TV Made for You
How Pay TV Operators Can Thrive in a Streaming Future

The television we grew up with in the 20th century is now little more than a memory. Streaming video has completely transformed the television landscape, unleashing an experience that was bound to the living room to one that can be consumed anytime, anywhere. Streaming video is ascendant, and the dramatic shift in video delivery and consumption methods has ushered in waves of innovators determined to claim a greater share of the massive consumer television market.
For multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), the impact of streaming video raises urgent and timely questions regarding both short-term revenue tactics and long-term strategic investment.
The mobile revolution has combined with increases in internet bandwidth (and lower costs) to propel television’s “storefront” to exponentially more screens. Television’s competitive outlook is fundamentally different, significantly more crowded, and more formidable than even five years ago. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and others rose to satisfy the demand for video programming at the time, place, and screen of the consumer’s choosing. Virtual MVPDs (or “skinny bundles”) such as DirecTV Now, Hulu with Live TV, and PlayStation Vue present additional threats to the cable bundle: Adding live TV, sports, and local channels to the consumer-centric personalization and modern interfaces of the first wave of streaming disruptors, these virtual MVPDs are only poised to grow as a competitive force. Social media and entertainment giants stand poised at the gates of linear TV, ready, willing, and able to seize market share.

The impact of these shifts for MVPDs are all too familiar: increasing numbers of pay TV subscribers cutting the cord, dropping retention rates, younger consumers never subscribing at all, and predictably lower profit margins.
A few pay TV operators have moving quickly to improve the TV experience for their subscribers. MVPDs who have integrated streaming solutions into their offerings seem to be thriving. Why, then, are dozens of smaller operators seemingly content to sit on the sidelines? Why haven’t more providers launched streaming video services of their own?
Many providers know full well that they must adapt their business models, but face challenges. The costs of deploying streaming video solutions are poorly understood, with low-risk, high-impact options often overlooked. The mosaic of content rights issues is often hard to navigate. The perception of streaming video as ‘soft’ revenue that helps retain customers but doesn’t drive current incremental revenue adds additional uncertainty. Managing multi-screen workflows with DRM, ad-insertion, integrations with a wide array of measurement and analytics providers, managing complex business rules dictated in your streaming agreements, and solving authentication concerns can seem overwhelming.

MVPDs thus face a critical inflection point with their subscription programming business, as they attempt to sustain and nurture their legacy subscription programming business while staking out a claim in the new future of television. The competitive situation posed by streaming video sees MVPDs facing table-stakes strategic decisions. With the stakes so high and window of opportunity closing, why aren’t more MVPDs embracing an approach that can realize incremental value from streaming services?
In the new white paper, “TV Made for You: How Pay TV Operators Can Thrive in a Streaming Future,” Synacor examines the rise of streaming video, explores some of the challenges MVPDs face in adopting streaming video solutions, and sets forward a practical roadmap for operators to adopt streaming solutions and ensure their place in the TV value chain of the future.
