Online video viewing continues to rise

By NBC 09.14.18

Magid Advisors President Mike Vorhaus gave one of the most popular presentations at Goldman Sachs’ annual Communacopia conference on Thursday. No prizes for guessing it was about the explosion of online video trends and cord cutting.

Vorhaus said that three-quarters of all internet users are now paying for a subscription video service, and online video viewing is up 8 percent per year.

The presentation also suggested that there’s more consumer demand for smaller selections of cable channels, or skinny bundles, a point also brought home by Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav, who confirmed his company has a deal to provide a host of its TV channels to smaller online bundles offered by Hulu and Sling TV.

But Vorhaus also touched on the topic of China, asking how many investors in the media had actually visited the country that is likely to be the lead topic of earnings presentations in the not-too-distant future. By his count only a quarter of the audience responded that they had.

Vorhaus told The Query that the Chinese digital middle class is around 700 million people, while there’s another 600 million blue collar workers who will be digitally connected in the coming years.

“If you claim to cover a U.S. studio and you don’t know about China, you are out of touch,” he said. “There is this whole image that it is very agricultural.

He noted there are more than 150 cities in China with a population of one million or more.

Still, he noted that even Chinese players such as Tencent are still operating at the whim of government rules. Tencent stock dropped last month after the Chinese government banned the content of one of its games. Here’s how CNBC covered it. Tencent Holdings also owns RIOT Games which produces the popular “League of Legends” computer game.