ESPN’s John Skipper doesn’t see any benefits in new TV models – yet.
ESPN chief John Skipper is happy to talk to any of the so-called new over-the-top Web video players surfing around the fringes of the cable TV business. But he doesn’t see any major deals happening soon — if ever.
In a conversation with Reuters at this year’s cable show, Skipper was blunt about his skepticism over the idea his network – the best paid in the business according to SNL Kagan data — could work with a new Web partner, a tie-up that may in some way threaten the cozy $100 billion a year cable programmer-distributor relationship which feeds the entire industry.
“We have a significant stake in maintaining the current model. There’s no advantage to us in new models that undercut what we have today,” said Skipper, speaking from the NCTA Cable Show in Boston.
ESPN pays tens of billions of dollars every year in sports rights fees to major sports and college leagues — much of which is live programming that doesn’t lend itself naturally to the subscription video-on-demand model popularized by the likes of Netflix and Amazon, he points out.
The Disney-owned sports network is the envy of the cable television business, and several major rivals, like News Corp and Comcast Corp’s NBC Universal, would love to replicate its model.
Skipper was careful to play down recent bullish comments about ESPN’s strengths versus potential rivals. But he pointed out that, while he respects his rivals, it would be difficult for them to build a new sports network to the size, scale and fees that ESPN enjoys today.
He also disputed the idea that the rising cost of sports could one day see ESPN forced onto a sports tier.
In Super Bowl streaming deal, Verizon scores again
What a delightful week this is turning out to be for Verizon. First, archrival AT&T decides it will ditch its $39 billion bid for T-Mobile USA (as if they weren’t grinning madly in the halls of Verizon’s Art Deco building down on West Street) and then they get a piece of this NBC deal to stream the Super Bowl. No doubt, in the greater scheme of things the AT&T news trumps the streaming deal — but every little thing helps in the crazy competitive telecoms world.
Here’s the upshot: For the first time NFL postseason games — including the Super Bowl — will be streamed live online over NFL.com and NBCSports.com and over mobile devices through an app supplied by Verizon. This is NBC’s deal; Fox tells us they have “no similar plans” while we’re CBS declined to comment on whether they would do a streaming deal..
The advantage for Verizon is clear: It’s just one more differentiator. (Verizon has really been on a roll lately. Beyond the events mentioned above, they swooped in to buy a ton of cable spectrum for $3.6 billion and made headlines with their plans to take on Netflix with a streaming service).
For NBC, the thinking is they can add an online audience to their already huge TV football audience. Joe Football Fan will watch the Super Bowl and all of its $3 million-plus commercials on the big TV screen at the same time he is watching the streaming coverage on his phone or PC, which will include a bunch of extra stuff such as additional camera angles, sideline updates and in-game analysis. In other words, it will be complementary.
At least that’s the plan. And it’s likely to work out just fine for NBC. When it comes to the Super Bowl, football fans crave all the information they can get, and having access to the game on your mobile phone while your sitting in a loud, crowded living room party would, frankly, be helpful.
There is a risk, of course. Perhaps this is just one more step toward cord-cutting, or allowing viewers to watch their favorite shows without the cost of subscribing to a cable distributor. If the NFL — the NFL! — is available in real time online, then can every third-rate sitcom be far behind?
Comcast, which controls NBC, has obviously concluded the risk is very small. They’ve been streaming games on Sunday nights and, as the Associated Press reports, their broadcasts haven’t been hurt.
Howard Stern’s TV judging stint a boost for Sirius XM
Howard Stern is going to be a judge on the NBC show “America’s Got Talent,” this summer and Wall Street is already betting this is going to benefit the shock jock’s satellite radio home, SiriusXM Radio.
Stern, who will replace the less potty mouthed Piers Morgan, will raise the profile of his radio show and drive new subscribers, at least one analyst said on Thursday.
“We see this as a positive for Sirius, holding potential for free on air-promotion, positive for awareness and sub growth, depending on how the TV show fares,” said Lazard analyst Barton Crockett in a research note.
His new gig won’t effect his current job, where he is locked down until 2015. What’s more, the show is even moving its production to New York from Los Angeles, so the east coaster Stern can have an easy commute.
Stern inked a five-year deal Sirius XM last December that nets him about $80 million a year, according to analysts. He brought an estimated 1.2 million subscribers to Sirius when he joined the fledgling satellite radio company in 2006.
There is no word yet on whether Stern will tone down his colorful vocabulary for network TV.
Howard TV, which is a televised version of his radio show, is available on demand from cable providers, including Comcast, the parent company of NBC.
Who wants a college sports TV network? Who doesn’t?
Sure it was obvious, but I applaud the decision by whoever organized the IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum to pipe The Cars “Shake It Up” through the loudspeakers of a bland room in New York’s Marriott Marquis as the conference wrapped up.
College sports — and here I’m the one being obvious — are going through a serious transition. Conferences are realigning, TV deals are being struck, and feelings are getting hurt.
“This has been a painful, stinging two years,” said Chris Plonsky, Women’s Athletic Director at University of Texas, which this year launched its own regional sports network, The Longhorn Network. The battling “belongs on the field”, she said. “When it comes to business, let’s play nicely in the sandbox.”
Easier said than done, given the big money at stake. Check out these estimates from IMG: College sports have 173 million fans; 79 million of them are female and 29 million of them earn at least $100,000 a year. Those are the kind of numbers that make a TV executive’s head spin.
Sharing the stage with UT’s Plonsky were NBC Sports President Jon Litner, University of Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick, and Chris Bevilacqua, a well-known dealmaker who helped put together the Pac-12 TV network. It was no surprise, then, that Swarbrick was asked about Notre Dame’s own plans for a TV network. (At the moment, Notre Dame, with its huge following, has a long-term deal with NBC reportedly worth around $9 million year).
“The Longhorn Network does not have a bigger fan than me,” said Swarbrick. “But it’s not a model that works for Notre Dame.” The problem, he said, was geography. The Longhorn Network can reach a concentration of fans in the school’s home state (which happens to the market size of some European countries).
“We don’t have that. What I have is interest everywhere, so we need to take another approach.”
When it comes to NFL, TV executives put on brave face
Shrewd? Prescient? Delusional? Tough to know, but top TV executives this week all seemed relatively confident — even off the record — when asked about the chances that NFL games would be played this fall.
The background, of course, is that NFL team owners and players are at odds over salary caps and other issues, raising the possibility of a lockout and the cancellation of some or all of the 2011 football season. Very bad news, if you’re a fan or a network executive.
As Yinka Adegoke and Liana Baker wrote in a piece this spring, “It is difficult to overstate the importance of the NFL to the revenue and profits of broadcasters like CBS Corp, Walt Disney’s ESPN, Comcast Corp’s NBC and News Corp’s Fox.”
Consider this: The broadcast and cable networks that share the NFL rights sell about $3 billion in advertising time for games each season. That’s $3 billion that’s up for grabs.
As TV executives made the rounds this week to introduce their 2011-12 prime-time schedules, they couldn’t escape the 800-pound linebacker in the room. It’s noteworthy that all of them — even if they were privately sweating — put on a brave face. Here’s a taste… “They’re going to play,” said John Skipper, who oversees content for ESPN. “I don’t know when they are going to play, but eventually they will play, and we will show it on Monday nights.”
If you really want brass, check out the what Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt had to say over at NBC, which counts on the NFL for blockbuster ratings every Sunday night. “We’ve obviously pretty close to what’s going on with this situation. We’re feeling pretty optimistic that football will be there. Worst case scenarios is we might have delay of games for a few weeks, in which case we’ve got a contingency plan to produce several high quality live event reality type shows that will fill out Sunday. But we’re feeling pretty good about where we’re going to be with the NFL.”
And Fox? A bit more wishy-washy, but hardly any signs of panic. “I think they’re planning for there to be an NFL season and at the same time working on contingencies if there’s not,” said Fox Networks Entertainment Chairman Peter Rice.
NBC Universal creates new sports marketing agency
It’s no secret that sports has been the brightest star of broadcast television lately. It pulls big audiences, and those viewers watch live — a combination that advertisers drool over. So NBC Universal figured it was high time to make the most of its sports assets — soon to be coupled with those of Comcast – and today announced the creation of “NBC Sports Agency.”
The purpose of the group is to market NBC Sports, whether it’s their coverage of hockey, football, horse racing or the Olympics, and produce campaigns for advertisers or league partners like the NFL or the NHL. John Miller, credited for coming up with the “Must See TV” campaign for NBC’s primetime, will head up the effort. Many industry watchers had predicted that Comcast’s take over of NBC would see a push for more competition for sports rights with Disney’s ESPN powerhouse. Let the battle commence.
Here’s a video of Miller on his new role.
Sun Valley: Jane Goodall and the primary primates
It’s day three of the Sun Valley media conference and the event has started to feel like a Jane Goodall documentary, in which we’re Jane and the moguls are the apes who have become comfortable letting us observe and record their movements. Several media executives groggily making their way to the morning’s first session (scheduled to kick off at 7:30), stopped to chat with the throng of press waiting to greet them.
Liberty Media Chairman John Malone voiced concerns about the economy for nearly 10 minutes while NBC’s Jeff Zucker, who once warned of the risks to media companies of trading analog dollars for digital pennies and later upped the exchange rate to dimes, posited the idea that the media industry was now within reach of collecting digital quarters. It’s change we can believe in.
Later on Thursday, Google’s chief executive Eric Schmidt (who for reasons unknown has been toting a camera with a beefy zoom lens throughout the event, even after-hours at the bar on Wednesday evening) will hold his traditional Sun Valley press roundtable, possibly with co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who are here.
As for Steve Jobs, it appears that he is a no-show.
And while hoops superstar Lebron James mingled with the executives at Sun Valley last year, he will probably end up overshadowing the gathering of media bigwigs from afar this year when he announces his choice of a new home team on Thursday night.
(John Malone does his media thing at Sun Valley. Photo: Reuters)
Hulu’s rise continues…
Hulu, the video site owned by NBC, News Corp and Disney, is safely ensconced in the No.2 most viewed video site in the U.S. according to latest February data from comScore. And Hulu is making progress not just in the quantity of views but in the quality of views: Users watched a record amount of video per person during the month. The average Hulu users watched 23.3 videos at 2.4 hours of video per viewer. This compares with the average online video length at 4.3 minutes.
It’s all very promising for the powers at NBC Universal, and its new owners at Comcast, as well as News Corp and Disney, who have been reported to be considering charging to view some of the videos on Hulu. One imagines they’ll probably add more cable content as part of the TV Everywhere initiaitve.
It’ll be more interesting to see how Hulu’s viewer numbers perform in March as it will be the first month after Viacom pulled its Comedy Central videos, including the hugely popular Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Our bet is that Hulu’s continuing growth will offset most of the losses from viewers of Jon Stewart.
Of course, YouTube remains by far and way the top dog with 11.9 billion videos viewed in February compared with 912.5 million videos on Hulu. Microsoft came in third with 623 million videos and Yahoo sites had 455 million.
from Shop Talk:
Auto show-Super Bowl TV ads don’t score for Mazda
Advertising during the Super Bowl doesn't score for Mazda.
While the Japanese automaker plans to boost its marketing budget this year as it launches the Mazda 2 small car, running TV ads during the National Football League's championship game in February won't happen.
"You're never going to see us on Super Bowl," Mazda North American chief Jim O'Sullivan said at the Detroit auto show. "We're not going to spend that kind of money on that kind of property because, yeah, you get a lot of impressions and stuff out there, but the fact of the matter is, do you really get to the target you really wanted? That's more of a feel-good ad for a lot of people."
O'Sullivan said it was a "given" that Mazda's media budget will be up in the first quarter, as well as for the year, although he didn't say by how much. He said Mazda, which expects its U.S. sales to possibly rise faster than the overall market this year, will spend more on social media and digital advertising this year as it tries to reach younger buyers for its late summer launch of the new 2 model.
However, O'Sullivan said advertising on the Super Bowl -- where Korean automakers Hyundai and Kia, and Germany's Volkswagen will advertise this year -- is more about the creativity of the spots than the product or service being sold.
"The one thing about the Super Bowl too, if you're going to go and do ads at the Super Bowl, you better make sure you got some very good creative because you'll get criticized for your ads if you don't have very strong creative," he said. "So is it about selling cars or is this an agency's competition? They're memorable in some cases, but that's a very expensive property."
"I'd rather take those resources and go where our customers are and focus on what our brand is," O'Sullivan added.
from DealZone:
Comcast the Barbarian?
Conan O'Brien could well be headed to Fox after making it clear to NBC that he will not go graciously into the later night. But a channel-changing question that is making the rounds has more to do with what the drama unfolding between O'Brien and former Tonight Show host Jay Leno says about NBC and its agreed joint venture with Comcast. If nothing else, the lack of replacement programming for the slot Leno is vacating, and the purported profitability NBC still enjoyed by having a cheaper, single-star variety show in a traditionally pricey prime-time slot, raise an obvious question -- why the rush?
John Hudson at the AtlanticWire does a nice job of collecting some thoughts on pressure that was probably building from Comcast, from angry affiliates who wanted Leno and his show's crummy ratings out of that vital pre-news slot, to improving PR.
"Though NBC Universal Chairman Jeff Gaspin said the Comcast deal has nothing to do with the decision, pundits say Gaspin has 'every incentive to show improvement' before his new bosses at Comcast takeover," Hudson says.
NBC said local affiliates had seen a 30 percent drop in audiences for their 11 p.m. news shows because of the weak lead-in from Leno. That would certainly have been alarming to Comcast, which knows a lot more about getting content into people's homes than it does about who is funnier, Conan or Leno.
Another reason Comcast may be the ultimate culprit here is change itself. Taking big, noisy, tough decisions before the deal with NBC gets its regulatory blessing means not having to take them when a new bunch of executives is taking charge of the remote control.
