OTT Question Time Online

OTT Question Time Online is our weekly debate show on Thursday afternoons where we explore the future of television with broadcasters, film studios, service providers, vendors and analysts from all over the world. 

There’s always so much to talk about in the industry! Guests from, among others, the BBC, BBC Studios, Channel 4, Foxtel, Hearst Networks, ITV, Sky, SVT and Warner Bros Discovery, have joined us to discuss everything from advertising models and technology budgets to content discovery, sustainability, and market dynamics across Europe and beyond.

We continue the conversation in person each year at our annual conference, OTT Question Time Live.

Watch all episodes, free and on-demand. And join our mailing list to find out about upcoming sessions. 

  • OTT Question Time Online S5, Ep2 – IBC Preview

    At this week’s OTT Question Time Online, Thurs 12 September, 4pm UK / 5pm CET, we’ll be talking about IBC – the industry’s biggest annual trade show in Europe.

    But fear not, it won’t be an extended sales pitch!

    Instead, and together with our guests, Jonas Engwall, CEO of Bedrock Streaming, …

  • OTT Question Time Online S5, Ep1 – Back to the Future

    OTT Question Time Online returned on 29 August and in the first episode of Season 5 we debated whether, with streamers increasingly adopting broadcaster characteristics, the old broadcast model was right all along.

    Together with Liz Bales, CEO of BASE (the British Association for Screen Entertainment), Gulliver Smithers, formerly of Sony Pictures, …

  • OTT Question Time #70 – Streaming Services’ Profitability

    What makes a streaming service profitable? As with any business the basic equation is income minus costs but this masks a world of complexity. What exactly is OTT income made up of (e.g. advertising, subscriptions, sponsorships etc.)? What about costs (content, staff, technology, R&D)? And how sustainable is the …

  • OTT Question Time #69 – Emerging OTT Services & Models

    Whilst Netflix, Disney, Amazon and D2C services from the broadcasters and film studios tend to get all the publicity, it’s easy to forget that the OTT market also has a huge number of smaller streamers. The UK, for example, has 288 of them according to the European Audiovisual Observatory’s database. …

  • OTT Question Time #68 – OTT User Engagement

    OTT Question Time returned last Thursday, 25th June, and to kick off the new season, we discussed OTT user engagement and sticky UI / UX.

    Together with Jonathan Kelly, Experience Director at Candyspace, Gulliver Smithers, formerly of Sony Pictures, BBC Studios and ITV plus Chris Ambrozic, VP & GM Discovery …

  • OTT Question Time #67 – The Most Popular OTT Devices

    Take a look back at the history of the most popular devices for watching online video and a fascinating picture emerges. In 2011, for example, 67% of the BBC iPlayer’s 1.9 billion TV requests were made from computers (PCs, laptops and Macs). That’s no huge surprise – smartphones were …

  • OTT Question Time #66 – Analysing OTT ARPU

    In our recent OTT Question Time about Disney vs. Netflix, Alan Wolk of TVREV told us that although technically Disney had more subscribers than Netflix (222.1m vs. 220.7m) that might not be the best metric for comparing the two companies. Why? Because over a quarter of Disney’s customers …

  • OTT Question Time #65 – Innovations in OTT Pay Models

    At this week’s OTT Question Time (Thursday 29th September 2022) we talked about established OTT pay models – PVOD, TVOD, SVOD, SVOD-lite, AVOD, BVOD and FAST – and explored the spaces in between. Could we see new tiers, for example, just for habitual binge-watchers? Or for digital-premieres? Could there be …

  • OTT Question Time #64 – IBC 2022 Review

    After an absence of three years, IBC – the International Broadcasting Convention – was back last week. This was a chance for the industry to come together, share knowledge, exhibit technologies and solutions, and meet people for the first time who they might previously only have seen on screens. …

  • OTT Question Time #63 – Disney Overtakes Netflix?

    Breathy headlines last week as Disney – now with 221m streaming subscribers – was reported to have edged past Netflix as the world’s biggest SVOD. And they did it in less than three years! And Disney is still growing fast! Netflix dethroned! 

    But is that an accurate representation …