T-Mobile Kills Live TV Service Just A Few Months After Launch

from the that-went-well dept

You might recall that pre-merger T-Mobile used to make fun of the wireless sector's repeated failures in the TV space, such as Verizon's massive Go90 face plant. Of course, at the same time, T-Mobile was busy planning its own streaming TV efforts. Launched just last fall, T-Mobile's TVision TV service was supposed to truly disrupt the stodgy TV sector (something already happening at the hands of countless platforms). T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert explained it like this last October:

"If ever there was an industry that needed an Un-carrier overhaul, it’s cable and satellite TV,” Sievert said, using the company’s term for its disruptive moves in the wireless industry. “I mean, it’s no secret why these companies are dying, they treat their customers so badly."

That was then, this is now. Less than half a year later, T-Mobile is now scrapping its live TV service and striking a deal to offer YouTube live TV services instead:

"It’s a major change for T-Mobile’s TVision service, which was launched just a few months ago, including both live and on-demand content. T-Mobile says the existing TVision Live, Live + and Live Zone services will be phased out starting April 29. T-Mobile customers will get a $10/month discount on YouTube TV, bringing the price down to $54.99/month, as well as a month of free service."

As Verizon and AT&T, have found, disrupting the TV sector is no easy feat, even when (in AT&T's case) you actually own a massive content empire in Time Warner. There are numerous reasons for telecom's failure to compete meaningfully in this space, a lot of it having to do with the fact that telecom giants, used to the lack of serious competition in broadband, aren't genuinely used to this whole disruption, competition, adaptation, and innovation stuff. Even T-Mobile, which made its fortunes being a competitive thorn in AT&T and Verizon's side, didn't find it to be a particularly easy road.

Granted there is still something to be said for T-Mobile figuring this out before it poured countless billions down the drain. Sort of. The company did spend an estimated $325 million to buy premium streaming vendor Layer3TV back in 2018.

Still, the losses aren't as bad as say, AT&T, which spent nearly $200 billion in megamergers thinking it was going to dominate the TV sector, only to lose 8 million TV subscribers in a few years (something I recently wrote about at The Verge) because it had absolutely no idea what it was actually doing. T-Mobile also seemed to assume this would be an easier path that it actually was, made tougher by the fact that the same broadcasters driving relentless price hikes in traditional TV, are also doing the same thing in streaming:

Another factor at play is that this version of T-Mobile isn't actually as disruptive as the trash-talking version helmed by former CEO John Legere just a few years ago. Thanks to the Sprint merger, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile see significantly less competition. As a result, investors will inevitably pressure them to compete even less intently on price, and they'll inevitably comply. As a result, all of T-Mobile's "uncarrier" disruptive plays have been getting progressively lamer and lamer, with the company desperately hoping nobody notices.

Filed Under: mike sievert, tv streaming, tvision
Companies: t-mobile

CBS Streaming Service Chokes On The Grammys, But YouTube Takedown Apparatus Works Just Fine

from the not-really-innovatin' dept

CBS had the perfect opportunity over the extended weekend to show that the company had evolved and was ready to embrace the modern streaming era. CBS had announced that users could watch the Grammy Awards live online on Monday Night -- but only if customers signed up for a trial of CBS' $6 per month "All Access" streaming service. And while not necessarily a bad promotional idea on its surface, it appears that CBS choked completely on the opportunity, with numerous customers reporting that they couldn't even get the stream to start:

Wow. @CBS All Access lasted about 30 seconds before totally crashing. Cool product.

— Dashiell Bennett (@dashbot) February 16, 2016

Some of the problems were thanks to the fact that users eager to watch the stream didn't live in the service's 130 launch market territory. CBS ultimately indicated that the problems that occurred with the stream were thanks to their systems being unable to determine user location, effectively causing the company's authentication systems to implode for many users:

"Some users experienced temporary difficulty accessing the live online feed of the Grammys. Our location services provider had a brief issue verifying user location. That issue has since been resolved and all users are back online,” a CBS Interactive spokesman said."

And while technical glitches happen, this is the same company that has waged war on companies trying to deliver a more innovative, efficient and modern TV viewing experience for decades. This behavior has included suing and whining about Aereo; suing to stop Dish's Hopper ad-skipping technology (and ignoring editorial firewalls over at CNET to hurt said product in the press); whining about Netflix; suing Star Trek fans for expressing their fandom; and constantly threatening to bury over-the-air TV behind the cable paywall unless everybody does exactly what CBS wants.

And indeed, while CBS couldn't get its own streaming service to work, the company's copyright shutdown apparatus worked perfectly well, so that fans of the awards show couldn't watch it anywhere:

@brianstelter and CBS just shut down a bunch of streams on YouTube pic.twitter.com/veGfbj6j7Y

— Austin Blumenfeld (@apblumenfeld) February 16, 2016

CBS' Grammy live stream is a disaster but instead of fixing it they're taking down all the YouTube streams and now I'm missing it 😒

— Abby Dockum (@AbbyDockum) February 16, 2016

So in short, CBS has fought tooth and nail to stop other companies from offering a next-generation viewing experience. And when presented with the opportunity to highlight why CBS should be considered the innovation gold standard, the company tripped on its shoelaces and fell flat on its face. Perhaps CBS should stick to the space in which it's clearly the most innovative: being anti-innovation.

Filed Under: all access, grammy's, streaming, takedowns, tv, tv streaming
Companies: cbs, youtube

Court Surprises Everyone: Says Filmon Streaming Service May Be Able To Get Compulsory License To Stream TV Online

from the filmon-wins-while-aereo-loses dept

Well this is a surprise. During nearly the entire time of the big Aereo fight over streaming TV online, there was a second player fighting battles on the side: FilmOn, by self-promotional billionaire Alki David (at times the name of FilmOn changed to mock Aereo and its investor Barry Diller, but it was originally FilmOn and eventually became FilmOn again down the road). Aereo appeared to have been constructed carefully to follow the various precedents in court cases, whereas FilmOn appeared to be designed on a whim to just get whatever attention it could. In the early days, it was little surprise that Aereo won and FilmOn lost (often badly). The arguments FilmOn's team made in court were not at all sophisticated and seemed mostly to be daring the judge to rule against them.

Then, after the Supreme Court ruled in the Aereo case using its "looks like a duck test," both companies shifted plans and started arguing that if the Supreme Court was arguing that they were the equivalent of cable TV companies then they should have access to compulsory licenses under Section 111 that allows cable systems to offer local channels so long as they pay a fee to the Copyright Office. In other words, if you're going to call us a duck, then we're going to quack.

In Aereo's case, the court was not impressed. And it looked like the same thing was happening in FilmOn's case as well. In fact, the company was held in contempt as it tried to push this argument forward. In both cases, courts pointed to the ruling against ivi, an earlier online streaming company that based its entire business on leveraging that Section 111 compulstory license. Aereo and FilmOn tried to argue that the Supreme Court's Aereo ruling effectively overruled the ivi ruling. And the courts had rejected this argument.

Until now. In a move incredibly surprising to probably everyone, a court has actually sided with FilmOn, saying that it can make use of Section 111. This is a different case and different court than the one that found FilmOn in contempt last year (Hollywood is suing in a few different places). In this ruling, the judge, George Wu, is well aware of all of the other rulings in Aereo and FilmOn cases... he just disagrees:

... this Court disagrees with the Second Circuit's decision in an analogous case....

In fact, the court argues that the Supreme Court ruling in Aereo actually does support the idea that internet companies qualify for a Section 111 compulsory license, because the Supreme Court keeps pointing back at the Fortnightly Supreme Court ruling, which was the impetus for Congress to change the law concerning cable TV and require the compulsory license. And, based on that, the court thinks that FilmOn has a legitimate argument that its service fits into the same category. Basically, the court says that it can see no reason that "internet" video providers should not qualify for the Section 111 licenses the same way Congress intended cable TV companies to qualify for it. The judge has trouble seeing how suddenly inserting "on the internet" makes things any different.

In finding that ivi's internet streaming service did not qualify for the §111 compulsory license, the Second Circuit affirmed the district court's determination that it was unclear whether ivi was a "facility" that receives broadcast signals and makes secondary transmissions, or whether the "internet" qualified as a "communications channel." ... The Second Circuit held that the statutory text was unclear as to whether the defendant operated a "facility" because "it is certainly unclear whether the Internet itself is a facility, as it is neither a physical nor a tangible entity; rather, it is 'a global network of millions of interconnected computers,'" thus, there is "uncertainty as to whether an Internet retransmission service is or utilizes a facility that receives and retransmits television signals.... And the Second Circuit noted that while Congress added "microwave" as an "acceptable communications channel for retransmissions," it had not "included the 'lnternet'" as an acceptable communications channel under § 111.... The Second Circuit did not purport to find any ambiguity in the phrase "or other communications channels," but nonetheless deferred to the Copyright Office's view that it should not be read broadly to include "future unknown services."

But, the court notes, that really doesn't make any sense under the law:

This is all at loggerheads with the thrust of Plaintiffs' prior "technology agnostic" argument in this case. And it is difficult to recognize the ambiguity the Second Circuit saw in the statute, at least as applied to the facts of this case... The "internet" is not the "facility" urged by Defendants here. And it can't be a "facility" for purposes of the § 111 analysis because without Defendants' facilities, the internet does not receive Plaintiffs' public broadcast signal. Thus, the undisputed facts in this case are that the signals are not received by "the internet." They are received by antennas, located in particular buildings wholly within particular states. They are then retransmitted out of those facilities on "wires, cables, microwave, or other communications channels." We know that they are so communicated because Defendants' users received them....

Thus, the nebulous nature of the internet does not seem to bear on whether Defendants operate equipment that "receives signals transmitted or programs broadcast by one or more television broadcast stations," reformats those signals, and then sends them out to the viewing public." .... [T]he Second Circuit's ivi II opinion focuses on the mysterious "ether" (then spelled "either") through which the retransmission is made, but the "facility" that Defendants have control over and operate consists of the "complicated electrical instrumentalities" used for retransmission, which precede "the internet" in Defendants retransmission scheme.

Thus, contrary to the Second Circuit's conclusion, it is unnecessary to turn to the legislative history or the administrative interpretation: "if the intent of Congress is clear and unambiguously expressed by the statutory language at issue, that would be the end of our analysis."...

Basically, the internet is meaningless here under the statute, and based on this court's ruling, ivi, Aereo and FilmOn are likely no different than cable companies (quack, quack!), and thus they should absolutely be able to make use of the § 111 compulsory licenses.

Of course, knowing that this ruling is different than others and the fact that the FCC is rethinking all of this anyway, the court is allowing the case to be immediately appealed. Still, this certainly makes things interesting and, depending on the eventual appeals court ruling, could set up a circuit split. Of course, it could become moot by the FCC, but at the very least it shakes things up in some interesting ways that say that if a company quacks like a cable duck on the internet, perhaps we really should treat it as a cable duck.

Filed Under: alki david, compulsory license, section 111, tv streaming
Companies: aereo, filmon, ivi