In The Frame – August ’17

Streaming / Online / Tech

Disney is preparing to launch its own OTT service in 2019 and attempt to corner the family market. Identified as a potential buyer of Netflix at the beginning of the year (covered in this Frame 25 blog post), Disney is to pull all its content from its rival, with which it has an exclusive film distribution deal in the US. Disney will also launch a streaming service for ESPN, the sports network with rights to top flight-competitions including Major League Baseball and the NFL.

Facebook has launched a new video platform as it steps up its commitment in the battle with YouTube and traditional broadcasters. Users will soon have a ‘Watch’ tab on their feeds for a range of programming, including comedy, reality and live sport.

Meanwhile, Amazon Studios VP Roy Price says the company will do fewer pilots in future, opting instead to order TV programmes straight-to-series.

The CBS OTT service, All Access, is to go global, launching initially in Canada in the first half of 2018, with other markets to follow.

In the UK, Sky has retained the rights to show EFL football matches after outbidding BT and agreeing to a three-to-five-year deal valued at between £500 million and £900 million. However, the Premier League is open to the possibility of allowing its matches to be streamed, with Amazon, Twitter and Facebook reportedly ready to beat Sky and BT to the rights to show live matches.

BBC News

The World Service has launched its biggest expansion since the 1940, thanks to a government funding boost of £289 million. The corporation’s Director-general, Tony Hall, called it “the start of a new chapter for the BBC”. A digital Pidgin service for West Africa is the first of 12 new language services to launch. The expansion means BBC News will operate in more than 40 languages.

Following last month’s publication of the BBC’s highest-paid broadcasters’ salaries, Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, says the corporation’s pledge to close the gender pay gap by 2020 is insufficient.

Elsewhere, the BBC has commissioned new series of popular favourites such as The League of Gentlemen, Fleabag and Alan Partridge. And Strike – The Cuckoo’s Calling is the adaptation for a new series on BBC One of the Cormoran Strike novels by Robert Galbraith, aka J.K. Rowling.

Ben Elton, delivering the BBC’s inaugural Ronnie Barker Comedy Lecture, has warned that “lazy contempt” from critics and social media is killing the sitcom, and “a great and original television art form is dying”.

And finally…

• The BBC is partnering with the Scottish government to launch a hub of the National Film and Television School at the BBC’s Studios in Pacific Quay, Glasgow, and Dumbarton.
• The Digital Production Partnership has published 10 Things You Need To Know About Going Live Online, a guide underlining everything that content producers need to know about streaming live to online platforms.
• Global broadcasters with bases in the UK are looking to Amsterdam as Brexit talks stall. Broadcasters will have to decide on relocation by as early as next spring, says Adam Minns, executive director of the Commercial Broadcasters Association, which represents international media networks in the UK.
• Virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) are among the newest technologies to come under scrutiny at next month’s IBC.
• You can watch Channel 4’s Jon Snow deliver this year’s prestigious keynote speech at the Edinburgh TV Festival, the James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture

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