Not so Flash?
welcome to unmade, written on thursday morning as what looks like 48 hours of constant rain for my corner of nw tasmania gets under way.
happy national lowercase day.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to carry on with that joke for the entire newsletter.
Today’s writing soundtrack: Let It Bleed, from the Rolling Stones. What an album. Track nine is my favourite Stones track of all time. I’m always tempted to skip straight there, but you can’t always get what you want.
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Good analysis, Tim, and I don’t disagree with any of it. I’m not sure many hardened news junkies who want this much content would need to pay $8 a month for the convenience of having it all in one place. Most of it is already available for free, and sites like https://livenow.news/ are already aggregating it for us.
The only context I hcan think of is that it’s filling a currently empty slot in the “Foxtel App” portfolio. You can buy a subset of the Foxtel suite in a Sports app and a Drama app, so a News app seems like an obvious addition. Particularly if you imagine a future where you can bundle those apps together to get closer to the current “Foxtel” experience. $8 a month is a lot, but discount that to a couple of dollars a month on top of Kayo or Binge and you’d probably get a few more takers.
All we need now is a Documentary app, and the portfolio is complete.
I think the doco call is a good one, Gavin. I’ve got half a feeling I’ve even read suggestions somewhere that there’s one on the way.
Cheers,
Tim
great read tim thanks
Flash is the topic du jour. Foxtel is so relatively cheap per month(with go thrown in) and you get the news channels. The ABC still in neg. with Flash too which I have read. But as you said overheads are low for it anyway. sky news australia is free in audio version at iheart regardless .
Great read Tim. I am looking forward to the year ahead as a paid up yearly subscriber to Unmade (thanks for the discount btw).
I’m wondering why Foxtel have their Streamotion apps on Apple TV/tvOS (Binge, Kayo and soon to be Flash) while completely ignoring the mothership Foxtel app itself. It launched on Google Chromecast + Google TV in early September and works great. As I’m in Victoria I’ve been getting multiscreen for free and will be till the end of November I think, so I’ve had plenty of time to try it out. I’ve got FTTP NBN and the Foxtel app has been very reliable in my experience so far.
I just don’t understand Foxtel’s strategy. Are they too thrifty to follow the Netflix, and locally Stan model of being on every platform they can realistically roll out to?
Apple TV/tvOS has had an App Store since 2015 and three set top box iterations. I just don’t understand Foxtel’s reluctance. Are they trying to prop up their iQ3/iQ4/iQ5 set top boxes? Their Streamotion apps? If Foxtel had their mothership app on more platforms at the same time as they are rolling out their Streamotion apps, would it funnily enough cannibalize their new streaming apps?
A quirk of Foxtel’s platform rollout is that they have the Foxtel mothership app on LG Smart TVs/webOS but no sign of the Streamotion three.
Their video game console platform strategy rollout is even messier.
Don’t even get me started on every Foxtel affiliated streaming website’s failure to playback on Linux. I don’t have this problem with any other streaming service – audio or video. Another Foxtel quirk. Possibly an anti-piracy measure I suspect. Those pesky Linux users are a threat apparently. A single digit percentage of the market threat. But why throw away a chance at a potential subscriber in a small population such as Australia?
As for Flash. I label myself a media, news & tech junkie but I consume most of my news in text on my smartphone (Google Pixel 5) and iPad Pro, audio (podcast & streaming radio) & the nightly 6pm 7News Melbourne bulletin (while second screening) so video news ain’t my preferred way of consuming news (with the exception of YouTube). I am going to trial it to see what it’s like and likely cancel it as I have a iQ4 and Fetch Mighty as it is. Plenty of news on those (especially come elections time).
Anyway. I’ve been watching Succession for the first time on Foxtel On Demand on my iQ4. Just finished season 1. Brilliant.
I’m also 2/3 of the way through Media Unmade and absolutely loving it. Your work at Mumbrella drew me to Media Unmade and reading that brought to me to the Unmade Substack and cemented me as a paid subscriber. Happy so far and I’m looking forward to the subscriber only posts. I really enjoyed all the podcasts you went on promoting Media Unmade. And I’m keen on listening to the subscriber only Unmade podcast.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks for the kind words, Anthony,
It’s funny you should mention the absence of Binge, Kayo and now Flash from the Foxtel aggregation. That thought recently occurred to me, although I haven’t fully explored it. I wonder whether the reason is that it would be one step too far in terms of cannibalisation.
I suspect that a major part of Foxtel’s broadcast subscription revenue depends on customer inertia. If it really starts rubbing consumers noses in the fact that there are cheaper alternatives, would it risk driving them away even faster?
I speak of one of those inert, paying consumers. If I was deciding now, I suspect the Foxtel broadcast model would be too unattractive to subscribe, yet I haven’t got around to unsubscribing. Not that Foxtel seems to be doing much to reward customer loyalty at present. I don’t remember receiving a single message about the loyalty program since it began. But I digress…
Cheers,
Tim
Thanks for the prompt reply Tim. Don’t want to bother you too much more.
I will say I don’t pay for my Foxtel Satellite subscription as I live at home with my parents and although I initially drove the decision to subscribe to Foxtel 20 odd years ago my parents are very happy with it these days especially with my ringing up and doing the threaten to cancel dance and getting a discount for 6 or 12 months. Admittedly the discounts haven’t been as large the last couple of negotiations.
I subsidize one set of my grandparents’ Foxtel Satellite subscription though. It’s so they can afford it a bit easier. And I was going around there to watch sport pre-lockdowns. Plus I always negotiate discounts for them to every 6 months to a year. They both love the news channels (if they were a bit more tech savvy they might go for Flash). And my grandpa loves the sports.
Would I subscribe to Foxtel Satellite if I was living out of home? I suspect I might still. Which makes my free Foxtel at home a very long free trial. Haha. Foxtel hooked me.
And yeah Foxtel First has been quite disappointing as a loyalty program.
Dan Barrett of Always Be Watching pointed out the confusion of Foxtel First and Bonus Content. He didn’t even know about Foxtel First and he’s a media reporter. He has Foxtel through Telstra so couldn’t get a Bonus Content drama program on Foxtel On Demand earlier than its wide rollout. Despite having the Premium Drama channel pack.
Foxtel First has competitions in the MyFoxtel app from time to time. Boy does the MyFoxtel app need some work. It’s very buggy on Android. I remember trying to add a channel package a few months ago. It kicked me to a webview and failed. And I tried to order a pay per view boxing fight a few months ago and it failed as well. Get the Streamotion team onto it I reckon.
Nice to see Gavin mention livenow.news – that’s mine! Just a little plaything.
Flash doesn’t have an Android TV app yet, unlike Binge or Kayo. So it’s relatively unusable for my use-case of watching the telly on the, um, telly. That seems quite an oversight.
Half the channels on Flash are available for free online anyway – even ABC News Channel (hasn’t been called ABC News 24 for many years!) – so in reality, you’re really paying for Sky News Australia, Sky News UK (which is available in every other country for free online, except here, thanks Foxtel), BBC World News, CNN International (only available on Foxtel, thanks to an exclusivity deal), and Fox News US (similar).
If you’re in a capital city and want access to Sky News Australia, which is quite a decent channel before 5pm, then it costs a minimum of $49/month on Foxtel. So, for $8/month on Flash, that’s quite a saving.
Indeed, Binge + Kayo + Flash = $47, which is rather cheaper than Foxtel’s equivalent pricing of $79.
I’m surprised that they haven’t added (US) ABC News Live, CBSN, and NBC News Now; and the television-done-on-the-cheap-but-actually-not-bad Ticker News, a strange global-but-Australian news channel from Melbourne. I’d personally have grabbed rather more channels – TRT World, Euronews, CBC News Network, and a few more similar services. Indeed, there might be an excuse in the future to expand it to foreign-language channels: if it’s relatively cheap to add these channels (many of which would be pleased just to have cost savings from Foxtel paying for the bandwidth), you’d think that 24-hour news channels from France, Germany, Italy, etc etc, would be worthwhile adding.
What I like: you can watch from the start of the hour – so you can watch the most important news story first (on traditional TV news channels like BBC World News).
What I don’t like: I’ve gone to watch BBC Newsnight, only to discover Foxtel’s automated recording system has got the wrong 30 minutes, recording something called “Our World” which was not what I wanted at all. And the user interface appears to be identical to Binge, which works well for on-demand content, but not really for live. And having no Android TV app, for now, seems a bit silly given how cheap the Chromecast with Google TV device is.
I’ve wondered about these Streamotion apps for a while now. It seems like they are building out a range of apps which kind of mirrors the Foxtel package options. For example you get general entertainment channels in the base Foxtel package, then you can add on a sport package, a movies package, a news package, etc.
Who wants to take my bet that at some point the Foxtel app turns into a glorified TV guide and single sign-on provider for all the different Streamotion apps, which people can pay Foxtel to subscribe to in bulk just like the broadcast Foxtel channel package menu?