Claim OwnershipThe Dan Rayburn Podcast
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© 2024 The Dan Rayburn Podcast
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Curating all the streaming media industry news of the week that matters most, in 30 minutes. Unvarnished, unscripted and providing you with the data and analysis you need, without any hype. The pulse of the streaming media industry.
100 Episodes
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This week, we do a mini-review of the NAB Show Streaming Summit and some topics we heard discussed around the difficulty in scaling streaming services for low latency and QoE. We also cover Netflix’s Q1 earnings and excellent user growth, adding 9.3 million subs, which was tempered by the news that they will stop reporting quarterly membership numbers and ARM a year from now. We highlight the latest rumors about Paramount Global, with it being reported that Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo Global are interested in the company, and detail the restrictions and complications on the companies if such a deal were to occur. Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
1This week, we discuss the latest news around Disney, including their plans to crack down on password sharing in June in a "few" countries and markets, with a "full" rollout in September. We detail how complex ESPN’s DTC offering is becoming, with Disney announcing that its new ESPN streaming service will launch in the fall of 2025 and will be offered as part of the Disney+ bundle, which will give Disney three separate ESPN sports streaming services in the market. We also detail sports news from Formula One’s US-based owner, Liberty Media, announcing a takeover of MotoGP’s parent company and the "rumor" that Amazon might get the rights to take over the entire NHL Monday night package from Rogers in Canada, including playoffs, for the remaining two years of Rogers’ contract. Finally, we highlight the NBA teaming up with Roku to launch its first-ever FAST channel, Diamond Sports Group renewing its distribution deal with Charter Communications, and DAZN announcing an exclusive deal with the PGA TOUR across the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia.Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
Step up to the plate with us this week as we tackle the complex maze of baseball streaming. We cover the latest baseball streaming news with Fubo adding RSNs, Hulu+ Live TV adding the MLB Network, and discuss the terrible fan experience with some MLB teams requiring fans to access five different networks to stream games. We also highlight other sports news, including Peacock's exclusive streaming deal for the NFL’s first-ever regular-season game in Brazil and Amazon's sublicensing deal with Viaplay to broadcast 38 live Premier League games a season in Sweden and Denmark. We break down the launch of Hulu on Disney+ in the U.S. for Disney bundled subscribers, and why we think the report that YouTube TV will reach profitability in 2024 isn't accurate. Finally, we debunk the ridiculous report suggesting that because Bitmovin's live encoder is now deployed on Akamai, it "raises M&A eyebrows" for them to be acquired. Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
This week, we detail WBD's planned international expansion of Max, which will make the OTT service available in 25 countries in Europe and 65 countries and territories worldwide. We also highlight comments made by the NFL's Chief Business Officer regarding the newly announced WBD, FOX and Disney sports JV, which is missing over half of all NFL games. We discussed the latest rumors regarding a potential sale of Paramount Global, with Skydance still conducting due diligence and having yet to submit a final offer. We detail the new YouTube TV multiview functionality on iPhones and iPads and Peacock's new upcoming enhanced four-view experience called "Discovery Multiview," coming in time for the Olympic Games in Paris that will be supported across smart TVs, streaming devices, web browsers and tablets. Finally, we discuss Kingsoft Cloud's Q4 CDN revenue, which decreased by nearly 10% compared to the previous quarter and some changes coming to Comcast's internal CDN.Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
This special podcast takes you inside the NAB Show Streaming Summit with a preview of all the content, speakers and expert strategies you’ll learn at the event. Hear what the keynote fireside chats will cover with Paramount Global, Prime Video and NBCU. We also give an overview of the new AI Demo Track and break down all the sessions tied to sports, content bundling, churn and retention, and streamlining video workflow strategies. Finally, we highlight case studies from NFL, SiriusXM, Disney+ Hotstar, and Sinclair and detail why you can’t miss the day one Happy Hour event. And if you're feeling the sting of recent layoffs or seeking career growth, join me for an empowering talk on how to find a job, advance your career, set yourself up for success and stand out amongst the crowd.Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
This week, we detail how SeaChange, which once dominated the cable TV operator market and had over $216 million in revenue, will have its assets acquired for $30 million. We break down the numbers you need to know from Fubo's full-year 2023 earnings, ending with 1.61M subscribers and reaffirming their expectation to reach positive cash flow and adjusted EBITDA in 2025. We also detail Paramount's full-year 2023 earnings, ending with 67.5M subscribers and DTC losses of $1.6B, forecasting profitability for Paramount+ domestically in 2025. Finally, we discuss some of the latest news from Disney, including Bog Iger's remarks about the mistakes they made around the launch of Disney+, including not having the right tech to lower customer acquisition and retention costs and acknowledging that the company is behind Netflix in terms of technical capabilities.Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
This week, we break down all the numbers from Warner Bros. Discovery's full year 2023 earnings, including DTC profitability in 2023, exclusive NBA negotiations, international expansion of Max, and their disciplined approach to investing in subscriber growth, mindful of lifetime value to subscriber acquisition cost ratios. We also highlight why Fubo is suing Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery over their recently announced JV deal to offer a sports streaming service and the overlapping distinct authority that the FTC and DOJ have to challenge anti-competitive practices. Finally, we detail earnings from Vimeo, which projects only 4-8% of revenue growth in 2024 and Brightcove, whose projected 2024 revenue growth would be flat or slightly down over 2023.Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
This week, we cover infrastructure news and Q4 and full-year earnings from Akamai, Fastly, and Broadpeak, highlighting overall CDN industry revenue growth, pricing trends, and Akamai's continued dominance of the content delivery market. We also discuss the Super Bowl stream on Paramount+, my 8.5 million AMA viewership number, and reported news that Amazon secured an exclusive NFL playoff game for Prime Video in 2025. We detail why Roku's stock is getting hammered, even with the company beating all of the street's expectations in their Q4 earning results with revenue up 14% year-over-year, active accounts growing 14% year-over-year to 80 million, and their achievement of positive adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow for the full year 2023, ahead of schedule. Finally, the plot thickens as we examine the Disney, Fox, and WBD streaming partnership, the DOJ's potential scrutiny, and predictions of how giants like the NFL might play their hand next.Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
This week, we discuss the key numbers from Disney's latest earnings, including subs, ARPU and D2C profitability projections. We detail what the ESPN brand could look like with their comments that they will bring its ESPN DTC app to the market in the fall or late August of 2025, including integrated fantasy betting. We debate what their newly announced plans to offer a joint sports streaming service with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery means for the streaming and pay TV industry and why they made a $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games. Finally, we break down all the cord-cutting numbers from Comcast, Charter, and Verizon, highlight YouTube TV's subscriber count of 8 million and discuss MLB's goal of introducing a DTC streaming package that would include, at a minimum, roughly half of the teams, by 2025. Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
This week, we discuss the key takeaways from Q4 earnings across OTT platforms and streaming vendors, including Apple seeing a "huge opportunity" with AI, YouTube's ad revenue growth of 15% and AWS closing out 2023 with $90.8 billion in cloud revenue. We discuss new numbers released by Amazon, which spent $18.9 billion on content in 2023, of which "approximately $7 billion" was spent on Amazon originals and live sports. We also highlight the latest pay TV losses from Charter, nearly 1 million Xumo Stream Box's deployed, Plex's new round of funding, and Harmonic's update on the strategic review process of their video business. As Lumen officially shuts down its CDN and sells off some assets, we detail the history of its CDN business and its contribution to the industry for so many years. Finally, we discuss why 2024 is going to get a lot worse for layoffs across the video industry, streaming, pay TV, vMVPD, broadcasters, and content owners. Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
The Netflix episode "Woooooo!" This week, we discuss Netflix’s record Q4 earnings, their free cash flow of $6.9 billion for 2023, their growing AVOD business and their off-the-top rope deal with the WWE as they continue to dominate the industry. We discuss how the WWE deal with "scripted entertainment” differs from sports content, how it will expand Netflix’s advertising business, and what it might mean for a more significant content deal with the WWE when Peacock’s domestic WWE Network deal expires in March 2026.We highlight new data from Netflix showing that 40% of all Netflix sign-ups are for their AVOD plan in markets where it is offered and the reason why Netflix plans to retire their Basic plan in some of their ad countries. We debate the growth Netflix could have with AVOD in the short and long term, especially with T-Mobile having just converted Netflix’s users to the ads plan in their "Netflix On Us" bundle.Finally, we discuss what Netflix said about their shift in the mix of content spend, their historical bias to build and not buy content assets, why they are not interested in some of the big linear assets being shopped and the work they are doing to improve ad targeting, relevance and measurement.Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
This week, we discuss the use cases for Apple Vision Pro and why it will not become the future of video viewing for consumers at scale. We also break down the Diamond Sports Group complex proposed restructuring plan, Amazon's commitment to make a minority investment, and the potential repercussions for Prime Video customers who will be able to purchase DTC access to stream local Diamond channels at a still-to-be-announced price. Finally, we highlight the deal between Qwilt and Cirion Technologies, which will result in Qwilt taking over the former Lumen CDN PoP infrastructure and running their edge cache software and cloud services across what was the Lumen CDN footprint in LATAM.We also mention some executives with new positions, including Walker Jacobs at DAZN, Michal Tsur leaving Kaltura, Stephanie Mitchko at AMC Networks, and Courtney Sanchez at Tubi.Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
This week, we break down all the latest sports viewership numbers from ESPN, FOX Sports, CBS Sports, and NBC Sports. We also highlight the new joint venture by YES Network and MSG Networks, the launch of an Innovation Lab by Major League Soccer and details around the Super Bowl stream, which will not stream in 4K on Paramount+ and will be in 1080P60 HDR. We detail the latest APRU numbers across the primary OTT services and why, with all the OTT price increases in 2023 and the recent launch of new AVOD tiers, the ARPU metric is becoming one of the most critical data points Wall Street is closely tracking. We also mention Fubo's $5/month price increase and Sony's latest stat that Crunchyroll has 13 million paid subscribers.Finally, we discuss Netflix's 23 million global monthly active users for their advertising-supported plan and the stat that 85% of Netflix's AVOD subscribers are streaming for more than two hours per day. Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
This week, we review what's behind all the industry layoffs as companies reset the cost bar on CAPEX and OPEX expenses. With full-year 2023 financials in the book, some companies didn't hit the revenue, efficiency, and cost savings goals they had expected, prompting layoffs to start the year. We also detail how some vendors are restructuring their debt with Fubo, the most recent example, which will pay a higher interest rate in exchange for pushing debt out by three years and getting to profitability faster.We detail the 2023 domestic box office revenue numbers, which topped $9.03 billion, an improvement on the $7.4 billion total ticket sales from 2022 and the great year that IMAX had financially. On the sports front, we discuss the NCAA's nearly billion-dollar handshake with ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery's plans to continue to give away its B/R Sports Add-On for several more months before they start charging consumers. Finally, we mention some executive changes at VideoAmp, Prime Video, Brightcove and Edgio. Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
This week, I reviewed Peacock's exclusive NFL game stream with some users having a poor quality video experience and detailed why I think Peacock's strategy failed with their ad-free fourth quarter. I also break down the viewership numbers reported by NBC Sports and highlight how sports is a costly and unproven part of Peacock's subscriber acquisition strategy, with no ability to scale sports content globally.I discuss, with numbers, why the rumors of Warner Bros. Discovery buying Paramount would not make sense from a financial standpoint since the deal would likely be a stock-for-stock deal, with the combined companies having about $60 billion in debt. I also detail how, from a regulatory standpoint, it would involve merging two of the five remaining major movie studios and two major television studios, creating a very high concentration of linear network ownership, including a significant consolidation of major sports rights. Finally, I highlight what changes I would like to see in the streaming media industry in 2024, including better innovation in the pricing and packaging of streaming content and more professionalism from those within the industry.Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
This week we discuss, how in a blow to Amazon and DAZN, pay TV broadcaster Sky won broadcast rights to show a record number of Premier League matches in a new four-year deal. We also break down Paramount’s balance sheet to refute the reports they are nearing bankruptcy and highlight Peacock’s latest data of 30 million paying subscribers, their $10 ARPU, and their two upcoming exclusive NFL games. We detail Twilio’s announced layoffs and the shutting down of their Programmable Video product, a 17% workforce reduction announced by Spotify, along with Netflix's recent outage and the lack of transparency in their "What We Watched” report. Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
Avi Saxena, CTO and Tyler Whitworth, CPO at Warner Bros. Discovery, join me for a detailed conversation about the technical video stack at Max. Learn how they approach the user experience when it comes to their apps, latency, adding live sports and news to the platform, device support, 4K, advertising, personalization, and how they measure QoE. We also discuss what’s ahead for the service, the technical challenges in ad delivery, expanding into LATAM, and the skills they are looking for when they hire developers and engineers across the WBD organization.Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
This week we discuss some of the latest news and rumors around bundling and aggregation of streaming services, the impact that wholesale rates have on DTC profitability, and the lack of data in the market to prove that bundling reduces churn. We also cover the viewership numbers from Prime Video's first NFL Black Friday game, Amazon's new licensing deal with NASCAR, and Charter's recently launched mobile broadband service that limits video streaming quality to 480p.Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
Larry Allen, VP/GM, of Data and Addressable Enablement at Comcast Advertising joins me for a detailed discussion on how the shift in viewing habits to all screens is making it difficult to provide cohesive cross-media measurement. We discuss the impact of the loss of third-party cookies, the challenges and opportunities that exist with measurement at scale, including with FAST services, and the potential role of AI tech to fill in measurement gaps. Finally, we highlight why the industry needs a clear set of guidelines on how the industry wants to approach measurement across inventory owners and distributors to provide a common language for measurement cross-platforms.Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
This week we cover all the latest news in the world of sports streaming tied to Apple, Amazon, ESPN, Disney+ Hotstar, Fubo, Max, Peacock, and YouTube TV. We also discuss content licensing and viewership stats across the NFL, NBA, Formula 1, and MLS. Some highlights include:Apple reported that they had more than a million viewers to watch the biggest MLS games this season and the rumors that Apple is eyeing Formula 1 as its next big sports investmentThe latest in the NBA media negotiations and why the NBA needs to package national TV rights with local-market rightsPeacock's first-ever exclusive live-streaming NFL Playoff game on Saturday, Jan. 13, 2024, and what the viewership might beDisney+ Hotstar news that they hit 59 million concurrent viewers for the World Cup 2023 cricket finals on November 19NBC Sports latest stats on the largest streaming audience ever for a regular-season Sunday NFL game on NBC Sports (1.85M AMA) and their most-streamed college football simulcast (605,000 AMA)Comcast reported that Amazon's TNF games comprise roughly 25% of all Internet traffic on Thursday nights across their networkFox saying it has no intention of taking its premium sports content DTC any time soon, with cable revenues continuing to deliver a lucrative revenue stream for the broadcasterPodcast produced by Security Halt Media
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