What the Heck Is Going on with Streaming Services Nowadays?
Here's how I'm puzzling through it all.
Cassidy Steele Dale writes to equip you with the forecasts, foresight skills and perspectives, and tools you may need to create a better, kinder world.
And one of those ways is to explain a change that’s under way so you can understand it and plan for it.
Like a lot of folks, a few years ago my wife and I cut the cable cord. We don’t miss it. Now we only subscribe to a few streaming services and we ebb and flow on whether to keep all of them.
How and why are streaming services changing? What services are we going to want to subscribe to in the future?
Here’s what I’ve figured out so far about the immediate/near-term future (three to five years) of streaming:
First, the boom in streaming services has probably ended: streaming has never been particularly profitable, there’s always been a lot of deficit spending in that industry, the return on investment for streaming services’ original programming has never been great, the market for subscriptions is about saturated, and the Hollywood writers’ strike outcome will make production of content more expensive (but far more fair to those who create that content).
To reckon with all this, almost all of the streaming services will either include unskippable ads or they’ll charge more for an ad-free experience. They can’t afford not to any more. This probably will make the lower-tier ad-supported subscriptions much cheaper than ad-free subscriptions currently are, though. They’ll also remove (or let licenses expire for) all content that, when royalties to creators are factored in, is more expensive to retain on their service than it provides in revenue.
For example, recently Paramount+ removed Star Trek: Prodigy, an excellent animated kids’ show we were using to introduce our kids to Star Trek. We all loved it. We’re sad it’s gone and plan to buy the entire series on Blu-Ray when it’s available. Paramount+ had produced an entire second season that it will never air.
Second, all the programming that’s licensed to others’ streaming services will revert back to their home production companies and those companies’ proprietary streaming service. So, for example, all Star Trek programming has now returned to Paramount+ and may soon only be available from Paramount+.
Third, the consolidation of streaming services has begun and will probably settle down into four to maybe six major services in the next three to five years.
Caveat: The following list may not turn out to be exactly right on what-goes-where, and others posit that there will be three major services — Apple, Amazon, and Netflix with a potential fourth of NBCUniversal/Paramount+/other cats and dogs.
(1) Disney+ which will include everything Disney owns: Hulu, ABC and 21st Century Fox and their catalogs, National Geographic, all of Star Wars and Marvel, and more. Doctor Who is now co-produced by Disney and the BBC and will air only on Disney+ outside of the UK and Ireland starting this November.
Some are speculating that Apple might buy Disney but I suspect the streaming service will still be called Disney+ (because Disney has entertainment-brand-name-recognition and Apple doesn’t). Others speculate Disney might sell ABC but that ABC would still license its programming to Disney anyway. (Apple has built every device and means for streaming content but has under-prioritized the development of its own original programming perhaps maybe — speculation hat on — because it was waiting for Disney to launch Disney+ so Apple could buy it.)
(2) MAX which includes HBO’s holdings, Warner Brothers/Discovery, the CW’s catalog, all things Harry Potter, Animal Planet, HGTV, Food Network, Magnolia Network, all DC Comics shows and movies, and the second largest library of children’s programming after Disney+ (Sesame Street, Looney Tunes, Hanna Barbera, and all of Cartoon Network). MAX will also have every TV series that Warner Brothers has produced over the years for the three broadcast networks. So MAX will become the home of Friends, The West Wing, and The Big Bang Theory. I expect the forthcoming Harry Potter TV series, which will re-adapt the entire book series over 10 years, will become a flagship series for MAX the way Game of Thrones was for HBO.
(3) Paramount+ now includes Showtime (for an extra fee) and CBS’ catalog, BET, MTV, Nickelodeon, and Comedy Central and every movie and TV series Paramount has ever produced including every iteration of Star Trek and Mission: Impossible.
(4) Peacock will include NBC’s/Universal’s catalogs and USA Network, Bravo, Syfy, DreamWorks animation, Telemundo — and the Olympics.
(5) Netflix — but a depleted one as large swaths of its licensed holdings revert back to their parent companies, and those parent companies’ streaming services. (Side note: when I want to watch a Korean or Japanese movie or series like Train to Busan, Squid Game, or Midnight Diner, Netflix is where they’ll be.) I cannot wait for the fifth and final season of Stranger Things.
(6) Amazon Prime Video may exist more as a platform than a creator of original content. Or it may try to reposition itself as the home of some prestige content and art house films since Amazon doesn’t need its streaming video service to turn a profit to the degree the others do. (If you think about it, many of Amazon’s originals feel like art house TV series, like Tales from the Loop.) I use A24 as a bellwether for this and currently A24 movies are on Amazon so I could imagine AMC retiring its streaming service and Amazon acquiring AMC’s catalog. (If you think about it, each iteration of The Walking Dead feels like an art house series. Mad Men certainly did.) I could also imagine Alamo Drafthouse doing the same. (Yes, Alamo Drafthouse has its own streaming service.) I can also imagine Amazon absorbing Britbox (if MAX doesn’t).
Amazon and YouTube may become the main platforms for FAST - Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV - but I don’t understand FAST well enough to forecast on that. FAST, YouTube, and YouTubeTV I’ll have to think about another time.
Fourth, as a measure of belt-tightening by the services, I expect a sharp reduction in the rate and amount of release of new original content (but an improvement in quality of some of it).
Sounds like a lot — and sounds like it could be expensive. I suspect a couple of things will happen:
Some people will rotate through streaming services month by month to binge shows as each season concludes. (October? The Continental on Peacock and The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon on AMC+. November? The most recent season of Star Trek: Lower Decks. December? The three new Doctor Who specials on Disney+.)
Some people will use VPNs to subscribe and watch from parts of the world where those services may be cheaper.
Many people will subscribe to all at the cheaper ad-supported rates. With the ads in there it may feel like watching TV in 1995 but at least the ads will be targeted at you specifically.
Bonus thoughts:
Cable TV will probably die quickly as favorite channels like HGTV go to streaming services. (My mother would cancel her cable immediately if she knew how to stream Dr. Pol, Medicine Woman and her zoo shows 24-7.)
I have no idea where Hallmark Channel will go but whoever gets it…
I have no idea where Christian cable channels and their programming will go.
I have no idea how professional sportsball (and ESPN) will handle itself — by licensing to streaming services or by starting their own. NBC already locked up the broadcast and streaming rights to the Olympics for the next decade, I think, so next go-round expect a massive spike in subscriptions to Peacock.
Linear TV (broadcast/live) may survive as the home of local (and hyperlocal) news and sports — the only time-sensitive programs being made any more. I imagine each such local channel would broadcast over the air and via YouTube. Could I imagine someday a local news channel that carries your local news and airs local Little League and soccer games? Yes, I could. Would I watch it (or have it on in the background while I write these newsletters)? Yes, I would. Could local residents send video of snowfall totals and best sledding spots by neighborhood to their local station and their station air it? Yes — and that channel would become the only thing your family would watch during/following a snowstorm. (We’re close to that already. Weather events are the only time we turn on local TV any more.)
So what does all this mean for our own future and planning?
Last caveat and a reminder of how I’ve been bounding this forecasting exercise: We watch relatively little streaming TV but what we watch we love. I actually spend most of my TV-watching time on YouTube instead, and my kids spend half their TV time on Disney+ and the other half on YouTube. So Futures of media consumption is very different from Futures of streaming services. A topic for a future newsletter.
So what does this mean for our household?
Since we’re sci-fi/fantasy geeks and we read geek news sites we can keep a running list of upcoming shows we know we’ll want to watch. And of course we keep a list of our current shows.
So currently we watch the different Star Wars and Marvel shows (Disney+), the various Star Treks (Paramount+), the kids love The Owl House (Disney+), and I watch Reacher (Amazon). We’ll start watching the rebooted Doctor Who when it starts in November (Disney+). We know the final season of Stranger Things will be out in the next year or two (Netflix) as will an Alien miniseries (Hulu, but by the time it’s ready, Disney+) and a Blade Runner 2099 miniseries (Amazon) and perhaps another season of Sandman (Netflix or, because it’s a DC Comics property, MAX). And we’ll all watch the new Harry Potter series when it appears (MAX), at which point I’ll watch the DC Comics live-action shows Titans and Doom Patrol. And of course we have a lot of shows stacked up in our queues on Netflix but far fewer on Amazon, Paramount+, and Disney+ (in that order).
So now we subscribe to Netflix, Disney+, Amazon, and Paramount+. A few years from now it’s possible that we might drop Netflix as we catch up to our queue and turn on MAX instead (but the more expensive ad-free subscription to reduce our kids’ exposure to ads) and subscribe to all five but pay the lower rate on for the services with the popcorn shows and the higher rate on Disney+ for the same kids-exposure-to-ads reason and Amazon because commercial breaks would pull us out of the art house experience.
So I keep a spreadsheet with two columns and update it every six months or so: Column 1 is Now/Next with shows by grouped by streaming service and months of the premiere dates for each, Column 2 is Later with new shows that are in production and our favorites that have new seasons on the way. That way I have a way to gauge both our subscription-money expenditures and our eyeball-time-expenditures in the future.
It’s classic futurist-overthinking-and-overplanning but it’s fun.
What’s your plan?
Want to read more about all of this? Here’s where I pulled from for this:
https://www.theverge.com/23831904/streaming-wars-price-hikes-disney-plus-hbo-max-hulu
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/disney-apple-deal-1235559416/
https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/29/23702827/free-streaming-services-tubi-pluto-roku
https://www.smartmove.us/learn/entertainment/the-future-of-streaming-predictions-and-possibilities
https://movieweb.com/the-future-of-streaming-ads-prices-content/
https://discover.hubpages.com/entertainment/The-Future-of-Streaming
https://www.valuethemarkets.com/analysis/what-is-the-future-of-streaming-services
https://medium.com/predict/the-future-of-streaming-c28a890e3db1
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/07/future-of-tv-predictions.html
https://www.cdnetworks.com/media-delivery-blog/streaming-trends/#:~:text=The%20video%20streaming%20market%20globally,and%20technologies%20on%20the%20horizon.