06 11 25 Questex VP of Technology Kevin Gray talks about start of the StreamTV Show

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now on Colorado's Morning News.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
The leaders of the streaming world have descended on Denver
for a mega three day conference called the stream TV Show.
This event is taking place at the Gaylord of the
Rockies and executives from the major players like Amazon, YouTube,
and NBC Universal are discussing everything about the streaming industry,
joining us now in the ka Common Spirit Health Hotline,
quest Tech Vice President. It's Kevin Gray. Kevin, thanks for
coming on Colorado's Morning News. What exactly are you all

(00:25):
going to be discussing? Is there a main topic or
focus of this year's a symposium?

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. So there's really
kind of two things that we focus in on here.
There's the content set of things, as we like to
call it, and the technology side. So the content set
of things is mainly around partnerships. So well, you're not
going to see here of people announcing like the next
season of Bridgeten or anything like that, right, what we
are going to see there's a lot of partnerships to

(00:51):
get made for bundles, So you might coming out of
the show see announcements for a bundle with like a
Netflix and the Stars or at Peacock in a paramount
and the various different TV manufacturers would be talking about those.
You also, on the technology side of things, people are
here trying to solve streaming problems, right, So content discovery,

(01:15):
ad fill, and ad frequency. If you've ever seen the
same ad more than ten times when you're watching a show,
all those things are things that people are working on
here trying to fix.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Kevin, I noticed the title of the of the get
together is called the stream TV Show, So that means
that's not what traditional TV where you're hooked in or
the traditional networks, right is that because everybody, most people
seem like they're migrating away from being wired and getting
off if you want to say, the main frame.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Yeah, So we're really focused on what we would call
the growth side of the industry, right, So it's no
secret I think just this year, streaming overtook legacy linear
television as the most watched platform and that's only going
to continue to grow over the next several years. So
that's what we're focused on. And it's everything from all
of the you're streaming apps that you see when you

(02:02):
log onto your TV set, to those TV sets and
those platforms themselves. So those guys that are like Roku,
Fire TV, Samsung LD all those are.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
There going to be streamers, There are going to be
talking about sports and how sports has migrated to some
of these platforms.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Yeah. Absolutely, We've got a bunch of sports panels. There's
one that's going to be on let's see so on
college sports and name, image and likeness. There's going to
be one on just sports streaming and the future of that,
monetizing that, and yeah, regional sports will touch on as well.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Ever going to fill Are we going to ever fulfill
our appetite for more content which seems like it keeps
coming and coming, and even though people do consume these
and binge watch programs, it's also it seems like it's
a much more fragmented audience.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Do you do you talk about those issues with viewership?

Speaker 2 (02:50):
I mean, we're in an on demand world now, and
I guess that's a good thing as a consumer are
but are we losing that common experience of watching a
show together at the same time and the fact that
maybe there's a little bit of disenfranchisement and disconnection with people.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yeah, that's something that a lot of people here actually
talk about. And the truth is that fragmentation is probably
going to be only more and more of a problem
in that regards because one of the key buzzwords that
you're going to see here at this show is personalization.
So that's actually breaking it down not just you know,
in your region, but by your household and by the

(03:26):
people that are in your household. So you might have
a different experience and watch different things than other people
that you live with, and that does lose that commonality
like you're talking about. But the reason why it's getting
even more fragmented is we have all these apps and
all these channels and everything right now, but really that
creator economy is really starting to take off through YouTube.
They're seeing more growth than anybody else, and they have

(03:48):
thousands and thousands of different creators that are on there
that appeal to really personal needs. So it's only going
to get worse. Unfortunately.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Final question, and that was it cutting the cord. I
just couldn't think of there, but the fact that I
think people cut the cord because they felt their cable
bill was way too expensive and they figured, well, I'll
go through an app. But a lot of these apps now,
if you want to say a la carte go on
that way have become very expensive as well, and that's
because some of these delivery systems now are actually creating
their own content. I think about Netflix, I think about Amazon.
Are we going to see costs go up because of

(04:18):
this as well? Because if you're creating the content, you
got to pay the creators and then that I guess
that flows downhill to the person that's consuming it on
the app.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Yeah, so what you're going to see is actually more
of a variety of choices. So if you do not
like ads, you are going to probably have to pay
higher and higher prices for the subscription here. But that
being said, everybody like Netflix themselves. They are starting to
bring on AD tiers, which are cheaper, but you just
might have to watch a couple of ads. And it's
actually to the benefit of a lot of these streamers

(04:49):
to get people on those AD supported tiers because they're
able to make money a lot more money actually in
a lot of cases on those AD supported tiers, So
there will be options available for everybody. There's also a
big free streaming world that's taking off as well. So
if you ever log onto your your Samsung's or your
LGS or Roku's, you might have heard something called Samsung
TV Plus or LG Channels or Roku Channel. You have

(05:12):
a lot of free options, so there's there's a lot
of choice that's out there that appeals to everybody's preferences.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Quest Tech Vice President's Kevin Gray. Thanks Kevin, all right,
Thanks Martin