Yahoo moves into TV

Last week, Yahoo announced yet another strategy to win over Internet users – moving into original TV programming.

The Wall Street Journal had this story by Mike Shields and Douglas MacMillan:

Yahoo Inc. is raising its ambitions in online video, with plans to acquire the kind of original programming that typically winds up on high-end cable-TV networks and streaming services like Netflix, people briefed on the company’s plans said.

The company is close to ordering four Web series, these people said. And unlike in years past, Yahoo isn’t looking for short-form Web originals, but rather 10-episode, half-hour comedies with per-episode budgets ranging from $700,000 to a few million dollars, the people said.

The projects being considered would be led by writers or directors with experience in television. “They want to blow it out big time,” said one of the people briefed about the plans.

Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer is hoping to show off TV-caliber content to advertisers on April 28 when Yahoo holds its “NewFront” event that is Internet companies’ answer to the so-called upfront ad-sales presentations made by TV networks each spring.

David Carr of the New York Times called Yahoo a “permanent adolescent in search of an identity” in his column about their latest move:

At a time when the culture is addicted to high-end television narratives, Yahoo wants in on the action, partly because while its site may have (flat) traffic — 700 million global visits a month — and (declining) revenue, it has zero cachet and no discernible way forward.

For many years, digital media players watched longingly as HBO and then AMC, FX and Showtime managed to rise above the clutter on television, where Americans still spend five hours a day. So last year, when Netflixbroke through with “House of Cards,” it made sense that companies like Amazon, Hulu and Yahoo would want to follow suit.

There are signs that it is working — streaming for Amazon Prime tripled in the last year and the company has introduced its own device, Fire TV, which will fight for shelf space in your home along with Apple TV, Chromecast and Roku. At the same time, Comcast is seeking a merger that will give it the scale to invest in technology, and HBO Go is pushing to follow the consumer onto mobile. “People always want to be what they aren’t,” said Jonah Peretti of BuzzFeed when we discussed the crisscross the other day.

The prize is dear. Winning in the distribution of high-end content is about mining an audience, and you can’t blame technology companies for believing they have relevant skill sets.

Bloomberg Businessweek reported in a story by Claire Suddath that Yahoo is planning to pay for its new content by selling ads:

Yahoo’s shows will theoretically be ad-supported and available to people for free online, aligning it more closely with YouTube (GOOG) than, say, Netflix’s subscription-driven strategy. Also unlike Netflix (NFLX), which captured an existing audience with the already-beloved Arrested Development and then jumped headfirst into the serialized drama fray with House of Cards, Yahoo is looking for 10-episode comedy series with a per-episode cost that’s less than “a few million dollars,” as the Journal put it—or about the price of a regular network sitcom. That’s a deft move on Yahoo’s part: Audiences already have plenty of novelistic dramas, but what they can’t get online (as original content, anyway) is a new half-hour comedy that really makes them laugh.

The moves by Yahoo and Microsoft are just part of a larger erosion of the traditional TV audience. The shrinking started in 2011 when Nielsen (NLSN) reported that the number of U.S. homes with television sets dropped for the first time in 20 years. As a result, the number of people who watched traditional TV programming, via broadcast or cable, started to decline as well. So far the decline has been slight but in a few years will probably pick up speed. Last year 86 percent of Americans still had cable—down from 88 percent just three years before. The premium cable channels have been hit the hardest: 32 percent of people subscribed to HBO, Showtime, or Starz last year, down from 38 percent in 2012, according to NPD group. Meanwhile, the number of Netflix subscribers rose 24 percent, to 31.1 million people.

As cable audiences shrink and the providers reduce competition by merging (Comcast and Time Warner), there is room for more original programming. The big question is whether Yahoo can move into that space. The firm’s reputation as an Internet innovator and go-to location for content has been damaged during the past few years. Many earlier adopters have left the platform for others. It will be interesting to see if it can win back users or if this is just another phase in its identity search.