Enders Analysis provides a subscription research service covering the media, entertainment, mobile and fixed telecommunications industries in Europe, with a special focus on new technologies and media.
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Tom Harrington was quoted in the Times on Dame Carolyn, are you sure we will be amused by your TV streaming service? He said “They are wishfully thinking that BritBox’s subscribers will be in the millions, but look at something like the streaming service Disney Life; that has only 100,000 subscribers. Then there is Now TV, which has fewer than 2m, and that has been around for seven years and has some of the best content in the world.”
Douglas McCabe was quoted in the Financial Times on Guardian owner hits profit benchmark after decades of losses. He said “The leadership team has done very well to bring this phase over the line, but the next phase, covering both the sustainability of the business and a core audience retention, will be more complex and challenging.”
The commercial challenges for media online are well-documented: online advertising pays for utilities such as search and social networking many times over, but not for media beyond user-generated content and low-investment journalism.
There are also costs from a user perspective: wasted time, harmful content created to attract views, and the collection, sale, use and frequent leakage to criminals of personal data.
Different sectors have found varying success with alternatives: games, video and music are attracting user payments, driving the paid online economy up 15.5% to £8.2 billion in 2018.
Disney now controls third-party content aggregator Hulu, which has 25 million subscribers in the US. Ramped up by Fox content, Hulu’s operating losses are expected to peak in FY2019 at $1.5 billion, with profits by FY2023 or FY2024
Serving only Disney content, Disney+ launches in the US at the low price of $6.99/month this November, and in 2020 in Europe and Asia Pacific in 2021, aiming to reach the challenging goal of 60-90 million subscribers in five years
ESPN+, Hulu, Disney+ combined could contribute 13% of Disney’s revenues by 2024, which does not intend to disturb existing channels and windows for catalogue and new content, aside from withdrawing content from Netflix
The economic model of TV production relies upon a vibrant market for back catalogue content; programming that has traditionally driven the desirability of many linear channels and slots
New release strategies, along with the hyper-concentrated viewing encouraged by video-on-demand and the round-the-clock availability of shows calls the longevity of the value of content into question
Our analysis suggests that programmes that previously would be leisurely distributed through broadcast could now feasibly be “worn out” more quickly. This could have ramifications for the whole sector, with more content investment required “upfront” and new financial and distribution models required
Out of Home (OOH) is bucking the trend in UK traditional media and continues to grow, driven by the digitisation of inventory as the paper estate recedes
Digital OOH now accounts for 50% of total OOH ad spend. Soon digitisation will slow, as much OOH inventory cannot be converted from posters to digital screens; sustained growth will require a different form of change
The industry is amidst structural shift – driven by consolidation and automation – which could be wholly positive, but a lack of cooperation between major players risks stifling innovation and the medium’s growth
The capacity boost with 5G will be more important than any speed or latency uplift. We estimate a 7-fold increase in mobile capacity in the UK and 13x+ for O2 and H3G
We view fixed mobile substitution products as quite niche although the number of mobile-only households is likely to creep up. mmWave would have the capacity to substitute for fixed but has many hurdles to overcome
Capacity-constraints have tempered competition of late and their removal risks an increase in intensity, especially as H3G views itself as sub-scale – good for policy makers but another challenge to add to the industry’s woes
Google’s Stadia promises the most credible game streaming service yet, but building a subscription bundle of top titles would require an all-out bet in the sector
Google is building its own game studios – to win over others it must overcome a troubled history in gaming, mitigating risks to developer business models and creative integrity
Games are much more technically demanding to stream than video, presenting an advantage to Google, Microsoft and Amazon – and a boost to telecoms network demand, welcomed by operators
Tom Harrington was quoted in the Financial Times on The race to make the next ‘Game of Thrones' He said “If you are global and you can get people to watch the first episode on a global distribution network, you can give it massive prominence. If they want to make it a hit they can probably make it a hit . . . They can put it at the top of the user interface and force it down your throat.”