Matt Belloni at Puck News has a story out that, while it doesn’t exactly break new ground, crystallizes in a dramatic way what is happening in television right now. As he puts it, “the Great Netflix Correction has officially become the Great Streaming Purge.”
He means that the draconian cuts made infamous by Zas at WBD are now becoming the norm in the industry. Iger at Disney is determined to cut $3 Billion this year. Streamers will still be spending a lot of money on production of course, but more and more focused on content that is watched by significant fractions, and that drive sign-ups and limit churn. One of the things this means is a return to the television content lifespan that Boomers grew up with, but will feel new and intolerable to most everyone younger: most shows and films will (if lucky) live long enough to be enjoyed once, maybe twice, and then disappear, often for good, not living on infinitely on VHS, DVD or evergreen streams. What I did not really understand until now (even though WBD kept claiming it, but they are hard to believe) is that available content in a streaming library is not cost-neutral to the streamer. I had assumed that if nobody is watching a bad film that is available on Disney+, it does not cost Disney anything (aside from original cost to make it or purchase it). But that’s not true. Apparently, just making a film or show available for streaming incurs a significant licensing fee cost. We need to think of every show and film on a Streamer’s available archive as if it were actually being exhibited or shown on a TV channel, (I.e. there are as many channels exhibiting licensed content as there are individual films or shows in a Streamers archive) and that means you have to pay the owner of the content their fee, whether it is being watched by millions or by no one. Streamers original strategy was to have so much content always available that it drive subscription sign-ups and kept subscribers paying every month. That worked for a while, especially for Netflix. But not anymore. Mist subscribers will not subscribe or stick around just because they can always find something to watch; they come for what they want, then leave and go some place else. Now all that Un or under-watched content is all cost and no benefit, and Streamers are wanting to eliminate them. Belloni notes that residual payments to writers and actors make up a very small slice of the cost to streamers, and are not really a factor in the Purge (so go ahead and increase their residuals). -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYK3pTXpv69ih5XggjZs5fGbYmK_cyJ1Bo54cW6SucKgqw%40mail.gmail.com.
