The Latest Prognosis: Is Streaming Dead?

Can you F’ING believe that a debate is going on about the future viability of Streaming?

Give me a break. Streaming is a fixture until the next evolution of TV. And yes, obviously Netflix is losing some steam…hello, there are countless streaming services increasing the competition…as I have written for years and as, finally, the mainstream has woken up to…this is a replay of early, middle, and late Cable TV, and we are already seeing Streaming bundles and former competitors partnering.

At the end of the day, the amount of excellent, unique one-service-only content is small in comparison to the total. It wasn’t like HBO was all you wanted to watch back in the day…despite the Sopranos…so watch, churn—churn, watch—or do like me and sign up for every platform. And now, of course, add “Ad Free” packages into the mix (another prediction I won), and all of a sudden we’re paying stupid money to watch one or two things a year on a particular platform.

So…how best to look at this??

Let’s take a step back and look at other Streaming equivalents where the debate between content, device, service, and platform got confused and then twisted by the Wall Street crowd to drive stupid valuations and unconscionable profit-taking.??

iPod. CD. 8-Track. Cassette tapes. LP’s. 45’s. Phonograph Records. Relics of time passed…think ByteDance, TikTok, SoundCloud, and Spotify…and check to see if anything new launched this week.

Even further back, there are cave paintings. Rock scratching. Stella’s. Papyrus rolls. Parchment scrolls. Illuminated manuscripts. Books…relics of an even more ancient time.

Wait, books?

According to some, books have been dead since 1930 when Bob Brown, an impresario and producer, wrote a book called The Readies, a take on the first sound movie he had just seen which were called Talkies.

This is amazing, and my readers know that I deplore and despise the smug and siloed DIGIBABBLE that begins with Ex-Nihilo…it all began here…Brown wrote:?

“The written word hasn’t kept up with the age…the movies have outmaneuvered it. We have the talkies, but as yet, no Readies…to continue reading at today’s speed, I must have a machine.”?

And here, dear reader, is the DIGIBABBLE arrogance slayer:

“A simple reading machine which I can carry or move around, attach to any old electric light plug and read hundred-thousand-word novels in 10 minutes if I want to, and I want to.”

He then added (I call this the coup de grace):

The machine would “allow readers to adjust the type size and avoid paper cuts.”

Brown joined the legions of prescient thinkers who over the ages imagined the evolution of needs…Davinci and Jules Verne come to mind, and there are many more. Feel free to add the ones that inspired you.

Different from our age and hubris…and yes, he missed rechargeable and beach-ready…don’t waste your time on that. Unlike our quick-to-the-draw, knee-jerk DISRUPTION—books are dead, authors are finished, anyone can be Dickens now—he left it open. It was about the device…content was content, it filled a device and made it desirable by its use case.?

One more point to ponder, video (as in talkies) remains a primary source and maybe an even more important one.

While my “Imagine” is not really about books, let me add a few more points to ponder and add to your questioning…the mission of Imagine, after all…

This might be debatable…the first real ebook, maybe in the world, was created by Project Gutenberg (and hold that thought) in 1971 when the Declaration of Independence was digitized for sharing. Think about that significance which has been so lost on us, it was important and critical content…and I’d even venture to say holy in the sense that it signified the next evolution in the freedom of information sharing that began with the revolution created by Gutenberg.?

For context, the first ever email message was sent in 1971 between two mainframe computers…probably had less computing power than your smartphone…just saying…and on and on. In 1985 came CD-ROMs, or as some called them expanded books because of the extra content you got to see. In 1998, the first true e-readers were launched, Rocket and Softbook. PS—Google was also founded. And then in 2007, the big one…Kindle and the full-on prediction that within a few years all printed books would be finished.?

Fast forward to today, and the sales of printed books are up, yet again…although, and this is worth contemplating, less reading is going on. UGC, as in anyone can be an author, was a dead end…although servers are clogged with the detritus of self-delusion, great content still surfaces and wins the day.

And I might add that every platform since has announced the end of “books.” Remember the Twitter Novels, no? LOL…because they were pure crap…

Finally, I call your attention to Stephen King’s novella Riding The Bullet, written only for e-books…400,000 downloads in 24 hours…froze servers…proved print was dead…today, it's a printed book with special editions and a movie (of course). It looks like King did not stay exclusive to e-books after all.

The point, hopefully, is clear if I have raised enough questions for all to think about.

It’s not books that were in danger, as in great (or not so great) written content…never, ever were books in question, despite all the brilliant analyst and pundit pontificating…merely wild swings of company valuations and talking head conference ignorance.?

In fact, nothing is really in danger…not books, TV, or movies—all that is happening is a shift—a constant evolutionary advance in how we enjoy and distribute that which we like...that which motivates us; excites us; causes us to laugh or cry or even get angry. But the content? It won’t get better or worse through the application of technology—it will just be more readily available. And to me, books, TV, and movies are just generic terms for types of content.

Think back to the days of the pre-Gutenberg printing press. There was little or no distribution of knowledge beyond a privileged few, and sadly, the powers in charge liked it that way.

Then all hell broke loose. Printed material became widely available. Ideas grew as they spread; peoples’ minds opened and sadly closed (always a two-edged sword, no different today) and the world changed and continued to change as it continues to change today.

Do we mourn the loss of reel to reel to recording tape? Do we lament the passing of the kinescope? Do we keen over the death of Edison’s wax cylinders?

Or, rather, do we look back upon those adaptations of technology with awe and wonderment, amazed at what they could do? We happily play or watch their output on every device imaginable today with a sense of deep nostalgia, respect, and thanks for getting us to where we are today and for preserving the best of what was then.

At the end of the day, it’s all about the content. Once the doors of sharing were opened and Pandora’s Box unleashed, we instinctively knew that our means of communicating—of sharing more—would change and evolve. And, we also know that the driver would be the content.?

The human need to tell and share stories drives everything.

We are a social people and since the first cave folk banded together and painted cave walls we have been looking for the next Facebook, video technology, or reading device. After all, that is what Gutenberg really invented…think about that.

Think on this: Beowulf, an epic poem passed on by word of mouth for generations; written and illuminated by monks; printed on a press; made into movies; available on multiple streaming platforms; watched on your iPad on an airplane; and then written about on your smartphone shared to your social channel of choice as you recommend or not it's viewing. I’d say we just came full circle, no? Do you see it?

So, here is my thought…why agonize over the device? Why do I care how it's delivered to me? Do I really care if it’s this or that or the other, or should I care more about understanding people; their needs; their actions; their experiences; their likes and loves? In other words, drive the content…the idea…the deep connectivity…the rest is obvious.

Devices are for figuring out how to use them. Platforms are for delivering to the device…But content? Either it's great or it’s not.

I had this thought last night as we settled down to watch a VOD on our big screen accessed through Amazon Prime via our Smart TV…after I checked its source on my iPhone. When done, we returned to Cable and watched a live news program. And there you have it, we didn’t spend half a second wondering or considering anything other than I was watching TV, and my bet and experience tell me that most people are the same.?

And BTW, I ended the night watching the premier of a new series on Apple on my iPad wearing my headphones as my wife slept.

Cable bundles are back…Streaming is here to stay, and sadly, so is DIGIBABBLE.?

What’s your view?