durosas

Facebook opened its first volley in the Content Wars (see: Apple vs Amazon vs Netflix vs AT&T/TimeWarner vs Comcast vs Disney vs FOX vs Verizon/Oath). Okay, it wasn’t THAT big of a shot in its bid to broadcast the Indian Premier League (Indian cricket matches) which it lost out to Rupert Murdoch’s Star. What’s interesting to note is that Facebook was looking at live content. Live content, the rule-of-thumb goes, is highly unskippable. Meaning that Consumers will watch the ads for fear of missing something that occurs. Additionally, the content is something that is preferred to be watched in that moment (no one likes to really see a replay of a game or have to avoid ESPN so as not to see the score of a game that they recorded). It also can be cheaper than building content for sitcoms or movies. Could their bid have been a primer for moving in on NFL broadcast rights that come up next year when Verizon’s mobile rights expire?

In the ever-evolving content vs. pipes vs. tech battle Disney has fired a shot heard ‘round the world by announcing that it will pull all of its content from Netflix. On one side I think, it’s about time! Disney obviously has finally seen the light that Netflix is stealing a page from Amazon’s early playbook by establishing a direct link to the end user by inserting itself between the seller and the buyer. The seller in the Amazon scenario were companies like Toys "R" Us, Borders Books and Target (to name a few) turned over management of their eCommerce platforms to Amazon. But not only did they turn it over management but the actual Consumer experience was Amazon! So Amazon, by default, was who consumers felt they were actually shopping from and we all know how that ended for Borders and many other brick & mortar stores. So rather than letting Netflix Amazon them Disney decides to launch a rival streaming service (kinda late to the game if you ask me. CBS launched one ba...