The Dan Rayburn Podcast
The Dan Rayburn Podcast
Episode 130: Q1 Earnings; Peacock Gains 5M Subs; 851,000 Pay TV Subs Lost; NFL Streaming News; Max Password Sharing Crackdown
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This week, we detail Comcast's Q1 earnings, including Peacock's subscriber gains thanks to the Charter bundle, with revenue up 16% and an EBITDA loss of $215M, down from $639M YoY. We also cover all the pay TV losses from Comcast, Verizon, and Charter in the quarter, as well as Comcast's worst broadband losses ever in a quarter. We highlight MSG Networks' deal with its lender, JPMorgan, which allows the RSN to avoid bankruptcy, as well as the NFL Commissioner's statement that he expects the league to schedule a Christmas Day tripleheader in the future. Finally, we discuss Max's password-sharing crackdown, YouTube's announcement that 20 million videos are uploaded daily, and Twitter's being found guilty of patent infringement related to streaming technology involving Vine and Periscope.
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 2Welcome to the Dan Rayburn podcast . I'm Dan Rayburn , co-host Mark Donegan , recording last podcast of April , friday , april 25th . Not too bad Mark this week in terms of news .
Speaker 2We've got some earnings that we're going to cover some other things around NFL , some sports , but nothing groundbreaking here , which was nice A little bit of rest after the NAB show . We do have some interesting news from MSG in terms of potentially no longer going bankrupt MSG Networks . I should say , well , that's good . Yeah , so that's good . Bad for the debtors , we'll go through those numbers , yeah , that's right .
Speaker 2Man losing a lot of money there . On that one . Let's jump into Comcast earnings to start . So Comcast had their Q1 earnings . They added 5 million Peacock subscribers . They ended Q1 with 41 million . So good to see . That grew , because for two quarters in a row it was flat . They just no growth in terms of net new subs . Revenue was up 16% for Peacock to 1.2 billion , but they had an EBITDA loss of 215 million . So we all know Peacock's been losing money every single quarter . But year over year same time last year , peacock lost $639 million in the quarter .
Speaker 3So to get down to 215, . Okay , they're making that's good , that's an improvement , it's a big improvement they're making , making progress .
Speaker 2They're increasing their number of subs now in terms of five millions , a big jump for a service that two quarters in a row didn't have any . So important to call out here that that comcast did say the jump in subscribers was driven by the charter bundle . So that went live at the end of march . And for those that don't know , peacock premium included is included with TV Select plans , so no additional cost . But of course Peacock I should say NBCU or Comcast is getting paid wholesale on that by charter , so it's still a paying user to them .
Speaker 2Comcast lost 427,000 pay TV customers . They ended Q1 with just over 12 million domestic video customers and they lost 199,000 residential broadband customers . That was its worst ever in one quarter . So that was pretty surprising to Wall Street . They did not like that number at all . So Comcast it was interesting talked in detail about what they need to do turn around the broadband business , and what they said was Mark , it was pretty interesting . They said well , at times we make it very hard to do business with us Interesting , so we need to make it more frictionless billing , customer service , signing up for products and services , bundling , and I think they're right there . That's something we always want as consumers . And second , they were saying that they have to do a better job of explaining to customers the value of their network and their broadband service . I think that'll be much harder because these days , if you're comparing broadband services at , say , half a gig to me , from what I've seen , they're pretty much apples to apples .
Speaker 3Yes , yeah .
Speaker 2I don't really see it in Prince .
Speaker 3Yeah , I've thought about that too , you know . And especially , the reality is even . I think the most basic plan is like 50 megabits , right to the home , I mean , and some are even it might be hundred by now . Yeah , it might be a hundred . And I mean , let's face it , you know , that is enough for like 99% of households . Right , it really is . I pay always for like a . Well , actually , I had a two gig plan for a while and I thought this is stupid . It's like only 30 more dollars a month , but I'm not even getting close .
Speaker 2So I downgraded to a one gig and even then it's like you know , yeah , a lot of it is unnecessary , to your point , for the average , average consumer , for the average person , yeah , so we'll see what Comcast is going to do there in terms of the next quarter . They're talking about rolling out some new bundles for broadband . I don't know what that means exactly . So what do we all want ? Lower pricing , naturally , not saying that's what's going to come , but interesting that they really highlighted that . Also , they did not give out an estimate for when Peacock would reach profitability . I thought that was very interesting . What they said was hey , we're going in the right direction . Yes , you are , but they did not say when it was going to reach profitability . They didn't even say we expect this year . They gave no guidance of any kind . So I thought that was telling .
Speaker 2They didn't give out any further details around its previously announced plan to spin off most of its cable networks , but not all , which likely . Previously they said likely would happen this year , but no additional update . Said likely would happen this year , but no additional update . They also said that they believe that their deal with the NBA that starts for the 25-26 season will help drive new subscribers to Peacock . So they definitely are counting on that to grow the business over time . But you know , the key takeaway here is revenue is up , which is great . Loss was down to 215 million for the quarter on an EBITDA basis and they added 5 million subscribers . So across the board for Peacock it was definitely a good quarter . Now can they continue that ? Consistency is the key . That's what Wall Street's looking at .
Speaker 3Yeah , that's right .
Speaker 2Now if we jump into WBD , they've introduced an extra member add-on feature for max subscribers . This is in the us only for now , so for those that subscribe directly to max this isn't through bundle you can add another user for eight dollars a month . So this is let's call it what it is . This is password sharing crackdown . Yeah , I saw some didn't report that . They just talked about a new feature . It's password sharing crackdown . It's smart . We've seen the success netflix has had , so we all knew this was coming . I'm surprised that warner bros discovery didn't roll this out sooner . The eight dollars a month price is the price , no matter , it's the same price , no matter which tier a user is subscribed to . So that's something else to keep in mind . Extra members will have their own login credentials , so that's nice . You are limited to streaming from one device , which I don't think anyone should be surprised about . I saw a few people commenting on reddit . They were kind of surprised . Well , it's eight dollars a month . It's concurrent for one person .
Speaker 2That's the whole point of password sharing cracked down exactly , yeah the key point here is anybody who wants to take advantage of this , though , mark , can't be signed up in a bundle , so you have to get out of your bundle and you have to sign up directly with wbd . So what percentage of people are sharing , we don't know , or , as Netflix used to say , households . They didn't talk accounts . We don't have any of those details from WBD at this time , but I think going forward we'll have some indication from them in earnings calls of what they're seeing regarding new subscribers . I would expect that and , mark , I did see one headline that said quote popular streaming service adds new $100 member fee just weeks after axing fan favorite future Axing I love the word axing Axing they didn't add a $100 fee .
Speaker 3Member fee I'm a Max subscriber it's not $100 more .
Speaker 2Member max subscriber it's not a hundred dollars more . So that some of the headlines were just hysterical why ? Based on the news and ? And definitely clickbait . And some of these were also from the sites that are at the same time running 20 ads on their page . And it's for sneakers , yeah , or something wild . Let's go into just real quick some Disney . So there was talk this week that the Disney-Fubo deal is now being formally reviewed by the DOJ . Why is that news ? We already knew it was going to be reviewed . Yeah , exactly so multiple reports . According to sources , it's being reviewed . Okay , that's what the DOJ does . So that's not news . Uh , the DOJ is looking at it . Great , maybe that'll push the process along further .
Speaker 3So that's a good thing . It's a good thing .
Speaker 2Uh , today , in an SEC filing , msg networks announced a deal that I talked about earlier with its primary lender , jp Morgan . It's going to allow the RSN to avoid bankruptcy . Now , potentially , this also gives them the ability to merge with the YES Network . So , along with the cash this is how it's going to work Along with cash contribution by Sphere Entertainment and MSG Networks , the old debt of $804 million was reduced to $210 million , so the borrowers are forgiving $514 million of debt , which is incredible . Now , these deals are very complex in terms of legalities and how it all works way above my head . You got to be a finance lawyer on this . So I've seen some say well , that's crazy . Jp Morgan to forgive half a billion dollars , yes , but if MSG networks had gone into bankruptcy , they potentially could have gotten zero .
Speaker 3Yeah .
Speaker 2So somehow it's in their favor . Let's just put it that way . Sphere Entertainment is going to pay $15 million to the borrowers . Msg Networks is going to contribute $65 million Interesting . As part of this deal , msg Networks put the Knicks media rights fees by 28% this season and by another 18% for the Rangers . So in return , msg Networks is going to issue to MSG Sports what they're calling penny warrants that are exercisable for almost 20% of equity . So that gets more complicated . So I think the good news here is the fact that it sounds like no , I shouldn't call it a fact . It sounds like it's going to keep MSG Networks from avoiding bankruptcy and potentially a merger with yes Networks . I don't know if the merger with yes Networks actually helps or hurts them . I have not looked at any sort of deal structure or terms . I don't think those have been released as of yet , but sometimes combining two services into one doesn't always make them better . Yeah , so we'll see what happens there , but that's the latest today in msg networks . Quick little hit here . Mark for nfl uh ro .
Speaker 2Roger Goodell talked today just very briefly on a radio show about the triple header this season because Christmas falls on a Thursday . But from what he is saying . He says this sounds like this will be the norm now for the NFL going forward . He said , quote I think we will clearly have three games every year on Christmas . So interesting little point there that he's calling out In some more NFL news . So there's another NFL media rights deal in the market .
Speaker 2Multiple news outlets are saying the bidding is very quote strong . I don't know what that means , but it could be for one of two games . It's likely centered on the week one , brazil game , which is going to be played on Friday , september 5th , and the teams are going to dictate who bids what and how high , because naturally they want great teams . So we know that one of the teams is the chargers , but it looks like the other team is going to be the chiefs . So it's being reported that if it is the chiefs , then those that are bidding are willing to bid more because since it's the chiefs , they think they'll have a higher viewership , hence also sell more ad dollars . So interesting what's going to happen here ? The NFL is probably going to release its schedule somewhere in the May 13th to 15th time range . That's what the NFL recently talked about . Now you've got YouTube and WBD upfronts on May 14th and Amazon's is on May 12th , so interesting timing here in terms of the up fronts , and then NFL reusing its schedule .
Speaker 2We're going to . We're going to hear that week for sure who has it and what the teams are . It's being reported that YouTube for YouTube , tv , warner Bros , discovery and Amazon have shown interest . Some are suggesting YouTube is the favorite Don't , and Amazon have shown interest . Some are suggesting YouTube is the favorite . Don't . Know if that's the case .
Speaker 2Wbd hasn't had NFL rights since TNT carried a partial season package from the 1990 to 97 season , but this would be very interesting for YouTube . So we all know YouTube has Sunday NFL ticket , but they don't have an exclusive game , and we've seen exclusive games on or have we seen them Peacock , netflix , prime Video I'm probably missing somebody there , but we haven't seen an exclusive game on YouTube . So that's an interesting one to watch , because YouTube TV is obviously retransmitting CBS and Fox feeds for their Sunday games . If YouTube gets this or WBD gets this , they would also need to hire talent and production staff from another rights holder or they'd have to build it themselves . So what does that do in terms of how they're bidding ? So a lot of complex moving pieces here .
Speaker 2And then , finally , the Brazil game that was streamed exclusively on Peacock last year . For comparison , it had 14.7 million viewers and that was Peacock's second best streaming audience behind the wildcard matchup that they did . Naturally , that's a good number for streaming for viewers , so let's see who bids what on this , but this is coming up very soon . This week , mark YouTube celebrated its 20th anniversary of the first video uploaded to its platform , and the company said in the next few weeks that YouTube members are going to be able to experiment with building their own multi-view with select non-sports content . This is great news for everybody who wants more multi-view .
Speaker 3That's right .
Speaker 2The downside here is we didn't get much details from YouTube on what exactly that means , because they said they're going to start with a small group of popular channels and expand it in the coming months okay , I don't know what the definition of small yeah , or expanding , or coming months means , but it's coming , so that is good because it's more functionality for users . Youtube also said that this is insane 20 million videos are uploaded daily since last month . That's the new number 20 million a day . Yeah , yeah , I didn't realize it was that high .
Speaker 3Yeah Well , so I am looking here and it's been reported that YouTube hosts looking here and it's been reported that youtube hosts , um , which I guess it means that they're available . The definition of host is not clear , um , so I don't know if they're actually storing 5.1 billion videos , but it says youtube hosts 5.1 billion videos and it says host .
Speaker 2That means available for viewing .
Speaker 3That , yeah , and that's the way that this particular article is written that I'm looking at , but absolutely insane the scale .
Speaker 2Yes , yes , If people knew what the concurrent streaming is on YouTube at any given time , I think they'd be very surprised . I won't give out the exact number , but it's in the hundreds of millions .
Speaker 3Yeah , yeah , um , well , okay . So NBC news wrote an article on the uh , you know it's called YouTube at 20 platforms says more than 20 billion videos have been uploaded since 2005 . So , yeah , I guess that would make sense . About 25% of all videos uploaded are still available on the platform . Wow , oh , that's a good way to break it out . Okay , yeah , that's yeah .
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 3And this and this is date and this comes right from Google . You know they disclosed they did a blog post yeah , exactly , yeah , yeah , and this article was just written , you know , based on the blog posts .
Speaker 2Yeah , youtube does some good blog posts amazing . Naturally , what we would like to see is more regarding statistics for youtube tv and subscriber accounts and paid subscribers , and we don't get that very often and there there wasn't anything new as far as alphabet earnings . We didn't get anything from that , unfortunately , but every once in a while , youtube has some good data in their blog posts and that's where this comes from , so you can check that out on the YouTube blog . Some NBA news real quick here the opening weekend of the 2025 NBA postseason . It drew 4.4 million viewers across eight games on ESPN and TNT , which was the most watched opening weekend in 25 years .
Speaker 2That was the part that really surprised me . It's also worth noting that the NBA's All-Star Sunday sorry , the NBA's Sunday slate Pell and Easter , so you have to think about what the impact might've been there In RSN news , the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals this is Major League Baseball they're going to stream their games on the DTC platform that's called Mason Plus . That's Mid-Atlantic Sports Network , kind of like NESN , new England Sports Network . It costs $20 a month , $90 for the remainder of the season . So what's interesting here is the only MLB team that doesn't have a direct-to-consumer streaming service is Houston Astros , and contractually they could actually create one and go direct-to-consumer , but they feel that it will upset their carriage . Agreements with DirecTV and Comcast yeah , so they don't do it .
Speaker 2Agreements with DirecTV and Comcast yeah , so they don't do it . The Orioles and Washington National Service , of course . Like every other one we've seen , it's only available for in-market streaming .
Speaker 3Yeah , that's the reality .
Speaker 2Unfortunately , with these let's go into cord cutting here Mark Charter so we had Charter and Verizon . Charter lost 167,000 residential pay TV subscribers , so they ended the Q1 with 12.7 million . This is residential . They lost 60,000 internet customers , so they ended the quarter with 30 million . Revenue for the quarter was flat , pretty much . It was only up 0.4% .
Speaker 2The interesting thing here is what we're seeing with bundling , super aggregators , call it whatever you want want these terms we have in the market .
Speaker 2But we've really gotten to a point now of where and charter talked about this where they feel they can grow their video business because select video customers with spectrum tv they now get about $70 per month of free streaming content and no additional cost and soon they say it'll be closer to $80 . So if you are a Spectrum TV Select video customer , you are getting at no additional cost a subscription to Max Disney Plus , espn Plus , subscription to max disney plus , espn plus , paramount plus , peacock , amc plus , vix , tennis channel plus , discovery plus and bet plus . Wow , can you imagine wow ? If we said three years ago a pay tv provider was going to give you 70 worth of free streaming services , yeah , you'd think we were crazy . And that's how much the carriage deals have changed in the market just in the last two to three years and we have to watch that going forward . So that is great if you're a Spectrum TV Select video customer . Verizon they lost 257,000 consumer Fios video pay TV subscribers , down 8.9% year over year . It also lost 7,000 business video connections as well .
Speaker 3I know you've asked this question before , but at what point does Verizon just shut Fios down Soon , soon ? Well , not Fios , but TV TV , sorry , yeah , fios TV , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , down soon , soon . Well , not files , but tv tv , sorry , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , the , the video service , the video platform , like I hate to say , but what's the point you ?
Speaker 2know , you wonder . I'm thinking they were above three million a couple quarters ago , a little over a year ago .
Speaker 3Now they're 2.62 million 2.6 , yeah .
Speaker 2And they have 52,000 business video connections . That's not a lot . I'm thinking , mark , and this is just a guess , you get under 2 million , yeah , and you have to stop and think does this really make sense ? Now , verizon already packages in YouTube TV with select bundles , so they already have their relationship in place . All they have to do is just cut the video business , stop licensing all that content , save a ton of money and just resell YouTube TV . It's going to happen , I'll bet . I'll bet you a dinner on that Now . I won't bet you when , because these companies do dumb things all the time . When you're a MVPD , they make some bad decisions at times , as we've seen , but I cannot imagine that this continues at the rate of cord cutting that they're having Quarter of a million in another quarter . It's just , it's too many .
Speaker 2Some interesting news , mark . I posted on LinkedIn just a few hours ago . Yeah , some interesting news , mark . I posted on LinkedIn just a few hours ago . Twitter has been found guilty of patent infringement relating to some streaming technology involving the apps Vine and Periscope . What the deal here ? This is a little complicated story . A Dallas federal judge awarded a company called VidStream more than $105 million . Vidstream , who's a patent holder was demanding $0.07 per user per month in damages and wanted $632 million .
Speaker 3Hey , if you don't ask , Dan , you're not going to get it , Sure why not ?
Speaker 2You have to come up with a value somehow and damages but a little ridiculous , yeah , so $105 million . Now the patents come from Vidstream's acquisition of the patents from a company called U2 . They file U2 , y-o-u-t-o-o . They filed for bankruptcy protection after filing a lawsuit against Twitter and there were three patents in question . Only one patent did the jury determine that Twitter infringed on ? The second patent they said they didn't infringe on , and the third patent .
Speaker 2Back in 2017 , when Twitter challenged all the patents , one of them was considered unpatentable . So it started with three patents . They were sued over two . They were found guilty of infringing on one , and the patent references a server streaming system that captures video content in accordance with predetermined constraints , including the video's frame rate . So interesting some of the technology here .
Speaker 2I did a quick scan of the patent . I didn't look at prior art or whatnot . We've not seen anything publicly put out yet from Twitter X on . Are they appealing this ? Just don't really have any idea yet . Trial documents , as I started reading through the mark again high level . It was interesting .
Speaker 2Youtube gave Twitter access to its IP for Twitter to test and during the two years that they were talking about business negotiations , vidstream argued that Twitter copied its patented technology and then used it in Vine and Periscope . Counsel for Twitter countered that you two never discussed patents with the social media company , which is kind of funny because if you look at the documentation you can see clearly that it was shared , and I'm assuming that's what the jury saw as well . Don't know Now . Vidstream sought an injunction banning X from distributing user-generated videos during the litigation , basically shutting down video on X . The judge rejected this in July of last year and then the federal circuit affirmed the judge's ruling in November . But interesting that they're asking we're asking for so much money and then trying to get an injunction to just shut X down . Video down on X .
Speaker 3Yeah .
Speaker 2It's like wow , but that's how these cases work . I've worked on a lot of patent cases . I did not work on this one and it's always interesting to see what is asked . And to your point , mark , they shoot for the moon and they know many times juries are just going to slash . If you win , they're going to slash that number . Yeah , so they wanted 632 and as of now they want 105 . Yeah , let's see how X responds to that 105 . Yeah , let's see . Let's see how how X responds to that .
Speaker 3Well , if anybody's interested , um , just you know , uh , type the word patent and then the patent number , uh , into Google . It'll come up on Google patents , although there's a lot of . You know that the U S patent office and all of the images that are associated with the filing are there and it's basically UI mock-ups . That shows what they're claiming to patent here . And it's actually interesting because , like , for example , one of the things they're calling out is when you upload a video or start a stream , you can say the network you you're on , and now this shows how old this is . The options are lan , dsl , dial up , dial up . They had dial up on there in in this drawing . Then you could say the duration uh , blog , 15 second or 30 second . Then you could say , oh , what else was it ? Well , the suit's almost 10 years old , sd , hd , okay , so that makes it boy , hd .
Speaker 3Back then they were thinking ahead , I mean , they were dial-up supporting dial-up . Anyway , it's sort of fascinating because I'm and I haven't read the filing , but just looking at the screenshots , the illustrations , it's sort of fascinating because I'm and I haven't read the filing , but just looking at the at the screenshots , the illustrations , it's like wait a second , this is just sort of an intelligent way back then to make it very easy to configure settings that people could actually understand . You know like , oh , let's see , I've got a you know DSL line , okay , you know , and that gives some idea of the speed , network speed . And then there is some resolution . I didn't see frame rate , but somewhere .
Speaker 2Well , back then too , Mark , in those days , I remember doing webcasts in the late 90s .
Speaker 3Yeah , yeah .
Speaker 2When you set up the links on MTV or wherever it was for net show real video audio video net zing . The buttons we would pick weren't in most cases the bit rate . It was dial up ISDN . Yeah , you were calling out the type of connection you had at home . Yeah , because that's what users understood . Oh , I have an ISDN , let me click on that . Yeah , and these , these patents go back . I forget the exact day they were granted 2011 is , let's see , is a date because the suit's almost 10 years old and the patents are before .
Speaker 2Yeah , that sounds about right yeah , yeah , yeah , 2011 .
Speaker 3I I think the patent was filed in 2011 .
Speaker 2Okay , yeah , there's a lot of patent infringement cases going on right now .
Speaker 2We talked about the Nokia and Amazon settlement last week , but there are a lot out there , yeah , and there's more coming , there's more coming , there's more coming . Yeah , because in the last I would say , mark week , I know of at least 10 companies , vendors in the space , who are all under $10 million in revenue , who are all shopping the company right now Term sheet's out in the market . They're not growing , they're spending $10 million a year to get $5 million in revenue . Yeah , and some of these are names that everybody knows who they pretend to be a lot bigger company than they are .
Speaker 2Sure , sure knows who . They pretend to be a lot bigger company than they are sure . Sure , and because they're not getting the multiplication that they want on revenue , some of them are looking at shopping the patents . Yeah , some of them have 20 , 25 , 30 patents , not just in the us but but globally combined , and their patents might be worth more than the company yeah , yeah so there's some of those conversations taking place right now , like when you like when you have a car , the parts are worth .
Speaker 3You know , sometimes parts are worth more than the car itself .
Speaker 2What kind of car do you have ?
Speaker 3Oh , I don't have a car like that , but you know there are classic cars where you know , I mean you know you just sell certain parts and collectively you probably could make more money .
Speaker 2It makes up the sum , at least the value of the car . It's an interesting way to do it . Two more things here . Mark one cnet . I guess I shouldn't be surprised it's cnet , but cnet's title today for an article I saw was , quote I cut my streaming bill in half and still watched everything I wanted , so . So of course it sounds catchy . Wow , I'd love to do that too as a consumer . Yeah . And then the two sentences that jumped out at me were you can cancel Netflix , hulu , disney plus or other services and then resubscribe later .
Speaker 2Okay , so that's just but the title is I cut it in half and I can still watch everything I want . And then the next sentence was you won't have immediate access to everything , to every show you want to watch , and you'll have to wait until the next full season airs . So how did you cut it in half ?
Speaker 2and still watch everything you wanted oh god , these articles , these bait click articles . Articles are just nonstop and they're getting worse . I see them more and more often when it comes to anything involving cutting costs . Yeah , and that's clearly because consumers are Googling how do I cut costs on streaming ? But it's not an apples to apples comparison . And then , finally , mark the amount of articles lately I'd say in the last week or two that are pushing out antenna data and all this , this other data that just says something like 40% of subscribers are now in an AVOD plan . Okay , and what's the impact ? Well , we don't say . We know from who is it Netflix and a couple of the others they're giving out . Here's the percentage of new subscribers that are subscribing to the AVOD plan , based on areas where it's offered . We already know it's high . What none of these numbers are talking about is okay , but what's the cost of a CPM rate ? Has the rate gone up or down ?
Speaker 3well , there's no business impact yeah , well , there's something going back to your charter uh announcement and this 70 dollars of streaming services , soon to be 80 , it is amazing , right ? Max , disney plus espn plus paramount peacock , on and on and on . Those are all . Those are all the ad-supported versions . Those aren't the full 4K , multiple family members allowed , multiple concurrent devices . It's the ad-supported , which is fine and obviously for pretty much all of Spectrum's viewers , tv Select viewers , viewers they're totally happy with that , you know , but that is important , um , and yet those are ad supported , uh , and those are wholesale subscriptions , right , and those are wholesale deals .
Speaker 2So remember when disney plus started , disney started cutting deals with carriers for disney plus , and then we saw their earnings . And what happened to the ARPU ?
Speaker 3It went down , it went down , it went down , even though their subscribers went up and we called that out , I remember , and we were , I think at the time we were theorizing because they didn't really split out the ad supported . But we're like well , this is pretty obvious , these are all ad supported and they're wholesale deals . Wholesale deals Now , ads supported and they're wholesale deals .
Speaker 2Wholesale deals . Disney did a couple quarters . I remember how long later . Start to then talk about ARPU's down . Because of wholesale deals , we get paid less .
Speaker 2My point here is I see all this data thrown at every single day and I see people regurgitating the stuff from antenna Nielsen . Pick whoever you want , total viewing time of whatever X percentage of it has ads in it . Yeah , and you're not giving me , as a reader , any takeaway . What I want to know is okay , now what's the impact to the industry , to the business ? What's the impact to CPM rates , fill rates ? Nobody is covering any of that . So all this data is being shared online every single day in LinkedIn , with no relevance around it , which is just disappointing , because how many times do I have to see the same chart go up , redesigned in a different way , that says something like 85% of all of Amazon Prime subscribers have ads . Well , we know that because they inserted ads into Prime and every single subscriber is getting them and the only way you could opt out was to pay more money . Do we really think most people are going to pay more money to get rid of ads ? No , and why ? Well , because we already have the data from Netflix and others . So I don't see that as a news story . What I would like to know is how is that impacting fill rates ? Are CPM rates going up ? Because , remember , this is also about targeting personalization . This isn't economics to scale business .
Speaker 2So the data we're seeing shared lately and I don't know why it's in the last week or two maybe Antenna put something out I didn't look because I don't really watch their stuff just the amount of nonsense in terms of data . That may be accurate , but unless you're correlating what the impact is to a customer , to a vendor , to a supplier , a distributor , to a content owner , to a broadcaster , to a sports league , the data by itself doesn't mean a lot . Yeah , so , mark , that's what we got this week . We've got a couple more weeks coming up with podcasts . So that's good , we're on a regular schedule before I have to bounce out of town . As far as what we've got next week , we've got a busy next week with some more earnings . So next week , just the next two weeks . We've got AMC Networks , we've got Paramount , we've got WBD , fastly , vimeo , fox , kaltura , we've got a couple vendors in there and a few I'm probably missing . So another two weeks of earnings .
Speaker 2I'm expecting what I don't have in here actually is Disney . I've got to look them up , but they've got to be coming up as well . So we should have some good information I think fairly soon coming out from Disney if not this quarter , next quarter regarding its flagship product . There was a report that pricing has been set and the name of the service has been set . Surprisingly , neither is leaked out , which I thought by now , if they've said it somebody internally , somebody , somebody , yeah . So I expect it'll leak out from know at least a couple months before it actually comes out , which still sounds like the fall . But we should have some good information from disney , I believe this quarter and next quarter . So we'll obviously cover that in the podcast . That's what we got .
Speaker 2You have any questions ? Reach out to mark and I still any follow-up questions for me to any b show ? Reach out . I'm still getting some from people wanting connections . Totally good , reach out . Still happy to make that . If you have any questions , reach out to us . Otherwise , be safe , be well and we'll talk to you next week . Thanks very much .
Speaker 1If 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 .