Haystack News moves streaming needle as consumers flock to local news

Streaming services have been surging during the pandemic as consumers entertain themselves at home. And a combination of the pandemic and recent civil unrest has also caused people to flock to TV news, with an big emphasis on local news, in recent weeks.

Although usage was already rising before COVID-19 hit the US in a big way, Haystack News said it has seen a sharp usage increase for a free, ad-based VoD streaming service that delivers a customized collection of news reports in partnership with nearly 300 local broadcasters and an array of national and international sources of TV news.

Recent major news events "have propelled us forward," Haystack CEO and co-founder Daniel Barreto said.

When setting up the service, Haystack News users have the ability to customize and localize what news (down to specific topics) and weather information is assembled into the curated, on-screen view

Haystack News (a service formerly known as Haystack TV prior to a recent rebrand that plays up the service's focus on news as a differentiator from other free, AVoD services) released its first batch of user and usage data this month, announcing that its overall user base surged 145% in May 2020 versus May 2019, with a 2019 baseline in the "millions." The streamer also says it's on track in 2020 to double its annual growth in consumption and at least match the increases it has been generating in each of the past four years.

Barreto also attributes Haystack TV's general growth patterns to the ongoing rise of cord-cutting as consumers drop traditional pay-TV services and rely on broadband-delivered streaming services for entertainment and news.

At the same time, Haystack News is also exploring other ways to distribute its app, including discussions on how to gain entry onto Xfinity Flex, a relatively new streaming/smart home service that Comcast is offering for no additional cost to its broadband-only customers.

Haystack News' business model centers on advertising revenues and revenue sharing with its broadcast TV partners. For those broadcasters, Haystack News represents new ad inventory and a way to augment their TV audiences, Barreto said.

Haystack News has established a content ecosystem of local news and weather from broadcast stations covering 90% of the major US metro areas and a reach that covers most of the major streaming platforms.

Barreto acknowledges that it took some serious work to get those content deals salted away, as Haystack News was required to negotiate agreements with a multitude of individual stations as well as various station groups.

But Haystack's move into that market was also aided by its association with the National Association of Broadcasters, as the streaming service participated in an NAB-run "Pilot" program. Receiving that "stamp of approval" from the industry played a big part in getting Haystack News engaged with the local broadcast news community, Barreto said.

Barreto said Haystack News' biggest challenge ahead is to continue to differentiate and stand out from other free streaming sources of news. Of recent note, Haystack News added a customizable, interactive news ticker for its Roku app called "Newsline," and expects to extend that feature to its other streaming platforms later this year.

Haystack News is also coming off a recent funding raise that extended its total to about $6.5 million, with the NAB among its financial backers. Barreto said that money has been earmarked for R&D and product enhancements and to expand on partnership and marketing efforts.

"We're in the investment phase," he said.

Founded in 2013, Haystack was incubated at Stanford University's StartX accelerator program (the StartX Fund is also an investor). Haystack has about 20 full-time employees.

 

JEFF BAUMGARTNER

 

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

TiVo unites live, recorded and streaming media with Stream 4K

 In what it says represents the latest part of its transformation from a DVR provider to a streaming market ‘innovator’, providing one destination for all home entertainment, TiVo has announced the retail availability of TiVo Stream 4K claimed to be the market’s first unifying streamer.

TivoStream4K 7May2020First unveiled at CES Las Vegas 2020, the device brings together shows and films from customer’s favourite platforms, live or streaming, on one screen. TiVo Stream 4K is now available at TiVo.com with an introductory price of $49.99 and a free 7-day trial of Sling TV. Consumers can access content from Sling TV alongside streaming video services like Netflix and Prime Video using TiVo’s own content catalogue.

TiVo Stream 4K is said to provide ‘seamless’ integration with numerous streaming video services, including Netflix, Prime Video and Google Play. This is said to eliminate the need to toggle between multiple apps to access TV shows.

TiVo say that the new is an evolution not only for TiVo and viewers, but also opens up new opportunities for content creators, content providers and advertisers to attract and engage new audiences. That is, with its unifying and user-friendly interface, TiVo Stream 4K will help more people find and discover content they might not have before.

“At a time when viewers are streaming more than ever across a sea of platforms, TiVo Stream 4K integrates that content with recommendation and search features to make it easier to find, watch and enjoy the best news, entertainment and sports from today’s most popular services,” said Dave Shull, president and CEO, TiVo. “We are delivering on our promise to launch TiVo Stream 4K, which is symbolic of our company’s transformation from a well-loved DVR provider to a pioneer in the streaming market.”

 

Joseph O'Halloran

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

What is Streaming?

Streaming is what allows you to consume online content without having to wait for it to download. Are you listening to some tunes while you browse the internet? Or catching up on Friends reruns in another tab? That means you’re streaming right now!

Gone are the days where you had to spend hours downloading a few songs. With the rise of music platforms like Apple Music, Pandora, and Spotify, and TV and movie repositories such as Netflix, HBO GO, Hulu, and Disney+, streaming is more popular than ever. But how does streaming work, exactly? Are there any downsides to streaming? (Hint: yes.) Read on for all the details on how streaming works, what to watch out for, and what innovations in streaming you can expect to see soon.

How does streaming work?

Streaming affords us the ultimate convenience in media consumption: just press a button and your song, show, or movie starts immediately! But how does streaming work?

Streaming is a means to send and receive data (such as audio or video) in a continuous flow over a network. It allows playback to begin while sending the rest of the data. For example, as soon as your

computor phone receives the beginning of a movie, you’re able to start watching it. As the movie continues playing, the rest of the data gets transmitted.

As long as you have a reliable internet connection, your device is able to play the entire movie smoothly without interruption. Any time you’ve used music services like Spotify or Apple Music, video players like YouTube or Netflix, or some types of games and apps, you’ve used streaming in action.

For companies to provide content for streaming, they’ll need servers or cloud platforms for storage. Big players like Netflix have content delivery networks that keep the most popular content cached and close to where it will be streamed, in order to reduce latency and bandwidth costs.

As a consumer of streaming content, you’ll need reliable internet with sufficient speed. It’ll need to be at least 2 Mbps (megabits per second) to provide a good streaming experience (meaning no delays or reductions in quality). While you stream content, the data is delivered to the buffer, which stores the next few seconds or minutes that are coming in the song or show. If your connection is too slow, you’ll constantly see pauses while your device works on buffering. If you want to watch in HD or 4K, you should have an even faster connection of at least 5 Mbps.
 

How does streaming differ from downloading?

Note that streaming and downloading are not the same. When you want to download a movie or song, the file gets saved on your hard drive. In most cases, you can only begin watching or listening once the download has completely finished. And once you have the file, it takes up space on your hard drive. If you want to use a lot of large media (such as HD movies), you would quickly fill up all of your available space. Streaming, in contrast, plays media without downloading the file, so it doesn’t eat up precious hardware space.

Which types of content can be streamed?

In today’s media landscape, there is a wide variety of content that you can stream. Music and video are the most traditional forms, but increasingly, there are new streaming options available including games, apps, and even live events.
 

Music and other audio

Audio streaming, including both music and podcasts, has become incredibly popular. Music streaming allows you to play tons of songs by different artists, all without having to download a single file. Services like Apple Music, Spotify, and Pandora provide millions of tracks available for streaming at the touch of a button. Some, like Pandora, have you select a genre or mood, and they curate playlists for you. Others like Spotify play exactly what you select — though playlists are also a major component of the platform. Apple Music offers a mix of both options.

Podcasts can be either streamed or downloaded to listen to later, and they’re available through services like iTunes and Stitcher. You can also stream audio files you own to other devices (such directing your phone to play audio files via your Bluetooth speaker) within your home.
 

Video

Video was the first mass streaming hit, starting with services like YouTube. Instead of having to download large multimedia files, video streaming involves compressing the data into small packets and sending them to your device where they’re decompressed and displayed. During a streaming session, the video is constantly buffering — while you’re viewing one packet of data, the next is in the process of decompressing so you can view the whole movie or TV show without gaps.

Some of the most popular video streaming services today are YouTube (still!), Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Google Play, and the newest large-scale editions to the scene: Disney+ and 7UPTV.

Video streaming saves you a lot of time and hassle

 

by Nica Latto

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Coronavirus: Can live-streaming save China's economy?

"I'm a bit nervous," confessed Li Qiang, the deputy mayor of Wuhan, the Chinese city where the coronavirus was first reported late last year, as he awaited the start of his first-ever live-streaming event.

It is not the kind of tone one often hears from a senior Communist party official. But in an effort to revive China's economy after the devastating epidemic, Mr Li was determined. He spoke fondly of his long appreciation of Wuhan's local delicacy, hot and dry noodles, and urged locals to frequent his favourite shop.

The two-month-long nationwide lockdown has taken a heavy toll on the economy. It shrank 6.8% in the first three months of 2020 – the first time the country's economy has contracted since the death of Chairman Mao in 1976.

But unlike then, Chinese politicians are more pragmatic these days, particularly as the once fast-growing economy is entering uncharted waters.

In a provincial-wide campaign to revive the economy, senior officials in Hubei province – home to 60 million Chinese – are turning themselves into online streaming celebrities. Mr Li and his colleagues are endorsing local brands and paying close attention to sales figures.

And the result? Chinese media reports say that on the first day of the campaign – 8 April – these live-streaming sales across the province garnered 17.9m yuan ($2.5m; £2m). They sold nearly 300,000 items in nine hours – including 44,000 portions of Mr Li's favourite hot and dry noodles.

Hubei is not the only province taking advantage of China's booming live-streaming industry. Many local officials in Hunan, Shandong and Guangxi provinces have also turned themselves into sales gurus since social distancing became a rule in China. They endorse local products to help revive the economy – while showing a different side of Communist party politicians to their constituents.

Sales through live-streaming during the epidemic "definitely provided hope and a new outlet for companies to start investing in marketing, which supports the service industry and other industries as well," says Andrea Fenn, CEO of Fireworks, a Shanghai-based marketing consultancy.

'Lipstick Brother No 1'

Yet this business model is not just a top-down effort. Even before party officials began appearing on live-streaming services, savvy business owners were turning to live-streaming platforms such as Douyin (the equivalent of TikTok in China) and Kuaishou, as well as e-commerce giant Alibaba's Taobao, to promote and sell their products in real time.

One of them is 27-year-old Li Jiaqi, whose maverick sales technique has won him the nickname "Lipstick Brother No 1". Once an unassuming shop assistant earning a modest salary in Nanchang in south-east China, he now has more than 40 million followers on Douyin.

In one of his live-streaming sales sessions he sold 15,000 lipsticks within five minutes. Unlike many beauty bloggers he always demonstrates the lipsticks he's selling on his lips, rather than his arms. It seems to be paying off, as he now reportedly has a net worth of up to $5m (£4m).

There is also 33-year-old Wei Ya, whose 1 April sale of a $6m rocket launch on Taobao amazed the nation and attracted international publicity. So much so that Taobao had to issue a statement confirming the sale was real and not an April Fools' joke.

Wei Ya has been a familiar face in China's live-streaming sales circle. Her followers call her "Queen of Goods".

The official China Daily says this was "the world's first live broadcast of a rocket sale". More than 620,000 Weibo users have used the hashtag #WeiYaSellsARocket and more than two million online viewers tuned in to watch the sale.

Can it save China's economy?

Foreign brands too have been joining in. Luxury product maker Louis Vuitton hosted a live-streaming sale in March – the first time since the brand entered the Chinese market 30 years ago.

At the height of China's Covid-19 epidemic, in February alone Taobao, the platform which sees the largest number of live-streaming sales, saw an increase of 719% in new sellers across the country.

Not everyone will succeed, though. Marketing consultancy boss Andrea Fenn says that despite the recent frenzy, the market is getting increasingly crowded.

"Early adopters were able to obtain results with [often quite amateurish] live-streaming activities because the phenomenon was quite new and fresh.

"Now there are thousands of live-streamings out there and consumers are starting to wonder how come we have gone back to a communication activity that looks much like a 1990s telemarketing show.

"I am seeing more and more companies failing in their ability to increase sales through live-streaming due to consumer fatigue."

One of China's most successful online celebrities can probably attest to that. In April, 48-year-old former English teacher – and now internet celebrity – Luo Yonghao made the news with his inaugural live-streaming sales event.

It attracted 50 million viewers across China and within three hours he had rung up a staggering sales figure of $15.5m.

Over the next fortnight Mr Luo used live-streaming twice more to sell goods, but with much less success. Chinese media say the number of his viewers and sales figures plummeted – by 83% and 48% respectively.

Andrea Fenn says, for him, all this confirms that "I don't think we are looking at something that alone can sustain an economic boom".

 

By Vincent Ni and Yitsing Wang

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

How Coronavirus Is Upending the OTT Streaming-Video Business

With millions of people under lockdown orders because of COVID-19, streaming-media usage has seen stratospheric increases. But while the pandemic has introduced opportunities to super-serve consumers, it also has created new challenges for all companies in the space.

The topic was covered in “COVID-19 and Its Impact on OTT Video,” an April 15 webinar presented by Variety and Bitmovin, as part of Bitmovin’s NAB interactive event series.

The webinar’s panel of expert speakers comprised Brian Fuhrer, SVP product strategy at Nielsen; Janet Balis, global advisory leader, media and entertainment at EY; Iván Markman, chief business officer at Verizon Media; and Stefan Lederer, CEO of Bitmovin. The webinar was moderated by Variety NY Digital Editor Todd Spangler.

Streaming to TVs has more than doubled during the pandemic. For example, on April 4, Americans watched 27 billion minutes of streaming content on TV — 50,000 years of content in just one day — versus about 70 billion per week a year ago, Nielsen’s Fuhrer said. Overall, the disruption from the coronavirus crisis has been unprecedented, he said: “In my career at Nielsen, I’ve never seen such

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

HBO Downsizes Apps, Increases Confusion

As expected, WarnerMedia is consolidating its HBO Go, HBO Now and HBO Max apps in an attempt to declutter the brand’s over-the-top video offerings to consumers. In the process, however, the corporate umbrella to Warner Bros., HBO and Turner has seemingly complicated matters.

With the high-profile HBO Max spearheading WarnerMedia’s OTT aspirations, the former Time Warner conglomerate June 12 announced it is phasing out HBO Go (on July 31), the OTT on-demand platform for HBO pay-TV subscribers. WarnerMedia will meld Go users into Max at no extra charge.

HBO Now, the 5-year-old standalone SVOD service ($14.99), will simply be called HBO. This, despite the fact Now subs who access the platform through HBONow.com, Google or Apple TV will be automatically switched to Max at no extra charge.

And HBO Now subs who access via Roku, Amazon Prime Channels or third-party ISP must download the Max app and re-register. Go users who access HBO via Prime Channels are out of luck unless they download the Max app separately.

Max, which has generated upwards of 1.8 million app downloads, is also available via AT&T TV, Hulu, YouTube TV, Comcast, Charter/Spectrum, Altice (Optimum and SuddenLink), Verizon, Cox Communications and NCTC (WOW, Atlantic Broadband, RCN, Grande Communications & Wave and MCTV). Due to negotiation issues, Max is not available via Roku or Amazon Fire TV — while HBO Go is. But Max is available via the Android and iOS app, Samsung TV, Android TV, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Google Chromecast.

 

ERIK GRUENWEDEL

 

 

 

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Disney+ Is the #3 SVOD Service in the UK, According to Omdia Survey

Disney+'s catalog including Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars propelled the service to a 16.8% market share in its first month, just behind Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

Disney+ didn't launch in the UK until March 24, but within a month it became the third most-popular SVOD service in the region, according to research from Omdia. The service—which boasts Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and other blockbuster properties—had achieved a 16.8% market share by the end of April, with 4.3 million subscribers.

It's still well behind the top two SVOD services. Netflix leads the way with 58.4% market share, and Amazon Prime Video holds 46.9% market share. Still, Disney+ leapt ahead of NOW TV, Apple TV+, and others.

“Disney+ arrived in the U.K. just as COVID-19 social distancing and quarantine measures commenced,” says Maria Rua Aguete, senior research director, video, TV and advertising for Omdia. “Streaming services like Disney+ and Netflix have become the biggest winners during the lockdown as consumers have sought new entertainment experiences to keep themselves entertained. The content and user experience offered by these services have proven to be their key differentiators. In particular, the current catalogs offered by these services have become increasingly alluring to viewers, given than the pandemic has halted production of new video content.”

Disney+ has also quickly moved into the top tier of SVOD services elsewhere. It's the #4 service in the United States, with a 25% market share. Netflix remains on top with 60%, followed by Amazon Prime Video at 47% and Hulu at 29%.

By Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen

 

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Europol bust illegal digital currency media streaming ring

Law enforcement authorities in Europe have uncovered a multi-million dollar illegal media streaming ring operating out of Spain, in the latest crackdown on digital currency scams and criminality.

Dealing principally in digital currency and other digital payments, it is thought the scheme made as much as $17 million over a period of five years, streaming media online illegally, Bloomberg reported.

As part of the investigation, officers from Europol made 11 arrests following 15 property searches, in which various proceeds were recovered, including jewelry, luxury cars, cryptocurrency and cash totaling $5.4 million.

Police also seized properties, as well as freezing bank accounts related to the fraud with $1.25 million in balance.

According to investigators, the streaming ring provided access to some 40,000 TV channels, movies and documentaries, with payments received through PayPal, bank transfers and digital currencies.

The sophisticated fraud also had a customer support team in place, serving an estimated 2,000,000 users worldwide.

Illegal streaming and piracy remains a growing problem for content creators, with an estimated 17% of all content streamed online being streamed illegally.

The Europol bust is only the latest example of authorities uncovering streaming scams dealing in digital currencies and other digital payments. According to Bloomberg research, the premium cost of content from platforms such as Netflix and Disney is driving demand for illegal streaming sites.

The threat from piracy may even be set to grow in future, according to the Bloomberg report, with streaming firms expected to increase their prices to leverage their large subscriber bases in the years to come.

Tim Mulligan, an analyst at Midia Research, said piracy would remain a factor for legitimate on-demand services to contend with: “The background threat of piracy means that the subscription video-on-demand services will have the ongoing threat of piracy as a pricing factor.”

 

Ed Drake

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Roku rolls out a programming guide for its free streaming TV channels

Roku is making it easier to channel surf, with the streaming service unveiling a new programming grid for its just-expanded lineup of more than 100 free streaming TV channels.

The new Live TV Channel Guide for The Roku Channel will be a familiar sight for anyone who’s ever browsed the programming grid on a DVR, complete with informational overlays for each show and the ability to quickly switch between channels.

Roku also announced that it’s adding about 30 new streaming TV channels to The Roku Channel’s selection today, bringing the grand total of live/linear channels to more than 100.

The free “linear” streaming TV channels on The Roku Channel are ad-supported, with about eight minutes of ads an hour across four commercial breaks.

Among the top free TV offerings on the Roku Channel include:

• News: ABC News Live, Black News Channel, Cheddar, Newsmax TV, NowThis, Reuters, Top Stories by Newsy, USA Today, WeatherNation, and Yahoo Finance

• Sports: Adventure Sports Network powered by XUMO, ACC Digital Network, beIN Sports Xtra, EDGEsport, ESTV, fubo Sports Network, MAVTV Select, Outside TV, and Stadium

• Movies and TV: Crime360, FilmRise Action, FilmRise Classic TV, FilmRise Family, FilmRise Free Movies, Gravitas Movies, Redbox Free Movies, and Voyager Documentaries

• Kids & Family: Ameba powered by Xumo, Battery Pop powered by Xumo, Kid Gamer TV from Studio71, Kid Genius powered by Xumo, Kidz Bop TV, pocket.watch, Teletubbies, Toon Googles, TG Junior, Rainbow Ruby, and Zoomoo

• Lifestyle: A+E Lively Place, The Bob Ross Channel, Bon Appétit, Condé Nast Traveler, The Design Network, DIY Daily, Food52, Glamour, GQ, Love Nature, Revry, This Old House, Vanity Fair, and Vogue

• Spanish language: AFV Español, América TeVé, Latido Music, Love Nature Español, MoovieMex by Pongalo, and Pongalo NovelaClub

You’ll be able to access the on-screen guide, which will display up to 12 hours of upcoming programming, by clicking the new “Live TV” tile on The Roku Channel, or you can bring up the grid at any time while watching linear TV by pressing the “left” button on the Roku remote.

roku channel programming guide tile

You can access the programming grid for The Roku Channel by clicking the new “Live TV” tile in the Roku interface, or by clicking left on the remote while watching a linear TV channel.

The guide will let you quickly switch between an “All Channels” and “Recent Channels” view, and you’ll also be able to flip between channels by clicking the navigation buttons on the remote.

The channel guide should begin rolling out this week to Roku’s streaming players, such as the Roku Ultra, Roku Premiere+ and the Roku Express, while Roku TVs and other Roku-enabled devices will get the grid in the coming weeks.

 

By Ben Patterson
Senior Writer, TechHiv

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David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Android TV: The Future of Television?

Google's TV platform may be the best hope for a future in which pay TV and OTT exist side by side.

There's the traditional operator set-top box (STB), and then there are streaming devices for OTT, and the two are usually seen in competition. Google's Android TV platform bridges the two by aggregating broadcast content with streaming services, giving pay-TV operators a fighting chance to take back control of the remote.

Google has signed up more than 160 operators worldwide, including AT&T, Bouygues Telecom, J:COM, and LG U+, to deliver on the Android TV platform to fight consumer flight from pay-TV services, which, last year, were in use in 65.3% of U.S. households, down from a high of 87.8% 10 years earlier. Similar trends have played out in other countries.

"Android TV provides operators with a full-stack operating system to help them build a complete TV experience for subscribers, bringing linear TV and streaming services to one place, accessible by voice," says Shobana Radhakrishnan, director of engineering for Android TV at Google. "Operators get first billing on their own systems." Plus, their consumers get search, voice, content discovery, personalization, interface customization, Android app store connectivity, and even smart home control as standard features. "This helps operators bring a full entertainment package to subscribers that goes beyond traditional paid services," Radhakrishnan says.

"Classically, a streaming provider would be used to having their whole user experience contained in an app, like a Netflix or YouTube. It's an app icon somewhere or button on the remote control, and once the user enters that, the user experience starts. The pay-TV operators are much more used to the whole device experience [being] branded and [a] focus on their service," says Sascha Prüter, chief product officer at Vewd. Some operators completely design the user experience and have it branded the exact way they prefer, like AT&T with its TV Now service.

Hey, Google, how does this impact consumers? The first step was to make this as plug and play as possible. New pay-TV customers can often get up and running without human interaction if the STB can automatically connect online to the home router. Viewers enter credential information and, depending on the service, can personalize the experience if the provider asks for additional details.

"We believe operators know their subscribers best and are therefore best-suited to build the right TV service for them. The key element was giving operators the flexibility to build a custom launcher and replace the Google standard launcher, thus owning the user experience while still offering all the capabilities of the platform," says Radhakrishnan.

 

Making STBs Smart

Older cable devices simply couldn't handle all the functionality that today's multitasking modern customer seeks, such as app use; DVR, live, and catch-up viewing; higher-resolution delivery; and smarter personalized programming. "A lot of [operators] tried to do that with a legacy STB, but the system was not really application-oriented by design," says Hervé Creff, business development director at Broadpeak.

One big plus is that development for the Android TV platform is done via web technologies instead of platform-specific development languages. "They're utilizing a technology that's already well-known by developers," says Thomas Christensen, CEO of Nordija. "Our user interface [UI] does not exist on the set-top box until it's turned on and pointed towards our portal, on the operator's own network or in the cloud. Then the whole user experience is downloaded and delivered in classic web HTML format.

Because Android TV uses HTML, you don’t need to load a full user interface onto the device, meaning it can work within the memory available on a wide range of devices, according to Thomas Christensen of Nordija, whose Android TV implementation is shown here.

"The point of using HTML is it's dynamic, so you don't need to load the full UI onto the device—only what's needed. For something like an EPG (electronic programming guide), you don't have to download the full seven days' worth of data for 600 channels," says Christensen. This means that Android TV can work on the memory available on a wide range of devices.

"It's a software layer, so that gives it a lot of advantages in terms of being able to be deployed in many additional areas, even like things like soundbars," says Tom Schaeffer, president and CEO of Float Left Interactive. "It has access to Google's services, so when you're part of Android TV, you're tapping into that wide range of various services."

Search is one service that's crucial to getting viewers to watch more, responding to user input by text or voice and featuring the ability to set preferential business rules. For instance, the integrated Google Assistant voice control could return search results that were tailored to WarnerMedia's content. A provi­der like AT&T could highlight its own featured content and streaming apps within the programming guide, as well as other third-party apps that either came with the offering or were installed by viewers.

By Nadine Krefetz

 

 

 

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden