Weekly Rewind
The Great Unbundling: Ben Thompson writes some of the sharpest business analysis in tech, and this week he takes a fresh look at the TV bundle. The gist is that several of TV’s core functions–to inform, to educate, to tell stories, and to occupy idle time–are increasingly served elsewhere. People can go to Google for information, to YouTube or the web for education, to Netflix for storytelling, and to social networks like Snapchat and Facebook for basic escapism. Without those pillars to stand on, Thompson believes that cable bundles will become de facto sports subscriptions, with ESPN as the tentpole offering.
As a broad prediction for the next five years or so, that sounds about right to me, but Thompson doesn’t delve into any of the interesting micro-trends that may happen in the meantime. Netflix, for instance, isn’t the only source of storytelling, and the economics of bundling are still powerful enough that I suspect we’ll see new kinds of bundles emerge over time. And with streaming channel packages like Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, and DirecTV Now, traditional TV service is already breaking free of the cable box and its expensive rental fees. The unbundling of TV may be messy, but it’s happening.
Roku takes on the TV guide: These days, every streaming device maker is trying to break out of the app model. Users don’t want to sift through a dozen individual apps to find something to watch, so the race is on to devise the best universal TV guide that reaches across all of those streaming services.
Roku has tackeld this challenge in the past with Roku Feed, a sort of universal watch list for streaming shows and movies. Now, the company’s going a step further, at least in its mobile apps, with a new “What’s On” guide. This combines new arrivals from the Feed with hand-picked recommendations. Though this guide is only on Roku’s iOS and Android apps for now, I’d bet on a big screen version before too long.
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