Better Program Stacking Deals Can Increase TV Sampling

Media Post

A media critique by Wayne Friedman, Staff Writer Monday, Sept. 12, 2016

Despite the ever-growing variety of traditional TV/video programming, there’s still a rough consumer journey to find all that content.

One of networks’ bigger efforts to smooth that journey is  by securing full-season streaming and video-on-demand (VOD) rights -- so-called stacking rights -- for TV shows on the traditional airwaves.

Say you start watching a new TV program mid-season. You might want to go back and watch the first episodes. All this, in theory, would help a TV network build audience for a show.
Problem is, these stacking rights are all over the place. On some network-supported VOD platforms, you may to get to see between three and five previous episodes at any given time.
But some TV producers  believe this isn’t always in their best interest that giving networks full-season rights can dilute viewership — especially when after-market rights can be sold to the likes of Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon for big revenues.

NBCUniversal -- and Comcast, its parent -- have been especially focused in this area. Comcast has made gains in recent years; it has stacking rights to 700 TV shows.

But now NBC itself is going one step further.  For example, not only has it secured full-season stacking rights for its freshman comedy, “The Good Place,” starring Kristen Bell and Ted Danson, but viewers don’t need to be pay TV subscribers — no so-called “authentication” is needed.
This effort might seem to take aim at the industry’s overall TV Everywhere efforts, which require viewers to be pay TV consumers  in order to get broadcast, cable or other content on any of their new digital devices.

But NBC -- and perhaps a few others -- realize that TV Everywhere may be an annoying hurdle for consumers to get over.  Getting consumers access to undiscovered TV shows needs to be what savvy TV-video and other digital marketer call “frictionless.”