Advanced Television

Off Message

Social Media and TV: frenemies?

Love, lust, envy, intrigue, hatred, violent threats, networking: just another episode of Game of Thrones? Or just another day on social media? Both, of course. As the cultural phenomenon de jour, Game of Thrones is commonly referenced in professional media chatter and all across social media. Its origins, in the far-off history of 2011, are in […]

June 5, 2019 Nick Snow

D2C competition: Winter is coming

Netflix continues to grow fast and can appear invulnerable. It has just reported record subscriber growth. But, alongside, it is also making records in cash burning – $460 million versus $287 million in the same quarter a year ago. And this is before new competition arrives in the form of Disney+ and Apple TV+. The […]

April 18, 2019 Nick Snow

Apple TV, hard core at last?

Apple finally puts some flesh on the bones, or fruit on the vine, of Apple TV. But is it really hard core about its TV proposition? Tuning in live to its launch, it was frustrating for us media watchers that we had to wait through the new News proposition, Games proposition and Pay proposition as […]

March 26, 2019 Nick Snow

Social media shape shifters

There are two things we know without doubt about social media platforms: they are big and their main purpose in life is to be engines of profit. Long gone is any naive belief in their patronising mission statements reminiscent of 1970s cola adverts. Just like big food, big oil, big pharma or big anything else, […]

February 11, 2019 Nick Snow

When is BT cheap enough for DT?

Deutsche Telekom has been limited to holding a 15 per cent stake in BT for three years, but this ends on January 29th. And BT obviously thinks it may launch a takeover bid. According to reports, BT is consulting takeover advisors Robey Warshaw and Goldman Sachs. Its shares are at a five-year low and the […]

January 7, 2019 Nick Snow

5G a battleground for the new Cold War

In the latest issue of Euromedia we bring our annual tour of the test and measurement landscape. As broadband capacity has increased, the emphasis has shifted from underwriting the quality of data-heavy video on crowded networks, to monitoring quality and security as unmanaged services and unmanaged devices proliferate across service provider nets. Not just within […]

December 17, 2018 Nick Snow

Globalisation; the worst system ever, except all the others

Winston Churchill famously said that democracy was the worst system of government, apart from all the others that had been tried. I’ve heard both sides call that saying in aid as they argue about Brexit. Leavers say the referendum was perfect democracy, while remainers say it was deeply flawed as everyone voted without any idea […]

November 20, 2018 Nick Snow

AI, all that bright?

Artificial Intelligence is a phrase you hear everywhere these days. It will make the buses the run on time, it will diagnose your illness better than your doctor, it will drive your car better than you. Probably. Maybe. As the range of interpretations of expressed in the main feature of the current Euromedia demonstrate, what […]

September 14, 2018 Nick Snow

Social Media: Free to be bad and mad?

Freedom of the press is often cited as a basic requirement of a genuinely free and democratic society. And it is true that a universal early symptom of advancing authoritarianism is curbs on a free press: look at Russia, look at Turkey, look at any historical example of a totalitarian takeover of any previously free […]

August 31, 2018 Nick Snow

Disney; it’s direct or die

Disney is the ultimate media brand and a genuine giant that is determined to be ever bigger with the takeover of 21C Fox. And many parts of the empire are still money machines. But it was a new and very small part of the group that drew some attention in the results. ESPN+ is symbolic […]

August 13, 2018 Nick Snow