When you think, or talk, about various OTT services, what reactions do they evoke?

Are they functional (catching up with Strictly Come Dancing on BBC iPlayer)? Transactional (Prime Video comes with my Amazon membership)? Or even, ahem, emotional (Netflix and chill)?

Do we love, love, love our streamers, merely tolerate …

Everything about the Olympics and Paralympics is at a gargantuan scale. The logistics, the venues, the ticket sales. The sponsors, the travel, the security. The inspiration, anticipation and the sheer spectacle of it all. And, of course, the people: the athletes and fans, volunteers and organisers, the media and the …

One of the things that made the old TV model so successful was the relative scarcity of content. If you missed something when it was broadcast you’d have to wait for it to appear on the channel again, pay to rent or buy it, or subscribe to a Pay-TV service …

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 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, …

What happens when a streamer starts cracking down on password sharing? Some back-of-the-envelope thinking:

• Password-sharers (i.e. those not paying a subscription themselves) ignore messages and continue using the service for as long as they can
• They stop using the service altogether
• They legitimately subscribe to the service and choose a pure SVOD tier …
  

I was at the CTAM Europe Symposium in London yesterday where, together with excellent guests from Samsung TV Plus, Vevo and Virgin Media, I moderated a panel about FAST. Yes, another one.

If you detect some weariness in my tone it’s because – at least for Europe – I’m a …

50 VOD Professionals – our list of the 50 most influential people working in the UK’s video-on-demand and OTT industry – is back for 2024!

Nominations are now open and we’d like to hear from you about the brilliant people that power VOD services all over the UK: the designers who …

In a wide-ranging presentation at this year’s OTT Question Time Live 2024, the excellent Ben Keen declared a winner in The Streaming Wars.

Collectively, he said, Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount, Sony and Comcast had lost $600bn in value since peaking during the COVID years.

“Why? Because …

A recap from ITV’s full year results 2023 released yesterday. First, the good news.

Digital performance – that is, OTT – is up across the board:

• – Total streaming hours viewed increased 26% YOY to 1.5bn hours
• – Monthly active users rose 19% to 12.5m
• – Overall digital …