News and Analysis
Discovery CEO David Zaslav said yesterday that DIRECTV Now and Sony’s PlayStation Vue each have more than 400,000 subscribers.
Bloomberg News writes that Zaslav made the disclosure to predict that rising subscription numbers for live streaming services will eventually force cable operators to offer similar Net TV services nationwide.
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Reuters reported this week that Comcast plans to rebrand and expand an existing live streaming service (now available only in Chicago and Boston) to each Comcast market in the third quarter. However, the wire service says, Comcast will not offer the streaming venture outside of Comcast markets, such as in ones where Charter or Cox have the franchise.
Zaslav’s prediction could come true, but my forecast is that it’s far from imminent. If cable operators decide to enter each other’s territories, it could lead to more than a “street fight,” as Zaslav describes it. It could lead to the self-destruction of a few cable companies.
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Cable operators succeed in part because they have a cable monopoly in their respective markets, a monopoly guaranteed when a local municipality awards them an exclusive franchise. Non-cable companies such as DIRECTV and Dish can compete against them in those markets, but not other cable companies.
If they open the door to cable competition in their own markets, the cable operators will be forced to lower prices, invest in better services, and possibly lose their customers to new online plans from other cable companies. That’s a great scenario for consumers, but a terrible one for the cable operators, particularly smaller ones which may not have the resources to compete with a Comcast or Charter.
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On another issue: Zaslav’s disclosure that DIRECTV Now and Vue each have roughly 400,000 subscribers is particularly interesting.
For DIRECTV Now, the number is eye-popping; the AT&T-owned streaming service launched just four months ago, and it’s been plagued with recurring technical errors. Still, if Zaslav is correct (and he should know; his channels are on both Vue and DIRECTV Now), DIRECTV Now is continuing to add subscribers, a testament to the DIRECTV brand and a growing appetite for alternatives to traditional pay TV services.
However, for Vue, 400,000 is not a particularly impressive number. Vue has been available nationwide for more than a year and the service has accumulated roughly the same number of subscribers that DIRECTV Now has acquired in just four months.
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Vue recently boosted its advertising efforts and it says here that it should have done so last year before DIRECTV Now launched. Now Vue has to compete with Dish’s Sling TV and DIRECTV Now for the still relatively small audience of consumers looking for live streaming alternatives.
And Hulu and YouTube are waiting in the wings with their live streaming plans.
It’s time for Vue to hit the gas and fast.
— Phillip Swann
VUE has the worst advertising ever. The commercials I’ve seen never mentioned a thing about what the service was. If you didn’t know what it was before hand, you’d get no clue from the commercials that it was a TV service. Vue seems to be the better product by no one in the general population has any idea of what it is.
Problem with Vue is that it is tied to your home network. Can not watch anywhere else.
That is a deal breaker for many people.
I had Vue, now I have DtvNow. More channels and service improving. happy customer.
I tried sling…It has a odd user interface…Vue is way better and particularly more channels. But Everytime I recommend Vue, people seem to think they can’t get Vue because they don’t have a play station. Vue needs to make it clear that its not only a play station app
I think the problem with Vue is it should have been called “Sony Vue” not “Playstation Vue” With that name there are still many people who either don’t know what it is (is it some kind of playstation game?) Or if they do realize it’s about TV viewing, they think you must have a Playstation (which was true initially, but hasn’t been for some time). Everyone knows that DirecTV is about TV! So getting people to buy into is is much easier.