It s Not Easy Streaming Green
The welcome drop in emissions and other environmentally damaging activity during the various COVID lockdowns has received a lot of media attention lately. However decades of environmental damage does not evaporate after spending a few weeks indoors and not sitting in traffic. Even with the economy at a temporary standstill, we have still been setting new records for dumping carbon into the atmosphere.
At the same time, video-streaming volumes have ballooned during the lockdown, fueled by the launch of new services in 2020.
But there hasn’t been much conversation about the environmental impact of streaming, especially given the huge uptick in usage that we’ve seen during the lockdown. Growth trends show streaming will eclipse linear TV as the primary consumption method for video content. But is this another one of those developments where convenience translates to a step backwards for the planet?
Navigating the COVID Content Collapse: What s Next for Streaming TV
The past year has seen an incredible increase in streaming viewers, with major platforms Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Disney+ have all experienced staggering subscription growth since February 2020. Still other data shows that more than 25% of consumers added at least one streaming service during the pandemic.
In the months ahead, perhaps the biggest new competitor in the streaming space isn t another subscription service (aka SVOD), but instead, the proliferating new entries in the FAST (free, ad-supported streaming TV) category. According to one recent report, the average American viewer uses about seven different streaming services and most 79% to be precise said that they would rather use free, ad-supported streaming than subscribe to another paid service.
How to Maximize Reach with Restreaming Solutions
To maximize the exposure and reach of your streams, it’s often very beneficial to send them to multiple sites at the same time. While we may not think of YouTube and Facebook the same way we think of CDNs, they serve similar purposes, as I’ll discuss in this article. The key differences are that YouTube and Facebook come pre-populated with thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of viewers, and they offer ways that people can subscribe for notifications when your show is coming up and when it goes live. If you have active community engagement, then you can count on the audience being aware that you’ve published new content.
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Read the complete transcript of this clip:
Jonathan Hurd: Tony, you had brought up earlier that you try to take a non-partisan approach to the news, but clearly we re in an environment where there s extremism in media and different news outlets trying to appeal to segments that might be at polar opposites of beliefs. Will we ever find the middle in outlets for media reporting again? We found it with Tony, but I m curious more broadly. How do you all see news reporting in terms of extremism versus kind of more down the middle?
The Keys to Launching Premium Quality, Profitable VOD Services in 2021
Global VOD usage is massive. According to a recent 2020 THEME Report from the Motion Picture Association (MPA), subscriptions to online video services in 2020 surpassed one billion for the first time – reaching 1.1 billion globally – and this number is set to continue rising. In addition, the global VOD service market is expected to reach a valuation of around $183 billion by 2031.
Given the explosive growth track of VOD and today’s super-competitive landscape, it’s more important than ever for content owners, service providers, operators and broadcasters to understand the key elements required to launch a profitable VOD service. Cloud-based video streaming platforms offer significant benefits over on-premises hardware, the depths of which will be explored in this article.