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Tens of millions of people watched the Knicks become champs live on TV this weekend. Hundreds of millions of people consumed some of the content about their epic run.
But if YouTube teaches us anything, it’s that social isn’t shoulder content to TV, it’s living breathing culture that also appears on TV. Social is not at odds with TV, it’s part of the new consumer journey that entangles the living room and the remote control always in people’s hands.
Which is why my pick for Roku’s acquirer was Meta. Well, I was wrong.
Instead, FOX announcing plans to acquire Roku for $22B. This instantly changes it’s TV posture from owners of stations and networks and Tubi to potential owners of the operating system that owns the moment 100 million TV sets get turned on.
“Roku will continue to be run as an open, partner-friendly platform” is the line right now but putting the largest TV OS in America into the hands of a studio/publisher shifts the OS Wars into an asymmetrical battlefield.
As we point out in our just released TV OS Special Report, the TV OS is a marketplace and a gatekeeper that enables TV makers to hold a position of relative independence as they generate revenue equally across the field of apps, channels and branded environments.
If this deals closes, FOX will choose what people see during all those “what do you want to watch” discussions. And FOX will undoubtedly have business incentives to drive to it’s O&O over everything else.
Executives will have some big questions to answer about who it becomes– and the media market will need to decide how to manage a bias gatekeeper. They will point to Comcast and cable, but this hits different.
Right Time for Roku
No matter what, the timing for Roku is right. Walmart’s VIZIO just became the #1 selling OS in America and there is no turning back on VIZIO’s hockey stick growth and expected decline of Roku’s reach over time. Wall Street wasn’t going to give them too long before it started to go the way of Trade Desk
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