T-Mobile is “going big” on Major League Baseball, signing an expanded partnership with MLB, it said Wednesday. T-Mobile will be the title sponsor of Home Run Derby during All-Star Week and the T-Mobile Junior Home Run Derby, a new youth competition. T-Mobile Simple Choice customers on qualifying plans also can sign up opening week, April 3-10, to get a full, free year’s subscription to MLB.TV Premium, T-Mobile said. "For the last three years MLB has been with us every step of the way as we have re-written the rules of wireless,” said CEO John Legere in a news release. “This year we're doubling down.”
The 13 largest multichannel video programming distributors lost 385,000 video subscribers in 2015, more than the 2014 and 2013 losses combined, said Leichtman Research Group. LRG said the nine largest cable companies lost 345,000 video subscribers -- the smallest cable losses since 2006, while direct broadcast satellite providers added 86,000 subscribers, with those numbers including gains from Dish Network's Sling TV. Minus Sling, DBS providers lost 450,000 subscribers, Leichtman said in a news release Thursday. The top phone providers lost 125,000 video subscribers during the year, it said. In just Q4, Leichtman said, the largest cable companies added about 125,000 subscribers, their first quarter of net video additions since Q1 2008, DirecTV's additions of 214,000 subscribers marked its best quarter since Q4 2010, and AT&T's U-verse lost 240,000 subscribers vs. a 73,000 gain a year earlier. Overall, 2015 was the best year for cable providers since 2006, with 870,000 fewer losses than 2014, while telcos had 1.17 million fewer net additions than in 2014 and their worst year since the addition of video services in 2006, said LRG analyst Bruce Leichtman.
Yahoo will begin free live streaming up to four NHL games a week, in an agreement with the NHL, Yahoo said in a news release. The "Game of the Day" streaming began Friday and comes atop the Wednesday and Sunday NHL games Yahoo promotes in a partnership with NBC Sports Group. Under the NHL deal, Yahoo said, it also will stream condensed games, "Best of the Day" and "Best of the Week" highlights. Yahoo Vice President-Media Partnerships Phil Lynch said Thursday the NHL deal "brings us one step closer to providing fans a live professional sporting event every day, on Yahoo, completely frictionless and for free -- no cable subscription or authentication required."
Smartphone owners spend more time per day listening to music on their phones than they do watching video clips, said a Parks Associates survey released Wednesday. Some 68 percent of smartphone owners listen to streaming music daily, it said, and while 71 percent watch short video clips, video viewers spend just 24 minutes on average per day, versus streaming music consumers' average of 45 minutes per day. Amazon Prime Music, a feature of Amazon Prime, is the most popular paid music subscription service among U.S. broadband households, “but the streaming music war has intensified as the large connected entertainment companies are driving to consolidate their offerings," said analyst Harry Wang. Apple launched Apple Music and Google is consolidating music offerings across the Play content store and YouTube platform. “Consumers are getting more music options as the competition for users escalates," Wang said. Digital media usage varies based on operating system platform and mobile carrier, with iPhone users consuming more content than users of Android or other operating systems, Parks said. T-Mobile and Sprint customers have the highest daily music consumption among U.S. carriers: More than 75 percent of T-Mobile subscribers stream music daily versus 66 percent of Verizon users, it said, with Sprint and AT&T falling in between. Other findings: Smartphone owners spend an average 28 minutes per day playing games on their mobile device, and 40 percent of smartphone owners watch longer video clips such as TV or movies at least once per day.
Amazon, Apple, Google and Roku made more than eight of every 10 digital media streamer shipments worldwide in 2015, “strengthening their combined grip on the fast-growing category,” Strategy Analytics said in a Friday report. Google's low-cost HDMI dongle “continues to lead the standalone streamer market” and has “cemented itself” among the top five overall connected TV devices globally, the researcher said. Based on cumulative shipments of digital media streamers, Apple tops all others, having shipped nearly 37 million Apple TV units since their 2007 launch, it said. Google's Chromecast is catching up fast with 27 million units shipped in two and a half years, followed by Roku box and streaming stick devices (20 million) and Amazon Fire TV (less than 10 million), it said. Global shipments of all connected TV devices, including smart TVs, Blu-ray players, videogame consoles and digital media streamers, totaled 220 million units in 2015, it said.
Dish Network's Sling added over-the-top millennial-targeted digital news service Newsy to its $20 monthly Best of Live TV package, channel owner E.W. Scripps said in a Wednesday news release. It said the programmer's live stream will be available to Sling subscribers "in the coming months." Newsy in January said it was starting a Washington bureau (see 1601280046).
AT&T's DirecTV video services will be offered via streaming over mobile devices, smart TVs and PCs sometime in Q4, AT&T said in a news release Tuesday. The company said the three video packages -- DirecTV Now, DirecTV Mobile and DirecTV Preview -- won't require annual contracts, satellite dishes or set-top boxes. The advertising-supported Preview package will be free and feature some content from AT&T's Audience Network and a variety of other networks and content sources, plus millennial-targeted video from Otter Media, AT&T said. The Mobile package will be focused on smartphone users, while the Now package will include "much of what is available from DirecTV today" in on-demand and live programming and also have a number of add-on options, the company said. It also said it will continue to provide DirecTV's satellite TV service and its U-verse TV and Internet service.
Starz thinks it’s “a very good time to be a premium provider of non-advertising-supported content with a subscription-based model,” CEO Christopher Albrecht said on a Thursday earnings call. Though the “core” Starz business continues to grow, “we must take advantage of new distribution opportunities that are now the realities of the television ecosystem,” Albrecht said. For example, the distribution agreement that Starz signed with Amazon in December, enabling Amazon Prime users to subscribe to Starz, among other services, as part of Amazon’s Streaming Partners program (see 1512080052), is for Starz yielding “very encouraging” results in the “early data on subscriptions,” he said. “After taking this first step with Amazon, we are now actively engaging with additional new distributors that want to provide the Starz experience on their platforms.” Starz also is nearing completion of its own “stand-alone app, which we plan to deploy in the coming months,” he said. The app “will assist us in securing opportunities to distribute Starz on non-MVPD platforms and will also help us innovate with traditional distribution partners,” he said of multichannel video programming distributors. “Early indications” show that Amazon is “a very good partner,” Albrecht said in Q&A. “This is a business that they are interested in growing, and we couldn't be more pleased that we chose them as our first partner outside of traditional MVPDs.”
TP-Link bowed Wi-Fi range extenders for the home that are said to provide up to 10,000 square feet of coverage. The RE590T AC1900 ($149) range extender offers speeds up to 1900 Mbps for online gaming and 4K Ultra HD video streaming, the company said Wednesday. The extender includes 4 gigabit ethernet ports for hardwired connections and its touch screen lets users access network management features including guest login information. The AC1900 TP-Link’s Kasa app works with the RE350K AC1200 ($99) wall plug extender, finding the optimal location for the device and letting users know if the extenders are too close or far from the router, the company said.
Warner’s The Intern and In the Heart of the Sea arrived on Vudu Tuesday in Dolby Vision, and the latter also boasts Dolby Atmos, said Dolby in an emailed note. More than 30 Vudu titles with Dolby Vision are available for streaming, Dolby said, and 14 Vudu titles are available in Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision.