The Dan Rayburn Podcast

This week, we detail Comcast's Q1 earnings, including Peacock's subscriber gains thanks to the Charter bundle, with revenue up 16% and an EBITDA loss of $215M, down from $639M YoY. We also cover all the pay TV losses from Comcast, Verizon, and Charter in the quarter, as well as Comcast's worst broadband losses ever in a quarter. We highlight MSG Networks' deal with its lender,...

This week, we detail Netflix's Q1 earnings, including its free cash flow, content spending, and 2025 guidance forecast of $43.5-$44.5 billion. We highlight all of Netflix's comments around its ad tech platform, Netflix Ads Suite (NAS), and why Netflix says owning the tech stack is foundational to its long-term ads strategy. We also mention Netflix's comments about video podcasts and...

For this special podcast, Mark Donnigan and I recap key takeaways from the 2025 NAB Show in Las Vegas, discussing what we heard on the show floor and in sessions. We detail the NAB’s attendance numbers and the impact I saw on the number of attendees due to the uncertainty in the financial market. We also highlight the many different metrics that exhibitors, sponsors and attendees use to determine...

This week, we highlight DIRECTV's expanding RSN bundling options, which cover 18 MLB, 16 NBA, and 10 NHL franchises and the addition of Max Basic with Ads to its MyEntertainment Genre Pack. We also highlight the MLB TV streaming outage on opening day, JioHotstar's announcement that JioHotstar now has over 100 million subscribers, and Netflix's news that it is now streaming HDR10+ co...

This week, we discuss JioHotstar's live stream of the ICC Champions Trophy Final, with a reported 60 million concurrent streams and why the industry needs to stop putting so much clout on concurrent or AMA numbers without any other details on the quality of the stream. We also detail the F1 TV Premium tier, offering 4K video and multiview functionality for an additional $6 monthly, and Comcas...

This week, we talk about the problems with Hulu's Oscars live stream and why streaming cannot take the place of broadcast distribution in terms of scalability and dependability. We also point out the likelihood of MSG Networks and/or its affiliates declaring bankruptcy and the potential consequences for their streaming business. We discuss the announcement that all Elite Wrestling PPV events...

This week, we discuss the Q4 earnings numbers tied to subscribers and profitability from Fubo, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, and EchoStar. We also highlight the latest sports news from Disney, DAZN, LALIGA, Fox, LFP, and Sky. We detail the new $35 entertainment package from DIRECTV, which includes 43 linear channels and the streaming services Disney+, Hulu+, and Max. Finally, we cover the new...

This week, we discuss all the latest sports news, including ESPN and MLB ending their contract early, the excellent-looking live stream of the NASCAR Daytona 500 on Max and SURJ's investment in DAZN, rumored to be $1 billion. We also highlight news that DIRECTV's MySports package will include 140 NBC affiliates, that Prime Video is offering Ligue 1 matches via PPV, reports that ESPN has...

This week, we review FOX and Tubi's Super Bowl stream, detailing the video quality, latency, playback, viewership numbers and overall event success. We also detail Q4 and full-year earnings from Roku, AMC Networks, Altice, Fastly and Harmonic, which saw mixed results. We highlight the launch of JioHotstar, which led to the merger of Hotstar and JioCinema; subscriber numbers from Philo; the Ap...

This week, we detail the launch of competing $70 sports-streaming packages from Comcast’s Xfinity and DirecTV, and FOX's plans to launch a DTC streaming service. We also cover the latest earnings from Comcast, Disney and Alphabet, with Disney+ losing 700,000 subscribers, Peacock's DTC business losing $436M, and YouTube seeing advertising revenue of $10.4 billion, with growth driven by th...

This week, we discuss all the latest NFL streaming news, including Amazon's exclusive NFL Wild Card playoff game, which reached an all-time high of 24.6M viewers; details from FOX on their 1080p upscaled 4 K HDR stream and their plans to make the stream available on Tubi. We also detail the network shutdown of Limelight Networks as part of Edgio's bankruptcy, what it means for the CDN in...

This week, I discuss the Disney and Fubo deal, what it means for subscribers and the impact of Venu Sports no longer launching in the market. I detail the deal terms and what's being misreported, separating facts from guesses. I also discuss viewership numbers from Netflix's debut of WWE’s Monday Night Raw, final global viewership numbers for Netflix's NFL games on Christmas and com...

For this special podcast episode, we review Netflix's streaming of the NFL games on Christmas, detailing technical aspects related to stream quality, latency, player functionality, reported user feedback, and viewership statistics for the U.S. market. We compare the 27 million peak viewers in the U.S. stat to previous NFL games across broadcast, Prime Video and Peacock and why viewership was...

This week, we detail more layoffs among streaming vendors and what they mean for the industry as everyone looks to be more operationally efficient in their spending. We also cover the latest price increase by YouTube TV, pushing the service to $82.99 a month; FIFA's broadcast deal with DAZN; and Amazon's latest TNF viewership numbers of 18.48 million, making it the most-watched TNF on Pr...

This week, we detail Akamai's successful $125 million bid for customer contracts from Edgio's security and content delivery businesses in Edgio's bankruptcy auction. We discuss Akamai's projected $89-$111 million in revenue over the next five quarters from the contracts and what the deal means for the broader CDN market. We also debunk some reported comments about the news and...

In regulatory filings, more details have emerged in Bending Spoons' plans to acquire Brightcove, including some terms for employees who stay on with the new company, the number of aggregate shares of company common stock tied to RSU awards, the exact number of Brightcove employees, a disclosure of a "material weakness in internal control over financial reporting,” and other company detai...

This week, we detail all the misinformation after Netflix's live boxing event, the danger of not checking sources, and who you trust for news. We discuss the current state of Netflix's business and how the company is playing the long game - chess over checkers. We also highlight the latest content news from JioCinema, MLB, Sling TV, Disney, Amazon, NBA and Hulu. Finally, we focus on the...

This week, we detail all the important numbers from Q3 earnings related to profitability, capex, MAUs and subscriber additions for streaming services from Paramount, Tubi, AMC Networks and Vizio, along with infrastructure players Vimeo, Brightcove, Akamai, Fastly and Cloudflare. We also discuss the latest content news from UFC, The Tennis Channel, Netflix, Sky and FOX and highlight CDN Medianova&a...

This week, I recap all the streaming subscriber and pay TV numbers from Q3 earnings and the profit-and-loss financials from Roku, Fubo, Peacock, YouTube, Sky, Verizon and others. I also highlight cloud services revenue from Amazon, Microsoft and Google, with AWS hitting a record $100 billion in revenue for the past 12 months. I discuss why Instagram lowers video quality for unpopular videos and di...

This week, we discuss the key takeaways from Netflix's earnings tied to its upcoming first-party ad tech platform, subscriber gains in the quarter, and its latest reported engagement metric of 2 hours per paid membership per day. We also cover the latest news from the messy world of RSNs, including the new report that Peacock will begin offering NBC-owned RSNs in early 2025 and the terrible l...

This week, we discuss DirecTV’s plan to launch a FAST platform and how it might benefit its brand, even as it enters a crowded FAST market. We also highlight why it’s smart for Apple to make Apple TV+ content available to as many viewers as possible through its deal with Prime Video, which will launch as a Prime Video channel later this month. We provide some of the new details released by ESPN&ap...

This week, we discuss what could happen to DTC services Sling TV and DIRECTV STREAM if the planned deal for EchoStar to sell Dish to DirecTV gets approved. We also highlight news that Skydance is in talks with the NFL to purchase the NFL Network, and the latest on Diamond Sports Group's decision to release all but one of its MLB contracts in hopes of securing approval for its bankruptcy reorg...

This week, we recap news from IBC on using cloud-based compute services for video workflows, encoding optimization, AV1 codec adoption, live encoding use cases, and AI's potential impact on encoding platforms. We also give updates on the Venu/Fubo lawsuit, price increases for NBA League Pass, the upgraded Roku Ultra, Google rebranding its FAST channels, and viewership numbers from Peacock. Fi...

This week, I break down news related to the start of the NFL season, including audience figures from NBC Sports, ESPN, and Amazon, as well as my testing of NFL streaming on Peacock, YouTube TV, Fubo, Paramount+, Sling TV, and FOX Sports. I also reviewed the most recent information regarding the expedited hearing on the Venu Sports injunction appeal, for which the opening brief is due this week. Th...

This week, we detail the latest updates surrounding the Paramount and Skydance merger, the Fubo and Venu Sports pretrial conference on September 12 and the NBA asking New York’s Supreme Court to dismiss Warner Bros. Discovery’s matching rights lawsuit against the league. We highlight the report that Amazon no longer plans to invest $115 million into Bally Sports, Diamond Sports Group agreeing to h...