Weekly rewind
Roku without the Roku: This week, Roku announced that it will bring its Roku Channel app to Samsung smart TVs over the summer. The free app offers movies and TV shows–mostly older ones–with a much lighter ad load than traditional TV channels.
By expanding The Roku Channel app to Samsung TVs–and possibly other platforms such as iOS and Android–Roku gets a bigger audience for advertising, which in turn could compel more studios to distribute their movies and shows through the app. It’s all the same to Roku, which now depends more on revenue sharing and advertising than hardware sales. Don’t be surprised if The Roku Channel becomes an ad-free alternative to Netflix, with an expansive library of content available on every conceivable platform.
AT&T, Time Warner, and you: Over at Fast Company, I looked at AT&T’s attempt to acquire Time Warner–over the objections of the U.S. Department of Justice–and what it might mean for cord-cutters. The argument against the merger is that it would give AT&T too much gatekeeper power. The company could hinder other pay TV providers by charging them more to carry popular channel such as HBO and TNT, or could turn to more insidious tactics, such as exempting its own streaming services from data caps and asking other companies to pay for the same privilege.
That’s not to say a failed acquisition is much better. If Time Warner can’t join AT&T, it’ll likely look for a new merger, perhaps with another media company such as CBS, Viacom, or Discovery. The combined entity would then have more leverage over all pay TV providers, resulting in higher prices and more homogenous streaming bundles.
Some of the biggest changes in TV, like the launches of Hulu, HBO Now, and Sling TV, have come when incumbent providers feel threatened by a decline in their existing business models. The problem with these mega-mergers in general is that they give major media companies more security as they look to uphold the status quo.
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