In this week's rundown of recent news items for cord cutters: Binge racing is a new status symbol, Pluto TV gets $8.3 million in funding, cable TV fights cord-cutting with broadband price hikes, analysts are ringing alarm bells over pay TV subscriber losses, don't spend money on last year's Roku leftovers, and more.
"Streaming NFL Games Still Sucks" in the opinion of Sports Illustrated's Jacob Feldman. After giving examples of problems with Amazon's streaming of Thursday Night Football this season, he concludes that "The NFL's Thursday Night streaming experiment isn't for us, dedicated football followers... Thursday Night Football on Amazon isn't a revolution. It's more of the same."
The sinking ship called "Cable TV" sank a bit lower in the third quarter, as "AT&T revealed... that it lost around 390,000 linear pay-TV subscribers across its DirecTV and U-verse platforms in the third quarter," writes Daniel Frankel for FierceCable. "Coming off a record-bad period for pay-TV attrition in the first six months of 2017, and with Comcast declaring a month ago that the combination of cord cutting and storms would lead it to lose as many as 150,000 pay-TV customers in the third quarter, analysts are ringing alarm bells."
If you find it difficult to keep track of which streaming services carry which shows, or you don't want to search a dozen services for a specific movie, then you might want to subscribe to SelectTV, a content aggregator. According to CNET's Cheapskate, SelectTV "collects the internet's wealth of streaming stuff -- TV shows and movies, live and on-demand, free and not free -- and organizes it under one simplified roof." CNET Cheapskate readers can get one year of SelectTV for $14.99 for a limited time.
"YouTube Red and Facebook Watch Are Not Going to Kill the TV Industry," writes Tim Goodman for The Hollywood Reporter. "Using Facebook doesn't mean people will watch TV on Facebook. Watching YouTube videos doesn't mean people will pay to watch TV on YouTube or pay to subscribe to it, either."
Samsung has invested $5 million in Pluto TV, the free linear TV streaming service available on Roku and other platforms. Jordan Palmer reports for Android Police that "other investors contributed, too, bringing the total funding round to $8.3 million. Pluto TV is hoping to improve its 100+ channels and video-on-demand offerings. The company also plans to add more partnerships to its already impressive list of 40 content deals with the likes of Warner Bros., Lionsgate, and MGM."
Following the recent release of the latest generation of Roku players, don't be tempted by the bargain-basement prices being advertised for last year's Roku models. "Don't buy an old Roku now," warns Jared Newman in his Cord-Cutter Confidential column for TechHive. "Usually, buying an old Roku player isn’t a bad idea," he writes, but "this year is an exception to the rule. With the way Roku is pricing its new lineup, and some of the changes it's introduced this year, older Roku players have become much less appealing. In most cases, you’re better off spending a little more to get a new Roku, even as prices for older ones hit all-time lows.
"Cable TV companies are fighting cord-cutting with price hikes on broadband service," according to Reinhardt Krause, writing for Reuters. "Morgan Stanley said that based on its own survey, cable TV companies hiked broadband prices by 12% to $66 monthly from a year earlier for customers that buy only high-speed internet and not a TV package."
"Streaming fast is a new status symbol" according to a recent Netflix press release. "Accomplishing in a day what takes others weeks to achieve, Binge Racers strive to be the first to finish by speeding through an entire season within 24 hours of its release." The top binge-raced show is Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, with a Fuller House, Marvel's The Defenders, The Seven Deadly Sins, and The Ranch rounding out the top five. What's the top binge-racing country? That would be Canada, followed by the United States, Denmark, Finland, and then Norway. "Binge Racing behavior grew from 200,000 members in 2013 to more than 5 million in 2017 (as of September)," according to the press release.
YouTube TV can now be controlled by voice using Google Home, Google Home Mini, and soon Google Home Max. A Google blog post states explains the simple setup: "Once you've set up Google Home and Chromecast, open the Google Home app to link the two. After that, simply use your voice to control your YouTube TV experience."
