The center of the home is still the room with the television. In that room, there is an arms race happening before our eyes. Streaming properties are adopting an end-to-end format that reflects the very nature of digitally native brands: own the product, own the channel, and you’ll own the consumer. But it wasn’t always that way and it may not always be.
This past weekend, my wife wanted to watch our favorite show. But in my parents’ market of Northwest Florida, that Sunday evening was disrupted. Their home was in a sort of in between, half traditional cable and half streaming services. But without HBO Now, we couldn’t watch the one show that we agreed upon. This situation was not without its irony.
Now-retired, Cleon Smith spent 30+ years as an executive in the cable industry. First for Time Warner, then Comcast, and finally – Cox Communications. It was within the walls of Time Warner that I interned with his upstart broadband internet department: code named “Road Runner.” As GM of the service, his market (the dense triangle of Houston, Dallas, and Austin) launched shortly after the test in Elmira, New York. At 14 years old, I watched his group tweak, market, and launch a product that would shape Texas’ future and then the nation’s. That broadband service, the first of its kind for the general public, would disrupt his company’s core business forever. Or so I thought.
I understood why the streaming industry took off but in the end, those consumers will yearn for simplicity of the good ole’ cable days. We sold a good product.
With the advent and widespread adoption of broadband internet, services like Youtube launched in 2005. And then, like a hurricane hitting an unsuspecting island of plywood homes, Netflix pivoted to streaming service in 2007. That did change everything.
Companies like Comcast, Time Warner, and Cox Communications began to innovate by introducing on-demand options and, eventually, the ability to login to Netflix or Hulu accounts to their OTT devices. But it didn’t end there. Each of the aforementioned properties were disrupted. First, by the Netflix approach to marketplace growth – an innovation that provided millions of cable, Dish, and DirecTV subscribers the incentive to “cut the cord.”
This is an example of a consumer household in 1995:
- broadcast television: cable or satellite provider
- basic: cable or satellite provider
- premium services: cable or satellite provider
This is an example of a consumer household in 2012:
- broadcast television: cable or satellite provider
- basic: cable or satellite provider
- premium services: Netflix, iTunes
This is an example of a consumer household in 2020:
- broadcast television: antenna, Hulu+, Sling, DirecTV Now, CBS All Access
- basic: Philo, Sling, YouTubeTV, Playstation VUE, Netflix, Roku, iTunes
- premium services: Netflix, Showtime (streaming), HBO Now, Prime Video, Vudu, Disney+
Between 2007 and 2018, Netflix worked to build a proverbial “mall” of properties by purchasing, licensing, or manufacturing intellectual property. It resembled elements of traditional cable but it emphasized the program, not the channel. Netflix Originals were purchased from independent filmmakers and marketed as Netflix’s own. Broadcast television properties like “Friends” and “The Office” were licensed for tens of millions of dollars per year. Hollywood A-listers and top directors were granted $300 million budgets for films meant to rival big studio releases. Yet, Netflix is currently trading at six month lows after news of: historic subscription losses, a small revolt after a $2 price increase, and the loss of two major properties. Industry analyst Andy Meek [1] on the matter:
Netflix lost 126,000 subscribers during the quarter, the first time that’s happened since the streamer actually started producing original content. Yikes. And then when you couple that fact, plus the quarter’s lack of new hit content and the imminent loss of shows like “Friends” and “The Office” with the forthcoming launch of rival streamers from Apple, Disney, and HBO’s parent company, among others — it’s a recipe for disaster and whatever the Streaming War’s version of hand-to-hand combat is, with everyone taking a piece out of Netflix, right?
As Netflix’s value erupted, an inverse relationship manifested: Netflix’s success and the commodification of the studios. The streaming industry increased their leverage by providing more consumer optionality and negotiation-by-wallet power to end users. In the process, cord cutting began to hurt studios as well. Not only are their cable contracts diminishing in value, their streaming payouts aren’t making up for the lost revenue.
Coupled with changes in consumer behavior, contract fallouts between studios and streaming channels, and the continued proliferation of speedier data services – you have the basis for the continued fracturing of the industry.
2PM Data: The Macroeconomics of Streaming
The final graph is, perhaps, the most interesting. Disney-owned Hulu has begun to close the gap between their offering and Netflix. With Disney’s properties growing in popularity, analysts anticipate Hulu will continue narrowing Netflix’s lead.
Netflix planned to be the modern consumer’s iteration of cable television – a model that depended on a critical mass of content and viewership. That critical mass had to remain greater than the sum of all potential streaming competitors. For a time, the Reed Hastings-run media company had enough of what America needed: great classics, go-to films, syndicated sitcoms, game-changing originals. And then the ecosystem began to fracture. Properties like “Friends” left for WarnerMedia’s streaming service while “The Office” prepared to depart Netflix’s content menus for NBC’s streaming equivalent. Becca Blaznek on why “The Office” has left Netflix [2]:
Among them is NBCUniversal, which owns the rights to The Office. On June 25, 2019, the company released a statement that they will not be renewing their deal with Netflix, instead bringing the “rare gem” to their platform beginning in 2021. According to the Hollywood Reporter, this will not affect international viewers for the time being.
Like the consumer categories that went vertical to compete in a new economy, so have the studio brands competing for the mindshare of cord-cutting consumers. This had an unintended effect however. While modern consumers prefered streaming over traditional broadcast or service providers, the traditional consumer still prefers their traditional television over other devices for streaming media.
The DTC Evolution
As media fracturing continues, contract negotiations between studios and existing streaming services will only intensify. This will result in added subscription costs for consumers. The promise of the cord-cutting age was two-fold: (1) improved household economics and (2) accountability. Consumers wanted to avoid the pages of unused television programming that went neglected. Today, it’s typical for a cord-cutter to maintain subscriptions to 5-10 monthly media services to accomplish the same consumer tendency: availability irregardless of usage rate.
Today’s consumer is submitting to this dizzying dance of “subscription / login / password recall / and idle subscription” but without the convenience that consumers found with traditional cable providers.
As such, the disruptor is due for disruption. And in this way, an earlier inference may have been mistaken and my dad could end up right. With cable and data providers like Comcast, Cox, and AT&T controlling the pipeline and studios increasingly at odds with new-age streaming services, the momentum is tipping in the favor of tradition. While OTT boxes like Roku and Apple TV have made subscriptions and programming search infinitely easier, the 1:1 connections between consumers and streaming agents continues to subvert the innovation’s original intent: ease, consistency, and value.
It’s likely that the traditional media consumer has reached their limit. Cord cutting was an economically-driven phenomenon. Foregoing the streaming economy in exchange for returning to traditional cable is a question of programming availability and ease of access (try logging into Netflix on a relative’s cable box).
Streaming services will be bundled. It’s likely that we’re near the point of OTT carriers marketing the opportunity for consumers to purchase pre-negotiated, economically-friendly bundles of streaming services packaged. With no-login, one collective price, and less of a fear of missing out – the past has become the present. Disney’s streaming offering may be the sole victor here; their value and reach may outlast a shift back consolidation. For all others, the fracturing market of streaming video on demand (SVOD) has begun to cannibalize the direct to consumer opportunity that was the initial appeal.
In this manner, there is similarity between retail’s DTC cost-elasticity and SVOD’s elasticity. For online retailers, CAC has risen as digitally native brands flooded the market (performance advertising inventory remained constant). For streaming media companies like Netflix, CAC has risen as studios flooded the streaming market and costs to feature their properties became prohibitive. While Facebook and Google’s ad inventory’s limitations have resulted in price elasticity, the SVOD parallel is slightly different. The streaming consumer’s spend is nearing its point of elasticity. And the end game may be consolidation, a result of the yearning for good old cable days.
Read the No. 325 curation here.
Research and Report by Web Smith | About 2PM