Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Tuesday, May 31st, 2022
More news today than I had space...
Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Tuesday, May 31st, 2022.
AN INTERVIEW ABOUT PHILO
There are close to a dozen virtual cable systems (or vMVPD's as they're known in the business) still around and for the most part, they offer the same lineup of channels at pretty much the same cost. And that's because 4-5 major media companies own the lions share of the channels and they offer their networks bundled together at a price that is the same for every company that negotiates with them. The result is that it's nearly impossible for a vMVPD to offer a so-called "skinny bundle" of networks at a reduced price.
One company that has so far managed to carve out its own niche is the entertainment-centric vMVPD Philo, which offers over 60 channels for $25 a month, with an unlimited DVR. It has managed to keep the price low by only carrying entertainment-based channels. No local affiliates, no national news channels or sports networks. While that approach has meant that it hasn't been able to strike a deal for some of the entertainment channels that are bundled with other programming (i.e., networks owned by CBS, Turner, NBCU or Disney), it does include a lot of familiar networks. Channels owned by Hallmark, A&E Networks, Viacom and Discovery are on Philo, along with a number of smaller, unaffiliated networks ranging from UP TV to GAC.
Philo has also been devoting a lot resources to the ad-tech part of its business, which was one reason I wanted to speak with Philo head of advertising Reed Barker, who recently walked me through the company's advertising strategy and helped explain why the ad you're seeing on your favorite streaming service might not be as targeted as they should be. The full interview will be on AllYourScreens in the morning and I'll include a link in tomorrow's newsletter. But here's an excerpt, which is heavy on ad tech talk, but also really enlightening for those of us who don't deal with the subject every day:
As you know, the vMVPD market is a tough one to be in. It's very competitive, their isn't much price flexibility and most of the companies are providing very similar programming packages. So how does Philo - and how do you specifically - sell the company to advertisers. What do you say to make the argument "this is where you should be spending some of your money?"
When it comes to the advertising space, we decided when we launched that we were going to focus on entertainment, lifestyle and knowledge as the core programming and that has helped us have a focused audience. It gives us an audience that is 70% women and more than 50% non-white. So there is a very focused audience for what we have.
The way we've sold Philo is that we're not out there telling advertisers, "you can buy the world." We're not doing the traditional broadcast direct sales where we tell you "okay, if you buy this show, you'll get women 18-34, we'll over-index them and we'll look at Nielsen later and tell you what you got. And we'll do make goods if we didn't deliver on this." Instead, we decided to lean into programmatic first. We work with programmatic and direct resellers. So we're not out there over-promising.
What we're doing is making our inventory available. So when an advertiser comes in - whether it's a large group or an agency - they are able to come in and buy the audiences they want, within the context they want, at the time they want, for the price they want. We've built an ad tech stack that gives us a unified option. In other words, it's basically priced per second. And it's a sales business built on relationships instead of direct sales. We set up a lot of private marketplace deals that have floors. We're passing along identifiers - client's ID, IP address. We're passing along contextual signals, genre, ratings, where they're watching it. Whether it is CTV, mobile or web.
So that when Proctor and Gamble comes in and they want to buy women 18-to-34 who are watching holiday movies in the Southeast U.S., they're able to find those on Philo, because they've put in an order on the DSP - the demand side platform - and the platform is going to offer them our audiences, Sling TV audiences, Tubi TV audiences - premium TV across the spectrum that match the criteria they've selected. So they can look at not just frequency capping and how they're distributing their ad, but also they can reach a huge audience in a very targeted way.
It used to be that when you bought broadcast TV, the penetration was 100 percent of U.S. households. Cable started at 100 million households and now it's down to about 80. As an industry, we're not at 100 million households yet, but we're getting there. And advertisers don't want to have to say "Okay, Philo, we'll do a deal with you. Okay, Sling TV, we'll do a deal with you." They don't want to have to make 100 individual deals when they can use programmatic means to set up what they want and them reach all of those audiences at the price they want. We set pricing floors and if they bid underneath our floors, they won't be getting our inventory. But that also tells them "Well, I need to bid this much to get the audience that Philo has, the audience that I want, within the premium video environment."
We're not out there saying Philo is unique. We're out there saying "You are looking for unique audiences. An audience that you want to reach with your message. We're going to provide that audience, and if you don't want it, that's great. Someone else will want it." Not everyone wants left-handed cast fanciers. But some people do. And you have to give people what they want.
AMAZON MOVES TO MAKE TENNIS FANS HAPPY (AT LEAST IN FRANCE)
Tonight is the FFT quarterfinal match between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal and as you might imagine, it's a match every tennis fan in France will want to watch. Which is a problem, since the match is being streamed/aired exclusively on Amazon Prime Video. So Amazon decided to make the game free for everyone to watch (at least in France):
BO BURNAM
Bo Burnham released an hour of unused footage shot for Netflix's Inside on his YouTube channel last night and it has already been viewed more than 1.6 million times.
Which reminds me that I remain surprised none of the various streamers have experimented more with adding "bonus" content to their original productions. They generally post the various trailers and Disney+ (and to a lesser extent, HBO Max) will post features from the DVD releases. But this video just shows that outtakes and other video has value. And if you are trying to goose subscriber engagement, one way to do that would be to add content that is complimentary to the main production.
Especially since a lot of this "bonus" content has already been filmed or at least is in a form that it can be easily edited into a usable clip. Why not post Stranger Things outtakes or rehearsals from The Witcher or jokes from comedy specials that didn't make the final cut? Especially if you release them a week or two after the main content premieres, to help reverse that natural decline in interest that happens after everyone binges the episodes?
THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE OF 'THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT'
There's been a lot of buzz today after Kaley Cuoco made some comments about whether or not there would be a third season of The Flight Attendant:
“It’s going to take a lot of thought to make sure if we go back that it’s better than the last two, which is very hard to do,” she told People.com, noting there are no current plans for a third season of the HBO Max dramedy. “There’s definitely interest in doing a third season. I think for me, at this moment, the plane has landed.”
Cuoco said the best thing about the Season 2 finale, which aired Thursday, is that the series “could definitely be done or it’s definitely open to continuing."
I suspect part of this is driven by the fact that after all of the buzz surrounding season one of the show, season two didn't seem to connect with audiences in the same fashion. And while it's difficult to know for sure from the outside, I've had a couple of people who work at the streamer tell me the show "underperformed expectations," although it's not clear to me what that means precisely.
But Cuoco's comments are the type of things you say when you've been told that - barring some amazing creative pitch - your show isn't coming back for a third season.
ADVENTURES IN BAD UX
I wanted to record something airing on History and went searching for the network in the channel listings of my Hulu Live TV account. I couldn't find it, which was strange, because Hulu Live includes all of the other major A&E Networks channels.
Later, I realized that I couldn’t find the channel because the channel listings are alphabetical and for whatever reason, Hulu's guide has History listed between Telemundo and TLC because the system has the network alphabetized using "The" as the first word.
ODDS AND SODS
* The niece of a deceased priest is battling a Catholic college for ownership of a dress from the movie The Wizard Of Oz.
* Season 24 of Big Brother is premiering Wednesday, July 6th, 2022 on CBS.
* After a year of hyping a potential smart TV game streaming solution, Microsoft has confirmed that it is working on a streaming dongle codenamed ‘Keystone’.
* The black creole chef who paved the way for Food TV. Now that HBO Max's Julia is a hit, I'd like to see a streamer tackle this story.
* Danny Boyle talks about the new FX limited series Pistol.
* Finland is the seventh territory to get a localized version of SAS: Who Dares Win.
* Photos from the first stop of The Masked Singer national tour, which kicked off in St. Louis.
* Channel 4 0rders Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen series Outrageous Homes.
WHAT'S NEW FOR TUESDAY
Here's a quick rundown of all the new stuff premiering today on TV and streaming:
America's Got Talent Season Premiere (NBC)
Black Patriots: Buffalo Soldiers (History)
Bobby Brown: Every Little Step (A&E)
Catfish: The TV Show Season Premiere (MTV)
Chopped: Desperately Seeking Sous Chef Series Premiere (Food)
Dancing With Myself Series Premiere (NBC)
Fantasy Island Season Premiere (Fox)
Frontline: Police On Trial (PBS)
Gamestop: Rise Of The Players (Hulu)
Lego Masters Season Premiere (Fox)
Pistol Series Premiere (FX)
30 for 30: The Greatest Mixtape Ever (ESPN)
Tom Swift Series Premiere (The CW)
Click Here to see the list of all of the upcoming premiere dates for the next few months.
SEE YOU WEDNESDAY!
If you have any feedback, send it along to Rick@AllYourScreens.com and follow me on Twitter @aysrick.