Avail Media and TVN announced their merger has now closed and the new company is now called Avail-TVN. “Today, Avail-TVN becomes the largest independent provider of end-to-end content aggregation, management and distribution offerings,” said CEO Ramu Potarazu. The new company reaches 120 million consumers through more than 230 cable, telecom, DBS, and hybrid providers. The merger was first announced on May 18th.
Avail-TVN now becomes a major distributor of content to the entire multichannel video service provider community. Their closest competitor is probably Comcast Media Center. It’s an interesting combination. Avail’s roots, Broadstream and Auroras, were squarely rooted in small telcos, while TVN built its VOD empire with the largest of cable companies. The two companies are now moving forward together to represent the interests of the entire industry, regardless of their telecompetitor status.
If they are to succeed they need to develop a more favorable Packaging model that allows the Service Providers (CATV) to gain control over what price they charge users and their revenue splits. In short fix a fee to SP and allow them to charge what they want.__If not the OTT model will eat their lunch near term, which may happen anyway in that Satellite delivery is still a broadcast medium and limits customers ability to interact with the content they buy.____Jim
Are you talking about their VOD or broadcast content?
It dosen't matter how the content is received; time-shifted format is the future for IPTV. With the decision in the Supreme Court on network DVR, we need to look at how to make all content avaialbe for start-over, recording and other time-shifted formats. This is what the customer likes about OTT. I alwasy find if funnay how the content owners used to state that their content will never be on the internet. Now look at them as they rush to cuit service providers from their delivery model costs.