On the heels of HBO’s standalone streaming service announcement, premium cable nets are looking for ways to fall in line with OTT options and subscription services in the U.S. and abroad.
Chris Albrecht, CEO of Starz, told investors on the company’s third-quarter earnings call Thursday that OTT “is a tide that has to turn. I don’t think it cannibalizes the existing business. It is a way to innovate and create real value.” Albrecht says that HBO’s plans have made other premium cablers adapt, finding alternate distribution models, like Starz’s upcoming international SVOD plan, for example.
The SVOD service would launch in international territories, possibly next year, with Starz originals and licensed TV and movie brands.
He added that he is looking at domestic options as well, along with more marketing options that no longer rely on the TV bundle as we know it today, targeting homes without premium channels and often without cable bundles at all.
Starz, which became a publicly traded company just last year, has been prioritizing original programming for 2014-15, with some of its early series performing well for the channel. Novel adaptation Outlander and LeBron James’ Survivor’s Remorse were both helped along by online previews and showed an uptick in female and African-American viewers, two audience segments Albrecht is focusing on for the coming seasons.
Read more at Variety.
Brief Take: With HBO, Starz and other premium nets onboard, we may see a very different OTT world for cable as early as next year.
[Image courtesy of Starz]
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