Streaming video’s rapid expansion—fueled by explosive growth during the COVID-19 outbreak—will continue to increase in coming years, along the way finding a new equilibrium with traditional broadcast and cable TV.  

That was the consensus of three virtual sessions at CES 2021 that examined the evolving media relationships of the digital ecosystem.

Data from Nielsen Global Media showed that the pandemic encouraged viewers, especially in older demographics, to learn how to use streaming technology, Nielsen senior vice president of product strategy and thought leadership Brian Fuhrer said. As a result, the audience measurement firm’s year-end assessment showed that total streaming audiences at all age categories were very similar to the segmentation of traditional (broadcast and cable) viewing. But the assessment also showed that older viewers (age 55 and up) are now among the biggest users of linear, rather than on-demand, streaming services—reflecting their comfort level with linear, ad-supported formats, Fuhrer said. 

Despite the growth of streaming viewership from December 2019 (117.7 billion minutes) to last December (132 billion minutes), the percentage segmentation of preferences, topped by YouTube and Netflix, remained relatively consistent.

Moreover, Nielsen’s findings underscored the continuing crossover between programming on traditional media and over-the-top platforms. For example, reruns of sitcom "The Office" attracted 10 million viewers on Netflix (before the show moved to Peacock in January).  But "The Office" also attracted 11 million viewers for episodes airing in syndication on Comedy Central, local stations and from other sources. 

“That is really important when looking at content,” Fuhrer said, emphasizing “the long-term life in multiple platforms simultaneously.”

Nielsen’s research also identified emerging release protocols, such as the value of offering all episodes of a series simultaneously (thus allowing immediate bingeing) versus regular rollouts, such as weekly release. Fuhrer noted that Disney+’s "The Mandalorian" had very high viewership during every weekend release, while series unleashed all at once showed steep viewership dropoffs after a one-time spree. 

Fuhrer’s data was reflected in the discussions on two separate CES panels dealing with streaming. In particular, panelists said, the role of original content versus “acquired” programming such as off-network series is a work in progress. Speakers also looked at the role of content in consumer acquisition and retention.

At a session titled “The Great Unbundling in Video,” Philo CEO Andrew McCollum predicted cord-cutting would continue to accelerate the viewer shift toward streaming. He expects the streaming companies will “offer new options to people who cut the cord long ago and are looking for new options,” he said. 

Five to 10 years from now, McCollum said, consumers won’t consider OTT options to be “cutting the cord,” but rather “a better way to get the content they care about.” 

Both McCollum and fellow panelist Scott Reich, senior VP of programming at AVOD platform Pluto TV, cited the growth their services experienced during the early COVID crisis. For Philo, it was a surge of attention to kids’ content, while Pluto TV’s “massive influx” came as the 2020 political campaign heated up.  

As PlutoTV, owned by ViacomCBS, had a lot of political and health information, its channels offered “an interesting combination” of political and pandemic news, plus “a whole lot of escapism” from its entertainment channels, including cross-selling of Showtime programs via streaming teases of selected shows. 

Reich and McCollum agreed that streaming isn’t a winner-take-all marketplace, though both said there are lots of questions about how many entrants the SVOD market can support. 

FINDING SHOWS STILL A CHALLENGE

Predictably, data is at the heart of video navigation and search. At the “Streaming’s New Era” session, Sandeep Gupta, VP and GM of Amazon’s Fire TV, acknowledged his company — known for its algorithmic awareness of customer preferences and usage — is not sharing what it knows, even with partners such as co-panelists from Starz and WarnerMedia. 

“The key thing is helping them discover content in ways that [the programmers] didn’t think of before,” Gupta said. 

Viewers know what they want to watch and can find it some two-thirds of the time, said Sarah Lyons, senior VP, product experience at WarnerMedia. “We believe in a blend of human curation with underlying data to facilitate that curation,” Lyons said. 

“We are all in this battle to make sure our customers can find our content as easily as possible,” said Starz senior VP of distribution Stefanie Meyers. “We’re just trying to make sure that we make it as easy as possible for our consumer on whatever platform … so they can engage.”

FREMONT, Calif.—A new UHD Service Tracker from the Ultra HD Forum has found three-quarters of UHD services available globally are predominantly linear.

The new Tracker looks at 150 commercial consumer-facing Ultra HD television services worldwide, collating information from three billion subscriptions worldwide. It says 300 million of these have access to UHD.

The Forum’s latest data shows that three-quarters of the world’s UHD services are predominantly linear, serving over 125 million viewers. The other quarter of VoD-based UHD services serve 180 million viewers. According to the Forum, half of all the UHD services now offer HDR, while almost a quarter include some form of Next Generation Audio.

The new Tracker is available via the Ultra HD Forum’s website.

Meanwhile, the Forum has also Version 2.3 of its Guidelines for providing UltraHD service. The update includes new details on UHD, such as SMPTE ST2110 and ATSC 3.0 standards.

I recently read an article with a headline that posed the question “The Death of Linear Television?”

I have been writing long enough to know that headlines are designed to grab the attention of the reader as they are scanning the page (whether on paper or display) and entice them to read the rest of the article. I guess it worked in my case because I did read the story but I was more interested in looking for the incorrect assumptions then I was about getting the full story. I was pleased to read that a number of the folks quoted have what I would consider balanced views.

Let me share with you three facts that are in my view immutable. Life is linear. Life is analog. Life is finite. While we have created and used technology in media to digitally capture and distribute content for information and entertainment, we are still consuming in the linear, analog and finite world.

The change is more about the birth of new methodologies then it is about the death of old ones. It seems to be human nature to think and express momentous and non-momentous changes and events in absolute terms. To justify the United States’ entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson paraphrased author H. G. Wells by calling the current war as “the war to end all wars,” a pretty ironic statement given the history that has occurred since then. But even on the personal level, I have heard and may have said in my youth after breaking up with a girlfriend that I would never love again. Now, having been married to the same person for 40 or so years, probably not my most factual statement or prediction.

REFINEMENT TO WHAT ALREADY EXISTS

So what is happening in our business and what should we do about it? Well the first thing I suggest is to recognize that “television” is not the business any more than “broadcasting” is the business. Television is about the transmission of content to receivers and is traditionally thought of as a linear service. But that is based on the limitations of the technologies used for creating content, not the limitations of the underlying distribution technology. Digital capture, compression and packaging technologies now enable using television to transmit multiple content elements and packages, faster than real time. The methodology of broadcasting is also thought to be linear based on the same traditions and limitations from its earliest incarnations. These are but two of the tools or methodologies that are used to interact with the consumers. We will continue to use and refine these tools.

[What Are We Going to do With TV?]

As a local “television” station and a “broadcaster,” I look at ATSC 3.0 as a refinement to a tool that we are currently using and while it is an important tool, it certainly isn’t our only tool. The content that we create is certainly distributed using these tools as well as others. The real business is creating valuable content and using the distribution tools to insure that the consumer has access to the content, whether it is via traditional and linear methodologies and devices or via nontraditional and nonlinear methodologies and devices.

We must therefore understand what exactly our businesses are and adjust our practices to take advantage of the refinements in the tools and technologies that we and the consumers use in the creation, distribution and consumption of content.

Having worked closely with many of the brilliant engineers that have written the ATSC 3.0 standard, I have to say that I am amazed at the capabilities that this new standard enables. I also certainly hope and believe that as it is adopted by the “broadcasters” and the consumers, it will be a tremendous success. However, I think it is important to realize that regardless of how great the success of ATSC 3.0 is, it will be one of the tools used by content creators and content consumers, not the only tool.

WHATEVER WORKS

In the summer of 2017, the BBC reported that, according to linear channel measurements, there were zero viewers for a repeat episode of the “Blue Peter” children’s magazine show.

Going back to the article that inspired me to write this column, one of the elements in it was something that happened in the summer of 2017 at the BBC. They aired a repeat episode of a children’s magazine show and based on the linear channel measurement for that airing, no one watched it. I think we all would probably freak out if we aired a piece of content and no one watched it.

So is this actually proof that linear television is indeed dying? If you look at the piece of content, it was actually viewed linear during its initial broadcasts by more than a quarter million people, played over the top by some 39,000 people and the show’s website had about 1.5 million kids visit. The viewers were using the tools that made the most sense for them to consume the content and get the job done. Sometimes it was the traditional tool and sometimes the non-traditional tool.

One last thing to touch on and it has to do with the traditional tools and the non-traditional tools. Don’t make the error of impressing your views and values on to others. For those of us who have been involved in the business for decades, viewing “television” content on a smartphone is consuming traditional content on a non-traditional device. For the kids in the U.K. watching the children’s magazine show via the iPlayer on their smartphone, there is no traditional or non-traditional content or technology involved.

Bill Hayes is director of engineering for Iowa Public Television.

For a comprehensive list of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.