Security Halt!

Doug Kiesewetter: Veterans on Fitness, Emotional Health, and Mentorship

Deny Caballero Season 7 Episode 251

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In this transformative episode of Security Halt!, host Deny Caballero sits down with Doug Kiesewetter to explore the intersection of mental health, mentorship, and the challenges veterans face in life after service. This powerful discussion highlights the importance of emotional regulation, fitness, and accountability as key tools for personal growth.

Doug shares insights on navigating emotional challenges, including the impact of divorce and the necessity of building strong communities. The conversation also delves into the evolution of the Softlete Program, the role of storytelling in character development, and the science behind dopamine regulation. They further discuss the healing potential of psychedelics, the importance of quality sleep, and how self-awareness can drive positive change in relationships and life.

Join us for an engaging discussion packed with actionable insights on personal growth and resilience. Don’t forget to follow, like, and subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts!

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Chapters

00:00 The Mustache Chronicles: A Nostalgic Start

03:11 Navigating Life Changes: Divorce and Family Dynamics

05:59 The Importance of Mentorship and Teaching

08:57 Mental Health and Emotional Challenges

11:50 Finding Purpose Beyond Military Service

14:50 The Evolution of Softly: From Concept to Community

17:56 The Role of Fitness in Mental Well-being

20:59 Accountability and Growth in Personal Development

23:51 The Value of Failure and Learning

27:07 Redefining Success and Identity After Service

30:00 The Need for Male Mentorship in Society

39:23 The Dopamine Dilemma: Seeking Fulfillment in Extreme Sports

40:27 Emotional Regulation: The Impact of Relationships

41:54 Character Assessment: Friends vs. Enemies

43:20 The Art of Storytelling: Truth vs. Narrative

44:48 Accountability and Reputation: The Broader Implications

46:43 Adaptability: Balancing Strengths and Weaknesses

49:34 Sobriety: The Journey to Better Choices

51:54 Self-Awareness: The Key to Personal Growth

54:30 Psychedelics and Healing: A New Perspective

57:11 Sleep and Health: The Importance of Rest

01:01:11 Owning Mistakes: The Path to Improvement

 

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Produced by Security Halt Media

Speaker 2:

Welcome to this week's edition of the Dan Rayburn Podcast, the show that curates the streaming media industry news that matters most, unvarnished, unscripted and providing you with the factual data you need to know, without any of the hype, the pulse of the streaming media industry.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Dan Rayburn Podcast. We're back for another week here recording. On Friday, january 17th, mark is back.

Speaker 3:

I am back.

Speaker 1:

You heard from last week. I had a lot to cover. Also, I made up a couple words, mark, on the last podcast. You weren't there to correct me, but I combined a couple words together and made my own. I noticed when I was listening back back, so, apologies, I used two words that actually don't exist. I was like what did I just say? But fortunately it wasn't incorrect numbers or anything like that that's right.

Speaker 3:

That's right. It's okay. We can make up words. It's a podcast, it's not gonna be perfect.

Speaker 1:

We're not reading from a script which is the whole point.

Speaker 1:

Uh, we don't have as much this week mark, which is great, but we do have some numbers from Fox, from Amazon, on viewership numbers. So let's just maybe start with the Amazon. So Amazon had an exclusive NFL AFC wildcard game and it did very well. I was watching it during the event. I was talking to Amazon about some stuff on the back end as well during the event, which was great. They were giving me some information. I was sharing a lot of what I was seeing across different devices. It worked really well. The latency for me on most of my devices was about six seconds. Amazon's goal is always to get it under 10 seconds, as they publicly talk about, so that looked really good.

Speaker 1:

The biggest thing that not surprising with Amazon, because they're using the SciTech is the fact that the frame sync on all three TVs that I was testing at the same time was perfect. I mean absolutely identical. So the SciTech obviously works very well. The SciTech is not used for every single stream. Not surprisingly, if you're watching on my MacBook, it's not using the tech and also the MacBook latency was more than 30 seconds behind. But what percentage of total viewers are watching on a MacBook an event like that? Almost none. I guarantee it's less than 1%. So, as we all know, with events, quality is going to change. As far as the user experience based on the device, during the event, amazon did say that they were seeing record viewership. We now have viewership numbers from them. So this is per Nielsen. The game reached an all-time high of 24.6 million viewers. Keep in mind that includes NFL digital properties and over-the-air viewership. Prime Video's average audience was 22.07 million. Now, that's from Nielsen's panel-only measurement and it doesn't include Nielsen's Big Data Plus panel measurement, which they put out later.

Speaker 3:

So if you're confused, so am I.

Speaker 1:

So are the rest of us and the reason is video amp, adobe, nielsen, first party data. It's very hard now to compare Thursday night football to Netflix, to Peacock's numbers to Amazon's numbers, because some of the methodology is completely different. Some is simultaneous stream, some is AMA, some is Netflix. For one of them said they reached, well, define reach. Now it turns out they mean AMA, but they didn't use that in one press or blog post, but they did for another event. Then, when you throw in first party data, first party data is used only from certain events, from certain companies. So it is getting really hard to compare this Paramount and Nielsen to where Paramount's now working with VideoAmp as a result. So Nielsen has a lot of problems, but those are the numbers that are being put out as of now. So good job by Prime.

Speaker 1:

I did not see a lot of issues on Twitter. The ones I did see hard to know what the actual problem was. It certainly was not in large volume. I would just also finally say here too, always important to remember any game where you're going to have a large number of viewerships, like that, you're always going to have a percentage of users that are going to have problems based on legacy hardware. So I won't go into the details in terms of the conversation with Amazon, but they can see who's using what from a hardware standpoint and you're always going to have some of those issues. It's not like broadcast TV, but overall, great job, good numbers there in terms of viewership. Keep in mind also, that is us only. So, mark, I saw some people right away being like, well, it's not good as Netflix on Christmas. Netflix was global, yeah, prime AFC was us only. So you really have to start looking very detailed at the very detailed methodology to try and compare one to the other.

Speaker 1:

It's very hard to do now, that's right, let's go into. Let's go into Fox. So two pieces of news from Fox. The first one is Fox nicely shared with me. It's encoding bitrate ladder for the Super Bowl. So the max bitrate. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, I thought that was pretty neat, yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, Sometimes those are sort of you know, for some reason viewed as closely guarded secrets.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, I really I don't think so as much, only because you look at the manifest file and you can usually see all that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So they're going to max out at about 15 megs. They're going to capture the game game in 1080. I don't know if it's 1080p, 1080p, HDR, I don't know on that, but they're going to upscale it to 4K HDR. They're going to digitally distribute it to virtual MVPDs and Fox's platform. Now I did hear someone man on a podcast today saying oh well, this isn't UHD, so you're going to need 25 megs to get it. No, you're not. Go look at the bit rates. You're not going to need 25 megs and it's not native UHD, it's upscaled.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So you know, giving out information like that doesn't help To put in perspective the audience here. At the 2024 Super Bowl stream on Paramount had an average minute audience of 8.5 million, and it required users to authenticate. The difference here, as in 2023, when Fox last had the Super Bowl, nobody will be required to authenticate with a pay TV provider. So that's great. And then the second piece of news is, in addition to the game being on foxcom and the Fox app, it's also going to be on Tubi. So that is new. The Tubi app will be streaming the exact same feed as Fox will. Obviously, for those who don't know, fox owns Tubi, so interesting to see what happens as a result down the line. How much exposure does that bring to Tubi? Clearly, clearly, they're doing it to drive traffic to the brand.

Speaker 1:

That's the big goal here yeah, I saw some say well, because it's on a free, fast service, you're going to get more viewership. No, because the fox app is free. So I don't know how putting on tubi gets you more. I don't think it gets you more. Maybe gets you a different type of user, but it's not all of a sudden going to spike in terms of total viewership.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I to you know just, you know parties, you know whatever um that are outside of the normal um, you know their normal like viewing um, habit or whatever Um yes, and, and I I think if you're watching the Superbowl, you want to watch it, for whatever reason you are, you're not obviously going to be like, well, it's on Tubi, I guess I'll watch it. Yeah, you are, you're not obviously going to be like, well, it's on tubi, I guess I'll watch it. Yeah, yeah, and that I don't think that makes sense. Um, so, uh, we'll be interesting to see just what that you know experience is, uh, since, since it is on a fast service for free, uh, so so interesting there. Uh, super bowl is wow, it's coming up already. If you go to superbowlstreamingcom, that's where you can see all the posts I've done on the Super Bowl previously in terms of measuring, monitoring, and also there's one slide that shows viewership. If you look at the Super Bowl streaming over the last three years from a viewership standpoint, it's averaged about 15% growth year over year over year on an AMA basis. So I do expect it this year with Fox, it'll be a little bit bigger than last year, but it's never as large as some people suggest.

Speaker 1:

I also saw some people saying, okay, because of what Netflix did on Christmas, it's only a matter of time before they get the Super Bowl. Remember, the Super Bowl rights are locked up for the next. We're in 2025, so it's locked up for the next eight years. Netflix is not doing the Super Bowl anytime soon.

Speaker 1:

Yes, the NFL does have the ability to opt out of certain contracts with Disney and Fox and others after the next couple years, but they can't just opt out of here. You have everything but the Super Bowl. They'd have to opt out of every single game, so that is not happening. So people getting excited about the Super Bowl on Netflix one day hey, that day may come, but it is not in the next few years at all. That's just not happening. Altice is in another carriage dispute, this time with Nexstar, so that's not great. Content was removed a week ago, on Friday, january 10th. This was interesting Mark in terms of what was put out by Altice, because, of course, both sides gave us the whole oh, we've been negotiating fairly and we've offered great terms, and blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, the usual boilerplate, but Altice came out and said quote despite News.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, they use old boilerplate, yes, but you know, altice came out and said quote despite News Nation's shockingly low viewership. Nexstar has taken this one step further by demanding expanded distribution of the channel to hundreds of thousands of more customers, requiring that even more customers who don't watch it are made to pay for it. The more customers who don't watch it are made to pay for it. But they actually gave out a number. They said 90% of all these customers never tune into the News Nation channel ever. I hadn't seen another carrier actually give out a number like that.

Speaker 3:

So interesting. That's not good for News Nation.

Speaker 1:

No, it's not. You survive because you're bundled with something else.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the old linear TV business model, the old legacy, that's right, which?

Speaker 1:

you better figure out how you're going to rebundle. That's right, because it's coming either way. Talking about just a little bit of rebundling or really redistribution, apple announced their entire first season of Severance is going to be available on the Roku channel, which will run through only a limited period of time, it's only for about a week. But another instance here, mark, and we've talked about this before you know, amc Network's cut a deal with Netflix to bring older seasons of a lot of their shows to the platform. You know. Here's Apple using the Roku channel, which has more distribution, just in terms of eyeballs, than Apple TV Plus does, to bring one of its you know popular shows to Roku to just get more exposure.

Speaker 1:

And who would have thought that would have happened years ago? Because, remember, years ago, companies, companies were broadcasters, content owners were taking content away from other platforms to put it in their own streaming service. That's right and wouldn't even think of relicensing it. Yeah, yeah, times have changed. Yes, they have. That's the reality of of what we're seeing in the market. Some other news, mark, that we just won't go into too much detail in here, just because, frankly, we don't have time and I didn't have the opportunity to really dig into it. There's been a couple interesting announcements on the advertising side. So for one, directv acquires the majority stake in Invidi. I'm saying that right Invidi, i-n-v-i-d-i Invidi, no, it's Inovid inovid inovid, okay, yeah, yeah, uh, let's see terms of deal.

Speaker 1:

We're not disclosed. We don't have that. Um now, not too shocking, because direct tv had partial ownership of the company with dishish and WPP since 2020. Let's see, yeah, 2020. So not too surprising. They're saying the company is going to remain and operate as an independent company.

Speaker 3:

Actually actually, dan, I stand corrected. Yeah, it is not InnoVid, because InnoVid is another advertising technology company.

Speaker 1:

It's.

Speaker 3:

Invidi, invidi, okay, invidi, okay, invidi.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

I stand corrected.

Speaker 1:

Another one here is. So this is again just kind of funny where this is going now with these carriers, uh, with these carriage disputes. So, uh, optimum, which is Altice, is currently in a dispute with MSG networks, and Optimum has now come out and said that they demand MSG networks to refund $125 million to customers. And what they're saying is they are charging customers every month for a service that they're no longer getting and they're suggesting that they refund that. It's getting a little aggressive now, more than usual in the media, in terms of how exactly these carriage disputes are going, but I thought it was pretty interesting that they're now starting to give out some actual numbers and talking about well, here's how much people are paying for a service they're not getting. I would say it's definitely getting a little more personal, which there's nothing good of that. Of course, this is business, but I think for us, mark, and for the industry, we're getting a little more window and insight into some of these services from a cost standpoint and a viewership standpoint.

Speaker 1:

Going into RSN news real quickly, man, this is just nonstop in terms of all these different teams cutting deals, yeah, it is so.

Speaker 1:

Uh, the Texas Rangers, uh, baseball team, um, so they originally were doing a deal with Diamond Sports Group, which is now Main Street Sports after they came out of the bankruptcy. That's who they had a deal with the Texas Rangers. The Texas Rangers have now decided, instead of going direct with their own app, that they're now going to do a deal and have done a deal with a company called Victory Plus. So Victory Plus has a deal to bring local Rangers games direct to their consumer streaming service, and it's interesting because Victory Plus also has rights deals with the Ducks and Red Bull. So now you're starting to see not just RSNs as part of larger packages or skinnier bundles, but you're also starting to see some RSNs bundled with other similar content tied to sports only in that local region. So even more fragmentation there, which is just wild in terms of where RSN has gone over the last couple of years and the continued fragmentation that we're seeing in the market.

Speaker 3:

Yeah for sure you know. Victory plus a parent media. I was not that familiar with them. Do you know who's really behind them? And especially the technology.

Speaker 1:

No, I haven't looked at any of that. They're, they're, they're definitely small.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

You know, interesting, not surprising. They're definitely small, yeah, but you know, interesting, not surprising. They're going with something local, mm-hmm. A couple of other things here, mark, and we'll be done for the week is Fubo filed an amended 8K last Friday, mm-hmm. A few interesting things to call out here the deals, termination clauses and fees. So if any of them trigger, fubo would have to pay Hulu 100, sorry, 50 million and Hulu would have to pay Fubo 130 million. The termination closing date is before April 6th of 2026. And that can get pushed back to October if all the deal points and closing conditions are done. But the company is just waiting. Companies are waiting for regulatory approval, yeah, so no surprise on that. Uh, at least 30 days prior to the closing Hulu has to notify subscribers to Hulu plus live TV that is going to change its terms and conditions. Not surprisingly, it's going to be owned by a different company. So a few more details that came out there. Nothing major, nothing that we see impacts the deal as of yet.

Speaker 1:

Let's go into. Let's go to the last thing here, mark Limelight Networks, so Egeo, which is a combination of Limelight Networks and Edgecast Networks. They actually run two different networks. Limelight Networks officially went dark at 9 39 am mountain time yesterday. That was sad, uh, yeah, you know, I saw a lot of people using the word, the word sad. Yeah, I get what they're saying. I don't. I don't know that. I look at it sad. You're talking about a company that was around for 23 years, yeah, yeah, which is a long time to be in the market, a lot longer than the vast majority of anybody last on the CDN side. It definitely had different starts and stops over the years. It employed a lot of people. The edge cast network was supposed to go dark as well. However, it will not go dark now until January 31st. I'm not going to give out details as to why, but it's not.

Speaker 1:

So you know what my post talked about online. If people haven't seen, it was. If you think about the combination of LimeLight Networks, edgecast, VDMS, egeo combining it all, it employed thousands and thousands of people over 23 years, delivered tens of billions of streams, if not more, really allowed. A lot of Limelight in particular are obviously much further along in their career now in terms of what they're working on, but a lot of them got their foundation at Limelight Networks when it initially started in 2001.

Speaker 1:

A company and brand that's been around a long time. We really have to take away from it as an industry, just over those 23 years, what it allowed people to do, to learn, to test, to evaluate how do we provide better solutions, better QOE at scale. That's right. So, yes, there's a lot of people that are going to be looking for jobs. No doubt Mark and I have talked about that before. What I will say, mark, is for anyone who's laid off at Egeo or any other similar company that may be coming up. I'm offering a free pass to them, just like I did last year at the NAB show.

Speaker 3:

That's great.

Speaker 1:

So reach out to me. There's been a little bit of confusion. I thought I made that clear in my blog post, but I have people who are not laid off, being like, yeah, I want a free pass, where do I get it? So they're not quite.

Speaker 3:

I'm looking for a job, Dan. Do I get a free pass? Contact me if you're still no.

Speaker 1:

But if you've been laid off, even if it wasn't edge cast but another company recently, yes, even if it wasn't edge cast but another company recently, yes, we'll help you out. I think last year, mark, we had 40 or 50 people, yeah. Maybe, who took me up on that. I don't remember exactly, but it was good. It's a great place to come.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I know it was.

Speaker 1:

it was a nice group, you know that were able to take part and it was great content that they could take part in, so I will do that again next year. You have to contact me directly, just email me, that's the best way to do it. And then Mark, for the NAB Show Streaming Summit man, they're talking about coming and doing two different technical presentations and WBD and NBCU and Disney and just you name it and there's going to be a really great lineup of speakers, also some very unique technical presentations that some of these companies are are doing. Mark, I'm also going to be doing a CDN meetup just for customers, on the Sunday before oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 3:

No vendors allowed.

Speaker 1:

No vendors allowed, and here's why, if you think of the top 20 major OTT services, you have a lot of new people now in charge of their distribution at those companies, and they're all trying to meet their peers and they're like, well, what is my peer over here doing and and how do they do a multi-cdn strategy? So I've been talking to a lot of them lately over the last couple weeks and they all want to share notes. So I thought, okay, let's, let's get them together, uh, so it's great.

Speaker 3:

It's a small setting. Yeah, it's a. It's a really good idea because there's there's, there's, you know, mixers and meetups, but you know, and I'm a vendor so I can take shots at them, but you know there's a lot of vendors in there also trying to kind of you know, do what vendors do. Nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 1:

We're all trying to sell our product, right and you can do that after they speak at the show. You can do that yeah, exactly Happy hour, our product right and you and you can do that after they speak at the show. You can do that exactly happy hour. But this is going to be private um for an hour.

Speaker 1:

Come by, it's great each other have a beer. Yep, so it's going to be the sunday before the show. Uh, in the in the session rooms, because they're already set ready to go, some of them will be. So it'll be sunday, april 6th. I don't have the time yet, but late afternoon.

Speaker 1:

So if if you're a CDN customer keep in mind a customer that means a content owner, broadcaster, sports league, ott provider right, you have to be paying a third-party CDN service, not a reseller of a vendor. But if you're a customer, reach out to me directly, dan at danrayburncom. If you're going to be at NAB, if you're a customer and you qualify, I'll get you a free invite. There's no cost. But I'm excited for that because there's a lot of information sharing going on right now between those companies quietly, but you'll hear more about that at the show. Their presentations they're looking at doing are pretty interesting, so I'm super excited by that, mark.

Speaker 1:

We also have just a great list of sponsors already Wowza, uplink, cdn 77, vimeo, hydrolox, ids, fastly, varnish, netskirt, netint, oracle. I know I'm not mentioning them all, but in the next week the site will be updated, content will start going up. I did already confirm two Fireside Keynote chats. One is a CEO of a content owner, the other one's a CTO, so you'll see those shortly. So a lot of content coming in hot, I think that's a lot.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, the next two or three weeks there's going to be a lot going online.

Speaker 1:

Also, registration is now open officially as of a few days ago. If you want a discount for the streaming summit, shoot me an email directly. I'll give you a code. The NAB is no longer doing register before these dates and then the price changes, which I think is great. That was too confusing. So if you want a discount, reach out to me, I'll get you a code. If you want a couple of people from your company to go, I'll set up a code just for your company as well. Happy, I'll set up a code just for your company as well. Happy to do that. So, mark, that's what we got this week. We'll keep this one pretty short. Wow, 20 minutes. That's like a record for us?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, this is amazing, dan. I think you missed something, unless you referenced it and I didn't catch it. Aren't you hosting a Zoom for job seekers and kind of talk about career advice?

Speaker 1:

Yes, it will be. I didn't mention it only because.

Speaker 3:

I don't have a date and time yet, oh, okay, but I did say, yeah, I did say in the interview post for all the people who are looking for just how to advance your career, find a job.

Speaker 1:

I will be doing what Mark's talking about is in February date to be determined, probably middle of the month I'll be doing a live Zoom of here's tips and tricks term in probably middle of the month.

Speaker 1:

I'll be doing a live zoom of here's tips and tricks. Here's what you have to think about your LinkedIn page. You can ask me questions. I'm not going to open it up to audio and video, that's just. I tried that last time and that was too much, so you'll have to type in your question. But it'll be. It'll be free to attend, so we'll try and give out as much resources there as well. And also, mark, that reminded me I got a nice email today from one of our dedicated listeners in Portugal, which was pretty cool.

Speaker 3:

They said you know, that's pretty awesome.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, they said we're listening to the podcast and we noticed you mentioned that. You know you have a large listener base in Portugal and they were explaining to me just sort of what they're doing in that region, who they're working with and just what the little streaming community there is, and they're going to be coming to the NAB show. So I appreciate them reaching out.

Speaker 1:

I got to shoot them back an email and make sure we meet up, but yeah, it was good to hear just what's going in that little region of the world. Streaming everywhere Can't go anywhere, that's right.

Speaker 3:

Can't escape it. We all consume content in some way, shape or form for good or for bad.

Speaker 1:

It's not always good, consumes a lot of our time too, that's true. So that's what we got this week. If you have any questions, you get back to us. Now, mark and I are going to take a little bit of a break here because get some travel coming up, so we're looking at what. The third so we probably won't drop another podcast for two weeks if any crazy thing happens. Somebody acquires somebody other than tiktok, because that's yeah everybody will know about that. They don't need.

Speaker 1:

Everybody's gonna know about that, yeah uh, if anything crazy drops, we'll figure out a way to record, but otherwise we'll be back in two weeks. Appreciate everyone listening. If you have any questions, reach out. Want the discount code? Reach out.

Speaker 3:

Nabstreamingsummitcom has all the information on submitting to speak and sponsorships, and then also, if you are interested in seeing the content from last year on the homepage of nabstreamsummitcom, scroll to the bottom and you can click on 2024 videos. It's a great thing to look at. If you're wondering like, oh, am I a good speaker? I've been referring a few companies in for sponsorship and I sent that link out to everybody you know and even flagged a couple of specific sessions because you know it's a great resource.

Speaker 1:

first of all, yes, you can see the caliber of speakers. You see what we cover to what detail you can see the stage setup. I keep getting questions Well, what's the stage look like? Well, here's the video.

Speaker 2:

Just watch it.

Speaker 1:

So it's on the homepage. You can check that out. Appreciate everyone listening, everyone stay safe, be well, and Mark and I will be back in a couple of weeks. Thanks very much.

Speaker 2:

If you enjoyed the show, send it to a friend, have questions for Dan or Mark, connect with them on LinkedIn at any time, and be sure to check out Dan's blog at streamingmediablogcom.

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