Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Hulu to launch non-stop customer service as it readies live TV

The increased spending on customer service comes as Hulu is about to go head-to-head with internet channels that offer live TV from AT&T's DirecTVNow and Dish Network Corp's Sling TV.

The services have had hiccups - like shows freezing, viewers getting error messages and system crashes. Their owners also have large customer service staffs already handling calls from their traditional pay TV customers, said Brett Sappington, senior director of research at Parks Associates.

The stakes are high for Hulu, which has a customer defection rate of 50 percent, according to Parks Associates, a Dallas-based market research firm.

"Live TV is a challenge particularly for events like the Super Bowl and the Oscars which draw millions of subscribers all at the same time," Sappington said. "You are never sure what's going to break until you have a few million people watching at the same time."

From the article "Hulu to launch non-stop customer service as it readies live TV".

Previously In The News

A Third Of UK Broadband Households Have An OTT Subscription

“Overall OTT video usage in the UK favours broadcasters,” said the Parks Director, Research, and Connected Consumer in Europe report author Brett Sappington. “The most popular OTT video sources in the...

Watch Company Buys Way Into Fitness Wristband Market

Harry Wang, director of mobile and health products research at Dallas-based Parks Associates, said the digital fitness tracker is the fastest-growing category in the connected health device market, an...

16% of Spanish pay-TV households become first-time subscribers in 2015

"First-time adoption of pay-TV is up among Spanish broadband households as is the penetration of pay TV overall," said Brett Sappington, director, research, Parks Associates and author of the report....

Two-thirds Of US Consumers Engage In Second-screen Activity On Monthly Basis

Nearly a fifth of pay-TV subscribers report that they have a mobile app from their service provider, up from 16% in 2014. The highest adoption was found to be among AT&T U-Verse and Verizon FiOS subsc...