The Upfronts Tackle Hybrid Viewing, Comcast Does Some Future-Proofing

1. The Upfronts Tackle Hybrid Viewing

So the Upfronts were this week and they are indeed very different. I mean yes, the gist was the same “here are our new shows, buy ads on them!” and there was ample use of famous people, but given that ad-supported streaming is now firmly a thing, the vibe was very much focused on this new hybrid future and the fact that you can now buy ads against all the really good shows too, e.g. the ones the networks deemed “stream-worthy.”

The final bit of Upfront news was WBD CEO Dave Zaslav’s assertion that his network would soon become the fifth major broadcast network. Which was notable not so much for the claim itself—that’s highly likely—but for the fact that being one of the major broadcast networks is still a thing.

Why It Matters

In prior years, there was a distinct impression that the good shows, the ones the various networks really cared about, were all on streaming and that the B-team was on broadcast.

This went hand-in-hand with the notion that there was, in fact, a “massive wave of cord-cutting”, that linear TV would soon be dead, and that the only people still watching pay TV were elderly Luddites hidden away in the darkest corners of Flyoverstan.

That perception has shifted however, thanks to the Yellowstone empire and the massive ratings that alerted the TV-Is-Dead crowd that even though no one they knew still had a pay TV subscription, millions of other people did, Kevin Costner fans in particular.

Thus, the focus now seems to be on how to survive in a hybrid world, where some viewers are mostly (but not totally) on linear, some are mostly on streaming and some are fairly evenly split between the two.

Hence the power of the broadcast networks which still dominate traditional pay TV.

As for the actual advertising part of the Upfronts, the message was similar to the NewFronts: alternative currencies, more data-driven advertising and measurement…but still a great way to get massive reach.

Which is the other thing the industry needs to figure out as it enters this hybrid era: for every advertiser that wants to only hit a hyper-targeted audience and receive detailed digital-style metrics on the results, there’s another (usually much larger) advertiser who doesn’t mind hitting people outside their key demo and is mostly concerned about creating a more positive impression for the brand. 

So how to deal with both? The short answer is a wider range of options, the long answer is probably novel-length.

But it is an issue the industry needs to deal with.

What You Need To Do About It

If you’re an advertiser, you’ve got a world of options available to you on TV these days, which means you can go as targeted or as broad as you’d like. 

Yes, buying CTV at scale is still a hassle, what with all those walled gardens, but you’re still getting sight, sound and motion and the emotional connection that creates.

So there’s that and it’s not nothing.

If you’re one of the major streaming services and you’re first getting into advertising, you have the chance to make the whole process easier, not harder. That means not getting hung up on the short-term benefits of a walled garden and working with your peers to create standards on things like verification and ID resolution that were not a part of the old school TV world. 

Because the more you work together, the easier it will be for dollars to follow eyeballs to streaming.

If you’re the industry overall, remember that the enemy isn’t other TV programmers. It’s Google, and Facebook and Amazon.

Play that game, and you’re guaranteed to come out ahead.

2. Comcast Does Some Future-Proofing

Comcast is getting serious about entering the TV Operating System Wars, laying out plans for their new joint venture with Charter that will also see their Flex OS available for license to third parties. That’s in addition to the continued rollout of their XClass smart TV in Walmart stores and their Flex device to Comcast broadband customers. 

The goal seems to be to provide a path forward for other MVPDs in the new streaming-first ecosystem that does not involve the MVPDs giving up their current status by having to partner with a third party.

Why It Matters

Comcast is facing reality: they have—and will continue to have— a growing number of subscribers who are interested in their sizable broadband business but not in their pay TV packages. 

So rather than lose revenue to a device or smart TV OEM, they are making sure those dollars go back into their own coffers by giving broadband-only users a Comcast-owned device with a Comcast-owned operating system. 

And Xumo, which answers the question of “Whatever happened to…

In addition to Xumo and other FAST and SVOD apps, Flex viewers have access to a range of  vMVPDs, including YouTube, Sling and Hulu, which is going to make the device even more attractive to viewers, especially viewers who are new to the notion of not having a set top box-based pay TV service.

Control of the TV operating system is going to be one of the major battles of the next decade as the companies that control that OS get to decide which apps are available to users, when and how easy it is to find them. (Sort of like an MVPD.) 

In addition, the TVOS owners get all sorts of data about viewer behavior, which they can then use to sell advertising on their FASTs or sell to other services for the same purposes.

Overall, it is a very sweet deal.

What You Need To Do About It

If you are Comcast, well done. So many companies think they can spit in the wind and it won’t hit them in the face. You get which way things are going and you are taking advantage of it, even if it means competing with your other business units at some level. Eye on the future and on how much a really good interface matters and you will be okay in the face of change.

If you are one of the other MVPDs, remember that your goal is to build customer loyalty around your broadband product by any means necessary. At some point you will have competition from 5G. (or 6G…) and when that happens, you want to have a loyal customer base.

If you own a streaming service of any kind…one more platform to make sure you have an app on.