Whether pay-TV subscriptions can survive long term in a world of streaming services and digital video entertainment has been up for debate in recent years, and while there still isn’t a definitive answer, new research paints a dark picture for cable companies. Leichtman Research Group has released a report finding that not only did the 10 of the 11 largest pay-TV providers in the U.S. lose subscribers in Q2 2016, the losses substantially increased compared to the year before.
Given that the 11 largest cable companies represent 95 percent of the market, the numbers are telling. The report shows that overall, the companies, lost 665,000 net video subscribers in Q2 2016; the number far exceeds Q2 2015’s net loss of 545,000 subscribers. While Q2 is historically bad for cable companies, according to Ars Technica, this year was a particularly bad one. Only DirecTV saw net gains, adding 342,000 subscribers.
Interestingly, the picture was not quite as bleak for the top six cable companies as it was for the group overall; their losses actually decreased compared to Q2 2015, dropping from 340,000 lost subscribers to 225,000. The quarter may have been bad for the market overall, but it was actually the best in terms of losses since 2006 for the top six companies.
Nonetheless, there is still plenty to give cable companies pause. “Over the past year, the top pay-TV providers (including Dish’s Sling TV) lost about 705,000 subscribers — compared to a loss of about 380,000 over the prior year,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, in a press release.
The top 11 companies do have a subscriber based of 93.75 million, so 705,000 subscribers is a relatively small percentage, but the fact that losses have increased overall is notable. Although the report didn’t point to a cause, it seems likely that the emergence of digital alternatives has played a role. Pay-TV subscriptions may not be on the brink of extinction, but cable companies will have to continue to adapt to the threat.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?