NewTV. This is an interesting new OTT venture that was founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg, former chairman of Walt Disney and headed by Meg Whitman, former CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and also from Disney. The company has raised $1 billion in and has support from every major Hollywood studio including 21st Century Fox, Disney, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Viacom.
Rather than take on Netflix and other OTT content directly the company plans to develop short 10-minute shows aimed exclusively at cellphone users. They plan both free content supported by advertising and a subscription plan that would use the ‘advertising-light’ option used by Hulu.
AT&T already owns a successful OTT product with HBO Now that has over 5 million customers. John Stankey, the head of WarnerMedia says the plan is to create additional bundles of content centered around HBO that bring in other WarnerMedia content and selected external content. He admits that HBO alone does not represent enough content to be a full-scale OTT alternative for customers.
AT&T’s goal is to take advantage of HBO’s current reputation and to position their content in the market as premium and high quality as a way to differentiate themselves from other OTT providers.
Apple has been talking about getting into the content business for a decade, and they have finally pulled the trigger. The company invested $1 billion this year and now has 24 original series in production as the beginning of a new content platform. Among the new shows is a series about a morning TV show starring Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston.
The company hired Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg from Sony Pictures Television to operate the new business and has since hired other experienced television executives. They also are working on other new content and just signed a multiyear deal with Oprah Winfrey. The company has not announced any specific plans for airing and using the new content, but that will be coming soon since the first new series will probably be ready by March of 2019.
T-Mobile. As part of the proposed merger with Sprint, T-Mobile says they plan to launch a new ‘wireless first’ TV platform that will deliver 4K video using its cellular platform. On January T-Mobile purchased Layer3 which has been offering a 275 channel HD line-up in a few major markets.
The T-Mobile offering will be different than other OTT in that the company is shooting for what they call the quad play that bundles video, in-home broadband (delivered using cellular frequency), mobile broadband and voice. The company says that the content will only be made available to T-Mobile customers and they view it as a way to reduce churn and gain cellular market share.
The Layer 3 subsidiary will also continue to pursue partnerships to gain access to customers through fiber networks, such as the arrangement they currently have with the municipal fiber network in Longmont, Colorado.
Disney. Earlier this year the company announced the creation of a direct-to-consumer video service based upon the company’s huge library of popular content. Disney gained the needed technology by purchasing BAMTech, the company that supports Major League Baseball online. Disney also is bolstering its content portfolio through the purchase of Twenty-First Century Fox.
Disney plans to launch an ESPN-based sports bundle in early 2019. They have not announced specific plans on how and when to launch the rest of their content, but they canceled an agreement with Netflix for carrying Disney content.