Category Archive: Articles

Sky and 21st Century Fox agree £18.5bn takeover deal

Categories:

Articles, TV industry

December 15, 2016

Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox will pay £11.7bn for the 61% stake it does not already own.

Sky shareholders will receive £10.75 in cash for each share, valuing the entire company at £18.5bn.

The deal comes amid concerns that Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the Sun and the Times newspapers, will have excessive influence over UK media.

Karen Bradley, the Culture Secretary, will have 10 days to decide whether the Fox bid raises public interest concerns – in this case media plurality. She has the power to ask Ofcom, the media watchdog, to examine the deal.

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Tom Watson, shadow culture secretary, urged Ms Bradley to refer the deal to Ofcom: “When she stood on the steps of Downing Street this summer, the prime minister said to the people of this country that ‘when we take the big calls, we’ll think not of the powerful, but you’.

“This is a big call. The government needs to decide whose side it’s on.”

A number of Sky shareholders, including Standard Life Investments and Jupiter Asset Management, have questioned the independence of the non-executive directors and their ability to extract a higher price since a possible bid was announced last Friday.

Richard Marwood, senior fund manager at Royal London Asset Management, owner of a 0.36% stake in Sky, urged Sky’s board to share more information on the independent financial advice that they based their agreement with Fox on.

“Such disclosure would help shareholders assess the fairness of the offer and give greater confidence in the independence of the committee in the bid process,” he said.

James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s son, is both chairman of Sky and chief executive of Fox.

Sky deputy chairman Martin Gilbert, who is also chief executive of Aberdeen Asset Management, which owns a 0.39% stake in the broadcaster, said: “[We] believe 21st Century Fox’s offer at a 40 per cent premium to the undisturbed share price will accelerate and de-risk the delivery of future value for all Sky shareholders. As a result, the independent committee unanimously agreed that we have a proposal that we can put to Sky shareholders and recommend.”

21st Century Fox plans to buy the remaining stake in Sky through a scheme of arrangement, which means it needs the approval of investors holding 75% of the shares.

Sky has 22 million customers in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany and Austria.

In 2011, Rupert Murdoch abandoned a bid to take full control of Sky in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.

 

source: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38326530

 

Ericsson report: Mobile video viewing up over 200 hours a year since 2012

Categories:

Articles, Over-The-Top TV, videomag

November 8, 2016

Ericsson launched the seventh edition of its annual ConsumerLab TV & Media Report, which details the enormous and rapid shift in TV and video viewing behavior towards mobility. The report also shows that while both mobile video and on-demand TV viewing have soared over the past seven years, content discovery remains a huge frustration for consumers.

Continued shift to mobile:

Average viewing times on mobile devices has grown by more than 200 hours a year since 2012, driving up overall TV and video viewing by an additional 1.5 hours a week. The surge in mobile viewing is offset with a decline in fixed screen viewing of 2.5 hours a week, however the appetite for TV and video is not waning.

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  • Weekly share of time spent watching TV and video on mobile devices has grown by 85 percent (2010-2016); on fixed screens it has gone down by 14 percent over the same period
  • 40 percent of consumers globally are ‘very interested’ in a mobile data plan that includes unrestricted video streaming
  • In the US, 20 percent of mobile viewing is paid-for content using services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime

Content discovery – how hard can it be?

A major issue, highlighted by the report, is low consumer satisfaction when trying to find something to watch. 44 percent of US consumers say they can’t find anything to watch on linear TV on a daily basis, an increase of 22 percent compared with last year (36 percent). In contrast, US consumers spend 45 percent more time choosing what to watch on VOD services than linear TV.

Paradoxically, 63 percent of consumers claim that they are very satisfied with content discovery when it comes to their VOD service, while only 51 percent say the same for linear TV. The findings suggest that although the VOD discovery process is more time consuming than with linear broadcast TV, consumers rate it as less frustrating, as it implicitly promises the opportunity to find something they want to watch, when they want to watch it.

Popularity of on-demand services soars:

The total viewing time of on-demand content – such as streamed TV series, movies and other TV programs – has increased 50 percent since 2010. Strong indicators of this growing engagement and satisfaction with VOD services include:

  • Consumers continue to embrace binge watching; 37 percent watch two or more episodes of the same show in a row on a weekly basis, more than a fifth say they do this daily
  • Consumer spending on VOD services in the US has increased by over 60 percent since 2012, from $13 to $20 per month
  • 40 percent of respondents say they watch YouTube daily; a substantial 10 percent of consumers say they watch YouTube for more than three hours a day

Zeynep Ahmet, Senior Advisor, Ericsson ConsumerLab says: “Based on our extensive research, we can see consumers increasingly ask for seamless access to high quality TV and video content, across services and devices. For consumers in general, and millennials in particular, being able to watch on the smartphone is key. Consumers not only want the shared, social broadcast TV experience, they also expect the flexibility of an à la carte on-demand media offering. Today’s experience is multifaceted and consumers want to create their own worlds of compelling, personalized content.”

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE:

Ericsson ConsumerLab TV & Media Report 2016 (HTML and PDF versions)

http://www.ericsson.com/ 
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Source: www.videomag.eu

@videomageu

Vimeo planning SVoD service

Categories:

Articles, Over-The-Top TV

November 7, 2016

Online video platform Vimeo has confirmed plans to launch a subscription service.

“Vimeo has the once-in-a-generation opportunity to, following in Netflix’s footsteps, deliver compelling subscription viewing experiences for consumers in the market for pay TV,” said IAC CEO and interim Vimeo CEO Joey Levin in a letter to its investors. He continued, “I believe we can do so at a fraction of the cost of other major competitors by virtue of the audience and content benefits conferred upon Vimeo through our existing marketplace.”

Vimeo has stated that it plans on strategically funding content, but it also focuses its efforts and leverage on its community of filmmakers. The platform said it will also “spend on programming” from third parties.

The ultimate goal, Levin added, is for Vimeo to “drive millions of subscriptions and transactions for our creators while also growing a proprietary subscriber base with millions of consumers directly.”

Previously Vimeo has shunned ads and operated as a ‘software as a service’ business, offering three payment plans – Vimeo Plus, Vimeo PRO and Vimeo Business – for video creators, filmmakers, and businesses using the site.

Introducing a subscription offering would allow Vimeo to boost revenues while tapping into the site’s existing community and large archive of content.

http://www.vimeo.com

Source: http://advanced-television.com

Technicolor PostWorks creates colour for Café Society

Categories:

Articles, Post Production, videomag

August 17, 2016

Technicolor PostWorks New York completed the finishing on Café Society, Woody Allen’s first digital motion picture as a director, which was captured by legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. The film opened the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and was released in the United States last month.

Set in the 1930s, the story charts the rise of the naïve young Bobby Dorfman (played by Jesse Eisenberg) from his humble origins in the Bronx before seeking fame in Hollywood and returning to New York in triumph. Storaro, working with senior colourist Anthony Raffaele, created looks that reflected the major locations, each in need of a distinctive visual style, and the development of the main character as he navigates a world of dreams and artifice.

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“When Woody Allen asked me to do Café Society, he had never done a digital capture before, but I knew that I had to jump completely into this new chance we had,” said Vittorio Storaro. “I wanted to see images on set that would be very close to the final result and afterwards on dailies even closer, almost 90% of that way to what we would see at the end – Anthony Raffaele with Baselight was able to offer that.”

Storaro wanted to keep a 16-bit 4K workflow throughout. Due to his previous experience with Baselight – on Majid Majidi’s Muhammad: The Messenger of God – and its ability to work in multiple new formats, Storaro was also insistent that Baselight was the ideal system for both the dailies and DI. The project was shot on Sony F55 and F65 cameras and graded using the ACES standard, with Baselight converting to XYZ to retain quality and to allow high dynamic range output to all the deliverables.

“A real plus of ACES is that you can achieve every colour and density you could ever want,” said colourist Raffaele. “Vittorio always wants a crisp black level. But with digital projection you do not get the same quality black level as you do with print. The full support for ACES in Baselight enabled us to emulate film.”

Because Storaro insisted on the same colourist for dailies and finishing, Raffaele formed a close working relationship with on-set DIT Simone d’Archangelo, exchanging files and notes every day to ensure that what was seen on set was precisely what left the colour suite.

Raffaele made extensive use of Baselight’s layer functionality, including emulating the original Technicolor three-strip process and colour intensity to create strong key looks, identifying each location.

“The Bronx was supposed to be a softer palette. It was poor, lower toned, with muted contrast,” Raffaele explained.  “Los Angeles was more vibrant, new, golden with luminous glow, reflecting the fact that our main character is in a more uplifted place. The New York look was a merging of the two, bringing something back from LA, with a fresher look. Bobby Dorfman has changed his life and so the image is a cleaner colour palette, with more contrasts.”

He used a large part of the grading arsenal of Baselight, such as the DFuse tool to soften out skin, particularly to make the main female characters look more radiant and angelic. The Baselight layering tools helped him complete simple VFX jobs too, such as adding lights to a dawn scene and matting out unwanted objects.

Raffaele also pointed to Baselight’s ability to switch colour spaces readily, allowing him to create the final grade in HDR on HD and immediately apply it to the 4K raw footage inside ACES, then roll out the deliverables to multiple colour spaces.

“Anthony Raffaele is a wonderful colourist. He was with us from New York to Los Angeles, from the beginning to the end,” said Storaro. “That’s something I’m used to doing in Italy and I really love it, to have the same colourist doing dailies and doing the DI as well, following the movie through its entire journey.”

Storaro had a clear vision of the complete movie, including references to classical painters and photographers, and he also had a very strong understanding of the technologies involved to achieve what he wanted. He went through the exact same process as shooting in celluloid.

“Vittorio is an absolute perfectionist. He’s extremely technical and a great storyteller. He is also the most collaborative cinematographer I’ve ever worked with,” added Raffaele. “Plus he insisted on a Baselight grade – and that day the stars aligned for me.”

http://www.filmlight.ltd.uk

 

via @videomageu

 

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