how he based his management style on his father Ralph’s, how he looked to other executives for inspiration like Malone, former Comcast CFO Julian Brodsky and even media mogul Barry Diller, with whom he has had a complicated past relationship. 

“I’ve been lucky because I’ve tried to learn from those who came before me,” Roberts said in the Morgan Stanley interview. 

He mentioned how in 1997, he managed to convince Microsoft founder Bill Gates to invest $1 billion in Comcast, a move that gave the cable business instant credibility and injected new life into the at-the-time absurd notion that spending billions of dollars to build fiber networks for something called “broadband.” We all know how that turned out. 

And though Comcast has been under pressure for months to spin off its content assets -- a move many analysts believe would unlock value -- Roberts said he believes content and distribution can work side-by-side, even as other companies are taking a different tack.

In the interview, Roberts said that throughout cable’s history, from Community Antenna TV to today’s mixture of broadband, streaming and linear programming, content has been the constant. 

“Content has powered that all along the way,” Roberts said. “We see the two working together and we’re growing our ability and technology with one platform working together as one company, content, distribution, now aggregation and streaming, in a way that puts us in a very unique and different position than some of those other companies.” 

“We believe in media and technology,” he continued. “The current Comcast, that’s how I would define us. We are a media and technology company. Those two go together. It’s not really vertically integrated, it’s delivering to customers and viewers experiences and memories and things like our theme parks. It relates to the characters and intellectual property that they’re in love with and their kids love.” 

Also Read: Comcast The Wallflower 

Roberts picked two moments as turning points for Comcast: the 2008 launch of Project Infinity at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which paved the way for the current on-demand, streaming environment, and the 2014 decision to incorporate Netflix into its X1 platform.

Project Infinity, Roberts said, was Comcast’s effort to give customers what they wanted in an elegant way, allowing “consumers to have infinite choices of any content that has ever existed or might exist and leave it up to the IP rightsholder to determine whether it was free, advertising supported, subscription, pay-per-view, whatever model fit their business." He added the 2010 effort to rebrand its products under the Xfinity name had its roots in that CES presentation. 

The Netflix integration came after a bit of a spat concerning peering of the service on Comcast’s broadband platform, which raised some hackles across the board. 

“I give [Netflix CEO] Reed Hastings a lot of credit,” Roberts said about how the two companies managed to bury the hatchet. “We both reached out to each other and said we didn’t want to have any more disputes, we wanted to figure out how to go forward. He came to Philadelphia and I went out to visit him and we took long hikes and one day we, with the help of many other people in our companies, broke new ground.”

That included making the Netflix app available on Comcast X1 set-tops, and today Roberts said that in the cable company’s markets, Netflix is the No. 1 streaming app. 

“Today we have Amazon and Apple -- we hope -- and we have Disney Plus and HBO and we have Peacock,” Roberts continued. “Some are our own, some are long term partners, some are new relationships. We want to say to these companies we are trying to find win-win outcomes. That can be hard at times. And you can have tension in relationships. The key is to try to navigate that and have a company that when you finally agree on something, you deliver. In fact, you overdeliver. I think that is what happened with Netflix and I think Reed has gone out of his way to acknowledge that.”

Roberts admitted that at first he was reluctant to go full bore into the new strategy, adding that it took some time for him to digest. But it wasn’t long before he was on board.  

”It goes back to culture. Do you have people sitting around a table challenging each other, or is it hierarchical,” he said. “We had to prove that we could evolve our company.”

That evolution, he said, requires not only listening to its own executives, but those outside the company walls as well. He remembered a conversation he had several years ago with late Apple founder Steve Jobs, where Jobs suggested that Comcast incorporate WiFi into all its set-top boxes. 

“I honestly wasn’t sure exactly what he meant,” Roberts said. “But I can tell you, we were pretty quick. We now have more WiFi than any company in America, and we put it in all our cable boxes. So sometimes you get ideas from all over the place, friends, competitors, other outside influences. I think it's important that you have a culture where you really try to rip up your playbook every day and make sure you have the right playbook tomorrow.” 

So, will Comcast go on a buying spree, or will it not? For now, the smart money seems to be on the latter. But then, again, that all depends on the playbook. 

The digital news business has joined Epic Games in pushing back on Apple for the revenue-sharing terms it demands for distribution through its App Store. 

“The terms of Apple’s unique marketplace greatly impact the ability to continue to invest in high-quality, trusted news and entertainment particularly in competition with other larger firms,” wrote Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, in a letter sent Thursday to Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Digital Content Next is a trade organization representing the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and other news publishers. (The Wall Street Journal originally reported on the letter.)

Also read: Apple Escalates Epic Games Tiff, Threatens to Pull Developer Access

Kint’s letter comes a week after Epic Games, publisher of the popular online video game Fortnite, sued both Apple and Google over an industry-wide practice in which the app stores of the tech giants collect 30% of first-year subscription fees when apps for paid services are downloaded through their digital stores. (The rev share rate drops to 15% after year one.)

For Digital Content Next, one of the major points of consternation is that not everyone pays 30%. 

In his letter to Cook, Kint cited an email sent from Apple services chief Eddie Cue to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, outlining a 15% revenue split for Amazon Prime Video subscribers when they download the Prime Video app through Apple’s App Store. (Bezos also owns the Washington Post.)

“I ask that you clearly define the conditions that Amazon satisfied for its arrangement so that DCN’s member companies meeting those conditions can be offered the same agreement,” Kint wrote.

Apple hasn’t publicly responded to DCN’s letter. Apple did respond last week, when it pulled Epic Games’ app from its digital following the game maker’s bold, strategic move to direct its users to its own site to purchase in-store game currency, instead of buying it through Apple. That was the move that kicked off this whole app-store revolt.

“Epic enabled a feature in its app which was not reviewed or approved by Apple, and they did so with the express intent of violating the App Store guidelines regarding in-app payments that apply to every developer who sells digital goods or services,” Apple said in an August 14 statement. 

Whether this pushback continues to grow, or is quashed by Apple and Google, has significant implications for the video streaming industry, most of which is subject to the same 30% revenue share dogma that dates back to the early days of video gaming, when Japanese console manufacturers charged game makers for the rights to have game cartridges supported by their platforms. 

Epic Games, which generates a reported $1 billion in annual revenue from selling in-game extras, has called the app store fees a “tax.”

Notably, Netflix already started pushing back several years ago, when it disabled new users from signing up for its SVOD services through apps it downloaded from Apple’s App Store, instead directing them to its own website. 

The Open Markets Institute read Google the riot act Monday (Nov. 18), citing a Wall Street Journal article with the self-explanatory title: "How Google Interferes With Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results." 

OMI said the story, which alleges that the company "uses blacklists, algorithm tweaks and an army of contractors to shape what you see," confirmed what it has suspected, that Google manipulates search "to serve its own private interests and those of big advertisers and other giant corporations." 

Currently, both the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are looking into whether Web giants have been using their massive market power anti-competitively. 

Related: Sen. Blumenthal Says FCC Should Investigate Google 

OMI executive director Barry Lynn appears to have no doubts. 

"[T]he Journal's reporters provided hard proof of how Google manipulates and exploits the public and yet another example of why we must break the corporation's advertising-based business model, he said. "Google's abuse of its market power is also bad for American business as the corporation routinely and mechanically steers commerce away from independent entrepreneurs to giant monopolists such as Amazon and Facebook. That Google maintains a secret blacklist to remove sites from search, beyond those required by law, is blatant censorship and a threat to free speech. It's way past time for our federal and state governments to fix Google." 

He is not alone. Big Tech has been getting a going-over on the Hill in recent weeks and months over alleged search bias, and targetted online advertising and data privacy and alleged content censorship, and much more. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), currently in a competitive race for the Democratic presidential nomination, has called for breaking up Big Tech. 

"We have been very public and transparent around the topics covered in this article, such as our Search rater guidelines, our policies for special features in Search like Autocomplete and valid legal removals, our work to combat misinformation through Project Owl, and the fact that the changes we make to Search are aimed at benefiting users, not commercial relationships," Google said in a statement regarding the Journal story. "This article contains a number of old, incomplete anecdotes, many of which not only predated our current processes and policies but also give a very inaccurate impression of how we approach building and improving Search. We take a responsible and principled approach to making changes, including a rigorous evaluation process before launching any change -- something we started implementing more than a decade ago. Listening to feedback from the public is a critical part of making Search better, and we continue to welcome the feedback."

President Donald Trump attacked new polls from ABC and NBC as fake news and "totally wrong in general" Monday morning (April 24), only 12 hours after saying new polls were "very good considering that much of the media is FAKE and almost always negative" and quoting stats from an ABC News/Washington Post poll, in which 53% of respondents said he was a strong leader

He also continued to maintain he would have won the popular vote, a curious claim that surfaces periodically, tweeting the assertion "Would still beat Hillary in popular vote," though it was unclear what he meant since Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton won the popular vote by several million.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday (April 23) found that 54% disapproved of the job President Trump is doing, compared with 40% who approved. The poll found that 82% of Republicans approved of his job performance to date (he marks his first 100 days in office April 29), while only 30% of Independents and just 7% of Democrats approved.

Only 50% of respondents in the NBC/WSJ poll gave Trump high marks for being firm and decisive, down from 57% in a February poll. He got "honest and trustworthy" high marks from only 25%, down from 34% in February.

The poll was conducted April 17-20 among 900 adults. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

The ABC/WaPo poll found that 42% approved of Trump's performance as president vs. 53% who disapproved, compared with an average approval/disapproval split of 69%/19% for past presidents in the first 100-days window.

Just 37% approve of Trump's plans for changes in federal spending --which include cuts to the EPA and state funding as well as zeroing out federal funding for noncommercial TV and radio stations, among others. And only 34% approved of his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner having major posts in the administration.

But the poll had some "brighter" spots for the president, finding that 73% approved of his pressuring companies to stay in the U.S., and the 53% who said he was a strong leader. In addition, 96% of Republicans who voted for Trump said they would do it again, so there was no buyer's remorse, as the poll put it.

The ABC/WaPo poll was conducted April 17-20, in English and Spanish, among a random sample of 1,004 adults. The margin of error is 3.5 points.

The Wall Street Journal, whose parent, News Corp., also owns Fox, gave IAC chairman Barry Diller -- former head of Fox -- op ed space Thursday to defend Aereo, the online TV station delivery service Fox is opposing as a copyright infringer.

Diller is a minority investor in Aereo, and he took aim at the Obama Administration for not backing Aereo.

Diller's piece comes days before the Supreme Court is to hear oral arguments in the case on April 22.

In the piece, Diller says that broadcasters don't own the airwaves and shouldn't be allowed to keep viewers from watching free TV on the device of their choice via an "antenna in the cloud."

"[B]roadcasters claim Aereo is "stealing" their content. Why is the industry pushing to punish those who wish to receive their television through airwaves, which are not owned by broadcasters? The answer is obvious: Broadcasters make more money when consumers are steered away from over-the-air program delivery and toward cable and satellite systems that pay the broadcasters retransmission fees."

Diller took aim at the Administration for backing broadcasters in the fight. "Broadcasters have now corralled the White House into joining their efforts to crush any innovation that challenges the status quo and the industry's lucrative business model," he said.

The Solicitor General's office filed a friend of the court brief in support of broadcasters saying Aereo's delivery of over-the-air TV signals via the Internet without payment is a public performance in violation of copyright.

The SG's office also agrees with broadcasters that the Supreme Court can rule against Aereo without calling into question the entire cloud storage regime.

"No one has offered any coherent factual or legal basis that justifies the broadcasters'—and now the administration's—attempts to condemn consumers to the use of an antenna from a bygone era," asserted Diller. "It is unfortunate that the broadcasters and the administration have aligned themselves against competition, choice and the consumer. The Supreme Court should set them straight."