Today's Top Stories | By Jim O'Neill |  Comment |  Forward | < a href="http://links.mkt1985.com/ctt?kn=104&ms=MzU0MjQzNgS2&r=MjM2NzI3MjAzMjcS1&b=0&j=MTExNjc2NDQzS0&mt=1&rt=0" name="api_addthis_com_oexchange_s31EczysZDuJq2qreNCFXg" > Twitter |  Facebook |  LinkedIn | With more than 23 million customers, Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) apparently isn't too concerned about losing some of them. The company decided Tuesday to bump its price for a combined streaming and DVD-by-mail service by nearly 60 percent to $15.98. It also began offering a streaming-only plan or DVD-by-mail only plan for $7.99, in line with its streaming only offering in Canada, which is the same price as Hulu charges for its Hulu Plus premium service. The move immediately drew howls of protest from a number of customers and raised concern among pundits who questioned the move and predicted subscriber erosion. Wall Street, however, apparently liked the move, rewarding Netflix with its second consecutive day trading above $300 per share. The stock closed, however, at $291.27. The move was nonetheless somewhat expected, with CEO Reed Hastings in the past saying that Netflix was far more interested in streaming content to consumers than in sending it through the mail, a delivery method that, because of postage cost increases and the expense of maintaining staffed mail drops centers, has become more expensive. A Netflix spokesman said the company expects to lose some subscribers because of the price increase but the company still believes the combined offering, at $15.98, was "a terrific value." Janney Capital Markets analyst Tony Wible said some 80 percent of Netflix customers currently use a combination plan and will be affected by the price change. For more:
- see this Wall Street Journal article Related articles:
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Netflix content licensing strategy puts it in a class by itself Read more about: Streaming Video, Netflix, Subscriber Numbers
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Facebook users have been inundated with VOD offerings of late, as Hollywood looks longingly at the over 750 million active users the site has, many of them Baby Boomers and other adults who've adopted the technology as their own. Now, Doctor Who will be available to users in exchange for Facebook credits (available in any online game and on the payments tab in Facebook). Another fan favorite, Top Gear, which already has 12 million Facebook fans, also will soon be available on the site, according to published reports. It is the first time a broadcaster, in this case, the BBC, has looked to Facebook to deliver programming as VOD. Episodes will be available for 48 hours and will cost 15 Facebook credits. For more:
- see this Telegraph article Related articles:
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Warner Bros. teams with Facebook for VOD movie play Read more about: Video On Demand, facebook, Doctor Who, Top Gear
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Soap opera fans may be dwindling in number, but at least one production company thinks that the fan base and advertiser support is sound enough to take some established properties to the Web. Prospect Park as licensed All My Children and One Life to Live from ABC, which planned to cancel the shows this year, and said it will produce new episodes for Web consumption, as well as put older episodes online. The deal will net millions in royalties for Disney, which owns ABC, and is said to run for over a decade. "We believe that by continuing to produce the shows in their current hour format and with the same quality, viewers will follow the show to our new, online network," said Prospect Park heads Rich Frank and Jeff Kwatinetz. Prospect Park hasn't cemented any deals yet with actors or writers and is weighing how it plans to monetize the shows. The Wall Street Journal said Prospect Park is weighing a subscription model, but also is looking at ad sales, product-placement deals and sponsorships. The company is counting on the shows to be cornerstones for a new network. For more:
- see this WSJ article
- see this EOnline article Read more about: Online Video, Disney, Prospect Park
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| By Jim O'Neill | Comment | Forward | < a href="http://links.mkt1985.com/ctt?kn=73&ms=MzU0MjQzNgS2&r=MjM2NzI3MjAzMjcS1&b=0&j=MTExNjc2NDQzS0&mt=1&rt=0" name="api_addthis_com_oexchange_qD4UwoatSVs7STKsM7SNw" >Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Buyers potentially interested in Hulu will begin looking at the books in the next couple of weeks, but Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), the company's closest rival, isn't likely to be one of them, according to a published report. Interested parties have been kicking the tires of the company, which earlier this month began to actively court buyers. Now, said the Wall Street Journal, they'll start doing a deeper dive on the books as owners News Corp., Disney and Comcast's NBCUniversal look to execute their exit strategy. The Journal, however, said Netflix, which is looking to stream the kind of content Hulu has to offer, won't be taking that next step. It added that Hulu's ownership wasn't keen on selling to Netflix anyway, as they want to continue selling content to as many outlets as possible and consolidating two of their biggest customers would be counterproductive. That's likely good news to Hollywood studios worried that a merger of the two companies would have produced a more powerful entity. Netflix currently is estimated to have more than 23 million subscribers, making it the largest subscription service in the U.S. Meanwhile, at least one analyst expects Netflix's content acquisition costs to increase tenfold by 2012, one more reason the company may not be interested in the sale. For more:
- see this WSJ article Related articles:
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Earlier this year, Shane O'Neill, Liberty Global's chief strategy officer, called over-the-top services "an existential threat" to cable operators during the told Cable Congress in Lucerne. "We need to innovate much more quickly than we have traditionally done," he said. "If we don't, OTT could be a big, big thorn in our side." That thorn has grown, according to a new report from IMS Research that predicts a world service OTT market of $16.4 billion by 2016, with a CAGR of 32 percent. And it predicts the growth will be led by subscription services like Netflix and Hulu Plus, which will account fro the largest share of OTT service revenues through 2016. Anna Hunt, CE principal analyst at IMS Research, said Netflix's just-announced expansion into Latin America and the Caribbean "illustrates the type of strategic initiatives we can expect from leading local OTT service providers" as they look to expand their market. "New deals for Spanish and Portuguese language content create a potential for Netflix to expand its market reach to the vast population of the whole Latin American region, as well as millions of Spanish speakers living in the U.S.," she said. It's not just subscription services that will see big gains in the next five years, Hunt said. She expects brick and mortar retailers like Walmart and Best Buy, as well as Hollywood studios and other content owners to benefit as well, as pay-per-view transaction revenues grow at a faster pace. IMS Research projects that retailers will grow their share of the OTT market, accounting for 13 percent of world OTT service revenues in 2016. For more:
- see this release Free eBook: The evolution of the OTT space and what it means to the industry
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North American OTT revenues to reach $20B in 2016, ad revenues to soar Read more about: ott delivery, IMS Research, Trends & Metrics
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