Verizon is slated to be launching its own streaming TV service later this year. Not much is known yet about the service, but the company has stated that its service will be different than what competitors are already offering. Although it’s tough to say what Verizon means by different. Verizon’s Marni Walden, who is the executive vice president and president of media and telematics, stated at the Guggenheim Media Day, that the service would launch after the AOL and Yahoo integration is under way. Walden also stated that “originals are important and sports are really important”. Walden also stated that the company doesn’t just want to do a “me too” thing with its streaming service. So the company is going to do things in a different way. Walden stressed that it was not about quantity, but quality.
After the Yahoo deal closes, which should happen later this month, Verizon is expecting to cut about 15% of its workforce. Verizon says that this would be to avoid redundancies across the companies. Seeing as AOL and Yahoo did do much of the same business, that would make plenty of sense. Those that remain at AOL and Yahoo, would be forming a new company called Oath. And it’ll play a major role in Verizon’s plan for media. There’s no word just yet on what would happen with Go90, but it has been struggling for quite some time, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see it cut out completely.
Of course, Verizon’s new service will be competing with the likes of DIRECTV NOW, Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, YouTube TV, Hulu Live TV and many others. So Verizon has some stiff competition when it does finally bring its streaming TV service to the masses, and it’ll definitely need to do something different to stand out. Considering the rest of these services are offering different channel packages, Verizon may need to look at offering plenty of original content, something that YouTube Red does, and is why YouTube TV has a leg up on the competition – but then again YouTube TV is only available in a couple of markets right now.