Live simulcasts of all three channels with current season programming are available live and on-demand next day. The hub also offers a VOD collection of new and classic titles, as well as other Hallmark library movies. It launched this week with popular series When Calls the Heart, and will feature new Hallmark series Ride and The Way Home in 2023.

Kelly Campbell, President of Peacock, and Direct-to-Consumer, NBCUniversal, says: “As we continue to make Peacock a premium streaming destination, Hallmark is exactly the type of brand we want to align with. Through this groundbreaking partnership, we’re giving Hallmark viewers a unique viewing experience while continuing to grow our audience, boosting engagement across both brands.”

Wonya Lucas, President & CEO, Hallmark Media, comments: “We’re proud to enter this partnership with Peacock and bring our widely beloved Hallmark content to their subscribers. The opportunity to provide our devoted fanbase access to all three of Hallmark’s linear networks will allow our audience to continue to grow and connect in meaningful ways.”

VideoAI was released for general use by Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) in January. It is a fully managed, 24/7 software-as-a-service offering, so media companies can pay for the applications on a per minute basis. According to Bart Spriester, VP & GM of Content & Streaming Providers Suite at CTS, the key differentiating point for VideoAI is the provision of pre-trained algorithms which mean the applications work out-of-the-box. Other vendors provide the AI detectors but leave media owners to work out their own algorithms, he claims. The VideoAI algorithms draw upon millions of hours of AI learning at Sky, Comcast and NBCUniversal.

VideoAI is also fully automated – there is no manual work involved when segmenting show introductions or credits once they have been detected, for example. “AI technology can be focused not only on enhancing the end consumer experience but on reducing the operational cost for content providers and operators,” Spriester points out.

The immediate applications available with VideoAI are:

• The solution can be used to generate specific metadata to support content chaptering with automated titles and summaries, plus smart thumbnails. Intros and credit rolls are detected to support this. VideoAI can also help detect ad breaks to support dynamic ad insertion.
• Contextual advertising. The content is analysed for brand opportunities and for advertiser sensitivities. CTS says this capability improves the value of every ad break.
• Live-to-VOD. Thumbnails, titles and summaries are created on-the-the-fly as a live event airs, ready for fast on-demand availability. Highlight reels can be automatically created during live sports events – and these are shown on-screen to enhance the sports viewing experience.
• QoE checks. Video assets can be automatically analysed to identify and tag key onscreen moments such as hard cuts, black frames and transitions, or audio silences or specific sounds. Alarms can be set to warn operations teams if something is wrong. If there is silence, for example, is there supposed to be silence in the programming or has the stream failed?

Comcast Technology Solutions says content owners, operators and even advertisers can work with the company to develop their own business use-cases. And Spriester promises that even small customers can influence the CTS development roadmap for the new product.

In terms of workflow, the VideoAI detectors sit downstream of audio and video encoding/decoding and closed captions creation. Customers with content in the cloud (and Spriester says this would be most of them) can provide low-resolution proxy assets for the VideoAI detectors to check, prior to the AI-based applications being performed. Enriched metadata is then sent back. It would also be possible to run detectors downstream of full video files, and it is possible to analyse live video as long as CTS can site its detectors in the cloud where the live signal comes from (proxies cannot be used with live).

CTS is in talks with several potential customers outside the Comcast group, with segmentation for auto-chaptering one of the most sought-after applications. Spriester emphasises: “This is not just another AI tool. We are bringing the pre-trained algorithms on a SaaS-based model. Our solutions have been proven and deployed at scale at some of the largest operators and content creators in the world.”

Fraser Stirling, Chief Product Officer at Sky, adds: “VideoAI from Comcast Technology Solutions is a potential game-changer. With VideoAI as a managed service, companies can quickly launch a range of AI-powered video services at scale, and benefit from investments we’ve made internally, to drive their own business objectives forward.”

Speaking at Videoscape Europe in London last week, Channel 4’s outgoing head of its All 4 digital service outlined ten common mistakes made by companies working in this space and offered a number of ways to avoid them.

Over-confidence and impatience were two of the ten mistakes that he flagged. Taking attention away from problems that can’t be fixed quickly means businesses cannot focus on solving big, intractable problems.

Davidson-Houston argued that while content needs to be ‘king-like’, content alone is not enough. “If you work in an organisation where the religion is ‘content is king,’ that is a conceptual mistake”.

Another major point was that broadcasters should treat VOD as a fully-formed businesses in its own right, not as a tech project: “It’s a huge catastrophic mistake to see it as one and it will make your business less competitive.”

The discipline of curating large-scale VOD platforms, he argued, has more to do with experimentation and mastery than it does with innovation and bosses need to value the people who are mastering these skills.

In terms of organisational structure, Davidson-Houston said that research and product teams should not be separated as they’re inextricably linked. Similarly, companies should not choose between strategy and implementation.

The key to hiring new talent, he added, is to find people who can learn and are able to teach themselves.

Decision making was flagged as crucial, as bad decisions can usually be superseded by good decisions – the key is to make a distinction between those that are reversible and irreversible. “I’m paraphrasing Jeff Bezos but, generally speaking, the cost of not making a decision is likely to exceed the cost of making the wrong decision.”

Strategically, broadcasters should be “fishermen” not “shepherds”, he said. They should not merely be herding people from broadcast channels to on-demand services, as this audience is both reducing in size and getting older, thus becoming less valuable.

“The thing about fishermen is they acquire. Most broadcasters that I know, especially those high up the EPG, have a bit of an issue here, because they’ve never had to learn how to acquire a customer.”

Discussing how best to avoid these mistakes, Davidson-Houston said that you need power in four main areas: having financial power; having staff and being able to move them around without asking permission; being able to design processes yourself; and being able to sit everyone together.

However, with this power you should not lead a rebellion against your own company. “You may be right but you’ll be dead in the water, absolutely finished,” he said. “Lead, be luminous, be the hope, bring people with you, love the incumbent business – it’s probably paying your wages.”

When it comes to dealing with bosses, he encouraged people to engage them early. “Take your work to them before it’s finished. Don’t transact with them. Don’t tell them ‘here’s my work, please mark it’. Say here’s what my work is going to become. It’s not finished. Please, would you be involved?”

Last week’s keynote came after Davidson-Houston announced in May that he is stepping down from Channel 4 in the summer after 12 years at the UK broadcaster. “It’s time to get stuck in to something new,” he said in a statement at the time, without revealing what he plans to do next.

He joined Channel 4 from Microsoft in 2007, was Head of Channel 4 Online from 2010, and launched video-on-demand service All 4 as Head of All 4 in 2015.

Videoscape Europe is the strategy event for D2C, SVOD, AVOD and vPayTV, with a focus on delivering profitable growth in premium digital video. You can find more details here.

When Sudhanshu Vats took the helm at Viacom18 in August 2012 the Indian TV company had six channels and one line of business. Under his leadership, the Mumbai-based group has emerged as a fast-growing, full-play media organisation has grown to more than 44 channels with its latest, Colors Gujarati Cinema, set to go live on June 1.

A joint venture between Viacom and TV18, Viacom18 today has a foot in both the TV and digital markets in India. Its on-demand service, Voot, went live locally in 2016 and in March this year launched internationally for the first time via a partnership with UK operator Virgin Media.

Vats says the deal marked the first of many planned launches for Voot as the company looks to grow digitally. Domestically, Viacom18 is also looking to develop the service further by launching a freemium model and a standalone subscription Voot Kids offering.

“The UK being one of our most important markets and a large diaspora market, it was logical that we started here. But this is something which we will do elsewhere as we expand our digital footprint,” explains Vats, discussing the company’s international plans.

He claims the Viacom18 has identified 21 top markets that it plans to target with Voot and will do so using a combination of approaches.

Partnering is an option for large markets like the UK, where Virgin has bundled Voot with Indian VOD rival, Eros Now, to offer its customers an app package called the Desi App Pack; in a few countries the company might look to distribute via a traditional TV platform with a TV Everywhere-type offering; while the third approach is to go direct to customer by launching direct via iOS and Android app stores.

“In the short to immediate term, we would be focused on the Indian diaspora. Having said that, I think as we progress, the good news about digital is that we may be able to offer that content to an audience well outside the diaspora,” says Vats.

In India, Voot competes in a crowded field against local rivals like Hotstar, Sony LIV, Zee5, Eros Now and ALTBalaji. However, Vats says he is happy with the niche that Voot is carving out for itself in the market. “When you are in India, you’ve got to become comfortable with crowds,” he jokes

While Indian SVOD leader Hotstar has Indian Premier League cricket rights to attract viewers, Voot is big on genres like non-fiction and reality and draws on a vast catalogue of content from Viacom18’s line-up of channels, which air big international formats like Big Brother, Fear Factor, Got Talent, alongside local formats like Indian MTV series Roadies and Splitsvilla.

Vats says that the company does close to 15,000 hours of original content every year on TV across seven regional languages plus English. On top of this, Voot offers some 1,500 hours of ‘shoulder content’ around its big entertainment formats and is also looking to do around 150 hours of digital original programming.

Last August the company launched its first set of originals with 18 web series across a range of genres. “As we speak, we are looking at over 30 originals,” says Vats. “We are continuously dialing that up.”

“If you look at viewership on our platform, as of now roughly 60% is catch-up TV; about 20% is content around content; around 10 – 12% is originals; and close to about 8% is kids.”

At the time of writing the standalone Voot Kids service is in beta with a full launch in the offing. This will be offered on a subscription basis and will include children’s programming, as well as e-books, audio books and educational content targeted particularly at two-to-five year-olds.

The subscription model is a new one for Voot, which started life as an AVOD service. However, in 2018 it signalled plans to move towards a freemium model – a response, Vats says, to how the wider market has moved.

“I personally feel India is a hybrid market. Where a vast majority of India would be on free, there is a section of India who is now willing to pay, and therefore in order to address that section of India we are looking at a freemium service.”

The idea for Voot going forward is that viewers can enter for free, but will be charged based on “two additional features or dimensions”. One of these is more content, be it Hollywood fare or original content. The other piece rests on the experience – for example providing an ad-free experience, linear content, or programmes that air ahead of their linear debut to subscribers.

Vats says he believes India will follow the market development model of China, where he claims an almost entirely ad-supported market of around 400 million internet video users in 2012 grew to around 800 million internet video users in 2018, of whom about 15% were behind paywalls.

“I think India, if you look at last year, had about 300 million internet video users and the majority of the market is free. I think in three years we will have close to about 650 to 700 million internet video users, a bit like China, and I think we will also have close to about 15% of people behind paywalls.”

While Vats says that YouTube is “almost ubiquitous” with internet users in India and acknowledges the boost that Hotstar gets from its cricket rights, he claims Voot’s number is “close to about 45 million to 50 million monthly active users,” putting it “right up there” against its OTT competitors.

He says that close to 60% of Voot’s audience is female, making it “one of the most female-centric” services in India and claims that 80% percent of consumption is by 18-34 year olds – mostly people under the age of 30. He adds that watch time per-user per-day is around 45 to 50 minutes, demonstrating that the service’s content is “sticky”.

While the market may be getting crowded, Vats says it “will find its own level and there will be some consolidation, but the important thing is we have to be right up there and we are right up there at the moment.”

While digital will grow exponentially in India, like in the rest of the world, Vats points out that there is also a “lot of headroom” for growth in the TV space, where unlike in many Western markets, the number of TV homes is still growing.

According to a 2018 study by Indian TV measurement body BARC, the number of TV homes in India grew to 197 million last year, marking 66% penetration. With a third of homes still to reach, Vats is optimistic about the potential to reach new viewers in the coming years and believes that the country will reach 90% TV penetration in the next three to seven years – five being a safe bet.

With this in mind, he says: “We are not a TV company, we are not a film company, we are not a digital company. We are a content company that will create content, curate content, and develop content experiences. That’s the thinking.”