- Next TMT
- Posts
- Charter puts long-forsaken video back in (triple) play, Wall Street tells Roku and Fubo to go play on the freeway
Charter puts long-forsaken video back in (triple) play, Wall Street tells Roku and Fubo to go play on the freeway
Also, the resurgent World Series outpaces the NBA Finals, Comcast rides massive 'Call of Duty' file sizes to internet glory, and that dumb 'Apple Intelligence' marketing slogan helps push iPhone sales out of their slump
Daniel Frankel
November 04, 2024
In partnership with
Welcome to the fourth iteration of Next TMT, your (free) weekly newsletter reporting and summarizing the week’s biggest news in technology, media and telecom. In this issue, we’re introducing our first sponsor, 1440 Media. Each click on the ad further down below supports our independent business journalism. Thank you.
Table of Contents
Tubi on pace for its first $1 billion revenue year after surging political ad quarter
Over at Comcast, they’re talking about spinning off the cable networks. But that’s not the case at Fox Corp., where a continuously riled-up and rabid mass audience of far right-wingers are effectively propaganized, then funneled from basic cable’s Fox News to other Fox platforms, including owned and operated stations … and now, Tubi.
Speaking to this “synergy” Monday during Fox’s fiscal first quarter earnings call, Fox CEO and chief propagandist Lachlan Murdoch said that the ad-supported video-on-demand platform saw its revenue surge 19% in Q1 and is now on its way to its first $1 billion revenue year, having become a “material recipient of political advertising.
“Tubi’s large but hard to each audience, coupled with its advanced targeting and geo-targeting capabilities, has clearly differentiated it as campaigns look to maximize reach and efficiency,” Murdoch said.
Receive Honest News Today
Join over 4 million Americans who start their day with 1440 – your daily digest for unbiased, fact-centric news. From politics to sports, we cover it all by analyzing over 100 sources. Our concise, 5-minute read lands in your inbox each morning at no cost. Experience news without the noise; let 1440 help you make up your own mind. Sign up now and invite your friends and family to be part of the informed.
Comcast declares personal internet usage best with help from Activision and Amazon
Comcast said that the penultimate week of October was its biggest traffic week since it started delivering internet in 1996, thanks to the release of Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and an October 24 Thursday Night Football matchup on Amazon Prime Video featuring the Minnesota Vikings and Los Angeles Rams.
According to the cable company, the two assets accounted for 26% of traffic across Comcast’s network, with the videogame itself making up 19% of all bits and bytes.
Consider that the PC edition of Black Ops 6 requires downloading a file sized at 102 gigabytes, and you get a better idea of how this personal best occurred. According to David Reitman, who focuses on games for PwC, the “Call of Duty” franchise has piled up $60 billion in revenue in the 22 years since it launched. Indeed, many gamers played hooky from school (and work) on Friday, October 25, the day the newest iteration came out.
Next Text: Will Charter’s $80 a month worth of free SVODs really spark a broadband resurgence?
Our weekend SMS exchange between veteran reporters David Bloom and Daniel Frankel on all things technology, media and telecom also looks at Major League Baseball’s sudden postseason TV resurgence
DANIEL FRANKEL: Hello, David, a lot to get to in this busy pre-election, first-full-earnings-week iteration of our column. First, I’ll just say that this morning, in the wee hours, covering the third-quarter earnings for Charter Communications, now No. 1 U.S. pay TV operator, the cable operator affirmed something I wrote about in this space a few weeks ago — the pay TV bundle might have come full circle, and it might be back. Once it gets Max and Peacock integrated into its systems early next year, Charter will be offering subscribers of its most popular linear video tier, Spectrum Select, $80 worth of at-no-additional-cost, partially ad-supported SVOD services, with plans to offer premium no-ads iterations of Disney+, ESPN+, Max, Peacock, Paramount+, AMC+ and Vix sometime in 2025, as well. Charter is so bullish about bundling video again, that it put it in the new triple-play that was announced in September as part of its big “Life Unlimited” marketing campaign. (My patience has already become very limited with this heavily rotated TV commercial below.)
Charter still lost 294,000 video subscribers in Q3. And with CEO Chris Winfrey repeatedly referring to fixed wireless access competition as “cell-phone internet” (here’s the link to the webcast) and the sunsetting of the Republican-tanked Affordable Connectivity Program still stinging, Charter lost 110,000 residential and small-business broadband customers in Q3. A resurgent video offering might actually help broadband, Winfrey said. “We expect that it will have a pretty significant impact on acquisition and retention, certainly for video, but also on broadband,” he said. Charter broadband, and cable broadband in general, could use the help.
DAVID BLOOM: It’s so kind of you to share a link to a commercial you already loathe, thanks to Spectrum’s endless rerunning of a small handful of promotional ads. Given Charter's implacable ad frequency shortcomings, the campaign should be called “Self Promotion Unlimited.” I’m less entranced with Charter’s Borg-like reabsorption efforts than Comcast President Mike Cavanagh suggesting this week that maybe they'll spin off their cable networks. As CNBC anchor Brian Sullivan gulped, “And yes, that means us.”
It’s not so simple, as Bob Iger found out last year with Disney (and didn’t proceed). If you keep NBC (which MoffettNathanson says is essential for a future-proofed media company), then what do you do with all the cable channels such as CNBC and MSNBC that NBC News also staffs? And even if Comcast keeps running its cable networks on its own service, will anyone else still pay to do the same?
FRANKEL: It’s frustrating to watch media companies such as Comcast flail like this. They still have the programming jewels that made “media networks” the stars of their quarterly earnings reports 15 years ago. Look at USA Network workhorse Suits, which remains one of the most versatile repeats in all of streaming. They couldn’t figure out how to keep the good times rollin’ in the digital age, even a little? Well, in retrospect, the answer doesn’t seem to have been, “Spend billions of dollars to launch your own SVOD service.” Speaking of MoffettNathanson, Craig Moffett this week suggested that Peacock “may never achieve meaningful profitability.” It’s still losing money. And after all those Summer Olympic moments, it still only has 36 million paying subscribers.
Reply