The future of TV is the past

“What’s past is prologue.”  The Tempest, act 2, scene 1

“The past isn’t dead.  It isn’t even the past.”  William Faulkner

Once upon a time, in a far away era called the 20^th century, a new form of entertainment arose called television.  Despite the vast resources available, and vast fortunes to be made, there were only three networks (let’s just forget about the Dumont network, okay?).  And so it was for many decades until Rupert Murdoch said, “Let there be FOX,” and lo, there was a fourth network.  And all was good, until the rise of cable, and premium channels, and DVDs, and streaming.

The monolith that had been “broadcast TV” broke wide open, and suddenly there was a din of voices in the ether, all competing for attention.  Where once TV shows needed an audience of 10 million to survive, now pulling in less than a million in the right demographic kept the lights on.  But despite the seeming chaos, there was one force that brought cohesion to the world of televised entertainment; one force that enabled people to have one portal for most (but not all) of their entertainment needs.

I am, of course, referring to Netflix.

Netflix has acted as a cohesive agent, being a portal for almost all movies and a lot of TV shows for the past several years.  If you are a curmudgeon who finds going to a movie theater annoying, just wait and you can either stream or get the DVD in the mail a few weeks after the film closed (and films don’t linger in theaters the way they used to).  TV series from all the networks were available.  In the ocean of visual entertainment, Netflix was your one-stop place to get not quite but almost everything.

But the writing is on the wall, and soon streaming services will resemble the plethora of channels you see listed on your cable directory that you’ve never heard of.  First Hulu, then Amazon Prime, rose as alternatives to Netflix.  Okay, three sources aren’t that bad.  Then Netflix announced that they were aiming at making most of their content “original” content, and in 2018 they spent more on original content than acquired content. To me, this meant that if I wanted access to long gone TV shows, Netflix wasn’t going to try and outbid Hulu for them.  That was the first crack I noticed in the Netflix monolith.

The huge iceberg on the horizon, though, was the threat of a Disney streaming service.  In 2017, Disney announced that when they started their own streaming service,  Netflix could kiss Marvel and Star Wars goodbye.  In 2019, Disney has fulfilled its promise and has announced that the most popular film in history, Avengers Endgame, will not be available on Netflix.  So now there is Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ (please ignore the fact that Disney is also in control of Hulu). 

But there is also the fact that every network has their programs available as on-line content.  And with media corporate mergers, media companies that once had small on-line content now are subsidiaries of conglomerates with lots of on-line content.  Increasingly, everyone will want to control their own on-line footprint instead of letting Netflix make money off of it.

Netflix used to be the one-stop place to go for streaming services.  But then Hulu arose to mainly carry TV series, but also to develop shows like The Handmaid’s Tale.  Then came Amazon Prime, and then CBS All-Access, and now Disney+.  Now that Netflix is no longer a monolith, will networks still be willing to sell the rights to their shows to them, or will they keep them on their own streaming platform, or on Hulu? 

One survey found that nearly half of subscribers between 18 and 29 would drop Netflix if it lost The Office and Friends along with the Marvel content (28% said they’d drop it if it lost Marvel, which is about to happen).  The default, as far as subscribing to streaming services, used to be “Netflix and . . . “ but in the new Balkanized universe it might be “Netflix or . . . .”  Before, I might do Netflix and Hulu, or Netflix and Amazon, but with so many options I might do Hulu and Disney+, or Amazon and CBS All Access.  This might be why Netflix chose to focus on original programming; it knew at some point the non-original programming would migrate to other streamers.

Or maybe the universe will re-order itself.  In a marketplace of multiple streaming services, will someone like Roku sell bundles of streamers?  That is, create a marketplace where you can choose from among various streamers and pay one bill instead of subscribing separately.  This is the accordion theory of organization—first options contract and there is only Netflix, then they expand, and multiple streamers enter the market and things become confusing, then in order to avoid competition the streamers start getting bundled together or buy each other up until there are fewer option.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

This sort of reminds me the shift that took place in the economics of TV networks.  For years, local affiliates paid the networks in order to gain access to their content; then at some point networks had to start paying affiliates in order to gain access to their audiences.  At first creators of content were eager to sell their wares to Netflix for access to Netflix’s vast subscriber base, but now everyone wants to have their own streaming service and Netflix is left to become a content creator to fill the void.

I don’t know how this will ultimately work out.  It was convenient having Netflix being the premier streaming service, just like having three major networks made picking shows to watch simpler.  How people choose to watch content on their TV screens will be resolved through a combination of economics and technology.  Will the technology ever exist where we can choose WHICH of the 500 cable channels we want to buy?  Will it ever be economically feasible for someone to offer an “a la carte” menu for channels instead of forcing customers to buy content they don’t want? 

The trend has always been for increasing amounts of customer control, so maybe buying only cable channels we want to pay for is only a few years away.  Then after we get that, Detroit can start working on those flying cars we’ve been promised for decades.