As streaming services grow, is TV-everywhere still relevant?

When companies launched TV-everywhere products a few years ago, they did so as part of an effort to compete with then-new streaming services — but now that many of those same companies have their own subscription OTT products, TV everywhere seems to be stuck in something of a holding pattern. Despite companies continuing to push TV-everywhere products, people aren’t using them any more than when they were first introduced. And while awareness of individual platforms remains steady, the general idea of TV everywhere is falling off the radar. The most recent numbers on TV-everywhere adoption, coming from a 2015 survey commissioned by the Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM), suggested 29 per cent of Canadians were aware of the TV-everywhere concept — watching live or on-demand shows from mobile devices or computer screens. The figure was an 18-point drop from the 47-per-cent awareness reported in 2014, the first year that TV everywhere was studied. (Awareness was much higher — 73 per cent — when respondents were prompted about specific products from individual providers.) However, the percentage of respondents who said they had actually used a TV everywhere product barely wiggled from 25 per cent in 2014 to 24 per cent in 2015. Gordon Hendren, whose company Charlton Strategic Research Inc. conducted the study, said the usage number was lower than he’d hoped, which was surprising. “In an era where use is growing, we would hope for and expect that TV-everywhere usage would be growing. And it was flat,” said Hendren, who will be conducting a third study for CTAM this summer. “We know that use of non-pay-TV methods of consuming content, and video content primarily, are increasing. It’s growing. So you would suggest that one of the good ways that the Canadian industry can be keeping pace with this shift in consumption behaviour is to grow its TV-everywhere products,” Hendren said. “I just think that it’s an opportunity. It's certainly one thing that I think the industry needs to be doing.” When companies began rolling out TV-everywhere products, they were seen as tools to compete with over-the-top competition from the likes of Netflix Inc. But the focus has shifted since BCE Inc., Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc. rolled out their own OTT services, CraveTV and Shomi, in 2014. “It’s really hard to be fighting the idea of the consumer having access and control to a wide catalogue of content when you weren’t doing that yourself,” independent broadcast analyst Kelly Lynne Ashton said in a phone interview. “So I think for particularly, Rogers, Shaw and Bell, that concept — the TV-everywhere concept — doesn’t work because they’ve got Shomi and Crave to push and that’s a way of getting the consumer to have the content on different platforms and to have control and choice.” According to a February Media Technology Monitor report, the proportion of English-speaking Canadians with online-only TV viewing habits grew to 12 per cent in 2015, up from eight per cent during the previous year. And while the CTAM study found millennials between the ages of 18 and 34 are more likely to have used TV everywhere products (27 per cent, compared to the 24 per cent overall usage), research has also suggested they’re the group least likely to have a pay-TV subscription. Numbers compiled by The Wire Report last month found the biggest telecom companies lost five times more TV subscribers in 2015 than in the previous year. TV everywhere doesn’t create new pay-TV subscribers, said Hendren, but it “absolutely links to loyalty” of existing subscribers. “It’s a clear benefit to being a subscriber to pay TV,” he said. “It’s a platform our customers see value in especially with the change in how people consume content. People want flexibility and the ease of being able to access content from anywhere at no additional cost and Anyplace TV allows them to do that,” Rogers spokesperson Andrew Garas said in an email. There’s a “direct correlation” between the use of Bell’s FibeTV app and the reduction of churn, Sean Omstead, Bell’s vice president of residential products, said in a phone interview. “It just makes people feel that there’s more value in their subscription because they’re not tied to watching it in one room of the house.” The initial iterations of TV everywhere weren’t what they could have been, said Omstead, who called the pre-Fibe TV app options “a compromise” because “you would have your TV subscription that you would be able to access through your set-top-box but you couldn’t access the same content on a tablet, which seemed kind of broken to us.” When the industry began pushing TV everywhere, companies started picking up Go apps for popular channels, such as TMN Go, CTV Go, Discovery Go, which all offered users the ability to watch popular content from specific channels on demand through their mobile devices or computers, alongside their own provider-specific platforms. As The Wire Report reported in 2014, providers acknowledged that the multitude of entry points into TV-everywhere products was confusing. Services have since evolved into more-consolidated platforms, such as Shaw’s FreeRange TV, Rogers’ Anyplace TV apps and Bell’s Fibe TV app, and Hendren said there is still an opportunity for the industry to increase the use of TV-everywhere products. “I think it’s a matter of industry commitment,” Hendren said. Rogers makes its customers aware of Anyplace TV as it does with any features that come alongside a TV subscription, Garas said. “It’s a key feature that we promote and want customers to take advantage of. As a way to encourage non-cable subscribers to use Anyplace TV we make a selection of content available to our wireless, home phone or hi-speed Internet customers for free,” he said. Bell has been pushing the Fibe TV app through a TV marketing campaign since December and has a promotion where Bell customers can buy a discounted Samsung Galaxy View tablet preloaded with the app, “but it’s still something we need to continue to focus on as one of the advantages of Fibe, for sure,” said Omstead. App users now have access to 400 live channels and more than 21,000 hours of on-demand content through the app, which Omstead said far outpaces Bell’s competitors. “People want flexibility, so I think to some extent there’s still an interest in some of these (TV-everywhere products), but we’re going to go through a period of time, because we’re in a transition, where all those choices are going to start drilling down into what people really want,” Ashton said. “And I think it’s difficult to predict what that is, we just have to sort of see what really appeals to people.” Early adopters who may have tried the initial TV-everywhere offerings likely walked away disappointed, said Omstead. “They subscribed to something on the TV or set-top-box but they just couldn’t get it on the tablet,” he said. “So it’s not 100 per cent of users that are using it, but compared to when we launched it to where we are now, it’s really encouraging because once people use it they go ‘wow, I can’t believe I can watch all my channels on this.’” Awareness and demographics may not be the only things standing in the way of TV-everywhere adoption, Ashton indicated. “There’s always a draw for live television. It’s the community aspect to it, which is really easy to see if you’re talking about special events like the Oscars or sporting events, but also for certain shows that have built up a community,” Ashton said, pointing to programs such as The Bachelor, The Walking Dead or Orphan Black, which have active online communities that interact while watching. “The jury’s still out” on whether the feeling of community is tied to watching the shows a certain way, such as from a TV and set-top-box, but having a second screen is imperative, she said. “Because if you’re going to go to your iPad, that’s where you go for the social media. You need more than one screen to be able to participate in that.” — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

As streaming services grow, is TV-everywhere still relevant?

News | April 8, 2016

Unlock all the Canadian telecom, broadcasting and digital media news you need.

FREE TRIAL

SUBSCRIBE

Inside The Wire Report

Information

Hill Times Publishing

Get in Touch With Us

As streaming services grow, is TV-everywhere still relevant?

News | April 8, 2016

Unlock all the Canadian telecom, broadcasting and digital media news you need.

FREE TRIAL

SUBSCRIBE

Related Stories

Bell Canada to offer service in eastern Ontario ILEC’s footprint

CRTC tells Iristel to pay overdue fees to Bell, Northwestel or risk losing service

Bell files for injunction over Rogers, Warner Bros. deal

Indigenous communities to buy Northwestel for up to $1B

Reuse & Permissions

Inside The Wire Report

Information

Hill Times Publishing

Get in Touch With Us