The Inevitable Streaming Service Bubble
Are we already in the middle of a “streaming service bubble”? In other words, are we going over-the-top over ahem… over-the-top (OTT) media services? CNBC’s Alex Sherman appears to think so and it certainly looks like it. Because, like the way instant messaging apps have proliferated over the years, fragmenting our conversations across different platforms, the growing plethora of subscription video on demand (SVoD) services is beginning to usher a counterintuitive reality where enough doesn’t seem to be enough.
Just in a span of few weeks, we have had news about new video streaming offerings from AT&T (set for launch late 2019), Costco (considering one apparently for customer retention reasons), Walmart (to take on Amazon), Apple (which has quite a few shows under production, in addition to mandating no gratuitous sex, profanity or violence), a new entrant called Quibi (because why not?), and this isn’t including Disney’s upcoming alternative or already available options like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube (and its offshoots YouTube Premium and YouTube TV), Hulu, Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, HBO Go (and HBO Now), CBS All Access, FX+, ESPN+, Kanopy, Roku Channel, IGTV, Facebook Watch, Shudder, Sundance Now, MUBI, FilmStruck, CuriosityStream and other streaming services launched by media giants solely around their own content.
In India alone, for instance, there are so many different streaming services it defies logic — Hotstar (Star India, owned by 21st Century Fox), Voot (Viacom India), JioTV/ JioCinema (Reliance Industries), Viu, ZEE5, SonyLIV, Sun NXT, AirTel TV, Tata Sky Mobile, ALTBalaji, Vodafone Play and Spuul. There’s nothing wrong with choice, of course, but when is too much, too much? Does anyone want all of this? What happens when a favourite show you were planning to binge watch over the weekend isn’t available on the service you have subscribed to? Even more importantly, is there anyone willing to fork out US$ 10 a month (on average) for each of them? No wonder then millennials are sharing streaming passwords, costing these companies millions in missed revenues.
That’s not all. With some streaming services now owned by ISPs and telephone networks, there emerges an even bigger threat to net neutrality. Who is to know if AT&T decides to offer a paid fast lane (called paid prioritisation) to favour its own streaming service, or worse, give it away for free (which would then be zero-rating) and downgrade that of competitors? Which is also why it comes as no surprise that Facebook, Google and Netflix are fighting tooth and nail to avoid costly surcharges from internet service providers.
Technology came with the promise of freeing us from cable, and to some extent Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are the kind of catch-all services we need (Movies Anywhere is a good start too, but it is limited to the U.S.), but the inexorable splintering of streaming content (niche or otherwise) only shows shortsightedness on part of movie studios and media companies in hoping to make money off walled content gardens.
Brian Heater summed it up quite well in TechCrunch last year when he said: “It’s a growing trend toward fragmentation of streaming services that will ultimately work against the best interests of consumers. A world in which every film studio and television station has its own proprietary offering sounds like a bit of a nightmare — worse even than the most convoluted of cable plans. It’s a sort of death by a thousand cuts, each studio and TV station emptying viewers’ bank accounts, $5 or $10 at a time.”
