State of Streaming Podcast

State of Streaming
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Covering the topics, trends, people, and acquisitions shaping Streaming TV.

  1. Jul 30 ·  Video

    How to Make the Shift to Audience-First Planning with Emily Williams, Consumer Expert at MRI-Simmons

    Have a question? Send us a text! Emily Williams, Consumer Expert at MRI-Simmons, joins Tim Rowe to unpack why the streaming industry's measurement habits are failing the consumers they're supposed to serve — and why fragmentation isn't a technology problem. It's a consumer experience problem. The Average American Uses 11 Streaming Services a Year MRI-Simmons' Cord Evolution Study reveals that 75% of Americans with traditional cable also stream — meaning the incremental reach marketers assume they're buying is largely the same audience showing up in a different environment. Eleven services a year isn't loyalty. It's fluid movement across platforms following content, not platforms. Media plans built on channel logic haven't caught up to that reality. 1:02 – What MRI-Simmons is and why address-based probabilistic sampling is the gold standard5:16 – The stacker problem: why adding streaming to a linear plan doesn't automatically add reach6:28 – 11 services a year, on average — and what that says about churn'Total Minutes Viewed ' Is the Metric We Need to Stop Using 63% of adults report doing other activities while watching TV. That's not a niche behavior — it's the majority. Emily's argument: total minutes viewed can tell you what platform content ran on and for how long, but it can't tell you whether anyone was paying attention, whether those people were the right people, or whether the campaign moved anything. A hundred million minutes among the wrong audience loses to twenty million minutes among high-value prospects every time. 8:21 – Why total minutes viewed is useful but dangerous as a standalone KPI9:44 – The attention gap: 63% of adults are multitasking while the TV runs11:05 – The question every viewing metric headline is missingFirst-Party Data Tells You Who Watches What. Consumer Insights Tell You Why, How, and How Much. Streaming platforms can see everything inside their ecosystem — completion rates, session length, genre preferences. What they can't see is that the person who watched three video podcasts this week is also planning a trip to Italy, renovating their home, and just bought their first EV. MRI-Simmons' Consumer Canvas enrichment product layers 60,000+ consumer attributes across 250 million adults onto a platform's first-party data — turning behavioral signals into audience understanding that actually informs creative, targeting, and planning. 11:38 – What first-party data can and can't tell a streaming platform13:15 – Consumer Canvas: how data enrichment makes first-party data smarter15:07 – Why a unified audience view is a consumer problem, not a technology problemDid You Know? 40% of Adults Feel Overwhelmed by Streaming Choice More services, more content, more FAST channels — the assumption was that consumers want unlimited options. MRI-Simmons measures 170 FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) channels and adds new ones every wave. Emily's prediction: three years from now, the industry will look back and realize it confused more choice with a better experience. Discovery isn't a measurement problem or a media planning problem. It's what happens when finding something worth watching becomes work. 17:32 – What the industry will look back on as a fundamental mistake18:07 – 40% of adults overwhelmed by choice: the data behind the scroll paralysis19:56 – Why fragmentation is ultimately a consumer experience problem, not a tech oneConnect with Emily Williams and explore MRI-Simmons research at mrisimmons.com. Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

    How to Make the Shift to Audience-First Planning with Emily Williams, Consumer Expert at MRI-Simmons

  2. Jul 23 ·  Video

    How M&A in CTV Is Redrawing the Power Map with Justin Ruiss, SVP Media at BWG Global

    Have a question? Send us a text! Justin Ruiss, SVP of Media at BWG Global, joins Tim Rowe to break down three of the biggest deals in streaming right now — Walmart's acquisition of Vibe.co, the Comcast spinout of NBCU and Peacock, and Fox's $22 billion move on Roku. Justin hosts 30 primary research forums a month with senior industry executives, and brings a synthesized, cross-vertical read that goes well beyond the headlines. Why Walmart Acquired Vibe and How They Declared War on Amazon The Vizio acquisition two years ago was Walmart getting serious. Vibe.co is Walmart gritting its teeth. The read from BWG's network: Walmart is building toward an in-house ad tech stack that competes directly with Amazon DSP — keeping the margin, owning the data, and closing the loop between retail media and CTV inventory. Their existing partnerships with Yahoo DSP and Magnite aren't going away, but they're becoming the lower tiers of a good-better-best model that Walmart now controls top to bottom. 8:09 – Why Vizio was the setup and Vibe.co is the signal9:44 – How Walmart's tiered ad stack (white glove to self-serve) starts to take shape11:32 – Why the creative-to-supply chain conversation is now about minimizing hops and owning the data returnThe Comcast Spinout Makes Peacock a Pure-Play CTV Story — Finally. Buried inside a conglomerate, Peacock's performance was impossible to read cleanly. Spun out, it becomes a transparent, standalone connected TV (CTV) business that can compete in the same conversations as Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon — and be evaluated on its own terms. Justin's take: Freevee getting absorbed and Vibe getting acquired makes the Peacock spinout look like a steal in retrospect. The linear bleed to CTV isn't over, and a pure-play Peacock is positioned to capture it. 13:13 – Why Justin stopped keeping a bingo card on M&A13:26 – What transparency means for Peacock as a standalone CTV business15:37 – Why Roku was being slept on — and who wasn't sleepingFox Isn't "Buying Roku". They're acquiring the most mature operating system in streaming. Amazon's overnight switch to an ad-supported model created a gravity well that cast a shadow over every other CTV player — including Roku, whose household graph and distribution scale were being systematically undervalued. Fox saw it. The combination of Fox's content portfolio (FS1, Tubi, Fox One, Roku Channel, Howdy, Friendly TV) with Roku's distribution infrastructure creates a competitive surface that can go punch-for-punch with Amazon and Netflix on premium inventory, audience segmentation, and sports. Looper Insights data pulled live in this episode: Roku generated $23 million in addressable attention for WNBA content in Q2 — against Apple TV's $513K and Xfinity's $297K. Orders of magnitude, not increments. 15:41 – Why Amazon's ad model switch made everyone else invisible — including Roku18:25 – What Fox actually bought and why leadership execution is the only variable left21:21 – The Looper Insights WNBA data: $23M Roku vs. $513K Apple TVRead SOS coverage: Fox and Roku · Walmart and Vibe.co · Who buys Peacock Connect with Justin Ruiss on LinkedIn and learn more at BWG Global. Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

    How M&A in CTV Is Redrawing the Power Map with Justin Ruiss, SVP Media at BWG Global

  3. Jul 16 ·  Video

    How $30B Microdramas Reshape Vertical Streaming with Nathaniel Danziger, Founding Voice at SOS

    Have a question? Send us a text! The conversation is a companion to Nathaniel's recent piece on microdramas. Nathaniel Danziger, Founding Voice at State of Streaming, joins Tim Rowe to unpack what makes a microdrama possible, the operational realities driving this mobile-first shift, and what the partnership between Peacock and ReelShort means for the broader media landscape. On the Microdrama Boom Microdramas have rapidly grown into a $30 billion global phenomenon, defined by short, hyper-melodramatic vertical episodes with constant cliffhangers designed to keep users swiping. With major platforms like Peacock striking library deals with ReelShort, this bite-sized format is moving from the fringes of social networks straight into mainstream streaming. 2:27 – The global expansion of microdramas: from Chinese networks to a $30B industry3:20 – Defining the microdrama: short form, flashy storylines, and constant cliffhangers4:41 – The mind-numbing volume of content: how libraries scale to thousands of episodesWhy Transparency on Set Matters Most While the sheer volume of output is staggering, the operational reality on set tells a much harsher story. Interviews with sound operators, DPs, script assistants, and makeup artists expose an environment driven by grueling conditions, tiny non-union crews, and budgets pushed to the absolute brink. For media buyers, understanding this operational backend is critical for establishing true brand transparency. 6:41 – Unpacking the crew interviews: no union protections, small crew sizes, and low pay7:29 – The reality of poor planning: when extreme constraints lead to desperate measures on set9:21 – The advertising angle: establishing brand transparency against "made-for-advertising" videoSalacious Content and Industry Anxieties Driven by algorithms rather than artistic merit, many microdramas trade in highly salacious, tabloid-style themes to capture quick engagement. This approach yields immediate clicks but leaves crew members struggling to build professional portfolios, while raising massive questions about AI integration and long-term career growth within vertical filmmaking. 10:12 – Tabloids of the internet: why crew members aren't putting these salacious titles on their reels13:13 – The vertical advantage: finding creative bright spots and unique vertical filming techniques14:26 – Fear and the future: will microdramas lower the production bar and restrict career pathways?Connect with Nathaniel Danziger on LinkedIn and read his full article here. Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

    How $30B Microdramas Reshape Vertical Streaming with Nathaniel Danziger, Founding Voice at SOS

  4. Jul 2 ·  Video

    How Open Source Streaming Insights Evolve with Josh Matthews, Publisher at StreamScoop

    Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Josh Matthews, Founder of StreamScoop, a Substack publication that aggregates open-source viewership data across streaming, broadcast, and cable into weekly data dumps, monthly deep dives, and the best streaming TV guide being published right now — which SOS syndicates weekly. 📺 Get This week's StreamScoop Streaming TV Guide Here Nobody was aggregating open-source streaming viewership data in one place. So Josh built it. StreamScoop started as a graduate independent study at the University of South Carolina — a journalism student who saw that all the conversation about streaming was happening at the business level, while the actual viewership numbers were scattered across Nielsen reports, Luminate, Samba, and dozens of individual PR pages. He pulled them all together. 1:11 – How StreamScoop started as a graduate independent study3:18 – Print journalism in 2024 and betting on the thing you're most passionate about5:01 – One year post-grad: what StreamScoop has becomeThe monthly data crunch goes where self-reported data won't. Streaming companies don't self-report when the numbers are bad. Josh does the work anyway — pulling Nielsen, Luminate, Samba, and platform PR data to answer questions like how Daredevil Born Again actually performed against She-Hulk and Moon Knight, or whether the Savannah Bananas' ESPN expansion is as dominant as the headlines suggest. 6:59 – Why streaming companies don't self-report negative data — and why that matters7:10 – How the monthly deep dives find the comparisons platforms won't make for you8:53 – The Daredevil Born Again analysis: what the data actually showedAI search is not solving the streaming discoverability problem. It's making it worse. Josh has tested Grok, Claude, ChatGPT, and Copilot trying to pull viewership data. The results are consistently wrong — not wrong in obvious ways, but subtly wrong, often citing numbers from two and a half years ago with no indication they're stale. If AI can't reliably surface what's streaming this week, the discoverability gap is wider than the industry is admitting. 10:22 – Why AI search fails at streaming data specifically9:36 – What ComScore and Reelgood found about AI as the default discovery method14:24 – What the consumer journey looks like when they can't find what they're looking forThe weekly streaming TV guide: every major release, double-checked. Three sources minimum per entry. Josh cross-references Vital Thrills, TV Insider, and official platform press releases every week — and still misses things. If a human going through this process every single week with established sources can miss a release, imagine what the end consumer is up against trying to find it in two searches. 13:05 – How Josh compiles the weekly streaming TV guide13:20 – Why English-only coverage is still almost impossible to keep complete14:04 – The Among Us example: missed by every aggregator, including StreamScoopConnect with Josh Matthews on LinkedIn · StreamScoop on Substack Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

    How Open Source Streaming Insights Evolve with Josh Matthews, Publisher at StreamScoop

  5. Jun 25 ·  Video

    How Direct-To-Consumer Streaming Gives Sports Franchises and Creators Revenue Control with Wim Sweldens, Co-Founder of Kiswe

    Have a question? Send us a text! Wim Sweldens, co-founder of Kiswe, built a direct-to-consumer (D2C) streaming company because he unplugged his cable box — and never plugged it back in. Twelve years later, the technology he knew was coming has arrived, and the sports organizations smart enough to own the relationship with their fans are the ones pulling ahead. The RSN Collapse Created a Blueprint Problem, Not Just a Revenue Problem When regional sports networks (RSNs) fell apart, teams didn't just lose a distribution partner — they lost the only model they knew. Kiswe's answer isn't to replace one middleman with another. It's to cut them out entirely. 0:55 – The origin story: a crashed cable box, a 4G network, and a company3:16 – Why being early to mobile video wasn't a mistake — it was timing4:43 – What "don't sell your rights, sell your content" actually means in practiceWhen You Own the Platform, You Own the Data Subscription, pay-per-view, dynamic ad insertion — the monetization model matters less than who controls it. Wim breaks down how Kiswe's revenue share structure aligns incentives and why direct fan data is the asset teams are finally realizing they've been giving away. 6:30 – The three monetization models Kiswe enables and how teams use each8:00 – Why influencers selling 50,000 tickets at $20 each is the proof of concept14:03 – Why sports teams see less churn than general streaming apps — and what drives itSEG+ Is the Case Study. Utah Built It First. Smith Entertainment Group (SEG) — owners of the Utah Jazz (NBA) and Utah Mammoth (NHL) — needed one platform for two leagues, two fan bases, and games that sometimes overlap. The result: 40% subscriber growth over two years, 75% Mammoth+ growth in year one, and a MultiView feature that lets fans watch both games simultaneously. 10:10 – How the SEG+ platform unified two franchises under a single login12:02 – The à la carte argument: why fans shouldn't have to buy butter to get milk13:27 – The retention thesis: engaged fans churn less, buy more, and bring friendsDownload the full SEG+ case study to see the numbers. Connect with Wim Sweldens on LinkedIn · Kiswe Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

    How Direct-To-Consumer Streaming Gives Sports Franchises and Creators Revenue Control with Wim Sweldens, Co-Founder of Kiswe

  6. Jun 23 ·  Video

    How to Measure Sports Viewership in a Streaming World with Russell Fink, Regional Sports Network (RSN) Expert

    Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Russell Fink, a two-decade veteran of regional sports networks, to dig into the measurement crisis hiding in plain sight inside sports streaming. The conversation pairs directly with Russell's piece published in State of Streaming this week — Too Much of a Good Thing: Sports' Measurement Problem — and uses Jurassic Park to explain why having the data isn't the same as using it. The RSN Era Was the Last Time Everyone Won at Once  Russell started at SNY in 2007, when regional sports networks were ascendant and the model was simple: hyperlocal content, cable affiliate fees, happy leagues, happy fans, happy advertisers. The streaming wars didn't just disrupt that model — they exposed that no one had a replacement. 2:14 – What RSNs looked like at their peak and why the economics worked for everyone4:47 – Why the shift to streaming put RSNs into survival mode almost overnight6:22 – The cable bundle déjà vu: Congress wanted à la carte then, tooThe Streamers Inherited Linear's Habits and Called It Innovation  When Amazon, Apple, and Facebook took sports rights, Russell expected them to reinvent the viewing experience. Instead, they replicated what fans already knew — and measured it the same way. The lesson: fan behavior is stickier than distribution format. 8:10 – Why Russell was wrong to expect streaming platforms to blow up the format9:33 – What Facebook's live chat experiment revealed about fan tolerance for experimentation11:05 – Why linear strategies persist inside streaming sports — and what that says about where the money still lives16.7 Billion Minutes. Nobody Knows What That Means.  The NBC Olympics touted 16.7 billion minutes viewed. Russell spent his career in research and can't tell you what it means — and that's the problem. When a metric requires twenty minutes to unpack, it's not doing its job. The industry's love of big numbers is actively impeding advertiser confidence. 14:38 – How the streaming measurement land grab produced a world where everyone is number one17:02 – Why "16.7 billion minutes" is a perfect example of a metric that defeats itself19:44 – What the better headline would have been — and why total viewers still winsYour Scientists Were So Preoccupied With Whether They Could…  The Jurassic Park thesis: the industry built fifty to a hundred new metrics it didn't have nineteen years ago, fell in love with all of them, and forgot to ask which ones actually move the business. Russell's piece is a call to simplify — not because the data is wrong, but because complexity is a sales problem. 21:15 – Where the Jurassic Park framing came from and what it has to do with Tuesday 3:30 PM engagement spikes23:08 – How to think about which metrics actually serve programming, marketing, sales, and affiliate25:44 – Why measurement complexity is part of why the advertiser shift to digital is still stallingPart two is coming. Read the full piece at State of Streaming. Connect with Russell Fink on LinkedIn Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

    How to Measure Sports Viewership in a Streaming World with Russell Fink, Regional Sports Network (RSN) Expert

  7. Jun 18 ·  Video

    How the Home Screen Became the Most Valuable Real Estate in Streaming with Looper Insights CEO, Lucas Bertrand

    Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Lucas Bertrand, CEO of Looper Insights, to break down what Looper's Q1 Media Placement Value ($MPV) data reveals about how connected TV home screens are being used — and misused — heading into the biggest sports quarter in recent memory. Recorded the day the FIFA World Cup kicked off, the conversation pairs directly with the Preston Smalley/Roku episode released earlier that week. The CTV Home Screen The Arbitrage of Streaming  Looper's $MPV metric assigns a dollar value to placements across Roku, Fire TV, Samsung, Xfinity, and others — factoring in local CPM rates, device footprint, and engagement. The result is a comparable framework that lets streamers, advertisers, and platforms understand what a homepage placement is actually worth before they negotiate for it. 4:06 – What $MPV is and the three variables that drive it: CPM, device count, and engagement5:59 – Why Roku's 100M device footprint makes its homepage one of the most valuable digital surfaces in media6:49 – The home screen as one of the most valuable websites in the worldThe Winter Olympics Set the Template. The World Cup Is the Stress Test.  Roku's Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics hub generated $36M in $MPV in Q1 — one of the first major hub executions on the platform and a proof of concept for what coherent sports signposting can do. With the World Cup now live across half a dozen broadcasters, multiple languages, and fragmented rights windows, the question is whether that template scales. 14:11 – How the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics hub performed in Q1 $MPV data15:43 – Why the Olympics hub is a model for Peacock, Roku, and other OEMs to build on16:07 – World Cup fragmentation: Telemundo, YouTube first-ten-minutes windows, and the signposting problemLive Sports Errors Are Already Appearing in the World Cup Data.  Looper monitors CTV interfaces in real time and is already surfacing errors to partners in the early days of the tournament — wrong match times, missing delay notifications, outdated location data. When a game gets rained off and every platform needs to update simultaneously, the gap between what's on screen and what's actually happening becomes a real fan experience problem. 17:18 – How Looper monitors live event signposting in real time18:02 – The types of errors already appearing in World Cup data: times, locations, delays19:09 – Why "it's available everywhere" is sometimes no answer at allQ2 $MPV report expected mid-July. We'll have Lucas back to break it down when it drops. Connect with Lucas Bertrand on LinkedIn · Looper Insights Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

    How the Home Screen Became the Most Valuable Real Estate in Streaming with Looper Insights CEO, Lucas Bertrand

  8. Jun 15 ·  Video

    How to Build a $22B Home Screen with Roku VP of Viewer Product, Preston Smalley

    Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Preston Smalley, VP of Viewer Product at Roku, unpacking the first new Roku home screen in a decade — how it was designed for 100 million+ households, what the hub methodology means for sports fragmentation, and why "delight" isn't just a brand word at Roku. It's a measured KPI. 82% of streaming viewers want you to read their mind  Roku built a home screen with a billion possible configurations to get closer to doing exactly that — and they're measuring whether it's working. Preston breaks down how Roku balances personalization with customization, why quick access felt "wrong" to users at first and indispensable a week later, and how a fictional city on your screensaver became one of the platform's most measurable loyalty drivers. 1:51 – Designing for 100M+ households: how surveys, diary studies, and a billion possible configurations shaped the new home screen4:42 – What "personalization" actually means: familiar content, adjacent discovery, trending signals, and human curators working together6:55 – AI in practice: how Roku layers large language models on top of its proprietary TV-specific models — and why general AI alone doesn't know what episode just dropped8:36 – The diary study insight: why users hated quick access on day one and couldn't live without it a week laterSports on streaming is more fragmented than cable ever was Roku's answer isn't aggregation — it's destination design. Preston explains how the Roku hub methodology works: one place for a fan to find their league, their team, their game — and the app they need to stream it, or free highlights if they don't have it. The NHL hub just launched. All four major leagues are now covered. World Cup planning is underway. 11:38 – The hub methodology: why sports fragmentation is a discovery problem, not a rights problem13:25 – World Cup and the Olympics playbook: medal counts, bracket tracking, and what "cultural moment" infrastructure looks like on a home screen14:37 – The global Roku business: #1 in the US, Mexico, and Canada — and why free live TV and antenna-blending are the growth story in BrazilWhy Roku City is a screensaver It's also a brand platform, a live event venue, a trivia game host, and one of Roku's top two sources of measured user delight. 16:55 – Roku City as loyalty infrastructure: IP partnerships, live events, Roku Dash, and why users don't experience it as advertising17:52 – How Roku actually measures delight — and what it has to do with finding a show you didn't know you likedConnect with Preston Smalley on LinkedIn Learn more about Roku at roku.com For more on how Roku is monetizing the home screen as a media property, read our full breakdown of the $MPV methodology from Looper Insights here. Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

    How to Build a $22B Home Screen with Roku VP of Viewer Product, Preston Smalley
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Covering the topics, trends, people, and acquisitions shaping Streaming TV.

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  • Creator
    State of Streaming
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    32
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 State of Streaming Podcast
  • Show Website
    State of Streaming Podcast