With the threat of mass cord-cutting causing cable TV companies to lose quite a bit of sleep, at least one cable TV giant is trying to get ahead of the game. Comcast, one of the largest cable providers in the United States, has created its own Youtube-like service, bringing ad-supported, short-form digital video to tablets, phones, computers, and smart TVs/set top boxes. This service, which launched last week, is called Watchable.
More about Watchable from Variety:
With the Watchable service, which launched Tuesday, Comcast has lined up 30 content partners who largely produce video for millennial audiences. Those include AwesomenessTV, Buzzfeed, Disney’s Maker Studios, Vice and Vox. (Comcast’s NBCUniversal recently plunked down $200 million into Buzzfeed and another $200 mil into Vox.) And unlike its cable TV service, Watchable is available online and mobile to anyone in the U.S., not just Comcast customers.
Why would anyone choose to go through the Watchable middleman, instead of simply watching on YouTube or directly from, say, Tastemade’s own sites and apps? Comcast isn’t looking to license exclusive or original content — the way, say, Vessel and Verizon’s soon-to-launch Go90 are.
Comcast does have a large installed base of 22-plus million TV subscribers, and Schwartz notes that “many of our Watchable partners have not traditionally had distribution on the TV, and we can give them a path to reach new audiences and further monetize their content on the biggest screen in the home.”
But those TV subscribers are accustomed to, well, TV. Whether they’ll really have an ongoing urge to watch shorter, made-for-digital material through Comcast’s Watchable funnel is not at all obvious. Meanwhile, the value-added lure for non-Comcast users is supposedly that they can browse a collection of professionally produced content that’s been aggregated and organized by category or playlist. The question is whether there’s enough there to produce a big and active viewer base to make advertising on Watchable a workable proposition.
We’ll see moving along if Watchable is a success, and if it is, it’s highly likely other cable and satellite TV providers will follow suit.
The TV, Internet and Phone Blog 