Are the streamers runnign out of st(r)eam?

[Frank Cox]

So.. Netflix lost subscribers and a big chunk of its stock value. CNN+ shut down just one month after it start date. Disney stocks are down due to slow growth in Disney+ subscriber numbers. Paramount+ also down.

Have the movie companies discarded theatrical revenue for streaming revenue that's not as reliable and is apparently now going away to at least some degree?

[Steve Guttag]

I think people are quite tired of having a bunch of monthly fees that add up to a big monthly budget. The exchanged their large cable/Fiber bill for a large collection of smaller ones. I'm sure Disney will continue to get the families with kids. But other streaming services that have one or two series of interest may not be enough to have people pay monthly too. Also remember, most streaming series consider but a handful to a dozen episodes a "season." So, in 1-3 months, its over, and no guarantees of a next season (a year away). Netflix is notorious for 1-3 season shows...so it is hard to get invested in them.

[Leo Enticknap]

I'm sure Disney will continue to get the families with kids.

I'm not interested in mine seeing the increasingly sexualized stuff they're putting out (at least, not for at least another decade, at which point it will be their choice rather than mine), which is part of the reason why we won't be subscribing to Disney+ in my household; and I suspect that the number of families with kids making the same decision is high enough to form a significant headwind for Disney now.

But totally agreed on the other stuff. There have been one off shows made by the streamers in the last couple of years that I'd have been interested in seeing and would have been willing to make a one-off micropurchase of (e.g. the Netflix documentary on Jimmy Savile), but not interested enough to subscribe to the entire service. Plus, inflation has whacked household income, and streaming subscriptions are discretionary expenses that will be among the first to be cut when income is squeezed.

I suspect that the big streamers will eventually move to a model whereby consumers can subscribe to one, and micro-pay for individual shows made by the others through it. To a limited extent Amazon Prime Video already does this. Netflix, Hulu, etc. will eventually hit a growth ceiling if they continue to refuse to allow this, and possibly have already.

[Bobby Henderson]

Price inflation on essentials (food, housing, fuel, utilities, etc) has to be a factor in this downturn with streaming. When a household is forced to make budget cuts "entertainment" is definitely low hanging fruit in the choice of which things to cut.

There has been significant price inflation in recent years with traditional cable/satellite TV service. Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have hiked their prices. If someone is subscribing to multiple services those price hikes start making the overall cost accumulate to something pretty big.

Earlier this week I called Sirius|XM to cancel the service I have in my pickup truck. Their 6 month price went from $123.76 to $131.04. It was $116.47 a couple years ago. They talked me into not cancelling by dropping the price to $46.57. I'll probably still get rid of it in October. Along with that, I'm very tempted to cancel my Dish network subscription. I don't have any premium packages, just the standard "top 120" channel package. It's costing over $110 a month now. If it wasn't for live sports I would have cancelled it years ago. I have subscriptions to Netflix, Prime Video and HBO Max. Between work, working out at the gym 1-2 hours in the evening and having to do other chores that doesn't leave a lot of time for watching TV. It would be a waste of money for me to add Disney+, Hulu, Paramount+ or anything else to that mix.

Have the movie companies discarded theatrical revenue for streaming revenue that's not as reliable and is apparently now going away to at least some degree?

I can't make any sense of the money making strategy of movie studios and their parent companies. The theatrical release window is now very minimal. Not much time passes between when a movie goes from the theatrical platform to digital download, to DVD/Blu-ray/UHD, to streaming services and then finally cable TV. The physical disc products are mostly bare bones affairs these days; they're not feature-packed like they were 20 years ago. So why spend a bunch of money on them?

Overall it seems like the movie studios and their parent companies are doing a good job of letting the different release platforms cannibalize the business of each other.

[Randy Stankey]

One hundred dollars per month for Dish plus another $130/6-mo and another $100+ a month...a total of $200-$250/mo. ... would DEVASTATE my budget!

I mothballed my car and my GF and I share her car just to save on gas, insurance, repairs, etc. I'm actually considering getting rid of my car.
Even with the $200/mo. savings on gas, not including other costs, we're just scraping by.

Adding all these costs together, cutting out cable/Dish, iPhone, car, etc., would be like getting another paycheck every month!
How the HELL do people even survive?!

We have a Netfix account and one on Hulu but we don't pay monthly. We use gift cards. When one runs out, we switch to the other.
Since the two companies compete on content, they usually show the same or similar stuff so it doesn't make sense to have live accounts with both at the same time. By the time our gift cards cycle through, the content has updated and we can start over again. It's a waste to see the same junk, over and over, every month.

I would never consider subscribing to Disney, Paramount or whatever streaming they have, today. Not even for 0.68 seconds.

I can't imagine how other people think it's a good idea to pay multiple-hundreds of dollars per month to see stupid crap on television, most of which they don't even watch in the first place?

Bottom line: It's just DUMB!

[Van Dalton]

All the above, and the market has just gotten so fragmented with all the studios, at least one online retailler and even a search engine hosting their own streaming operations. Back when it was just big, monolithic Netflicks and HULU, it was simple and everybody was happy. Two systems that carried just about everything from everybody.

Remember what happened to video games circa 1983 (and again with CD-ROM consoles in the mid-90s)? An oversaturated market led to the industry's collapse. The streaming bubble has finally popped. Watch for a lot of them to start going bankrupt and closing down over the next couple of years.

[Frank Angel]

One hundred dollars per month for Dish plus another $130/6-mo and another $100+ a month...a total of $200-$250/mo. ... would DEVASTATE my budget!

I mothballed my car and my GF

Um ..that's where my eye paused and I thought, Wow...mothballing his girlfriend...yah, no doubt; that will indeed save him lots of $$. Sorry, Randy; it's my mind's fault.

Steve, a few of my friends and I have discussed the problem and find that for us it is just the opposite about short series; we LOOK for them. We've been burned more than once with long, 4 and 5 season runs. We all find ourselves actually choosing series that claim to be "limited series," over series with 3, 4 even 5 seasons. Those series with extended season, many times are running on their popularity and money generating grosses, not particularly on the very content and style that make them compelling in the first one or two seasons. Much like most entertainment, if is making money, make more of it and that just means more of the same. We found that series with longevity often run out of sustainable ideas long before the producers realize they should have ended it 20 episodes ago. A number of times WE just quit before the producers do. Give me a good series that runs two, even one season and if they know they've created a robust story and a compelling way of telling it, then they should know when and how to bring it to a satisfying conclusion; I am happy with that; I don't need them to give me more of the same just because I was a loyal fan in the beginning. Problem is, they don't seem to know when that point has come come. So we wind up with serie that follow much the same path as the movie equivalent of a "franchise," i.e., a never ending string of junk episodes. It's like, would you want POWER OF THE DOG or CODA to go on for another 15 hours? There is something to be said for economy of ideas.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I've ever since decided not to invest my time into series anymore. I occasionally may watch an episode of a series, but that's it. A REAL GOOD miniseries may sway my mind, but I'm done with a never-ending string of cliffhangers.

Apparently, I had my Disney+ subscription tied to my Google account, which apparently had some credits left. When those credits went out, my Disney+ subscription apparently lapsed with it and I didn't even notice it for a few months. Google kept mailing me on an old spam-account I almost never use. So, we went by without a dysfunctional Disney+ subscription for months, without even noticing it. I guess, that's a good indication of how much it was being used.

The only subscription currently active is Netflix, I've since cancelled most of the others. I personally could even live without Netflix, but the wife is a pretty heavy user. Lots of folks around me had subscriptions to all kinds of services, including Netflix, Disney+, HBO, Amazon Prime, some sports related services and a bunch of local options. I just yesterday had a short discussion about exactly that subject with a bunch of friends and it looks like they're also cutting back on subscriptions, ever since most pandemic restrictions have been lifted (at least for now).

The same seems to be true for us also: Ever since the pandemic restrictions have been loosened, I'm back visiting theaters again. We've watched quite a few movies in our own screening room in the meanwhile, but I still dearly missed the experience of watching a movie in a theater together with other people, even though the current release schedules are pretty lackluster...

Let's wait and see when those "streamers" start walking things back once they start realizing that a movie made much more bucks for them when they released it first in cinemas all over the world, before dumping it "for free" on some streaming platform.

[Steve Guttag]

I don't know Frank. I differentiate a mini-series from a short season TV show. I have no problem with s mini-series that breaks up a single story into several, bite-sized parts. I also like my true TV seasons of 20-30 episodes. Most Trek fan found that TOS was too short with just 3-seasons (and they would be long, by today's standards). No, they didn't like the Season 3 episodes but season 3 was begrudgingly provided. My favorite TV shows all had more than a couple of seasons...shows like The West Wing (7-seasons and none of them clunkers) or ER (15-seasons with some of them clunkers but one got a good 5-7 seasons of pretty good stuff). BSG did okay though not running many years, got over 70 episodes. The Sopranos went over 80 episodes.

I, personally, will not invest in a streaming service to get a short-season series. There will need to be other, compelling product as well.

[Ed Gordon]

The Streaming decline started almost a year ago:

Streaming is decreasing, as shown by US research.

22 Jun 2021

For the first time ever, the number of video streaming services used per citizen is falling. From 7.23% in November to 7.06% in April.
These are the results of a survey on US citizens. The study is conducted by Omdia and has been presented in London at the Connected TV Summit 2021. As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Omdia‘s Senior Researcher Maria Rua Aguete states:

“After the 2020 explosion of VOD growth, we’re seeing a cooling of the market, partially driven by viewing habits normalizing and industry consolidation, but also from a wealth of new SVOD and studio services.”

Indeed, Pay TV figures are stable and SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime) usage is growing. However, many users are abandoning AVOD (Advertising Video on Demand, meaning free services such as YouTube and broadcasters’ web portals) in favour of paid alternatives.
We are therefore witnessing a cooling down of the market, which is partly based on the normalisation of viewing habits and a consolidation of the industry.
In Maria Rua Aguete’s words, always stated by The Hollywood Reporter:

“In the past, many have placed a limit on the number of services a consumer will be able to handle. With US growth stumbling, many will wonder if seven is the ceiling for video streaming services (paid and free).”

Wall Street analysts speculate in the meantime that streaming giants such as Netflix and Disney+ will have no problem in an increasingly competitive space, but it will be the smaller players that will perhaps face upheaval.

Outside the US, the number of online services per household seems to be increasing. The UK has now reached 5.78 services per user.

Source:https://www.miamarket.it/en/streamin...y-us-research/

Other factors:

• Viewers are no longer trapped at home in the dark of winter by the Pandemic.
• Production of new content will take time to reach the market.
• Inflation is stimulating a re-examination of what part of the budget will go to entertainment.
• Demand for TV always falls during summer.
• There are too many subscription streaming services. The market can not support them all.
• Content providers have failed to see that the theatrical run adds value to their product, while streaming subtracts from the value of the product because as soon as the content leaves the highly secured theatrical environment, it breaks out into the wild and becomes available at no cost.

[Randy Stankey]

Um ..that's where my eye paused and I thought, Wow...mothballing his girlfriend...yah, no doubt; that will indeed save him lots of $$. Sorry, Randy; it's my mind's fault.

Funny!

[Harold Hallikainen]

Besides the Netflix loss of 200k subscribers, CNN+ decided to quit after about 3 weeks of operation. Netflix lost 700k subscribers by suspending operation in Russia, so otherwise they would have had a subscriber gain. But they were expecting a gain of 2.5M subscribers in the quarter, so a gain of 500k (excluding the Russia loss) is far short of expectations. They now face a lot of competition, so it is certainly difficult to gain subscribers, much less maintain the subscriber count.

I do expect that some day we will see ads for movies or TV shows and just enter a URL to see it (or go to a theater!) and not require a subscription to anything. The subscription model is really limiting the audience for a program since there are now so many different subscriptions. Movies do not show in just one theater chain. Groceries do not appear in just one grocery store chain. Video content should also be widely available. There is, of course, room for a theatrical window for a premium experience at a higher price. But once that window expires, content should just be available on the Internet with a pay per view price.

Having a URL for a particular piece of content would also remove the gatekeeper restrictions like that imposed by Roku where streamers have to pay Roku to appear on the device. There should not be gatekeepers on the Internet (other than the content owner charging for the content if they wish).

Harold

[Bobby Henderson]

One hundred dollars per month for Dish plus another $130/6-mo and another $100+ a month...a total of $200-$250/mo. ... would DEVASTATE my budget!

At $131 for a 6 month term, the Sirius|XM subscription comes out to $21.83 per month. I still balked at that, forcing them to drop the cost or watch me leave. $15 per month here, another $8 there plus $20 for that service and on and on still accumulates pretty fast. My own personal costs for TV services, phone and internet are pretty modest compared to most people. I know other Dish customers paying upwards of $200 per month just for that; the premium TV packages and sports packages will inflate the bill pretty fast.

The notion of adding more streaming services like Apple TV+, Hulu, Paramount, etc are about as valuable to me as tits on a bull. As it stands, I'll probably drop either Netflix or Amazon Prime along with Dish Network. That's even with me still being able to afford the subscriptions. I'm just not spending enough time making proper use of the services. I'm doing more with my $38 per month membership to the Lawton Family YMCA.

Adding all these costs together, cutting out cable/Dish, iPhone, car, etc., would be like getting another paycheck every month!
How the HELL do people even survive?!

The much bigger question I have on that front is how do people who haven't already owned their home a decade or more be able to afford housing? The collective cost what I spend per month on pay TV, smart phone service, etc is a fraction of what too many people are having to spend on a house payment or rent.

I live in a modest 2 bedroom house that's big enough for me; I'm single and don't have any kids. My mortgage is around $450 per month, which is dirt cheap compared to mortgages most of my friends are paying. Lawton has some of the lowest living costs in the nation. This town isn't drawing a huge number of new arrivals like the DFW metroplex 200 miles away, but we have enough of an influx that it's still making the housing market just plain absurd. Even smaller houses like mine are in short supply and getting hard to afford. Anyone stuck in service industry jobs or anything else where they're making less than $30K-$35K per year is going to be screwed. And that's here in Lawton.

Whenever my girlfriend comes over to my house she likes to turn on HGTV. There's all these house renovation and sell shows. House-flipping pornography. The cost of the renovations and asking prices of the homes afterward on these TV shows are just insane. But these TV shows make it seem like everyone should have no problem spending $200,000 on renovations and affording $700,000 for a mortgage. What kind of loser doesn't have money in the bank for that? The median home price in the US is now over $400,000 for the first time. Therapists are wondering why the teen suicide rate is up 60% since the year 2000. Have they considered the cost of entering adulthood as one of the factors?

[Marcel Birgelen]

Whenever my girlfriend comes over to my house she likes to turn on HGTV. There's all these house renovation and sell shows. House-flipping pornography. The cost of the renovations and asking prices of the homes afterward on these TV shows are just insane. But these TV shows make it seem like everyone should have no problem spending $200,000 on renovations and affording $700,000 for a mortgage. What kind of loser doesn't have money in the bank for that? The median home price in the US is now over $400,000 for the first time. Therapists are wondering why the teen suicide rate is up 60% since the year 2000. Have they considered the cost of entering adulthood as one of the factors?

Just look at birth rates all over the world and you can see there is a massive problem brewing here in many places. Many couples I knew have opted out of children, because it doesn't just scare them to put a child into the world in the current state, it also scares them what it will cost to support those children until they're "self-providing adults"...

Costs of houses are out of whack in many places in the Western world and it's all just due to speculation. Why put your savings in the bank if you get a negative return on that? Consider the housing business, which, despite the massive crash of 2008, only has gone up ever since...

I don't know how politicians around the globe expect future generations to pay for their houses. I guess owning property will not be a thing for the future "middle classes". Renting at exorbitant fees until you die will become the new norm.

[Jon Dent]

I don't know how politicians around the globe expect future generations to pay for their houses. I guess owning property will not be a thing for the future "middle classes". Renting at exorbitant fees until you die will become the new norm.

It should be pretty obvious by now that it's not trendy to think of the future, at all. YOLO!!! It's all about getting as much as you can RIGHT NOW and f**k the future.