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 …

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 …

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 …

At this week’s OTT Question Time (Thursday 29^th 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 …

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. …

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 …

It’s easy to think of FAST as simply a nice-to-have mezzanine floor between legacy scheduled programming and true on-demand viewing. After all, aren’t FAST channels – which are pre-programmed “linear” streams delivered OTT – mainly used by cord cutters who want to retain the experience of having “TV” on …

A recent consumer survey by Omdia (free with registration) found that in the USA, the percentage of users that permanently cancelled at least one online video subscription within the previous 12 months has nearly doubled over the past three years, from 18% in November 2018 to 34% in April …

With Paramount+ now live in the UK, and already boasting 40m subscribers at the end of Q1 2022, we did a SWOT analysis of the new service on this week’s OTT Question Time (Thursday 7^th July, 4pm UK / 8am PST). 

Together with Allan McLennan, CEP/Media, …

In the days of linear-only TV, the EPG (electronic programming guide) was the easiest way to find out what you might like to watch. Presented as a simple grid, or even just a list, it would tell you what’s on now, next and, if it was very sophisticated, tomorrow …