Providing Market Intelligence for 40 Years

In The News

Joining a crowded market, NBCUniversal launches $4-a-month online comedy service in January

NBCUniversal's latest effort to target millennials is coming: An online video service focused on comedy that costs $4 a month.

The service, Seeso, will have original content and NBC shows like "30 Rock" and "The Office," ''Saturday Night Live," standup and the "Monty Python" movies. It will be available for most people in January.

NBCUniversal and its owner, cable and Internet giant Comcast, have been trying different ways to get young people's attention as live TV viewing declines. If Seeso had been born 15 years ago, it would have launched as a cable channel, said Evan Shapiro, Executive Vice President of NBCUniversal Digital Enterprises. But online viewing today is "clearly part of the mainstream," and to reach comedy nerds, Comcast is launching Seeso as an online subscription service.

Comcast has also launched a YouTube-like video service, Watchable; is trying out an Internet-based basic cable TV alternative that doesn't require a cable box in some markets; and invested in new media outlets like BuzzFeed and Vox.

But Seeso will have to compete for attention in a crowded market.

"In the past year we keep seeing more and more services coming up, more niche services," said Glenn Hower, an analyst with market research firm Parks Associates.

From the article "Joining a crowded market, NBCUniversal launches $4-a-month online comedy service in January" by Tali Arbel.

Previously In The News

Security Trumps Ease-Of-Use For Smart-Home Consumers As Market Reaches Critical Mass

Conducted through OnePoll, the survey canvassed 1,200 respondents in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Japan on the IoT devices they had in their home and security measures people take (or fail t...

US FCC Not To Investigate Netflix Throttling Of Some Mobile Consumers

That dichotomy could also spill into an ongoing debate in Washington over how strictly to regulate the broadband companies over customer privacy. "This is outside the Open Internet", Wheeler said. Wel...

Facebook Says, Unlike Netflix, It Does Not Degrade Its Video For Mobile

More than half of all US households with broadband subscribe to Netflix, according to Parks Associates. "I predicted this would occur sooner or later", he continued, noting that subjecting all Inte...

Tablets Rise Amid Stark Desktop Decline

According to Parks, only 6 per cent of US broadband households rely on desktops exclusively, with an additional 6 per cent of households using only a combination of desktops and tablets. “Desktop a...