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Received an offer from AWS L5
It’s an exciting time right now in the streaming industry. Disney is launching their hotly anticipated streaming service later this year. Warner will quickly launch their own big service shortly after that. NBCUniversal will then launch their own service end of next year. Netflix is rapidly bleeding licensed content, evolving to a company that can (hopefully) survive on just their original content. Hulu is still trying to figure out where they belong, now that the fellowship has disbanded and they are fully owned by Disney. Amazon is slowly growing bigger by the day. And then big players like Apple and Facebook and YouTube are entering into the fray. How do you see things shaking out? 🍿
As a consumer, I was happy when there was just one cable, and later just one streaming service. Now a dozen of them exist and need a subscription, it's getting unaffordable.
IMO Disney, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video will be the real OGs in the coming future. Disney and Amazon have an incredibly huge warchest and can offer quality content at competitive price points. Netflix Originals are the jam. Some of them have cult followings. I’m not an expert in marketing, but I foresee a drop in monthly subscription costs as soon as Disney launches its own service. As long as NFLX keeps producing/creating good content and maintains its current licensing standards, it will stay in the game. Apple is heavily restricted in itself. Youtube originals cater to a very specific audience, and I personally don’t know anyone who actually has youtube red. Warner and NBCU might not be able to attract an audience on their own, and might tie up with Amazon Prime as a bundled streaming service, like Showtime and HBO. Best guess :)
Disney will probably succeed but the other new ones will be huge failures. People have convinced themselves that streaming is a money tree when almost nobody is running a profit on it. You either run it as a loss leader for some other concern (YouTube with data or Amazon with prime) or you have content that is so irresistible that a lot of people who don't consume that much will pay to keep their options open (hbo, Netflix, maybe Disney). I'm worried about hbo too, saw a speech some exec gave about wanting people to consume more hours of video per week to be more like Netflix. Clearly doesn't understand streaming.
Over the next five years companies like NBC, ABC, and Viacom will start pulling their shoes from Netflix and Hulu to launch their own apps. This will not go well for them. People don’t know which networks make which shows and have little loyalty to the networks. I don’t know how CBS’s service is going but even with the new Star Trek show I don’t see how they will be able to survive. People do not want to pay for seven or eight different streaming services. We are in a post-scarcity world when it comes to TV and movies. New services will launch but most will fold within five years. Apple’s service will trudge on but in five years the main services in the U.S. will be Disney, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. Not sure about outside the U.S. though.
ABC is Disney
It’s NOT exciting. To watch what I watched 5 years ago with 1 subscription I’ll have to pay multiple. I hope Bernie and Warren go after the “streaming industry” who’s only goal is to raise prices for the average consumer :)
For me personally, all the shows I care about (Rick and Morty, Big Bang Theory, Silicon Valley and all the HBO shows) are all Warner shows, so my guess the Warner service is the main one I will likely subscribe to. None of the Netflix originals speak to me with the exception of Stranger Things. After I’ve binged season 3 I will cancel. Disney is cheap enough that I will probably just do it. I will wait and see how NBCUniversal shakes out. That has some potential.
What about Quibi? Coming out in 2020
The transition from linear TV to streaming is a secular trend. And no traditional studios can make a smooth transition, it's hard to allocate your best resources to go for the lower margin business, as illustrated in the book the Innovator's dilemma, too much internal conflicts. Amazon, Apple are using streaming as a loss leader, not enough executive attention and it's hard to get big. I am seeing Netflix coming out as the winner take most like Google on search. Streaming is as much about tech as it's about content. studios just don't know it yet.
Can you expand on why you feel that streaming is as much about tech as it is content? Do you mean tech like recommendation engines?
Recommendation engine is important. Netflix can increase the viewing several times given HBO's catalogue thanks to recommendation. But it's way beyond recommendation. For example, Netflix is able to manage all productions using the same set of services in the cloud, data flow automatically from one system to another. Whereas studios are a dozen silos that don't even talk to one another. Therefore studios can never match Netflix on the level of efficiency, speed, data accuracy and sophistication. They will be lucky to achieve Bing status compared to Google. For studios, it's relatively easy to build a new streaming service, much harder to rebuild themselves. 90% of personnel will be gone if they are built like Netflix. It will not happen.
Becoming too many options. No one is going to subscribe to 7+ services. In 5 years there will be only 3-4 major players. In 10 years I see broadcast dying and basic cable more or less gone. I think internet services that can be offered with blazing speeds will be key.
Dgaf about any of them, all I need is KissAnime.