Verizon will launch its OnCue internet-based TV service by the middle of next year, according to Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, who used his remarks at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference Thursday to shed some light on what Verizon actually plans to do with the OnCue assets it acquired from Intel earlier this year.
Verizon‘s OnCue will feature programming from the big four broadcasters, according to McAdam, whose remarks were first reported by Deadline Hollywood, but also what he called custom channels with programming from West Coast-based digital media studios. One example cited by McAdam was AwesomenessTV, the Los Angeles-based tween studio that launched as a YouTube network but is now also producing content for traditional TV, and was acquired by Dreamworks Animation a little over a year ago.
McAdam’s remarks may help to boost morale within the OnCue team, which was slated to launch an internet-based TV service in late 2013, only to see Intel change course and sell the entire unit at the eleventh hour. Further doubts around OnCue arose when McAdam said in May that he didn’t plan to launch OnCue as a linear TV service “because of the overall content cost.” Insiders told me at the time that the OnCue team was taken aback by these remarks, and it didn’t exactly help that OnCue’s chief executive Erik Huggers left just a few days later.
