Roku Chief Financial Officer Steve Louden set expectations for “tough” year-on-year comparisons in second-half 2021, on the company's quarterly call Wednesday, after COVID-19 pandemic-driven “outperformance” in 2020. Q2 revenue increased 81% year on year to $645 million, it reported, crediting “exceptional performance in platform monetization.” (See Q2 materials). Player unit sales were little changed after the 2020 demand spike. Tight component supplies and shipping constraints increased costs faster than expected across consumer electronics, executives said, saying the company “insulated consumers” from higher player unit costs. Higher costs are an industrywide issue affecting smart TVs, too, Louden said. Management said higher out-of-home entertainment engagement was competition, as consumers "sought increased out-of-home entertainment activities" after being pent up in Q2 2020 during lockdowns. That led to a decline in viewing hours, it said. The stock closed down 4% to $403.48 Thursday.
ViacomCBS ended Q2 with 42 million streaming subscribers worldwide, and its $982 million in streaming revenue nearly doubled from the same quarter a year ago, it reported the company Thursday. It said Paramount+ was the biggest driver of the 6.5 million new streaming subscribers it added. It said Paramount+ will launch in Australia and New Zealand this month and in European markets including the U.K., Germany, Italy and Ireland in 2022 through a partnership with Comcast's Sky. Total sales were $6.6 billion, up $489 million, with $411 million of the gain due to growing advertising revenue. Licensing revenue, at $1.24 billion, fell $701 million, partly reflecting depressed film licensing due to lack of theatrical releases in 2020 and early 2021, it said. ViacomCBS closed up 7.1% to $41.55.
Following its acquisition of clypd, Xandr launched Monetize TV for advertising sales, said the company Wednesday. Standardizing audience-based transactions will help expand the digital TV market, said Xandr’s Mark Mitchell, vice president-business development, TV Platform.
Fandango said it’s combining its Vudu and FandangoNow streaming services into a newly updated Vudu-branded offering that will replace FandangoNow as the official movie and TV store on Roku. The new Vudu service will offer more than 200,000 new release and catalog movies and TV shows to rent or buy, it said Tuesday. It claims the largest collection of 4K titles with no subscription required.
Discovery+ subscription streaming will be coming to Vizio SmartCast smart TV viewers by September, said the TV vendor Tuesday. Vizio also said it's bringing the BET+ streaming app to SmartCast TVs beginning Wednesday. Users can access the streaming service for a free, seven-day trial before buying a premium, commercial-free subscription for $9.99 monthly.
Vizio upgraded the appearance and functionality of its WatchFree+ free video streaming offering, the company announced Monday. It added an “intuitive” program guide and expanded content “custom-curated” using “first-party viewership data” collected through its proprietary Inscape audience-measurement service. The program guide supports voice navigation for new SmartCast TVs that come with the latest Vizio voice remote. Vizio reports Q2 Wednesday.
Display-only video monitors and projectors should be exempt from FCC user-interface rules if they don’t render audio, said the Information Technology Industry Council in a call Tuesday with Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau and Wireless Bureau staff, per a filing posted Friday in docket 21-140. ITI was represented among others by Senior Policy Counsel Joel Miller, former Commissioner Mike O’Rielly’s chief of staff when O’Rielly was at the agency. Miller left the FCC in early 2021 and was hired by ITI in May. Display-only monitors and projectors “do not possess the hardware or firmware needed to produce audio feedback,” the filing said. Requiring the devices to produce audio could effectively eliminate display-only devices, the group said: Changing the construction of such monitors to comply with user-interface rules would require additional chips, which are in a shortage. So manufacturers would need more time to comply.
The American Television Alliance said the FCC sent a "strong signal" with its forfeiture order Wednesday against several broadcasters for violations of good faith negotiation rules (see here and 2107280068), in a statement. The order indicates the agency "will not tolerate broadcasters' bad-faith conduct, especially when their behavior leads to needless TV blackouts," said ATVA.
Spotify fell short of its monthly average user guidance for Q2 on “ongoing COVID-19 headwinds” and a “temporary issue” with user intake on a third-party platform, said CEO Daniel Ek on a Wednesday call. MAUs grew 22% year on year to 365 million. There was “user sign-up issue” with email verification on a third-party platform that created “unexpected intake friction,” management said. Chief Financial Officer Paul Vogel said this “was on our end” due to a change “not caught soon enough” that had a 1 million-2 million impact on MAU growth. It's corrected, he said. Q2 revenue exceeded expectations at $2.7 billion, up from $2.2 billion year on year. Shares closed down Wednesday 5.7% at $223.32.
Sling TV says monthly subscriptions will increase to $35 a month from $30 beginning Aug. 27, matching the new subscriber fee for the Orange and Blue packages. A Reddit user posted the email received Tuesday. The Sling email attributed the price hike to higher content costs. The virtual MVPD noted recent enhancements including increasing DVR storage from 10 to 50 hours, the ability to pause live content, a redesigned app and local channel integration in the Sling guide with Locast. It also has a Watch Party. The Dish Network subsidiary didn’t respond to questions.