What To Expect! – Shuffling the Deck Between Classics and Originals

The streaming universe is expanding, and four major players will be weighing in this year.  The competition for viewers will get furious. The game is changing, and current players will have to adapt and adjust to remain a preferred provider. New players will have to offer better alternatives to woo viewers away from their past favorites.

Statistics show that the real value of the content remains in the long-standing rewatchable content; however, millions continue to pour into original programming. Viewers want the surprise of a new series, but what they really gravitate to is reliability and the access to watch their favorites. The new and original content is a bonus to the proven familiar popular shows.

Hulu paid about $130 million for an exclusive 6-year deal for Seinfeld.  That was in 2015, and it was considered an outrageous amount. Today, that deal looks like a bargain. New subscribers look for their well-known favorites like Seinfeld when choosing their services. The unproven promise of original programs is not enough to seduce subscribers from their expected, familiar favorites.

Here’s proof! NBC paid about $500 million for five years of The Office.   HBO Max inked a 5-year deal for South Park for just about $500 million to get the show from Hulu, and paid another $425 million to Netflix for Friends.  Netflix is scrambling to replace the loss of its two highest streamed shows, and bet about $500 million on Seinfeld for five years.

The point of this is that there is gold in the rewatchable favorites, and they draw in more subscribers than the promise of original programming. Licensing contracts are being made for shorter periods of time, so it’s clear that there will be a lot of shuffling of content in the future. If you want to cling to your favorite shows, you better be ready to be flexible so that you can follow them from provider to provider.

Advertising and Sponsors…

As your streaming choices grow, so can your monthly subscription bill. Right now, NBC Peacock is the only player to offer their streaming service Free. You can expect more of these Ad-supported services to proliferate. Streamers like Vudu, Xumo, and Pluto TV have shown it to be a successful business model. In fact, Pluto TV gained nearly 8 million new subscribers since January 2019, when they were acquired by Viacom.

Consumers are definitely price conscious. They are saying “goodbye” to the cable guy in record numbers and interested in putting some of that savings into their pockets and not right back into an unmanageable portfolio of Connected TV + Remarketing. They cannot subscribe to them all. One or two services may be all that a family cares to pay a monthly fee for. Ad supported free services will help them expand their content choices without expanding their budgets. Watching a few commercials is a small price to pay.

The Future of Streaming…

Mega-media players are entering the streaming universe in a big way. Hulu and Netflix will no longer be the undisputed industry leaders. As a consumer, the choice of a streaming service requires an ongoing evaluation of the content each platform will provide.   With so many changes and so much competition, the service you choose today can be very different next month.