Deciding which online tv service will win: Which stream will Hit the Target?
Posted on | November 17, 2019 | No Comments
I love on demand video.
From my faithful Tivo, to video files on my computer, to Netflix, I’ve relished the ease of use that comes with all the different flavors of shows that you can access with the click of a mouse, remote, or touchpad. There’s really nothing like it.
But once the novelty of convenience wore off, it was the shows I was watching that really had to keep me coming back for more. Broadcast tv was good, but eventually those programs and the others on cable would show up on Netflix anyways. Eventually, I left behind episodic television and just Cut the Cord.
The world of pure streaming was fantastic. Binge that series you’d always wanted to watch, then enjoy a movie or two on a slow Saturday. The sky was the limit. Then came the real turning point: original streamed programming. Netflix started it with Lillyhammer, and perfected it with House of Cards. But they didn’t stop there: there was even an experiment with the tv show “Party Down” where each episode was added to Netflix after it aired on television (although ironically Starz was the first content provider to leave them to start their own streaming service).
Also going along the television path was Hulu, providing broadcast shows as they aired but with their own available library of tv shows and movies. Then there was Amazon Prime, with it’s own original shows and deep library of films and programs. Now there’s a couple of new kids on the block: AppleTV+, with their limited but impressively produced list of original shows, and DisneyPlus, with their enormous back-catalog of movies and shows accompanied by original content that covers the panopticon of the Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney universes.
But with all of these new services, plus a dozen other smaller networks out to compete with their own lists of programs, who is going to win? Who will end up with the most subscribers?
Well for starters, it won’t be the small streamers.
NBC is pulling “The Office” from Netflix in 2021, making it the flagship show for their own streaming service. It’s a good strategic move, especially considering The Office is one of Netflix’s most popular shows. But what NBC doesn’t seem to understand is that the show is popular due to it’s convenience, not just because it’s a great program. When people are bored on a weekend, or just sitting down to dinner and want something familiar to watch, or maybe just desire some noise while they’re working, they turn to a well-thumbed few episodes of the antics of Michael Scott. But is it worth paying for a whole new service to see the show? Perhaps for a month or two if you’ve never seen it (which is pretty unlikely after 14 years), but are you really going to pay after you’ve watched all the episodes? And would you also pay all the other niche network streaming services out there for their shows all at once?
That brings us to our original question: with all the content out there split between different networks and on demand video providers, subscribing to all of whom would cost hundreds of dollars a month, who ends up winning in that situation?
That’s easy: the pirates.
No one wants to pay for content. They’ll pay if they need to, but in the long run they’ll depend on the largess of the Internet (if they’re savvy enough to find where the content lives). It’s already a documented fact that the split of streaming services from Netflix has pushed people back towards piracy. What we’ll probably see as smaller services break out on their own is the eventual realization that they’re not making as much money from subscriptions as they had expected. Their only eventual safe move is to come back to Netflix (or in some cases Amazon Prime, if they can get a better deal).
So where does that leave the heavy hitters, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and Disney?
Two words: package deal.
Right now you can get ESPN, Hulu, and DisneyPlus for the low price of $12.99 a month. That’s a great deal considering Netflix is up to $8.99 a month now. If for another $10 or so you throw in Netflix and AmazonPrime, I personally would be thrilled to sign a one year contract.
So which stream will hit the bullseye? The biggest ones. If there’s a detente enough between the Big 4 to get a package together, they’ll all be winners. It would be the ideal situation: a watcher could look upon the apps all grouped together on their device and see a little mini television channel lineup. Consumers will get the content cheaper than if they were separate, and eventually everything will be on there once the little guys come back after they realize the error of their ways.
And then we’ll finally have time to answer the hard questions: like who has the cheapest deal for the Internet access to watch them all…
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