The San Diego Union-Tribune

Price increases come in bunches, said Brett Sappington, a pay TV expert who follows traditional and Internet providers for the research outfit Parks Associates.

“The fact that they're all doing price hikes in a group helps them,” he said.

Most of the companies initially launched with really low prices, and leaner content offerings by association, to attract the most attention. As the bundles have fattened, so too have the prices, Sappington said.

Currently, there as ...read more

“The unlimited data mobile wars have been going for awhile … as T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon encourage people to (buy) the highest tier of mobile services,” said Brett Sappington, who studies both traditional and non-traditional pay TV providers at research outfit Parks Associates.

WatchTV, then, is just the latest incentive that AT&T can use to dangle in front of its (and its competitors’) customers to get them to pony up for its priciest wireless plans. The company has 160 m ...read more

“Online pay TV is going to have a significant affect on the television market, and by the end of this year we’ll be talking about both those services that succeeded … and those that did not succeed,” said Brett Sappington, a digital entertainment researcher with Parks Associates. “I think we’re going to see some surprises both in the successes and failures of online pay TV.”

From the article "3 streaming TV trends to watch in 2018" by Jennifer Van Grove.

At last tally, Apple ranked fourth behind Roku, Amazon and Google in terms of streaming media player market share in the U.S., according to Park Associates.

In other Apple TV news, SiriumXM just released its own app for the fourth generation and 4K boxes, meaning subscribers to the satellite radio service can sign in to access their favorite stations on their TV sets.

From the article "Streaming TV news: Apple, Amazon and Google can't decide if they're friends or foes" b ...read more

Rather, I believe that the Google-run property realized the strategy tipped a little too far toward millennial viewing patterns, thus shunning a growing audience of older cord-cutters who weren’t ready to embrace such a radical shift to their TV viewing experience.

Though 18-to-33 year-olds are cutting the cord at higher rates, the behavior for people 34 and older is on the rise, growing from 8 percent of U.S. broadband households in the demographic group in 2015 to 12 perce ...read more

In the third quarter of 2016, 48 percent of U.S. broadband households owned speakers, 23 percent owned a soundbar, and 6 percent owned an Internet-connected multi-room music system, according to data supplied by Parks Associates.

“As much as industry leaders see the artistic and market potential of the high-resolution movement, consumer demand for high-resolution audio is unclear,” said Dina Abdelrazik, a research analyst with Parks Associates. “Most people can discern the d ...read more

“If (AT&T) had a box that came in at $35 or under, consumers would be interested,” Brett Sappington told me. He’s the senior director of research at Parks Associates, which pays extremely close attention to the over-the-top (OTT) — meaning Internet-based TV — space. “They’d buy it just to see if it worked.”

Sappington reasons that a new streaming box isn’t dead on arrival, so long as it has a stellar user interface, is feature-rich, is open to all TV app developers and is re ...read more

But if you must have 4K movies and you already default to iTunes for your movie purchases, then you might as well upgrade to the Apple TV 4K. The device’s high price tag is partially subsidized by Apple’s promise to upgrade all your iTunes-purchased HD movies to 4K. These theater-quality flicks will also be sold at HD prices going forward. So that’s something.

“The most significant part of this announcement is the range of 4K content Apple has lined up for the launch,” said ...read more