TV Everywhere
TV Everywhere refers to a type of American subscription business model where access to streaming video content from a television channel requires users to "authenticate" themselves as current subscribers to the channel, via an account provided by their participating pay television provider, to access the content.
Under the model, broadcasters offer their customers the ability to access content from their channels through internet-based services and mobile apps—either live or on-demand, as part of a subscription to the service. Time Warner Cable first proposed the concept in 2009; in 2010, many television providers and networks began to roll out TV Everywhere services for their subscribers, including major networks such as TBS and TNT, ESPN, and HBO among others. Broadcast television networks have also adopted TV Everywhere restrictions for their online content, albeit in a less broadly than their cable counterparts.
Television providers and broadcasters have touted the advantages of being able to access content across multiple platforms, including on the internet, and on mobile devices, as part of their existing television subscription. Upon its establishment, the TV Everywhere concept received criticism for being difficult for end-users to set up, while media activists have criticized the concept for being a paywall that extends the existing oligarchy of the subscription television industry to the internet, and considering it to be collusion against cord cutters—those who drop cable and satellite entirely in favor of accessing content via terrestrial television, the internet, and subscription video on demand services.
Rationale
TV Everywhere services were developed in an attempt to compete with the market trend of cord cutting, where consumers drop traditional pay television subscriptions in favor of accessing TV content exclusively through over-the-air television and/or online on-demand services, including Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, and other sources. Authenticated streaming and video on-demand services allow traditional television providers to directly compete with these competitors, and add value to existing television subscriptions in an effort to retain subscribers.In particular, broadcasters and providers have emphasized the use of TV Everywhere services to allow multi-platform access to their content, on devices such as personal computers, smartphones, tablets, digital media players, and video game consoles.
History
Precursors
first introduced a TV Everywhere-like concept with ESPN360, a service which allowed users to stream sports programming from its networks either live or on-demand through a website. However, access to ESPN360 was restricted to the users of internet service providers who had negotiated deals with ESPN to offer the service; a model closer in nature to cable television carriage. Similar tactics were soon used by several other channels, such as NFL Network and Epix. David Preschlack, ESPN's executive vice president for affiliate sales and marketing, foresaw a future in the model, believing that access to exclusive content would soon play a greater role in competition between high-speed internet providers. However, the model was deemed a violation of the principles of net neutrality by some critics.Introduction and adoption
In 2009, Time Warner Cable announced an initiative known as TV Everywhere, a set of principles "designed to serve as a framework to facilitate deployment of online television content in a way that is consumer friendly, pro-competitive." The concept would enable users of their respective cable television services to access live and on-demand online content from channels that they subscribe to by using an account-based authentication system. TWC CEO Jeffrey Bewkes believed that the TV Everywhere principles were "good concepts" "likely to be the general direction for all TV networks and all the distribution connections that are out there." That summer, both TWC and Comcast began trials of services based on the system; Turner Broadcasting was an early supporter of the system, providing access to TBS and TNT content as part of the trials. Comcast officially launched a public beta of its TV Everywhere-based portal, Xfinity Fancast, in December 2009 for all double-play television and internet customers. Afterwards, other providers began to follow suit.In 2010, broadcasters and television providers began a wider roll-out of TV Everywhere-based services; for the 2010 Winter Olympics, NBC Sports offered live and video on-demand access to events throughout the Games that required users to authenticate for access. Also in February, HBO launched HBO Go, a video on demand service exclusive to HBO subscribers on participating providers. In September 2010, Disney would begin launching an array of TV Everywhere-based services, including WatchESPN, and similar apps for Disney Channel and Disney XD.
In August 2011, Fox became the first over-the-air network to restrict on-demand access with a TV Everywhere-based system; "next day" on-demand episodes would only be available online to users authenticating themselves as a subscriber to a cable or satellite provider, or those who subscribe to the Hulu Plus service. All other users would be subject to an eight-day delay. On September 1, 2011, fellow Fox property Big Ten Network also launched a TV Everywhere service known as BTN2Go.
Expansion
Matt Strauss, Comcast senior vice president of digital and emerging platforms, considered the 2012 Summer Olympics to be a "watershed" event for TV Everywhere services; NBCUniversal announced that a total of nearly 10 million authenticated devices accessed its online coverage during the Games across both the NBCOlympics.com site and NBC Olympics Live Extra app; in particular, parent company Comcast accounted for 3.3 million devices from 1.5 million users. Following the Games, the app was rebranded as NBC Sports Live Extra.TV Everywhere services also began to appear in Canada in the early 2010s, with the Canadian launch of HBO Go in 2012, and the 2013 announcement of TV Everywhere services from Bell Media and Shaw Media. The majority of Canadian broadcasters are vertically integrated; both Bell and Shaw operate internet service providers and national satellite television services.
In May 2013, ABC released its Watch ABC mobile app, which allows viewers on participating providers to access live streams from participating ABC affiliates. In December 2013, ABC confirmed that it would impose a similar restriction to Fox for "next day" on-demand episodes beginning on January 6, 2014, with seven-day exclusivity for authenticated users and Hulu Plus subscribers. NBC unveiled its own plans for a similar TV Everywhere app to its affiliate board in April 2014.
In November 2015, after negotiations surrounding revenue sharing and infrastructural mandates, Major League Baseball reached a three-year deal with Fox to allow it to offer in-market online streaming on Fox Sports Go for the 16 teams that it holds regional rights to through the Fox Sports Networks division. In December 2015, Discovery Communications, a long hold-out on the concept, launched Discovery Go, a centralized TV Everywhere service and mobile app for Discovery Channel, TLC, and its array of sister networks.
Shift to subscription-based services
In the late-2010's, a number of major media companies began to shift their priorities towards direct-to-consumer, subscription-based streaming services, in order to specifically attract cord cutters and increase their competitiveness with competitors such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Some of these forays either subsume content previously distributed via a TV Everywhere model, or represent a hybrid approach of a service that can be obtained direct-to-consumer or via a television provider :- In 2018, ESPN launched ESPN+, which began to subsume much of the overflow content that had previously been available at no extra charge to ESPN subscribers via WatchESPN.
- In 2018, Bell Media merged its OTT service CraveTV with its pay television service The Movie Network, with the merged service taking on the Crave branding and becoming available on a direct-to-consumer basis.
- HBO and NBCUniversal both launched streaming services in 2020, HBO Max and Peacock. HBO Max replaced both HBO Go and a previous direct-to-consumer offering, HBO Now, and is available to HBO subscribers via television providers at no additional charge using the TV Everywhere system. Peacock's ad-supported premium tier is similarly offered to television subscribers via agreements with individual providers, such as NBCUniversal parent Comcast and Charter.
- On January 31, 2024, Paramount Global discontinued the TV Everywhere apps for its entertainment networks in order to direct users to Paramount+, including Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, and Paramount Network. In June 2024, Paramount also shut down the individual websites for networks such as CMT, Comedy Central, and TV Land, removing all archive and video on-demand content, and replacing them with websites with minimal functionality that primarily promote Paramount+. Various tiers of Paramount+ have been made available via the TV Everywhere log-in system to providers like Spectrum.
- On September 23, 2024, Disney similarly discontinued the TV Everywhere apps for ABC, DisneyNow, Freeform, FX, and National Geographic Channel, likely in an effort to discourage their use in favor of Disney+ and Hulu. TV Everywhere access remains available through desktop and laptop computers. The ad-supported tier of Disney+ has been made available to some Spectrum subscribers as part of an individual carriage agreement.
Reception
Media activists have criticized the concept as protecting the existing closed, regionalized oligarchy of multichannel television by tying digital content to traditional television subscriptions, thus harming fully over-the-top competitors. Public Knowledge believed that "under the 'TV Everywhere' plan, no other program distributors would be able to emerge, and no consumers will be able to 'cut the cord' because they find what they want online. As a result, consumers will be the losers." A 2010 report by Free Press made similar arguments, contending that TV Everywhere was an act of collusion by the cable industry, and arguing that "by tying programming to local cable subscriptions, while denying content to pure online TV distributors, the incumbent industry hopes to artificially reproduce the lack of competition for TV distribution to which it is accustomed, based on geographical fiefdoms and turf." The NCTA denied many of Free Press' arguments, stating that it was "an effort to ensure more content than ever is distributed over the Internet at no extra charge to consumers."
In July 2014, BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield criticized the video on demand services offered through TV Everywhere systems for being ad-supported. In examples from FX and TNT, he noticed that ads often repeated, and that in TNT's case, its version of an episode of The Last Ship included 20 minutes of unskippable ads across 45 minutes of programming. In conclusion, he contended that viewers would rather wait for programs to appear on subscription streaming services rather than use TV Everywhere services.