Weekly Digest from the West
Jean-Baptiste Piron
Cultural Attaché I Attaché culturel I Québec Office Los Angeles
-Apple Goes to Hollywood. Will Its Story Have a Happy Ending? Known for its bold designs and its big marketing campaigns, Apple relishes its status as a dominant force in the corporate world. So it was noteworthy when one of its executives, Eddy Cue, struck a note of humility during a discussion this month at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Tex. “We don’t know anything about making television,” said Mr. Cue, a senior vice president who oversees the team in charge of the company’s original programming initiative. “So what skills does Apple bring to that? And the viewpoint is: very little. There’s other things we bring. We know how to create apps, we know how to do distribution, we know how to market. But we don’t really know how to create shows.” As Mr. Cue’s words suggested, Apple’s new venture has taken the company far from its Silicon Valley comfort zone and thrust it into alien territory: Hollywood. Or, to be more precise: Culver City, Calif., the former home city of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where Apple is building a new 128,000-square-foot headquarters for its entertainment division. Apple’s plans to make itself into a big player in the entertainment industry are now coming into focus. In recent months, the company has outspent Facebook and YouTube — two other tech companies that have also taken steps into original programming — as well as the traditional TV studios. In a few cases, it has also beaten Netflix in bidding wars. Since October, Apple has made deals for 12 projects, nine of them “straight-to-series” orders — an aggressive method of creating new programming that skips the pilot-episode stage. When Apple began courting producers last year, it said it had a budget of about $1 billion to work with. Now it is becoming clear that the company will blow well past that figure. Perhaps more meaningful, though, is that Apple’s strong brand name and its willingness to write big checks have quickly made it a top draw for show creators and stars.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/25/business/media/apple-hollywood-streaming.html
-Spotify expects its paid subscriber ratio to hit 46% by the end of 2018: Spotify is ramping up a promotional push ahead of its initial public offering (IPO) next week by issuing its first ever stock market guidance for analysts and prospective investors. The music-streaming giant filed for its direct public listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) last month and has been preparing for the April 3 offering via initiatives such as its official Investor Day presentation earlier this month, when it outlined why it’s bypassing a traditional IPO. We already knew Spotify was trying to guide public attention to its platform growth rather than profits as it looks to outmaneuver rivals such as Apple and Google. And this was clear from its latest guidance, where it outlined some projections for its Q1 numbers, as well as for the full year of 2018. Digging into these estimations reveals at least one interesting insight into how the company’s ratio of paid to free users is nearing parity. In its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last month, Spotify revealed that it had 159 million monthly average users (MAUs) as of December 31, 2017, of which 71 million subscribe to a $10 monthly ad-free plan. In effect, 44 percent of its users are now on a paid plan. By the end of this year, Spotify projects that it will have between 198 million and 208 million MAUs, of which 92 million to 96 million are paying. This is roughly consistent with its previous trajectory, which shows that Spotify gains 10 million new paid members every five to six months. While hitting the magic 200 million MAU milestone will arguably be the bigger headline-grabber (if it happens), the numbers also indicate that Spotify’s paid subscription base is edging ever closer to even, at more than 46 percent.
-Turner is Taking Bleacher Report Over-The-Top with New Streaming service: The company announced plans to launch Bleacher Report Live, a sports-focused streaming service. The service, which is expected to launch in April, will offer fans the opportunity to watch a wide variety of sports content ranging from Basketball to Armwrestling. Among the thousands of live sporting events available directly through the service will be the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League, NBA League Pass games, 65 NCAA Championships, PGA Championship, National Lacrosse League, The Spring League, Red Bull Global Rallycross, World Arm Wrestling League and more. According to the company’s description of the service, fans will be able to find and watch live sports with the ability to scroll through a feed of real-time sporting events. Additionally, the service will offer personalization features which aggregate live sports content that is based on the viewers interest. Bleacher Report was acquired by Turner in 2012. Through its development and distribution of original content, such as “Game of Zones” and “Gridiron Heights,” B/R has established itself as an influential brand that drives the connection between sports and culture.
-U.S. v. AT&T: Dish Executive Testifies Time Warner Merger Could Doom Skinny Bundles: As the U.S. government continues its attempt to halt the $85 billion merger between AT&T and Time Warner, the trial is moving into its Beautiful Mind stage. That would be the 2001 Oscar-winning film about mathematician John Nash, whose pioneering work exploring game theory earned him a Nobel Prize. The movie was specifically referenced during opening statements last week because the government's expert has used Nash's models to predict how the merger would mean higher prices for consumers. Before the expert testifies, though, the government called Dish programming executive Warren Schlichting to the witness stand to showcase a real-world application of Nash’s bargaining theories. Schlichting became the first witness during the second week of trial, but he didn't begin his testimony until after lunch thanks to some unexpected morning drama. The hiccup occurred after Dish's lawyers shared transcripts of the opening statements with Schlichting. This potential taint had U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon considering striking him as a witness. Ultimately, though, Schlichting was allowed to speak at trial and give his viewpoint that the merger could spell doom for Dish and ? skinny bundles" of television programming. Schlichting spoke how there were a lot of "unsettled issues" in the last negotiation — and how Dish has been single-minded about limiting the number of networks on its Sling service. This skinny bundle has attracted 2.2 million subscribers to date, but Schlichting expresses concern about what's going to happen if Time Warner — followed perhaps by NBC, Fox and Disney demanding the same — insist Sling accept the lesser channels. For instance, Dish might want TBS, TNT, and CNN…but not, Turner Classic Movies, Adult Swim, Boomerang and TruTV.
-GSMA: U.S. will ‘pioneer’ 5G, boast 190 million connections by 2025: International mobile network trade organization GSMA forecasts that the United States will be a “pioneer market” for 5G wireless technology, thanks to both an early start in commercializing 5G and solid projected growth through 2025. According to a comprehensive new GSMA report published today, the U.S. will have 100 million 5G connections by 2023 and 190 million by 2025 — enough to continuously lead the world in percentage of 5G connections. One of the key reasons GSMA projects strong U.S. 5G adoption is its huge base of early adopters: 58 percent of the total smartphone user base, a solid majority constituting just the initial addressable market for 5G services. Europe is close behind the U.S. with 46 percent as early adopters, while the combined Middle East and North Africa region is third with 34 percent early adopters. By contrast, less than 15 percent of customers in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia are early adopters, making 5G more challenging to bring to those markets. Not surprisingly, GSMA predicts that high-resolution video, AR, and VR will be some of the earliest drivers of 5G demand. The organization notes that Apple is already selling the Apple TV 4K with HDR support, demanding extra data bandwidth, while partner Foxconn is working on “8K + 5G” displays designed to display 8K video using 5G wireless connections. Similarly, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and all four major carriers are all working on either VR or AR projects, and each new visual technology is expected to benefit from 5G’s high speeds and low latency. U.S. revenues from 5G are expected to come substantially from enterprise customers, with consumers, online apps, and government as smaller drivers. GSMA predicts that 4G connections will continue to be viable through 2025, at which point 5G connections will overtake 4G for the first time. However, legacy 2G, 3G, and 4G services will all show noticeable declines in popularity starting in 2019.
https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/26/gsma-u-s-will-pioneer-5g-boast-190-million-connections-by-2025/
-Netflix and YouTube streaming video is about to get a lot faster: Tech’s biggest companies -- including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Cisco and Netflix -- have finished the first version of video compression technology called AV1, and now they're ready to use it to speed up your streaming video. AV1 can match the quality of the prevailing video compression technologies, HEVC and VP9, using 30 percent to 40 percent less network capacity, said Gabe Frost, director of the Alliance for Open Media, which developed the technology. Although some technologies have a hard time escaping the labs, AV1 isn’t one of them: It'll soon deliver video from YouTube, Amazon Prime, Netflix and Facebook as the technology spreads to laptops and phones. Compression is key to streaming video. With good compression, you can avoid blocky or blurry artifacts, shorten waiting times for video to start, pare back your network usage and sometimes upgrade to higher-resolution video, like 4K, without having to upgrade your broadband connection. But AV1 could have another big effect, too: leaving behind a video patent system that arguably has held back the speed boosts that HEVC could have delivered. Patent royalty requirements have limited the spread of HEVC, but AV1 is open-source software and costs nothing to use. ? I think free always wins," said Jon Peddie, analyst at Jon Peddie Research. AV1 could be used in any sort of video connection your computer or smartphone can make -- streaming movies, video chat, screen sharing and video game streaming. It could also help usher in newer technologies, like high-resolution 4K video and virtual reality headsets that need high resolution and minimal delays decoding video sent over a network.
-How an L.A. Hospital Is Using Virtual Reality to Prep Staff for High-Stress Scenarios: I‘m the attending physician in a pediatric trauma room, and my patient, a girl who looks to be about 12, is going into anaphylactic shock. “Do something,” her mother screams. I check the girl’s breathing (sounds funny); I check her pulse (seems OK, but who knows?). To my right is a red cart loaded with assorted medications. A voice behind me tells me to give her a dose of epinephrine. “Is she dying?” I ask. I’m not experiencing some sort of medically themed night terror, nor am I the planet’s worst doctor. I’m not even a physician. I’m in the Culver City offices of BioflightVR, testing a virtual reality simulation that Children’s Hospital Los Angeles relies on to help train doctors. Medical centers around the country are beginning to use the technology for a wide range of applications, from prepping physicians for rare and complicated surgeries (separating conjoined twins, removing brain tumors) to interpreting MRI scans to assisting in the rehab of stroke victims (regaining motor function through VR is just as effective as standard physical therapy but infinitely less boring). Patients are also using it to reduce pain (from backaches to severe abdominal pain), stop smoking and overeating, and combat the stress of being in a hospital in the first place. In my case, the effect is the opposite: The ordeal has made my heart race and my palms sweat, but that’s sort of the point, says company president and CEO Randy Osborn, who’s talking me through the simulation (“You win,” he laughs after guiding me to the right meds to save our patient). Unlike medical training with mannequins—the method of choice to practice for pediatric emergencies of this sort—the immersive nature of VR intensifies the experience. Even if the animation isn’t always Pixar-worthy, you’re pulled into the scene, owing to what designers call “psychological fidelity.” They want medical residents to feel stress, but not so much that it’s incapacitating. “There’s kind of a sweet spot,” says Osborn. The sim debuted at Children’s in 2016 and marks the first time VR has been used to train doctors in pediatric medical resuscitation. Attending physicians Todd Chang and Joshua Sherman helped create and design the sim, and according to them, resuscitation is one of the crucial “low frequency, high stakes” events—they rarely happen, but when they do, there’s a lot on the line—in pediatric medicine. Teaching new doctors how to deal with them is an ongoing problem. “Everything happens so fast, and everything’s so time sensitive,” says Chang. “You can’t just bring a medical student along and sit down and explain what’s going on.”
https://www.lamag.com/mag-features/childrens-hospital-los-angeles-vr/
-FCC approves SpaceX plan for 4,425-satellite broadband network: SpaceX has a green light from the FCC to launch a network of thousands of satellites blanketing the globe with broadband. And you won’t have too long to wait — on a cosmic scale, anyway. Part of the agreement is that SpaceX launch half of its proposed satellites within six years. The approval of SpaceX’s application was not seriously in doubt after last month’s memo from FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who was excited at the prospect of the first U.S.-based company being authorized to launch a constellation like this. “I have asked my colleagues to join me in supporting this application and moving to unleash the power of satellite constellations to provide high-speed Internet to rural Americans,” he wrote at the time. He really is pushing that “digital divide” thing. Not that Elon Musk disagrees. The company has already launched test versions of the satellites, but the full constellation will need to go out more than two at a time. SpaceX eventually plans to launch 12,000 of the things, but this authorization is for the high-altitude group of 4,425; a separate authorization is necessary for the remaining number, since they’ll be operating at a different altitude and radio frequency.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/29/fcc-approves-spacex-plan-for-4425-satellite-broadband-network/