Sky:“现在全是数字化的”

The distinction between pay TV and OTT has blurred even further during since the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in various levels of lockdown and shelter-in-place. Roku高管, YouTube, 天空工作室, and ViacomCBS agreed that the pandemic had rocketed video streaming habits with no going back.

"This is not a linear versus digital war,简·米利契普说, chief content officer at 天空工作室, 康卡斯特公司. “现在一切都是数字化的."

She was speaking on a Variety-hosted virtual panel, "Succeeding in the Global Streaming Economy" part of the IBC版 of Bitmovin's Bitmovin Live webinar series.

Noting that linear TV viewing was also in high demand the past 6 months, Millichip argued that it will be a hybrid world for some time.

"Sky saw a 240% increase in viewing across the board. 内容为王. During lockdown, news broadcasts and event programming really brought the nation together. On-demand is part of our evolution, but we do need to be mindful of the full viewership of all our customers and get relatable content to them in the most digestible, 负担得起的形式."

"We host Netflix, Disney+, Spotify on our platform," she added. "Where we differentiate is we offer a frictionless environment for the consumer. We aggregate great content from multiple sources, and we originate great content too."

ViacomCBS has a slightly different approach to aggregation. "The whole streaming industry was once forced into subscription on-demand but now you see AVOD, AVOD怀旧感, 免费的, 有些只付费,奥利维尔·约雷说, SVP of emerging business for ViacomCBS EMEA. "There's a variety of business models. We are trying to offer services for all those user cases."

The media giant is expanding its international streaming service into a "super service" streamer to launch in Nordics, 2021年澳大利亚和拉丁美洲. Priced to take on Netflix and Amazon it will combine content from its brands including CBS, MTV, 喜剧中心, Nickelodeon, its Paramount film studio and current SVODs Showtime and CBS All Access.

谷歌副总裁, YouTube and Video Global Solutions, Debbie Weinstein argued that YouTube's notion of primetime is personal. "The focus is on the user and how the user wants to spend time and the data we see is that we're serving content which is just right for them."

She cited music fans turning to the platform to find virtual music venues in lockdown and the huge following that fitness instructor Joe Wicks gained in the UK this summer; plus huge interest in how-to content (such as how to cut your hair).

"Brands are finding it hard to get to the users they want with traditional broadcast," she claimed. "If you're looking for urban demographics in Asia, 例如, then marketers are spending more of their time with us alongside their traditional TV investment."

Bitmovin CEO Stefan Lederer claimed that the initial spike in traffic earlier this year put a stress on networks. 政府, 他说, required streaming service providers to dial down their bitrates to 免费的 up bandwidth.

"We had a customer tasked with streaming live educational classes and this was gaining more impressions in minutes than the biggest U.S. 新闻媒体. Similar examples apply to commercial services. What happened after the initial spike was that numbers [demand] plateaued at higher level than before, and the focus now has to be on making online streaming work from an economic perspective. The clear problem identified by CTOs of media companies that we surveyed is the cost of streaming."

尤利娅•Poltorak, head of international content distribution, Roku, 说, "We anticipated that 2020 was going to be the start of the streaming decade. What we didn't expect was that it would accelerate so much with COVID. 第二季度我们实现了65%的同比增长. Not only were streaming hours and engagement up, but so was the rise in active accounts being registered. What it signals to us is that there's no reverse."