Bridgerton sets new Netflix record with 82 million viewers

NEW YORK - Bridgerton has become Netflix's most popular new series, with more than 82 million households tuning in to watch the period drama, the streaming service has announced.

The show reached number 1 in 83 countries including the United States, Britain, Brazil, France, India and South Africa, Netflix said in a statement Wednesday.

"I'm so proud of the incredible team behind this show! And thank you guys for loving it," 25-year-old actor, Phoebe Dynevor, who plays Daphne Bridgerton, wrote on Instagram.

Netflix said a record 82 million households watched the show in its first 28 days online, describing it as its "biggest series ever."

The previous record was 76 million views over a 4-week period for "The Witcher."

The figures are not subject to third party verification, unlike audience measurements for broadcast television.

Bridgerton has made the top 10 in every country except Japan, the company added.

The drama, set in early 1800s London, centers on the well-to-do Bridgerton family as it tries to navigate Regency-era high society in England. 

The show, with its outlandish costumes and racy sex scenes, has been lauded for casting Black actors in period drama roles that are traditionally played by white actors.

"It's designed to be more lavish, sexier and funnier than the standard period drama -- and that's what so surprised and delighted our members," said Netflix vice president of original series, Jinny Howe.

Bridgerton is produced by acclaimed American producer Shonda Rhimes and is based on a series of romance novels by Julia Quinn.

It has been commissioned for a second series.

Agence France-Presse

Netflix adds 15.8 million customers during quarantine

Netflix Inc on Tuesday reported a surge in new sign-ups as audiences stayed in their homes to help fight the novel coronavirus and binged on series such as "Tiger King," but the company predicted a weaker second half of the year if quarantine orders are lifted.

The world's largest streaming service gained 15.8 million paying customers in the first three months of the year, bringing its global total to 182.9 million at the end of March. That nearly doubled the average Wall Street expectation of nearly 8 million, according to FactSet.

The company warned, however, that it expected fewer new customers from July to December compared with a year earlier. Many people who would have joined then are likely to have already signed up, executives said.

"We expect viewing to decline and membership growth to decelerate as home confinement ends," Netflix said in a letter to shareholders.

Shares of Netflix rose 1.2% to $439 in after-hours trading.

The company is among the few businesses to benefit from government orders imposed in March to keep people in isolation amid the coronavirus threat. While the S&P 500 Index has fallen 19% from its Feb. 19 record high, Netflix has gained 11% during the same period.

Netflix also issued a bullish forecast that it would add 7.5 million new customers for the current quarter, which ends in June, though the company said it was "mostly guesswork" given uncertainty over when stay-at-home orders might be lifted. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected 3.8 million.

For the just-ended quarter, Netflix's earnings per share fell short of analyst expectations. The company posted diluted earnings per share of $1.57, below the $1.65 consensus, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Total revenue rose to $5.77 billion from $4.52 billion. Analysts on average had expected $5.76 billion.

Appreciation of the US dollar, due partially to the coronavirus crisis, dragged on international revenue, the company said.

In the quarter, Netflix true-crime documentary "Tiger King" about a colorful zookeeper became a cultural sensation. It also released reality show "Love is Blind" and a new season of Spanish-language thriller "Money Heist."

As streaming video has grown in the United States, the market has become more competitive with the debut of Walt Disney Co's Disney+ and upcoming rivals. That has pushed Netflix to look for growth overseas.

The company's biggest expansion from January through March came from Europe, where it added 4.4 million new customers.

The most popular Netflix plan in the United States costs $13, nearly double the $7-per-month cost for Disney+.

-reuters-

Apple Music expands to 52 new countries in global services push

SAN FRANCISCO -- Apple Music is being expanded to 52 additional countries and territories in a push to broaden service revenue streams for the iPhone maker, the company said Tuesday.

The move, part of the biggest expansion of Apple services in a decade, brings Apple Music to a total of 167 markets, including 25 new African countries added Tuesday. 

Costs will range from as low as $3 to $11 monthly, with a 6-month free trial period in the new countries.

The expansion ramps up the global presence of Apple Music, which has some 60 million subscribers, in its duel against market leader Spotify, which has more than 120 million paid users but is available in fewer markets around the world.

Apple at the same time announced an expansion to 20 new markets of its other services, including its App Store, the Apple Arcade gaming service, Apple Podcasts and iCloud.

With the rollout, Apple services will be available in 175 countries around the world. 

Until now, Apple customers in parts of the world had access to some free apps and services for their devices without an opportunity for paid subscriptions.

Music and other services will be available with interfaces in at least 40 languages supported by Apple.

MORE SERVICES FEWER IPHONES 

The California tech giant has been shifting its focus away from the iPhone -- the longtime revenue and profit leader for the company -- to what is considered a steadier financial stream in digital content and services including music, digital payments and apps.

Amid a softer smartphone market, Apple's iPhone accounts for only around half of its revenues, while new services and accessories are showing gains.

"We're delighted to bring many of Apple's most beloved services to users in more countries than ever before," said Oliver Schusser, Apple's vice president for music and international content.

"We hope our customers can discover their new favorite apps, games, music and podcasts as we continue to celebrate the world's best creators, artists and developers."

Apple's iCloud and other services were being expanded to eight additional African countries, two in the Asia-Pacific region, five in Europe, two in the Middle East and three in Oceania.


Apple has been working for some time on the expansion, but the move comes as consumers around the world are facing lockdowns and spending more time on their devices.

Apple Music holds about 19 percent of the global music streaming market, compared with 35 percent for Spotify and 15 percent for Amazon, according to Counterpoint Research.

The streaming music service has some 60 million songs and offers curated playlists along with a Beats 1 radio station.

Apple Podcasts has more than one million shows in over 100 languages. Apple's iCloud service is free but allows users to upgrade for extra storage.

The Arcade gaming service launched last year includes ad-free original titles designed for Apple devices.

Last week, Apple unveiled a new entry-level iPhone, aiming to appeal to consumers facing a suddenly bleak economic backdrop.

The updated iPhone SE will start at $399, or less than half the price of its flagship devices.

While the iPhone had been in the works for months, analysts said the launch appeared to be well-timed amid a pandemic-induced economic slump that has hammered the smartphone market and hit consumer sentiment.

Agence France-Presse

Disney+ crosses 50M paid subscribers mark globally

Walt Disney Co said on Wednesday Disney+ has garnered over 50 million paid users globally, with 8 million of them coming from India where the streaming service was launched last week.

The service was rolled out in eight European countries, including the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria and Switzerland, in the last two weeks, the company said. It was launched in the United States in November.

Disney+ is available in India in conjunction with the Hotstar streaming platform. 

-Reuters-

iWant, YouTube, iFlix to cut streaming traffic while Luzon on coronavirus lockdown: NTC

MANILA - Streaming sites YouTube, iFlix and ABS-CBN’s iWant have agreed to cut down its streaming traffic to decongest telecommunication networks during the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown when people are staying at home, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) said Saturday.

In a statement, NTC said the streaming sites “heeded their call” to manage streaming bitrate, given the increasing Internet demand for school, office, and work purposes amid a lockdown which encourages work from home and online educational arrangements.

“This means more bandwidth will be freed up to case data congestion due to work from home arrangements as well as increased private and education demands during the enhanced community quarantine,” NTC said.

NTC said Google, the parent company of YouTube, was “doing as much as it can to minimize stress on systems around the world” as people remain confined to their homes in the global pandemic.

YouTube is poised to shift from its High Definition setting to Standard Definition Setting in both mobile or broadband connection over the next few days, NTC added.

Southeast Asian streaming site iFlix had earlier done so by setting streaming caps in its services.

“iFlix will continuously balance bandwidth usage to use as little data as possible while optimizing resolution for its users,” NTC said.

ABS-CBN network’s streaming site, on the other hand, “has already reduced its streaming bitrate by 33 percent” since March 27, NTC noted.

Netflix was the first to announce it would reduce streaming traffic amid the coronavirus lockdown.

Luzon, home to more than 50 million people, is on lockdown until April 12. Under this enhanced community quarantine, people are required to stay at home and public transport, school and work, save for frontline and basic services, are suspended.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Want to binge watch? New streaming TV services will make you wait

LOS ANGELES - In 2013, Netflix Inc shook up television by delivering 13 episodes of "House of Cards" in one batch, a move that helped popularize streaming video and fueled a culture of binge watching.

But Apple Inc, Walt Disney Co and AT&T Inc are largely rejecting that path as they prepare their own efforts to hook the online audiences that embraced Netflix.

Executives at AT&T's forthcoming HBO Max, a streaming service that will be unveiled to investors on Tuesday, plan to debut one new episode of its original series per week, Robert Greenblatt, chairman of WarnerMedia Entertainment and the company's direct-to-consumer business, told Reuters. That mirrors the traditional TV pattern.

"We like the idea that people watch weekly and look forward to the next episode and talk about it," Greenblatt said. "Newspapers write about the storylines. There is a sense of a shared experience."

Creating buzz around a new series will be crucial in the coming weeks and months as several companies jockey to lure customers and keep them paying a monthly fee over the long term.

HBO Max may make some exceptions, according to a source familiar with the company's strategy, by putting out a few episodes simultaneously to stoke initial interest.

Apple, meanwhile, will debut its subscription video service, Apple TV+, on Friday. For dramas "The Morning Show" and "See," and most other Apple series, the company will drop three episodes at the same time, followed by one per week.

The family-friendly Disney+ will unveil episodes weekly for new series including "The Mandalorian," the first live-action TV show set in the "Star Wars" universe. Disney+ will launch on Nov. 12.

'WAIT AND EXPERIENCE'

"Mandalorian" star Pedro Pascal said he believes the once-a-week approach will make watching the show "more romantic and more classic."

"Basically you get to sort of wait and experience more collectively, and it just makes it more event television, which it deserves to be," Pascal said.

"A little courtship never hurt anyone," added co-star Gina Carano.

But to some viewers, going a week after a dramatic cliffhanger "seems like it's old school," said Brett Sappington, principal analyst at Parks Associates.

"For some consumers, that can be frustrating," he said. "Expectations are just different today."

While it started among younger viewers, binge viewing of several episodes is now common among all age groups, Sappington said.

It also has been adopted by audiences around the world.

In surveys by Ampere Analysis, 69 percent of people in the United States said they frequently watch several episodes of the same TV show back to back. The percentage was 66 percent in Britain, 65 percent in France and 46 percent in Germany.

SPIKING AT DEBUT

Various release strategies can generate hits, according to data from Parrot Analytics, which measures global demand for programming. It found interest in binge-able series generally spikes when they debut and then tapers off, while shows released weekly see interest build over time. Both level off around 10 to 12 weeks.

HBO's "Euphoria," for example, released its first installment in June at the same time that Netflix dropped the entire season of "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance."

Global demand for "Dark Crystal" peaked in the first week after it premiered, while "Euphoria" saw steady increases after each episode came out, according to Parrot Analytics. It reached its highest point around the episode eight finale.

Both shows peaked with roughly 18 million daily "demand expressions," a combination of viewership, social media mentions and online research about the shows.

Even Netflix is experimenting with intervals between episodes. For reality competition "Rhythm + Flow," the company released four installments at first, three more a week later, and the final three a week after that.

Around the world, Netflix distributes roughly 35 shows on a once-a-week basis, Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said in October during the company's earnings webcast. While it does not release audience figures for most of its programming, Sarandos said Netflix customers preferred getting all episodes together.

"We actually get more viewing and cumulatively more social media buzz, more tweets, more activity on social media, around these shows for the all-at-once model," Sarandos said. 

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Additional reporting by Jane Ross in West Hollywood, California; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Cynthia Osterman)

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Netflix shares jump as subscribers grow ahead of Disney, Apple attack

Netflix Inc added slightly more paying subscribers than Wall Street expected in the third quarter, a relief to investors who had worried the company might fall short just as Disney and Apple prepare to ramp up the streaming video wars.

The results for July through September represented a rebound from the previous quarter when Netflix lost U.S. streaming customers for the first time in eight years and missed targets for overseas subscribers. Shares of Netflix rose 9.2% in after-hours trading on Wednesday to $312.69.

That performance, combined with concerns about new competitors, had weighed on Netflix shares, which had fallen 21% from the last earnings report through regular trading on Wednesday.

For the third quarter, Netflix was boosted by new seasons of shows such as "Stranger Things" and "13 Reasons Why." The company added 6.77 million paid customers around the globe, topping the nearly 6.7 million average expectation of analysts, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Netflix said it was on track to achieve full-year operating margins of 13% and was targeting another 300 basis point expansion in 2020.

Its total subscriber count topped 158 million.

Still, the company faces challenges.

"Netflix results were good enough that they assuaged concerns about price sensitivity and penetration levels in the domestic markets," said Fitch director Patrice Cucinello. "A caveat is that competition hasn’t hit yet."

The company projected it would pick up 7.6 million customers in the last three months of 2019. Analysts had expected a forecast of 9.4 million. The company will release a new installment of "The Crown" and Martin Scorsese film "The Irishman" during that time.

But it will face new competition starting in November from Disney+, a streaming service from Walt Disney Co that will be stocked with movies and TV shows from Disney's popular Marvel, "Star Wars," animation and other properties.

Apple Inc also will debut a much smaller streaming video service with original programming in November. AT&T Inc's HBO Max, and a new offering from Comcast Corp, are expected to enter the market next year.

Netflix argued that the new services would increase interest in the streaming video market broadly.

"In our view, the likely outcome from the launch of these new services will be to accelerate the shift from linear TV to on demand consumption of entertainment," the company wrote in a letter to investors.

Netflix acknowledged, however, that it was still taking a hit from price increases earlier this year in the United States. "Retention has not yet fully returned on a sustained basis to pre-price-change levels, which has led to slower U.S. membership growth," it said.

The most popular Netflix plan in the United States costs $13, nearly double the $7-per-month cost for Disney+. Apple TV+ will debut at $5 per month.

Netflix said its additional revenue would allow it to continue to invest "to further strengthen our value proposition."

For the third quarter, Netflix's net income rose to $665 million, or $1.47 per share, from $403 million, or 89 cents per share, a year earlier. That topped Wall Street's concensus target of $1.04.

Total revenue rose to $5.25 billion from about $4 billion. Analysts on average had expected $5.52 billion.

The debt that Netflix has amassed has sparked concern among some investors. The company said in the earnings report that it expected free cash flow to improve in 2020 and annually beyond that. In the meantime, Netflix will continue to tap the high-yield market as needed, it said.

In the next earnings report, Netflix will begin disclosing revenue and membership by regions - Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East/Africa, Latin America and the United States, the company said.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

YouTube to launch new music streaming service on May 22

Google's YouTube said on Wednesday it will launch a new music 
streaming service, YouTube Music, next week and unveil soon a premium service that will charge more for its original shows.

YouTube Music, which will be launched on May 22, comes with extra features like personalized playlists based on individual's YouTube history and other usage patterns, YouTube, owned by Alphabet Inc's Google, said.



The video streaming company said it will also launch YouTube Premium, the revamped YouTube Red subscription service.

The new ad-supported version of YouTube Music will be available for free, while YouTube Music Premium, a paid membership without advertisements, will be available at $9.99 a month, YouTube said in a blog post.

 

YouTube plans to charge $2 more for its premium service, as it includes YouTube Music service along with its original shows. YouTube Premium will be charged at $11.99 for all new members, the company said.

"YouTube Premium includes ad-free, background and offline across all of YouTube, as well as access to all YouTube Originals including Cobra Kai, Step Up: High Water and Youth & Consequences," YouTube said.

For existing YouTube Red members, the current price will continue for YouTube Premium, it said.

YouTube Music will be launched in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South Korea on Tuesday. It will be expanded to some other countries in the following weeks.

Recode earlier reported the launch plan. 

-reuters-

AT&T unveils DirecTV Now streaming service ahead of Nov. 30 launch

NEW YORK - AT&T Inc., the largest US TV provider, took the wraps off its new DirecTV Now streaming service on Monday, two days before it enters the online video service market to win subscribers who shun pay-television subscriptions.

DirecTV Now will launch at prices ranging from $35 a month for over 60 channels to $70 for over 120 channels, AT&T said. For a limited time, more than 100 channels will be available for $35, the company said.

AT&T announced the subscription video service in March, promising on-demand and live programming from many networks over the Internet, similar to Sling TV and PlayStation Vue. But details on the service had been limited.

AT&T is counting on the mobile video market for new revenue as most US consumers already have wireless service and further growth is limited. AT&T acquired DirecTV for $48.5 billion last year, making it the largest US pay-TV operator with 25.3 million video subscribers, in an effort to diversify into the media and entertainment business.

AT&T also plans to buy Time Warner Inc. for $85.4 billion to gain control of premium content from networks such as HBO, as online video competition is expected to heat up.

"It is really important to understand that this is the foundation for how we are going to do things in the future," John Stankey, chief executive of AT&T's entertainment group, said at a media event in New York.

DirecTV Now will help AT&T target a new market segment, including consumers who cannot pass credit checks for pay-TV subscriptions and those who shun pricey pay-TV connections, Stankey said.

DirecTV Now content will include live and on-demand video from Walt Disney Co., Twenty-First Century fox, Viacom Inc. and Scripps Networks Interactive, AT&T has said. The company is actively working to bring CBS Corp. programming to its service, executives said on Monday.

source: news.abs-cbn.com