Streaming , Does it Still Have a Viable Future ?

[BAYLOR]

A few years ago , everyone oohed and awed over the new steaming model as the wave of the fuel in test proving views with wide variety of content form a small subscription fee . In present , things didn't go arriving to plan. What went wrong with whole steaming model ? Where does streaming go from here?


Thoughts?

 

[Brian G Turner]

Looks like streaming will do fine to me. Netflix has introduced ads, but then again that just puts it on a par with cable and satellite broadcasters. Disney+ is losing money, but it doesn't lock people into subscriptions - so rather than buy lots of disney DVD's at Christmas parents can just rent out Disney+ for Christmas, then cancel. Same for anyone who wanted to watch Star Wars TV series. Amazon Prime video also looks like it's still going strong. Apple TV has the powerhouse of Apple behind it, so they'll simply continue to grow their content.

The only alternatives to streaming look like terrestrial channels, which are looking increasingly stale - the BBC has a reputation for not daring to take risks on new talent these days. And satellite and cable remain dependent on syndicating content but the studios behind them want to stream them themselves, such as Paramount and HBO.

The internet is the way of the world for the foreseeable future, and IMO that can only mean streaming.

 

[Elckerlyc]

I don't see anything that is threatening the streaming services. But because of its success the competition is getting stronger, which makes Netflix somewhat nervous and more costs aware. It is telling that the first and biggest on the streaming market, Netflix, is also by far the priciest and apparently yet has to learn how to become a lean and mean streaming machine. (Suggestion: Curb the cost on the Board of Directors).

 

[BAYLOR]

I don't see anything that is threatening the streaming services. But because of its success the competition is getting stronger, which makes Netflix somewhat nervous and more costs aware. It is telling that the first and biggest on the streaming market, Netflix, is also by far the priciest and apparently yet has to learn how to become a lean and mean streaming machine. (Suggestion: Curb the cost on the Board of Directors).

Its not proving to be quite as lucrative as hey had originally envisioned.

 

[KiraAnn]

As I see it, the current problem with streaming is that they are dividing up the market, with a few exceptions. For example, if you want Star Trek, you have to get Paramount+; if you want Star Wars or Marvel, you have to get Disney+; if you want British shows, you have get Acorn or BritBox. NextFlix and Hulu are the exceptions, but have been shut out of some of those dedicated markets.

It's rather like the automobile market of the early 30's, and I forsee a period coming up of consolidation.

 

[BAYLOR]

As I see it, the current problem with streaming is that they are dividing up the market, with a few exceptions. For example, if you want Star Trek, you have to get Paramount+; if you want Star Wars or Marvel, you have to get Disney+; if you want British shows, you have get Acorn or BritBox. NextFlix and Hulu are the exceptions, but have been shut out of some of those dedicated markets.

It's rather like the automobile market of the early 30's, and I forsee a period coming up of consolidation.

Some player will fall by the wayside and get absorbed by the bigger players. This is already happening.

 

[BAYLOR]

Looks like streaming will do fine to me. Netflix has introduced ads, but then again that just puts it on a par with cable and satellite broadcasters. Disney+ is losing money, but it doesn't lock people into subscriptions - so rather than buy lots of disney DVD's at Christmas parents can just rent out Disney+ for Christmas, then cancel. Same for anyone who wanted to watch Star Wars TV series. Amazon Prime video also looks like it's still going strong. Apple TV has the powerhouse of Apple behind it, so they'll simply continue to grow their content.

The only alternatives to streaming look like terrestrial channels, which are looking increasingly stale - the BBC has a reputation for not daring to take risks on new talent these days. And satellite and cable remain dependent on syndicating content but the studios behind them want to stream them themselves, such as Paramount and HBO.

The internet is the way of the world for the foreseeable future, and IMO that can only mean streaming.

There going to be consolidation fewer offerings.

 

[BAYLOR]

Skydance is trying to buy Paramount .

 

[paeng]

There are many videos about this, especially about platforms like Netflix and in light of phenomena like ESG scores.

The gist is that companies face rising costs to keep subscribers while subscribers prefer to subscribe, binge-watch, and then unsubscribe or halt payments temporarily because several shows are spread out across several platforms.

Because competing platforms don't want to share material with each other, then they have to increase their libraries by creating their own TV shows and movies, which is very costly. It also adds to more market saturation, which is making viewers tired because there are too many shows and movies to choose from. Meanwhile, the platforms have to raise rates and/or add ads, which are making more viewers consider just paying for one month to binge-watch and then unsubscribe or halt payments temporarily. The same platforms are counting on them to pay for several months or the whole year.

Meanwhile, investors want platforms to show more diverse content, leading to mixed results from viewers. The same investors also want higher returns, leading to more pressure from companies to come up with new content to retain viewers in markets that are already saturated with content.

The shows are marketed and talked about by being shown partially in video platforms and talked about outside mainstream media control in social media. At the same time, more viewers spend more time looking at videos in social media they spend less time watching streaming features and TV shows, as well as even watch TV.

Given that plus market saturation, many viewers just tend to focus on a few shows and then just wait for anything else to come up for free somewhere or become available in a bargain bin.

 

[CupofJoe]

Record-breaking Suits and Bluey named most-streamed shows of 2023 in US

The legal drama, starring the future Duchess of Sussex, enjoyed a huge surge in popularity last year.

www.bbc.co.uk

What would worry me if I was a Steaming platform is one of the later paragraphs...

There were no original shows from the streamers in the end-of-year top 10 list, with all being acquired from other networks.

 

[Dave]

I didn't understand your original question either. As far as I'm concerned, I'll can never go back to watching live broadcast TV. We watch everything either recorded or streamed. If it is recorded we can skip through the adverts, but either way, we watch things at the times that we want, and we don't organise our lives around the TV in the way we did in the past (or just missed TV programmes never to see them again.)

But I see now that you are actually questioning rising subscription fees:

Its not proving to be quite as lucrative as hey had originally envisioned.

I can only speak from a UK perspective. I can't afford every subscription service, but I'm paying more for TV than I ever did when I only paid the BBC license fee (which may be a lot but has been squeezed in recent years.) This number of players in the game is unsustainable. The pie is too small.

Some player will fall by the wayside and get absorbed by the bigger players. This is already happening.

That is what the market will dictate, but it isn't "the end of streaming." The competition makes for better programming and a few bigger players will be left in the end. Once they have consolidated, they may be able to raise their prices further and make more money, but if they make it unaffordable people just won't pay. There is too much TV now. I can't watch everything even if I wanted to.

One major problem is that advertising rates and the levels of terrestrial TV advertising have fallen (in the UK anyway.) I know someone working in TV and this is a problem for ITV, CH4 & CH5. You no longer get the same number of programmes with huge audiences where advertisers fight to advertise in the breaks. So, those revenues have been falling which means less money for programmes.

On the other hand, recent terrestrial programmes like Mr Bates Versus the Post Office and The Traitors have been hugely popular in the UK. I think it's a really interesting time.

 

[Parson]

• https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/585354/post-2683949
• Add bookmark
• #10

Record-breaking Suits and Bluey named most-streamed shows of 2023 in US​

The legal drama, starring the future Duchess of Sussex, enjoyed a huge surge in popularity last year.
www.bbc.co.uk
----

I was reading about this as well. One of the things the New York Times mentioned was that the "most watched" was calculated in terms of "the most time watched" so this gives a big boost to kids programs which are watched over and over and over again --- ask any parent of young children --- and well loved older shows who have possibly 100's of episodes to binge.


Based on my own consumption of streaming my suspicion is that the driver of paying the subscription fees is the new programming and once you have subscribed you watch what drew you in the first place, say "The Queen's Gambit" or some other original series and then you fill in the rest of the time you have with things you know and might have missed.

On HULU I am currently watching ELEMENTARY. It was a show I could watch a few times a season when it was on broadcast television when my schedule would allow it, but right now I would guess that I've watched more time in that show than those that caused me to put my money down in the first place.

 

[paeng]

Here's one video about what I mentioned earlier:

 

[Dave]

None of this discussion means the end of "Streaming" or that Streaming doesn't "have a viable future", any more than the discontinued production of Betamax cassette tapes meant the end of Video Cassette Recording (VCR). It was Digital Video Recording (DVR) such as TiVo that was the end for (Video Home System) VHS recording. Now, if instead, you were to show me what is going to replace internet streaming services such as Netflix, then I'll agree, and you'll likely be the next multi-millionaire.

 

[paeng]

I think "viable" means "profitable," and more than that of other businesses where investors can switch.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

TV packages always have the same problem. When you first get it, if you are interested in older programs, there are plenty of things to watch, a backlog of older programs. The size of the backlog is dependent on how many old programs you want to watch. Going through the backlog can take awhile, but once seen, you now have the new programs, which you may or may not like and are fewer in number. As the number of liked programs decreases so does viewer loyalty. One can either keep the service, waiting for something new to watch or keep sorting through the old stuff, maybe finding something. Paying by the month one can use the option of canceling and getting it back when something new comes on or enough new stuff has accumulated that you want to see.

The variety of entertainment sources will continue to flourish as long as gaming, sports, movies, episode shows, content remains too big, or too expensive, or require different formats for any one source to handle. Consolidations within the same type of entertainment are possible but not across different types of entertainment. Contracts lock sources into distributors which insure the sources will continue to exist, as long as people are willing to pay. The sources of entertainment are able to avoid consolidation and takeovers by the distributors because of the way the contracts are arranged time wise. Going back to when movies ruled and tv didn't exist, movie studios could pay lower salaries to pairs or groups of actors by signing them up individually and not at the same time. This gave the studios a great deal of leverage over the actors and the costs of making movies. This type of control insured the studios existence. Because the different sources, sports, gaming, drama, movies can not be handled the same way format wise, their existence will continue as individual entities because the distributors won't be able to control all of them at the same time.

One thing that could untangle everything would be a smart tv that could handle the selection of different format styled programs issued by audible commands. The smartness would be the tv instantly loading everything in place without the viewer having to issue a series of commands to switch from one streaming source to another and then make the various selections to get to the program itself. A company that could do that might be able to force the various entertainment sources to pay them for the privilege of being able to be seen on their tv screen. For the time being, the tangled mess results in lower prices for the consumer.

 

[paeng]

The consumer is plagued by a proliferation of media works that are essentially the same, with more involving rehashed content, or spinoffs, reboots, sequels, prequels, etc. He also don't want to pay more because he's already being charged by each platform, or per work, etc. Se he waits for free time or just watches whatever's there, and then chats on social media and reads what's new, which is where the same producers come up with all sorts of ways to tell him what to watch.

Meanwhile, the producers are in trouble because they have to compete with each other, come up with more works that look expensive, and churn out more as fast as possible to meet investors' demands for greater returns, which means higher overhead costs that can't be met by consumers who are flooded with all sorts of media, are spending too much, and are choosing to wait for works to be found in bargain bins or shown for lower prices or for free. Or in the case of subscription they subscribe for a month, binge-watch, and then unsubscribe.

Finally, with better technology, including virtual sets, deepfake, libraries of videos, images, and audio, and entertainers willing to sell their likeness, plus lots of impressionists, more works can be manufactured using mostly computers, saturating markets even more.

 

[Parson]

Somewhere we have to make room for the time spent on social media and YouTube et. al. Here we have "entertainment" with very low overhead which is "free" to the public. This means that there are fewer faces viewing the high overhead, high quality products squeezing streaming, theaters, and television all at the same time.

 

[Dave]

@Parson That's a very depressing future where there is no TV drama, and the only entertainment left is time spent on social media and watching YouTube.

Actually, in the Star Trek TNG episode "The Neutral Zone", Data says that on Earth, television was said not to have lasted as a form of entertainment long beyond the year 2040. That's only just 17 years from now. But they did have a Holodeck to play with! (and to break, mostly.)

No, I can't see the end of TV just yet. I can't see the end of cinema just yet either, though @BAYLOR has been predicting it here for at least the last seven years: A Growing indifference to Cinema Going

Nor, can I see an end to live theatre and concerts. They are doing fine. Thriving! (providing that you like musical theatre)

 

[BAYLOR]

@Parson That's a very depressing future where there is no TV drama, and the only entertainment left is time spent on social media and watching YouTube.

Actually, in the Star Trek TNG episode "The Neutral Zone", Data says that on Earth, television was said not to have lasted as a form of entertainment long beyond the year 2040. That's only just 17 years from now. But they did have a Holodeck to play with! (and to break, mostly.)

No, I can't see the end of TV just yet. I can't see the end of cinema just yet either, though @BAYLOR has been predicting it here for at least the last seven years: A Growing indifference to Cinema Going

Nor, can I see an end to live theatre and concerts. They are doing fine. Thriving! (providing that you like musical theatre)

Dave, I don't want to see big screen cCeima go away , I hope it survives but in order to do that they have start by doing better with their movie offerings which of late most of them have not worth watching.

Point of interest The Tv Show Max Headroom. predicted the demise of Cinema and the much of the what have not in terms of or tmevsion programs. It was an exertion of thethe thing that the 1976 film Network projected.