The streamers that focus on new content will win, while others die.

The many casualties in the streaming world will include the dinosaurs like DVD. Broadcast and cable players will have fewer subscriber and ad dollars so they will shift from scripted content to news and sports.?Broadcast is shrinking into a tiny ecosystem of procedural franchises: 911, Law and Order, the Chicagos. Broadcast shows are being ignored by the Emmys.?Cable is losing new television series to the streamers, and nets like TNT and USA will give up on scripted content.

That said however, the blistering pace of change may not always blister: a third of America is using dial-up and they are changing their viewing habits as little as they can.

The streamers themselves will shed blood. There are eight or nine major streamers, but no one wants to pay for that many services, and in time the laws of Darwin will thin them out. Content in the end may be dominated by a half-dozen big firms like the old days.

To win, you need a stream of good new content, for marketing, for attracting new and young viewers, for working social media. You need content aimed at women, minorities, LGBT. And deep pockets.

Accordingly the top two winners will be Amazon and Netflix because they aggressively seek new content; Apple and Disney will be less aggressive and will fall behind; Disney is going big to exploit their existing IP,??but unless they seek new content streams, they won’t be as competitive.

The big players with studios and streamers are figuring out how to balance maximum profits with the need to prop up their streamers. They want theater play, then PVOD, then stream, then sale in the case of Warner and Disney (sometimes they do sale earlier). Sometimes a company will send a film to its own streamer and then ship it to Amazon after they’ve squeezed most of the value out of it.

In terms of viewers, Netflix and Amazon had 200 million in mid-2021, Disney and Hulu had 130 million between them, and the small fry – HBO, Peacock, Paramount and Apple – were all in the 33-45 range. Apple, revenue-heavy and content-light, should look for a merger partner for its streamer, and really all four of the dwarves should band together in some combination.

The race in summer 2022: Netflix at 221 million, Amazon 175, Disney 138, HBOMAX 77, Hulu 46, Paramount 40, Apple 37, Peacock 28. Disney as expected has failed to catch up to Netflix; HBO has managed to pull away from the players at the bottom of the stack.

Another yardstick is retention: Netflix has a monthly cancellation rate of 2.5 percent. Disney and Hulu are in the 4-5 range, HBO 7, Peacock 9, and Apple a disastrous 15.?

Another yardstick is of course profit. One analyst said that Wall Street has lost interest in subscriber numbers: they want to see lots of black ink.

The streamers and their investors must survive all the other hazards of the market as well. The Street expects Paramount to sag due to weak television advertising, and Disney is expected to underperform because they’re losing Indian cricket.

Netflix expects to lose 2 million subscribers. They plan to cut costs and cut 300 staffers.

Amazon partners with HBO and other content producers, showing their stuff on a rental basis. Is this good for HBO, letting people watch their stuff without subscribing?

Disney said they would be at 230 million by 2024 but are now trimming down those predictions. They are at half that now. How are they going to double their numbers when a huge proportion of their offerings in the next several years will be reheated stories from the past? Lots of Marvel without its big stars, some more terrible Star Wars, Little Mermaid and Pinocchio, Lion King, Bambi, Father of the Bride, Hercules, Robin Hood, Sister Act, Aladdin, Jungle Cruise, a Pirates spinoff. Some will be hits, but I don’t see anything that will start a hundred-million-man stampede in the next two years.

Hulu is pushing into the content game, scoring with shows like Only Murders. What if Disney simply sticks to its regular lane with Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar and shows for the kids, and pushes the fresher, edgier stuff to its subsidiary Hulu? They keep the rated-G brand for Disney and also keep the profit from the darker stuff?

Universal’s parent, Comcast, is hoovering up content for the Peacock streamer. But, ominously, Universal leaders reportedly are still willing to take big blockbusters like Jurassic World and Fast And Furious to HBO, who would get them months before Peacock, or to Netflix, which could mean Peacock doesn’t get them at all. Note that they’re pulling their cheap properties off of Netflix, like the Office and Parks and Rec, but not the stuff that could make a ton of money. Universal may be less willing than Warner was to take risks to pump up their in-house streamer, perhaps because HBOMAX is still a contender in the market and the corporate investors want it to succeed, while Peacock only has 5 percent of the market even if you include the people who get it for free, and Comcast could quietly put it to sleep or arrange a face-saving merger.

Universal’s franchises are getting creaky anyway: the Jurassics, whose last installment made a ton of money but was ridiculed by critics who could torpedo the next one; the Despicables, now petering out into fluffy Minion nonsense; the absurd and repetitive Fast and Furious; Bourne, a franchise whose future is in doubt following the departure of Damon who began it 20 years ago. They are unlikely to bring those properties straight to Peacock because they can squeeze more money out of them on the more successful streamers.

The Law and Order revival isn’t going to Peacock right away: NBC isn’t pumping up its streamer like Disney and Warner are. NBC wants the biggest audience, not the biggest jump in streamer subs. Peacock gets it next day and possibly gets it first after a season.

Warner’s handling of the COVID gamble will be argued for some time, but the rest of their decision-making was messy or unlucky. The dream of competing with the big streamers, the ATT/Discovery hand-off, the shortage of cash at the mother ship, the subscriber spike that turned into a slow crawl, the stock spike that didn’t happen, the struggles with Amazon Fire and Roku. Their Potter effort was disrupted by the Depp situation and then their snake-bit DC universe was rocked by Amber Heard and by Ezra Miller, who also works in Potterland. In the 2022 San Diego convention, Disney and Marvel dominated all the marketing because Warner had to mumble about Aquaman and the Flash. They dread the questions, such as, why did they fired Depp but not Heard?

Paramount was so desperate to persuade Wall Street that they are still a viable feature producer, that they promised the money boys a new Star Trek film – without securing the cast or financing. Now the actors have them over a barrel. Their last film barely made a profit, if any at all, and this installment has been stalled for a while.

Paramount has more creaky old franchises?to offer, Transformers, Mission Impossible, Star Trek, Avatar, plus another variation on the effort to turn games into movies, Dungeons and Dragons.

Sony has no streamer at all, and even if they did, their IP is pretty thin: Jumanji, Men In Black, Charlie’s Angels; they lost James Bond, and their co-parenting of Spiderman with Disney didn’t go well last time.?

Warner and Paramount will not catch up to the big boys because they will lack strong new content. Comcast/NBC will not be able to compete, a cable provider and a broadcast network whose glory days ended 10 years ago, not enough cash or content. If the Warner, Paramount and Comcast people were clever, they’d combine into one mega-streamer, but right now they’re telling the world, including investors, that their stand-alone streamers will be winners, and it’s too early to admit they were wrong.

Jack is a writer with 29 feature screenplays and a series completed, almost all of them with female leads, three under option. Check them out on this site and let’s get one filmed! https://threewibbes.wordpress.com/