The Dan Rayburn Podcast
Episode 67: Nielsen's Flawed Comparison of Pay TV to Streaming Services
This week we expose the flawed comparisons of bundled streaming services to pay TV, with Nielsen improperly comparing linear TV to YouTube, but excluding vMVPD services like Sling TV and Hulu + Live TV in their ratings. We also break down the new NFL Sunday Ticket bundle with Max, new student pricing, and multi-view combinations, and speculate on the future potential for platform customization and interactive features available on mobile and TV. Wrapping up our discussion, we discuss the potential of streaming services to reach profitability and the possible future where pay TV operators stop making profits from pay TV services.
Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
This week we expose the flawed comparisons of bundled streaming services to pay TV, with Nielsen improperly comparing linear TV to YouTube, but excluding vMVPD services like Sling TV and Hulu + Live TV in their ratings. We also break down the new NFL Sunday Ticket bundle with Max, new student pricing, and multi-view combinations, and speculate on the future potential for platform customization and interactive features available on mobile and TV. Wrapping up our discussion, we discuss the potential of streaming services to reach profitability and the possible future where pay TV operators stop making profits from pay TV services.
Podcast produced by Security Halt Media
Welcome to this week's edition of the Dan Rayburn podcast, the show that curates the streaming media industry news that matters most, unvarnished, unscripted and providing you with the factual data you need to know, without any of the hype, the pulse of the streaming media industry.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Dan Rayburn podcast. I'm Dan Rayburn. I'm here for another episode this week with Cole's Mark Donaghan. Mark, great to have you joining us. I know you got a little bit of cold, so I appreciate you hearing our words. I won't make you sing. Promise There'll be no singing today, even without a cold. You don't want me to sing? Yeah, probably not Me as well. We'll stick to the news for our listeners this week.
Speaker 2:We'll stick to speaking. We've got a couple things this week. We're going to not really go off too much of a schedule. We don't have any earnings this week, which is good. We're going to talk about some news tied to NFL, netflix, nielsen, quite, a couple pieces around NFL and YouTube TV. Also some things around comparison of streaming versus TV from a measurement monetization standpoint.
Speaker 1:But let's jump into Netflix.
Speaker 2:Quick little story here that Adweek put out reporting the Netflix they say now has 10 million subscribers to their AVOD plan. Netflix has not confirmed this, so we don't know if it's accurate. Frankly, not too surprising, they told us they meaning Netflix announced in May they had 5 million subs.
Speaker 2:To double that from 5 to 10 million in 90 days, I don't think that seems unrealistic at all, but that's the latest number that we're seeing reported. Another one, Mark, is that let's go into before we get to the NFL. I thought it was interesting how, because of the news that we've recently seen over the last two weeks that Disney is going to raise pricing on some ad free tiers and, in addition to ESPN plus Hulu plus live TV, we also know price maybe not increases.
Speaker 2:I should say when prices are going to be coming from max if you want to watch certain sports content that has already leaked out. So we are seeing services go up. Nfl plus they raised rates as well. So in the last week one of the things that the media has been picking up on is hey, streaming services are getting expensive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:Which, okay, welcome to our world. That's not new. What mainstream media is now bundling a bunch of services together, comparing it to pay TV and saying, wow, streaming TV one title. Here we're. Streaming TV costs now higher than cable. Not quite accurate. It really depends on how you define what cable it is. What TV is, what broadcast is, what linear is and we're going to get to that later needle some stats. However, comparing Svod content to what Hulu plus live TV costs, which has linear channels and sports not really accurate. In addition, I looked up I have about $35 through Verizon in taxes, fees and RSN fees.
Speaker 3:Wow 30 every month oh yeah, every month. And your bill is, I'm guessing what around $130?.
Speaker 2:What is it? Is it working? Triple play, are we talking just cable TV? Yeah, that's the problem. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So okay, so those fees are. Do they even tell you what is for cable? Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:They break it out really well.
Speaker 2:So I think I documented last by last count. I was paying about $94 a month for pay TV in a triple play bundle.
Speaker 2:All fees included taxes, regulatory fees, rsn fees no hardware fees, because I don't use their hardware, but about $95, let's call it $95. So, okay, 35 of that are fees. Yeah, these fees have always been on the pay TV side. Yeah, A lot of fees. So when you add in fees and when you add in, most people are using cable TV hardware I'm probably the exception of the rule using cable cards the fees for pay TV are still a lot more expensive than streaming. So this idea that streaming now is higher than cable TV in terms of costs, that's just not factually accurate and I think that's important to point out because as prices go up, I do think and we've talked about this mark over not just on the podcast, but over many years in the industry- the whole value proposition of live linear services Sling TV, hulu Plus, live TV all of these was cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap.
Speaker 1:That was always the value proposition, man. This stuff is so cheap.
Speaker 2:It's not cheap anymore. And it's when you're saying cheap you have to say okay, what are you comparing it to? For comparing it to pay TV? Sure, it's getting up there. So there is a tipping point at some point I don't know when. That is what the price point is, when, when live linear streaming services become let's call it on par with pay TV services as far as price, they really lose all value. At that point, I get less content, less choice, less quality, less reliability. How do I want it yeah.
Speaker 3:We were talking about outages before we hit record and you and I have heard it and seen it Right. Sometimes the cable operators walking around our industry, at the shows or the telcos or something like oh, that's the legacy, they still have black boxes in their network. It's like, ah, that's old stuff. Well, okay, yes, the cable goes out and it's always super annoying when it happens. Right, know the game and, yes, we all know, quote unquote Comcast, you know, has low customer satisfaction. However, generally speaking, these services are very reliable. They are very reliable, you know they work.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, it's coax.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and they work, and you know so. Yes, there's compromises and yes, they don't have all the sexy user interface, and you know so. I'm not. I'm not saying oh, everybody's going to, you know should, or run back necessarily to your cable, but the point is is delivering video at scale is hard and consumers are paying and when they start adding up the bill and they start thinking about it, you do have to scratch your head and go wait a second. You know, am I getting everything I thought? Is this the panacea?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've seen that obviously change over the years. But also, you know, it's interesting the numbers people are using to compare this, because here was one news outlet saying a popular set of streaming services adds up to a total cost of $73 per month, compared to $83 for equivalent cable TV package. But then the services they picked, they don't have live sports or if they do, they only have one thing, like Apple TV has what Friday night baseball.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure. So not quite accurate. That $83 for the cable package doesn't include fees, doesn't include RSN fees, doesn't include equipment Not quite accurate. I did think it was interesting. Some people in the comments in this article, mark said I'm not sure where people are paying $80 a month for cable. Not in the US, everyone I know, and the average price I see is $150. Exactly. So streaming is still cheaper. Yeah, you're right, it is for now. Yeah, it all depends how we bundle things up.
Speaker 2:But, interesting on the comparisons within one week the amount of media and this was more mainstream media that doesn't really cover our industry. Sure, all came out with this idea that like hey, with all these price increase and Max recently went up as well streaming is now more expensive than pay TV.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So keep that in perspective. You were talking about averages, mark, just real quick. Fubu TV had some outages. Youtube TV had some outages, you all said. Hulu Plus Live TV had an outage as well. Some of them were due to the original source content feed coming in from the broadcast location Bottom line, though obviously consumers don't care about that. They care about the platform they signed up for, that they're paying for these services, which is who they'll blame.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, to your point delivering video at scale reliably to keep the stream going all the time with a high enough quality. Fubu TVs was interesting because they did acknowledge that there were issues being recorded with some 4K feeds and they said unfortunately there is no ETA for a fix of the moment. Please switch to the regular stream. Ok, so sometimes the issue is in a total outage, but it's a QoE, it's a quality of experience issue. So that is the reality of live events on the Internet and everything that we're going to be watching. Coming up next month with NFL Sunday Ticket and we talked about in the last podcast the day the NFL launched NFL Plus at a new pricing and packaging, like NFL Network had an issue. So September 10th, when this kicks off, it's really going to be something for the industry to watch over over a couple of week period. And with that let's jump into some Sunday ticket news.
Speaker 2:So a couple of promotions out there. Comcast is giving new Xfinity Internet TV customers and existing Xfinity Internet customers that add TV $200 off NFL Sunday Ticket. I also saw a deal with TCL. So TCL is offering $200 off if you buy a certain type of TV. I think the cheapest TV they had was about $600. Yeah, $598. So basically, if you buy a TV that's $600 or more, you get $200 off. So there's some promotions out there, not too surprising.
Speaker 2:And then the one we heard of, finally, from Warner Bros Discovery. They had announced on their last earnings call that they were teaming up with Google to offer some sort of YouTube TV NFL Sunday Ticket I should say NFL Sunday Ticket bundle with Max. So that is now out. Users who have purchased NFL Sunday 3 take it through YouTube TV not through the premium channels, but through YouTube TV have gotten the promotion of four months of Max for free. Now it's a little confusing, because online people are saying if you're a current Max subscriber, individually you can't use it, but that's not what the language says.
Speaker 2:So when they announced this and they sent out the email, people were reporting on message boards that they were getting a server error when they tried to redeem it. Others were saying just keep trying. And then it worked. So the rollout wasn't exactly smooth, right, which is, again, not ideal. Also, they're calling this a bundle, but I don't really know that I would call this a bundle. They're offering something for free for four months, which, hey, I think that's great for customers who can take advantage of it, but I'm not really sure how that's a bundle, so that seems like an odd way to call it.
Speaker 3:It's a promotional tie-in, it's an attachment, right, hey? You buy this thing and we're going to give you this other thing for free, or something. You bolt something onto it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So a bundle would be something that would be persistently available, correct. And even if they chose to discount it, but like, hey, if I buy it now until I cancel, I get a half price, that'd be a bundle.
Speaker 2:That's a bundle. So again, I think, are we nitpicking here? Well, words have meanings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if you set, expectations with customers of a bundle, but then what you offer isn't what they think a bundle is. That's not great. It creates more confusion on the market, and we already have so much confusion and choice and fragmentation. Good news is, if you're a customer who can actually use it, get four months of max free. I think that's always good. Youtube announced this week in a long blog post that they are going to start offering a monthly payment plan option for an NFL Sunday ticket. It will roll out over the next week. It'll be four payments over four months. With that, they are also going to be introducing student plans, which is interesting. Direct TV used to have that. They had an NFL Sunday ticket. Now they didn't say what the student plan costs, so we don't know that yet. And it's also important to point out that the payment plan option will not be available in every state due to laws. Certain states have laws about how payment plans are done.
Speaker 2:So I thought it was really good to YouTube to call that out and say listen if you don't see it in your state.
Speaker 3:It's not because we don't want to offer it.
Speaker 2:There's some rules there which most consumers probably don't know about. They also said that NFL Sunday ticket subs will be able to choose from an extensive assortment of multi-view combinations every Sunday afternoon. However, I asked YouTube and they re-clarified you're not going to be able to pick every single game you want in every single window. You're going to be able to pick combinations that they've already pre-selected for you and then you'll have different combinations to pick from. So that's definitely going to work. Some users no doubt. I don't know what the combinations are going to look like, but if there's a combination for these four games which you only like, two of them, that's not ideal. So I would also just say I think we have to be just respectful also of YouTube TV in the sense that just because they rolled us out week one this way, that doesn't mean that's what it's going to look like week 10.
Speaker 2:This is new multi-view, certainly new with NFL Sunday ticket in general. So give them time. It's the first year. Maybe certain amount of games in you can pre-select it. You can select the games you want. It's not pre-selected. Maybe next year, you can, don't know. The message boards are rife with people kind of upset about that. Not surprising, but let's see what the options are. Also, the multi-view options change if you also have the red zone package. So they're sending online. All these different combinations will also include local NFL games side by side with NFL Sunday ticket games. So that's for YouTube TV members. So obviously just there's a lot that's going to be going on. They also say that at the start of the season, if you're watching NFL Sunday ticket through YouTube, you're going to be able to enjoy new interactivity like chats and polls on mobile and TV. So both platforms. They're also going to be integrating NFL shop integrations. No surprise there. That would be insane.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you have to be able to buy team gear easily.
Speaker 2:For sure, that would just be nuts.
Speaker 2:And then they're also going to be bringing to the ability to scrub within the video for key plays. So that's really, really smart. The fact that you can catch up on something you missed, or quick snippet before major of each major play. I think that's super, super important. But no, they then called out the key plays is only going to be available on TVs. But then they also said only on TVs this season. Okay, so it leads me to believe and it would make sense, that a lot of what they're doing is setting up the platform for this year so that next year it can be more customized, they can be more creative around. That it would make sense. So that's the latest.
Speaker 2:On NFL Sunday ticket, we are let's see, one, two, three, three and a half weeks away. Wow, no, four weeks. So it's incredible how quickly it's going to be here. Everybody's going to be watching it. Major media is going to be covering it. So I'll be online that entire day with my account just looking at everything the message boards, everything on social, whatever the hell Twitter's called these days. I'll be in well, just keeping an eye on everything. So, Mark, I'm probably going to somewhat live blog kind of like I do with the Super Bowl, but for this, and then I also have people around the country preset up. We're going to be sending me what they're seeing in different cities as well so I can have a better overall view of what's taking place. But it's going to be an interesting weekend for sure.
Speaker 2:So, Mark, let's jump into just real quick on here. This was an interesting story in the New York Times today and I thought it was interesting the impressions and the comments it's getting when I posted it. And the New York Times is saying that when it comes to subtitles, a lot of people have subtitles turned on they say about 50% of Americans, based on the Slim survey and they said the reason for that is because of all the issues that come from how your TV is mounted or not having speakers, or speakers on back of the TV. I thought that's kind of interesting If you think about that. They also talked about just obviously some lower end TV is not having the best speakers out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, the audio is just not good, it's just not there. So because broadcast TV has to adhere to regulations tied to loudness levels, streams are out there, so it's completely different on the streaming side.
Speaker 2:Interesting to see some people leaving comments too, just when I threw the post up saying being that there's no encoding, standardization or level for audio, even someone like myself who has a high end audio system Half the time using mono, so the voice track is sent to all the speakers so interesting. That wasn't something I noticed was a problem in the industry, but the more I Google it and the more I look at message boards around that it's pretty fascinating to think how many people are using captioning for that and tying to that Mark. Something I was watching at Netflix yesterday immediately threw captioning on Something that comes on a Netflix throws up captions by default. So I contacted Netflix. They had me go through some settings. Everything was good to go.
Speaker 2:They also had me watch a specific video that they point you to online. They say watch this video and please tell us what happens. And I wasn't getting captioning. What I thought was interesting. So bottom line was they don't know why it's defaulting to captioning every single time, even though I haven't turned off. But I also recently saw some stats talking about how many people use captioning. But what I wondered was well, how many of them are turning it on, versus how many times is it being forced?
Speaker 3:Is it being forced? Yeah, and they either just live with it or they're kind of like well, this is kind of useful, maybe. Yeah, but it's interesting. You know this audio.
Speaker 3:It's interesting the issue around audio quality, because I spent a little bit of time, pretty good period of time, working in and around the home theater industry in like early 2000s, late 90s, early 2000. And this is when it was just the rage. I mean, you'd walk in everyone's family room and the speakers would be bigger than the sofas, than the furniture, and so there was a real focus. And then, of course, with flat screens and as TVs got thinner and the screen size got larger, I think people kind of got sick of speakers everywhere and you start getting a little small satellites like the Bose systems, and then now it's like soundbars. And then eventually I go in so many homes, friends, family, whatever and it's the speakers and the TV, and they've got this 80-inch panel or something 85-inch hanging on the wall and there's no audio.
Speaker 3:Right, it's common, yeah, it's really really common, and it's a bigger room. And you think, wow, and for me I'm an audiophile so like I would never have that set up in my house, but I don't know how many people it's like. Well, you know, maybe it's not the best, but it's good enough. And then you get it all set up and it's like you just can't hear it. You know, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was interesting when I thought of the TVs in my house, just in terms of how I test, and I thought, ok, kitchen TV mounted really close to the wall half an inch away. Yeah, there's no speakers in the kitchen specifically tied to the TV. Fortunately, your rebound's well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the.
Speaker 2:LG TV is really nice, but other rooms I was like, oh, that's interesting, you got to turn the volume up really high, that's right. So it's an interesting problem and I don't see the industry talking about it. Yeah, so something to keep an eye on. I mean, obviously you have Sonos or you're doing something like that, but the Sonos arc is $900.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly, well, and you know when. I think I even wonder how much. That's the issue. I mean, now you can get an amazing panel I mean just really amazing, like OLEDs, for $1,000, right, and you can get big panels for a couple grand that just really are stunning. And yet if you put together an audio system, you can very quickly blow past $2,000 or $3,000. And I'm not talking about going in and picking the best of everything. It's high quality, but you can easily. So I wonder how much is just people scratch their head and go wait a second. It's like I see my TV, I don't know Well, so this is interesting.
Speaker 2:Mark, some companies are looking at this. So on April, amazon rolled out an accessibility feature called Dialog Boost Inside their app and basically you have to go into your options. You have to choose English Dialog Boost High Okay, but it's only available for a small number of movies and shows, and they're all obviously Amazon shows. So like. Jack.
Speaker 1:Ryan.
Speaker 2:So I thought that was interesting. Amazon has this setting that really no one's talking about if to go in and find. So I wonder down the line if some companies are working on that as far as giving users an option. But the audio thing super, super interesting. I hadn't really seen that or heard about that, so it's a good post in the New York Times. Yeah, mark, let's jump on to Nielsen. So I wrote your favorite topic. Yeah, I mean, nielsen is not my favorite company, only because just the lack of transparency and definitions they don't provide. So basically, what happened is Nielsen came out with their July hit numbers and they said streaming grabs a record 38.7% of total TV usage in July. Now the media in many cases use titles like linear TV made up less than half of all TV viewing, according to Nielsen. The problem here is what is defined as linear TV and who's defining, because if you are Sling TV offering a linear lineup, wouldn't both of us agree that's linear TV?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I would Ok, they don't include services including YouTube TV, hulu plus live TV and sling TV. They call out those are services we're not including in the numbers, hmm but they don't say why. Now the other thing they say is they have another category and they say quote streaming platforms listed as other streaming Includes any high bandwidth video streaming on television that is not individually broken out.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What is that? What I don't understand. What is? What is high bandwidth have to do with anything? So I've always asked Nielsen. I get no replies, no, nothing back ever. But what they're doing is Nielsen is lumping in the method of delivery, which is streaming, cable, satellite, with the business models, pay TV, avod as far and fast, but then ignoring some services like virtual MVPD's, but then throwing out terms like TV usage. Now, what is defined as TV usage? So the terms they use, marcus, tv usage, that's one. Now TV is a type of, it's a device, it's not a type of viewing. Now later they say broadcast viewing. Okay, how is broadcast viewing different from TV viewing? Yeah, and then they use the term cable viewing. So you watch broadcast channels from your cable operator on your TV. I don't. I don't get how they're mixing in the delivery mechanism, cable With the device. And then, finally, netflix will not disclose Publicly in their methodology anything. What devices are actually being measured on the streaming side?
Speaker 2:Hmm, and yet they're calling it linear without defining what linear is yeah so they're including fast channels in their usage Numbers, and fast channels, I think many of us would agree, is really linear. Yeah, but they're not including live linear.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's completely mind-boggling. So there's zero transparency in their methodology and their definitions and and when they. It's pretty funny when they actually post this every month. There's a video of their Product person engineering data. And if you watch that for three minutes, I will buy anyone dinner. Who's listening, who can explain to me what they're talking about? Because they go through the methodology and now you're even more confused. Then it doesn't make sense so, dan.
Speaker 3:So I'm on the page, you know, on the Nielsen page, and, by the way, they called us the gauge and and, and they published this monthly, so every month, and it's a video of, I don't know if it's the same, gentlemen, brian user. Yeah, but anyway, I've never even watched the video. But you go to the FAQ methodology and frequently asked questions. At the very bottom it says what about live streaming on Hulu and YouTube? Have you read this?
Speaker 2:yeah, I've streaming be a virtual MVP. Mvpds are excluded from the streaming cat.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but then but but here's the second part, and Just said this a few minutes ago, but but I don't think you pointed this out for the listeners. Their second sentence says Hulu, sbod and and YouTube main Within the streaming category, referred to the platforms usage within the inclusion of linear streaming. Now I, I read that sentence like four times and I think what they're saying is that Hulu SBOD, so just called the, you know the, the video on demand side of Hulu, and then you tube main, I, I guess that's just YouTube. Just YouTube, yeah, okay, is included in linear streaming. Yeah, like oh, why would you not include who live in YouTube TV? I mean, yeah, I'm right, so I'm with you.
Speaker 2:I, I'm just scratch and why would you include you at?
Speaker 3:all if I'm going and watching, correct correct 30 second.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah that makes like no, would we call that linear streaming? No and yet YouTube is what percent has the highest percent at 9.2. Yeah, Well so we know it has the most viewing Wilson.
Speaker 3:They were yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, but then you have Netflix at 8.5. Netflix doesn't have 30 second videos on exactly. So you know, the point of all this is it's it's not clear, yeah, and yet the sad thing, mark, is, even though there's no transparency in the methodology and definitions, the streaming industry In the media continue to use this every month to Just propel the notion, like you said earlier, that anything that isn't streaming related is a dead business.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, completely dead.
Speaker 3:I Was having a conversation with some folks just a couple days ago and you know, let's just say that they are, you know, very important in the More traditional broadcast pay TV side. You know they have done a lot of work in there and so the conversation was around the future and streaming and how, everything. You know where the trends are right, where the business is going, and there's one camp, you know, inside this group, that believes that. You know the quote legacy business is, is is clearly dying, it's not gonna come back, like you know, if we don't get on to OTT like it's game over. I'm being extreme, but you know that's, that's, that's a mindset, and I was kind of arguing and listening to, so you know, the debate going back and forth. I said, no, wait a second. You know, um, I come.
Speaker 3:Cast is not shutting down their cable service, all of these they are not going. Yes, the, the, the subscriber growth is, you know they're losing subscribers. Yes, we see those trends. Meanwhile, they continue to spin off billions of dollars, you know, in in in revenue. I know talking profitability, but I mean in revenue from these platforms. These platforms are not going away and you know there is a very real scenario where the consumer wakes up one day and either because of Discovery issues on OTT, which you and I have talked about, you know, sometimes it's just, it's just kind of too hard to find something.
Speaker 3:You know across all these services, you know the aggregation like and I'm not saying everybody's gonna run back to the cable bundle as we knew it, but there is a simplicity and there was a simplicity in what you know, in sitting down with one remote in your hands and Navigating some UI as simple and even our cake as it was, and being able to find something to watch. You know and knowing that you hit, you know you selected the channel. It would start playing almost immediately and you know, barring somebody, you know cutting the cable, you know when they're doing road construction or something. Basically, it always worked. You knew it was always gonna be there.
Speaker 2:True. I think the issue here is, you know, the theory of a proposed replacement is always more appealing than the reality of a solution. That's a super key point. It's always the case, and I've said that multiple times at the conference, but we're comparing two different types of services. It also offered two different types of content. All this original content, netflix and Paramount Does you have, it's not a cable TV.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's not gonna be available on Comcast. No, no now FX.
Speaker 2:You know others Paramount right, they have some great original content. No doubt absolutely.
Speaker 2:You're going to have to have it as a consumer if you truly want the full experience, which includes sports, we gotta throw that in there. You're gonna have to have pay TV and and some streaming services. Now for those where it's not as important or they don't care if they see it the moment it comes out, mm-hmm, no, you're not gonna need pay TV. But to your point mark, you already see people saying, well, at some point these companies are gonna get out of the pay TV business. Now Comcast, no. However, verizon Files has just over 3 million Files TV subscribers. They continue to decline. I don't know if it's a profitable business just on the PTV side, but it's certainly expensive to license all the content, maintain it. These services, like streaming, have always benefited from economics of scale. That's the business they're in, same with wireless carriers, everyone. So if you're Verizon and you're at 3 million now and you continue to decline, at what point are you saying well, now we're no longer even breaking even? That becomes a problem.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:So I think there could be some smaller pay TV operators that down the line say this may not make sense. But we also might see that from streaming, because Slink TV is now only at 2 million subs. So it's going to be fascinating to see what happens over the next couple of years. But that, going back to Nielsen from Minimark, the reason I point this out is in order for the industry to properly grow and measure what's taking place we need good data garbage and garbage out.
Speaker 2:So to me it's sad the industry doesn't push back on Nielsen more, question the data, demand transparency instead of pushing the agenda of pay TV is dead. So it's interesting as an industry how it seems people don't care about methodology anymore. They don't question data, and to me that's a step backwards for the industry. So I do like the fact that you've got iSpot Video, amp, comscore, invid 605,. There's a bunch of companies out there that are looking to challenge Nielsen and some of them to some degree are, because you've seen Peacock and other companies sign deals with them. Yeah, that's right, but the bottom line is Nielsen is still just the largest company by far. They have the most reach, and Nielsen did deal with Amazon for Thursday Night Football and then as much as Netflix originally complained about Nielsen they expanded their deal with them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, so well, the arbiter. The challenge is is it? Nielsen is the arbiter of value and I guess measurement is. It's difficult across all these ecosystems and Nielsen is the standard. So people need a.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's hard to displace the standard and something that's been there and also well.
Speaker 2:So it's going to be interesting to watch, but it just I would say, mark, the one thing that's going to the one part about leaving this industry at some point which I'm going to do the most one, that is is that I'll no longer have to look at data where nobody questions it. And what's crazy about that is I was thinking of this the other day like I could publish a blog post right now and throw a whole bunch of data in there and I'll bet you 99% of people would never say well, what's your source? Yeah, they would never ask.
Speaker 3:Where'd you get it?
Speaker 2:from yeah, and you can see that with something like Nielsen, because the amount of news outlets that came out and covered that news, even the ones in our industry, they didn't look at what the methodology was. Now, there were a couple that questioned it, no doubt, and I mentioned them by name but I honestly don't remember but there were a couple of people in the industry who were like, oh, again, nielsen, you know you said this a year ago, right, for the first time ever.
Speaker 2:And it's not very clear what you're measuring. So I'm not the only one here. There are others out there as a collective holds in industry. We're just we're not questioning it enough, I don't think so. So, Mark, with that we'll wrap up here. I'll give a quick little update here on the NDB Streaming Summit I announced this week. Netflix is doing a great presentation on encoding. Also working on presentations right now with YouTube. Be very interesting. They're going to come talk about how they do interactive live events across their platform Pretty interesting case study there. So LG is looking at presenting something with an advertiser, with the actual advertiser on stage, talking about the type of ad formats they like buying and why, and how they measure KPIs. Pretty interesting That'll be, good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't usually see the advertiser on stage. This is a brand public company everyone's heard of. Also, a great conversation with Disney, so hopefully that works out in terms of them doing a fireside chat with me around the ad business challenges and restraints as well that they're seeing, but also opportunities when it comes to advertising across D to C. So some great content being lined up here.
Speaker 2:Promotion has just started for the NDB Streaming Summit. You'll really see a lot come out in the industry right after Labor Day. But for anyone listening, october 24th, 25th, new York City, javits Center, if you want to discount code, reach up to me directly. Also super thankful, mark. We've got the first five sponsors in as well, so we're starting to get sponsors dropping in. We're going to have a great cocktail reception the first night. So BrecoVeggio, cdn77, quilt, visionler they're all in the sponsors already. So the show is really starting to come together and it's interesting because the demographics I'm seeing, mark and some of the interest here, are coming from companies that are local to the area, that don't make it to the Vegas show or didn't speak at the Vegas show.
Speaker 2:Disney is a great example. The Disney streaming services are now what it's rolled up into.
Speaker 1:That's a heck of a quarter of.
Speaker 2:New York YouTube TV sorry, not YouTube TV, youtube, the live event site Again, hickory here. So for those that have been to the NAB show in Vegas before, you're definitely going to have a bit of a different crowd in New York. We're going to cover some unique topics, definitely a little more, I would say, on the ad side, because you've got some of the agencies and brands here, and by here I mean New York and then also Mark. I'll have probably a combination of a total of five sessions just around fast, a couple of different things there, and then also sports. Obviously a ton going on. For anyone asking no, I will not have YouTube TV talking about.
Speaker 1:NFL.
Speaker 2:Sunday ticket.
Speaker 2:There is no chance of that happening, even if they pull it off perfectly, they're still not going to talk about that, but some really good content lined up. So, for anyone listening, if you still want to get involved, whether that's speaking, whether you want to moderate, whether you want to sponsor, whether you want to attend okay, you have a lot of time to buy a ticket, but I would say probably have to speak in. Spots are now gone, but if you're interested in being involved in some way, reach out to me right away. It's going to be a good show and then night before I'm also more going to throw a meet up in midtown not to Jeff, you know streaming.
Speaker 2:So bottom line is there's a lot of good stuff to come for the industry, and just keep following me on on LinkedIn or or the blog and you'll see more information, which is really good. So, mark, we're not going to have a podcast next week due to some travel, but we'll back the week after for listeners. So anyone listening everything we talked about today, it's already on my LinkedIn. It's already up all the stats numbers. You have any questions, reach out to Mark and I at any time. We appreciate you guys listening. I have not looked at what the latest stats are, mark, but I'm thinking we're probably at about 27 or 28,000.
Speaker 3:That's great, I was. I was going to ask if we crossed 30,000. 30,000.
Speaker 2:No, not, not as of yet, but we're getting there. We're getting there. I also just published the last podcast we did today recording this one. It was a little slow in the last 30 days, but we're doing really well, so we appreciate everyone listening. You have any questions? Reach out to us anytime. Have a good rest of your week and Mark and I will talk to you when we're back. Thanks very much.
Speaker 1:If you enjoyed the show, send it to a friend, have questions for Dan or Mark, connect with them on LinkedIn at any time, and be sure to check out Dan's blog at streamingmediablogcom.