Podcast Episode 17 is live! This week we discuss the holy grail of of the streaming media industry, a single platform to aggregate streaming media services. With new Discover and Universal Watchlist  functionality from Plex and news from Verizon about their +Play platform to centralize subscription services, we debate what might really take place in the market. We also cover some streaming viewership numbers from March Madness, the news of Disney+ getting live content with Dancing With the Stars and breakdown some of the technical limitations of the MLB stream on Apple TV+.

 Thanks to this week’s podcast sponsors, Agora and NPAW.

Correction: The MLB games on Apple TV+ will be free for the “first 12 weeks”, not just the first game like I suggested.

Companies, and services mentioned: Apple TV+, MLB, Disney+, Plex, Verizon, Netflix, Peacock TV, NFL.

Backlight, a new technology company backed by growth equity firm PSG has launched in the market along with the news that it has acquired ftrack, iconik, Celtx, Wildmoka and Zype. PSG led the investment of $200M+ into Backlight for all the acquisitions and future working capital of the companies, but isn’t disclosing how much it paid for any of the vendors. The most well known of the bunch and largest in revenue is Zype, which raised close to $19 million in funding since inception.

Interestingly enough, the team at Backlight isn’t looking at the new company as the next big platform in the market. It’s actually the opposite. The value that they’re bringing to these existing small companies comes from the scale and infrastructure Backlight provides with a holding company strategy. In turn, this creates more opportunity for their new business units to focus on creating the best possible tools and solutions, while removing a lot of the barriers of scale that small companies encounter.

Backlight states that its mission is to serve media, entertainment and video-forward customers with cloud-based solutions that dramatically improve every step of the media content lifecycle. Each of the business units provide customers with different solutions to help them create content experiences.

The Backlight business units are:

• ftrack is the creator of ftrack Studio, cineSync, and ftrack Review, the Emmy and Academy Award-winning production tracking, interactive media review, and team collaboration platforms for the creative industries. ftrack’s solutions are designed for producers, supervisors, artists, and pipeline developers to collaborate with anyone, anywhere.
• iconik is a cloud-native, SaaS media management solution that is designed for users to share files from any storage, collaborate on video, and enrich media with AI for high searchability—all with great ease and the ability to scale to serve solo creators or large global teams.
• Celtx is an all-in-one solution for writing, planning, and managing media production that is used by millions worldwide. Celtx provides pre-production planning software, including scriptwriting, storyboarding, shot-planning and budgeting, to in-house production teams, agencies, film schools and universities, game studios, and media & entertainment companies.
• Wildmoka is a platform for the creation of live and near-live content in Sports, News and Entertainment. It has won several awards for its AutoReZone technology, which helps broadcasters provide a mobile-first experience. Wildmoka’s cloud-native Digital Media Factory aims to empower broadcasters and rights owners to produce and deliver content from any source, to any destination, in any format, at speed and at scale.
• Zype provides the infrastructure for digital video with a cloud-based platform to manage and distribute enterprise-grade video across the web, mobile, TV, and social media. Offering both developer-friendly tools such as customizable APIs as well as turnkey solutions for OTT apps and linear/FAST channels, Zype’s SaaS solutions enable video creators or distributors to quickly build, launch and manage superior video products at scale

As we’ve seen, the market rewards growth and scale, and puts a premium on growth at scale. In speaking with Ben Kaplan (LinkedIn), Backlight’s CEO, his goal for these businesses is to put them in the best possible situation where they can focus on products and services and help drive the whole portfolio towards growth at scale. Across all the companies, Backlight has about 300 employees and expects to be 350+ by the end of this year.

Podcast Episode 16 is live! This week we discuss the complex streaming sports licensing business and the challenge sports fans now have in finding and consuming games from MLB and the NFL. With both league’s doing exclusive streaming only deals for distribution, many consumers will now need cable or cable like bundles to get access to all games. With MLB on Apple TV+, Peacock, ESPN, TBS and some RSN services, it’s getting to be a complex mess. The NFL is also getting more complex with Thursday night games now exclusive to Amazon Prime Video and won’t be broadcast anywhere else, even in local markets. We debate what the impact could to the NFL and MLB when it comes to the future of fan viewership and engagement. Thanks to this week’s podcast sponsors, Agora and NPAW.

Companies, and services mentioned: Apple TV+, MLB, NFL, Amazon Prime Video, MLB.TV, Sinclair, Peacock, ESPN, TBS.

Podcast Episode 15 is live! This week we debate the real impact that password sharing could have on revenue and ARPU of streaming services. We also try and decipher confusing data from Antenna on the conversion rate from free trials to paid subscribers. We question who’s watching AVOD services when so much of the content is old and not exclusive to any single platform and discuss what the financial impact could be to OTT services when adding a lower priced ad-supported tier. And we touch on the launch of CNN+ and wonder who the target demographic is for the service when so much news content is now just commentary.

Companies, and services mentioned: Netflix, Antenna, YouTube TV, Pluto TV, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, Disney+, CNN+, Roku, Xumo, Tubi, IMDb TV, Vizio, Discovery.

The program and speakers for the Streaming Summit at the NAB Show are now going online and I’m pleased to announce that Andrew Gallatin from Netflix will be presenting a case study on how Netflix does such a great job delivering video at scale. You can expect to see nearly all speakers and sessions online by mid-week. #netflix #nabshow #streamingsummit #streamingmedia

Podcast Episode 14 is live! This week we preview some of the speakers and content that will be at the NAB Show Streaming Summit, taking place April 25-26 in Las Vegas. Hear what companies like Netflix, HBO Max, Paramount+, Disney, Fire TV, FOX, MotorTrend, La Liga, DAZN and others will be discussing and some of the main topics that will be covered in the program. We also discuss how industry conferences have changed since the pandemic, the role of hybrid events, what show organizers are doing well and what others need to improve on.

Companies, and services mentioned: Netflix, HBO Max, Paramount+, Disney, DAZN, fuboTV, Oracle, Red Bull Racing, AWS, Salesforce, Korea Content Platform, Adobe, Dolby, Samsung, LG, Demuxed, Roku, Fire TV, Vizio.

Podcast Episode 13 is live! This week we discuss the Apple and MLB deal and debate the importance of sports streaming to the content strategy of Apple TV+ going forward. We also highlight what the deal might mean for other sports streaming companies like Sinclair’s DTC service, which will have go-fenced games from some MLB teams and we talk about the difficulty consumers are having in finding sports content from one league on a single platform. The discussion also breaks down the news by Verizon of a new platform called +play, which will allow consumers to purchase and manage some of their favorite subscriptions across entertainment, audio, gaming, fitness, music, all with a single point of billing.

Companies, and services mentioned: Apple, MLB, Sinclair, Apple TV+, MLB.TV, Netflix, Hulu, Verizon, Roku, Vizio, LG, Samsung, CNN+, Verizon Fios, Disney, NBCU, Peacock TV, YouTube TV, Amazon Prime Video, Antenna, FOX Nation, Sony.

Articles Mentioned


• Antenna Q3’21 SVOD Growth Report
• Apple and MLB have announced “Friday Night Baseball,” a weekly doubleheader with live pre- and postgame shows that will be available to fans in eight countries exclusively on Apple TV+
• Netflix is raising rates for all streaming plans in the U.K. and Ireland
• Hulu is switching to unlimited DVR for free, starting April 13