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In fact, I heard all of those questions posed—some of them multiple times—at our first annual Pay TV Show in Denver a few weeks back. The answers were always nuanced, often vaguely unsatisfying … and sometimes funny as hell.

“That’s like walking into the baby section of a hospital and saying which one of these children is going to survive,” quipped Brett Sappington, senior director of research for Parks Associates, answering Fierce Telecom Group Editor-in-Chief Mike Dano’s q ...read more

Parks Associates’ Brett Sappington said during the Pay TV Show, an event produced by Fierce parent company Questex, that Amazon is the only company to get a la carte TV right. On top of that, he said the company could simply begin offering full pay TV subscriptions as part of its Prime memberships. He said Amazon could afford to give away local broadcast and cable channels for free if it can figure out how to effectively tie its retail offering to that proposition. "Fundamentall ...read more

The group, however, didn’t bite, forming a consensus that these are the early days for the virtual MVPD industry. Despite rampant competition for subscribers, high programming costs and loss-leader price points, none of the operators seems close to cutting bait, they said.

“That’s like walking into the baby section of a hospital and saying which one of these children is going to survive,” quipped Brett Sappington, senior director of research for Parks Associates, during the ...read more

Brett Sappington, senior director of research at Parks Associates, kicked off the first annual Pay TV Show detailing some of the emerging challenges and opportunities for the pay TV space.

He broke out the virtual MVPD space by operators (DirecTV Now, Sling TV), content producers (Hulu and Philo), online brands (YouTubeTV), consumer electronics makers (Playstation Vue) and OTT services (FuboTV). But he also pointed to the growing number of premium channels, sports networks, ...read more

Parks Associates analyst Brett Sappington agreed that it will be compelling for some customers, particularly due to content that won’t be available elsewhere like MLS games and some of the college sports. But he questioned how valuable the service would be to fans of the MLB and NHL.

“If you’re a sports fan, are you interesting in a generalized sports service with little pieces from everywhere?” said Sappington, guessing that baseball and hockey fans would likely go for MLB. ...read more

The percentage of U.S. broadband households that use digital antennas in their homes increased to 20% near the end of 2017, up from 16% in early 2015, according to Parks Associates.

"Increasingly, consumers are cobbling together their own bundles of content sources. Digital antennas are experiencing a resurgence as consumers consider over-the-air TV and OTT video services as alternatives to pay TV," said Brett Sappington, senior director of research at Parks Associates, in a ...read more

For content distributors, the decision-making process goes like this, said Brett Sappington, senior research director at Parks Associates.

“Typically, device makers support multiple formats out of fear that they will miss the ‘right’ format that ultimately wins out,” Sappington said. “So [TV] manufacturers are the first line to pare the least popular formats.”

Next in line are content distributors that “want to support a small number of formats due to the cost and effort ...read more

Video subscribers’ appetite for OTT video continues to climb, with more households purchasing more than one service.

New research from Parks Associates revealed that over 50% of U.S. OTT subscription households subscribe to multiple OTT video services, up from only 20% in 2014.

As of the third quarter of 2017, 69% of U.S. broadband households subscribe to at least one OTT video service. Not surprisingly, out of these multi-OTT households, 81% use Netflix plus some other ...read more