DirecTV Stream has completed its national rollout of PBS, deploying nearly 250 PBS member stations in 198 Nielsen DMAs reaching 99% of U.S. TV homes.
DirecTV, which announced plans for the PBS rollout back in early October, said the rollout was completed nine months ahead of schedule.
DirecTV Stream is only the second virtual pay TV service to pick up carriage of PBS following Google's YouTube TV.
PBS represents a challenging deployment for vMVPD operators. For one, PBS isn't covered under the same "must carry" rules that guide the public broadcaster's carriage on DirecTV satellite and other linear pay TV services. That means each station must agree to its own retransmission consent fees.
In the case of the DirecTV Stream deal, terms were negotiated at the network level, with individual stations deciding to opt in or out of a master agreement.
Secondly, there are nine designated marketing areas in the U.S. that have three PBS stations, each with their own distinct local programming, and each with their own schedule for network shows. For operators, that requires a lot of bandwidth, not to mention creative problem solving in regard to displaying program guides.
Third, there's no monetization through local advertising with PBS. “It really takes companies that are committed to serving their communities and their viewers and who are willing to partner with us to help bring our stations to their platforms,“ said Ira Rubenstein, chief digital and marketing officer of PBS, to Broadcasting+Cable in October. ”After YouTube, AT&T was the most willing."
DirecTV streams each of the PBS member stations’ full schedule live, as well as the PBS free video-on-demand library to complement its live broadcasts.
In addition to announcing the carriage rollout, DirecTV also said that it has signed on to be a "premiere sponsor" for two upcoming PBS documentaries: Becoming Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom. DirecTV will conduct screenings of the two documentary films across the U.S. this summer.
AT&T spun off DirecTV last year in a deal with private equity firm TPG, with the telecom maintaining 70% ownership of the pay TV asset. The spinoff finished the third quarter with around 15 million customers, according to third-party estimates.
