Perhaps viewing MeTV as overly “me-too,” Cox Communications confirmed that it has put the launch of the emerging OTT service on the backburner.
“[W]e’ve decided not to launch MeTV as originally intended and we’ll continue to explore the digital entertainment space,” a Cox official said in a statement, confirming a report by Light Reading.
Word of Cox’s OTT offering, originally called Flare MeTV and initially targeted to iPads, emerged late last year. Designed to appeal to millennial audiences, MeTV was an aggregated, ad-free service with personalized playlists that also cross-searched sources such as HBO, Showtime and Hulu. It was also coming on the heels of new ad-supported OTT offerings from Verizon (go90) and Comcast (Watchable).
Notably, Cox is gearing up for the national launch of a next-gen platform that’s based on Comcast’s X1 platform, which provides access to Watchable content at the set-top, complementing distribution on mobile apps and Web browsers.
Cox continues to run other Flare-branded streaming services, including FlareKids, an ad-free OTT app for the iPad, and flarePlay, an OTT subscription gaming service. Cox also marketsmyflare, a personal media management service that lets customers store digital pictures, video, music and documents in the cloud
Coxshut down its short-lived flareWatch IPTV trial in 2013.
