In this week's collection of recent cord-cutting news items from around the web: The best indoor TV antennas, Pandora to modernize podcast delivery, AT&T launches skinny bundle streaming service, Crackle leaves Canadian market, Hulu users binge-watch 'The Golden Girls,' Starz comes to YouTube TV, Instagram launches long-form video hub, 'Warren Buffett's Secret Millionaires Club' debuts, and more!
TechRadar rates the best indoor TV antennas and identifies six "great digital TV antennas for inside your house." TechRadar "tested several current indoor TV antennas from top makers, watching to see how many channels each antenna could find, how easy it was to set up, how crisp the signal looked, the style and size, and the price and overall value." Coming in first was the $25 AmazonBasics Ultra-Thin Antenna (50-Mile Range). This antenna was said to be "cheap and effective – an excellent value."
Before buying a new antenna, though, read some OTA TV Antenna Shopping Tips from Tablo. "If you want to access TV channels available in both VHF and UHF frequencies in your area, inspect the features list on the packaging or online listing of the TV antennas you’re considering, to ensure they include support for both UHF and VHF bands."
Virtual pay TV services will have around 9.2 million subscribers by the end of 2018 according to a UBS analyst, as reported by FierceCable. "Sling TV still leads the category, with parent Dish Network reporting 2.3 million users at the end of the first quarter. AT&T, meanwhile, reported 1.5 million users at the same time, while Hulu said at the end of May that it's live streaming service was up to 800,000 users."
Cheddar to debut Warren Buffett's Secret Millionaires Club, an animated children series, on Saturday, June 23, according to a press release. The series was created by and stars an animated Warren Buffett with guest appearances by animated versions of Bill Gates, Jay-Z, Shaquille O'Neal, Nick Cannon, Gisele Bündchen and Kelly Rowland. Airing on weekend mornings, the half-hour show will be available on streaming services that carry Cheddar, including Sling TV, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo, and fuboTV.
Pandora CEO Robert Lynch, who started Sling TV, told NBC News that Pandora plans to do for podcasts what they did for music. "We have announced we're moving into podcasts and spoken word in a much bigger way. Think about podcasts today. Its about lists. It's not really personalized... [We will] use all the data science we have to promote content to you that we know will be relevant. In some ways, podcasts are still in the stone ages."
AT&T has started streaming TV service. CBS News reports that the new service, called WatchTV, is a skinny bundle of more than 30 TV channels. "WatchTV will be free for subscribers of two unlimited wireless phone plans AT&T is launching. Others can get WatchTV for $15 -- $20 less than [AT&T's streaming service] DirecTV Now, but with just half the channels."
TechCrunch reports that Starz is launching 14 channels on YouTube TV. "Starz is rolling out its 14 channels, including Starz, Starz Encore, and Starz Encore Westerns, to the Google-owned streaming service as an add-on that costs $9 per month. The network joins YouTube TV's other premium channel options, including Showtime, Shudder, Sundance Now, and Fox Soccer Plus."
The average Hulu viewer is watching 10 shows, reports Multichannel News. "Hulu said that 44% of its viewers binge at least once a week, and that the average viewer is watching ten different shows at one time, typically a mix of Hulu originals, comedies, dramas and reality shows." Among the other revelations: "Nearly 130,000 [subscribers] watched all 180 episodes of The Golden Girls in an average of two months."
"Sony is shutting down Crackle in Canada on June 28," according to MobileSyrup. "The end of Crackle in Canada comes as Bell Media launches two new Crackle-like free, ad-supported video-on-demand (VOD) services called CTV Movies and CTV Vault, which will be part of what it calls a 'new CTV digital super-hub.'" But MobileSyrup notes that "Twitter reactions mainly range from confused to indifferent."
Instagram launches a long-form video hub, called IGTV. Videos can be up to an hour in length, and FierceCable reports that "IGTV features a mix of videos from users and professional publishers including BuzzFeed, Discovery Channel and Vice Media." VentureBeat says that IGTV "will put Instagram's content in competition with YouTube, which uses programs like YouTube Creators to support its community of video makers."
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