Yesterday FierceCable posted an interview with Andrew McCollum, the CEO of the live TV streaming service Philo.
During the interview a few interesting points jumped out to us, and we wanted to highlight them here.
Philo’s Plans to Add More Networks
One of the most common questions we get is will Philo add more networks. During the interview McCollum said they would love to add more networks such as FX, Nat GEO, and SyFy. Yet at the same time he explained why getting these networks is difficult for Philo. “It is tough because being in those families of networks with sports, news and regional sports, it’s hard to pick and choose,” he said.
In short many of the networks people want are owned by companies like Disney and Fox. Right now their parent companies want to see their networks in a bundle that include sports and news. For Philo this is an issue because they are still determined to keep costs down by not including these networks.
TV Everywhere Apps
Right now Philo does not have access to most network apps, so if you want to watch a show you need to watch it with the Philo app for the most part; however, Philo plans to expand TV everywhere app support. “We got a lot of requests for enabling log ins on TVE apps, which is something that we have planned and had done a lot of the work for but because demand was so strong we’ve tried to accelerate that,” said McCollum.
I’m sure many are wondering what the issue is with having the ability to log in to network apps. We have learned from other streaming services that companies like Philo need to pay extra to offer network app login support. When you only charge $16 a month there is not a lot of room to pay extra for a network, so that is likely a big part of the hold up.
Want to read the full interview? Head over to FierceCable.
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