Vizio revamps Smart TV home screen
Vizio recently began rolling out an improved user experience on its Smart TV home screens. With enhancements to the user interface that allow for better content discovery as well as a customizable app interface, the new overhaul is meant to reduce choice fatigue while also creating revenue opportunities. With the home screen acting as ground zero for viewer choice, it also includes new access points for advertisers and sponsors to take advantage of, which Vizio plans to capture to its full potential.
The Circana Take:
- An improved user experience combined with simpler content discovery is a win-win for any home screen.
- As the home entertainment landscape continues to expand in all directions, making the home screen experience better for consumers and more attractive to advertisers is a strong value proposition.
DirecTV loses hundreds of local channels all over the country
DirecTV and Nexstar, the largest owner of local TV stations in the country, are at an impasse over carriage fees, or the fees paid to carry the stations’ content on the DirecTV platform. This affects DirecTV, DirecTV Stream, and U-Verse subscribers in over one hundred markets that carry Nexstar-owned affiliates for ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CW, and NewsNation. Each side is blaming the other, with DirecTV claiming that Nexstar is trying to double the fees from their last contract, while Nexstar is claiming that DirecTV is not negotiating in good faith, and that other providers like Hulu and YouTube have been able to successfully complete agreements.
The Circana Take:
- With subscriber loss continuing to escalate across the cable TV landscape, disruptions like this one are likely to spur faster cord-cutting, which is the last thing the cable industry needs.
- To the average consumer, this will simply look like big corporations sparring with one another, only to have the final resolution passed on to them in the form of price increases.
NBCU moves all in on FAST
After removing free content from Peacock earlier this year, NBCU has moved to directly monetize that content through licensing deals with Amazon Freevee and Xumo Play (co-owned by NBCU parent Comcast in a joint venture with Charter Communications). Dozens of new channels will launch this month and will cover content across reality, true crime, TV classics, movies, sports, and Spanish-language content and include titles like Saturday Night Live, Lassie, Little House on the Prairie, Saved by the Bell, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, among others.
The Circana Take:
- Non-exclusive licensing continues to be a quick play for media companies to boost the bottom line as Wall Street continues to favor profit over growth.