Ericsson signed an exclusive deal with 20th Century Fox Television Distribution for its sub-Saharan Africa subscription VOD service, Nuvu, giving it access to Fox-produced titles and an array of global film franchises, it said in a news release Wednesday.

When building their own a la carte video package, consumers most want ABC, CBS, NBC, Discovery Chanel, History and Fox, TiVo's Digitalsmiths reported Wednesday. For each of those channels, consumers are willing to pay roughly $1.50 a month, with the average price for their top-10 channels being $15.30 a month, it said. That raises the question of whether consumers face sticker shock when asked to pay, for example, the $5.99 per month charged by CBS for its All Access app, Digitalsmiths said. It said it looked at the skinny bundle offerings available now, and found none carries all the 20 most-desired channels. "Add up the cost of a skinny bundle, subscription video on demand service and a streaming device like Google Chromecast and the total is essentially back to the cost of a traditional pay-TV package," it said. "Will consumers catch on that skinny bundles aren't really skinny?" The TiVo unit said pay-TV providers could remain competitive by offering a la carte or skinny bundle packages that include channels unavailable in competitive offerings. The data came from a survey of 3,140 U.S. and Canadian participants.

Eight Starz channels will be on AT&T's DirecTV Now streaming service when it launches later this month, the network said in a news release Thursday. More of its channels, including its VOD catalog of Starz series, will be added later. The DirecTV Now terms came as part of multiyear agreement between Starz and AT&T/DirecTV, it said.

While required to build fiber to 12.5 million homes by 2019 as one of the conditions of its purchase of DirecTV, that fiber buildout size could be a floor rather than a ceiling, AT&T Chief Financial Officer John Stephens said Wednesday during the Wells Fargo investor conference. "We would be willing to do more." Stephens also said DirecTV integration is ahead of schedule regarding cost management. "We kept [revenue generation] expectations tempered," he said. "We thought it would take a year to get things going, and it has." AT&T revenue expectations also have been hampered by a tepid U.S. economy, he said. While the carrier has announced a $35 price point for its upcoming DirecTV Now streaming service (see 1610250053), the company plans to subsequently add features and content that will result in other price points, he said. Stephens also said one aim of DirecTV Now is as an entry point to the market of 20 million or so U.S. households without pay TV, letting AT&T then try to bundle broadband or other services with it.

Tuesday night's presidential election coverage was the largest single news event Akamai ever streamed, the company said in a news release Wednesday. “Live video streaming traffic specific to the election peaked at 7.5 Tbps on the Akamai Platform shortly before midnight Eastern Time on Tuesday, November 8th, eclipsing previous news events, and placing it among the highest video traffic peaks for any individual event delivered by Akamai.” Traffic on its network during the 2004 presidential election coverage peaked at 21 Gbps, while the 2009 Obama inauguration reached 1.1 Tbps and the 2011 British royal wedding hit 1.3 Tbps, it said. The first 2016 presidential debate peaked at 4.4 Tbps, Akamai said. “Not only are more people watching online in general, they’re watching at higher quality, which contributes to the increasingly higher peaks in traffic that we’re observing,” said General Manager of Media Bill Wheaton.

Univision programming will be included on new AT&T streaming service, DirecTV Now, as part of a “multiplatform distribution agreement,” the broadcaster said in a news release Tuesday. DirecTV Now will offer Univision stations, Univision Network, UniMás, Galavisión, UDN (Univision Deportes Network) and the Fusion network, it said. The agreement includes TV Everywhere provisions and will allow U-Verse and DirecTV customers to stream Univision's live and VOD content, that company said. DirecTV Now will launch in Q4, with 100-plus channels, Univision noted.

Discovery Communications and Major League Baseball subsidiary BAMTech are jointly forming BAMTech Europe, a company providing digital services to content owners, broadcasters and over-the-top platforms in Europe, they said in a news release Tuesday. BAMTech Europe's first client is Eurosport Digital, which will get access to various European sports rights from worldwide sports properties, including current and future rights acquired by BAMTech and jointly by Eurosport and BAMTech, the two said. The deal is BAMTech's first move into Europe, and BAMTech’s back-end video platform and services will be implemented in 2017 across Eurosport Digital’s products, such as Eurosport.com and subscription-based OTT platform Eurosport Player, they said. The two companies also said they will collaboratively work on making premium sports events more widely available through streaming, including via current and future rights acquired by BAMTech and joint acquisitions. Disney also is working with BAMTech on its ESPN streaming service (see 1609220053), and it bought a third of the company for $1 billion (see 1608100024).

Streaming video-on-demand competition for exclusives and originals has become “fierce,” and streaming VOD content costs are rising, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter emailed investors Monday. Video content spending dented earnings reported last week by Amazon (see 1610280053) and Netflix (see 1610170061), Pachter said, saying Amazon’s lower-than-expected gross margins were affected by an estimated $300 million in video content spending that hadn’t been included in forecasts. Netflix, meanwhile, posted higher-than-expected subscriber additions, but reported negative free cash flow of $506 million, Pachter said. Wedbush expects the trend of escalating content costs to continue for the foreseeable future, but sees the spending gap narrowing between the two, “approximately reflecting the quality of content as well,” he said. Comparing subscriber costs, Pachter said an Amazon Prime membership bundling Prime Video is $99 annually vs. $119 for Netflix, which could play out in Amazon’s favor this quarter. “Long time Netflix customers could be persuaded to switch this Holiday season as Amazon markets their video service more aggressively, and as Netflix completes its price increases on its remaining grandfathered subscribers, potentially bringing greater consumer attention to the price comparison and alternative content available,” he said.

Sony’s PlayStation Vue live TV streaming service is available on Sony premium Android TVs, the TV maker said Thursday. In an announcement, Sony said PlayStation Vue gives customers “a better option” for watching live TV than a cable or satellite subscription. The service offers simultaneous streaming on various devices from one account, and includes “thousands of hours” of programming “without recording conflicts” on Vue’s cloud-based DVR, said the company. Sony Chief Operating Officer Mike Fasulo said the launch of Vue on premium Sony TVs demonstrates the company’s “continuing commitment to customer choice,” including cord-cutting. PlayStation Vue is available on all models in Sony Android TV series: X700D, X750D, X800D, X850D, X930D, X940D, Z9D and plans start at $29.99 per month, $39.99 in cities with most major live broadcast stations.

The $35 per month subscription price to AT&T's DirecTV Now means that over-the-top service likely won't be a money maker, since programming costs probably will be in the low $30 range, UBS analyst John Hodulik wrote investors Tuesday. It won't come with satellite, set-top box or installation costs and could reach the cord-cutter and cord-never markets, he said. Hodulik said increased OTT competition likely will mean Comcast and Charter Communications will start seeing losses of traditional video subscribers again by 2018, but cable numbers probably will be more resilient than satellite or telco video subscribers because of the quality of cable video product, broadband bundling and the potential of cable quickly offering OTT services. Hodulik said strong DirecTV Now growth "would likely sit well with regulators concerned about the OTT ecosystem." AT&T pointed to sped-up OTT innovation as a big motivator for its planned $108.7 billion takeover of Time Warner (see 1610240011). Disney Chief Communications Officer Zenia Mucha said that "a transaction of this magnitude obviously warrants very close regulatory scrutiny."