The Broken Promise of Streaming

Much of the current in-fighting within the entertainment industry surrounds the purported riches from streaming content, but are the corporate overlords outright lying when they say there’s no money to be had? Yes, there is profit—but it might be time to admit streaming television threw every single expectation about traditional media out the window, including the infinite, self-perpetuating income streams all parties involved needed for television to survive. Now everyone is paying the price.

Sure, it felt like tapping into dark magic when streaming debuted. It was 2 a.m. and someone had a hankering to watch the first episode of the The Brady Bunch featuring Cousin Oliver? No problem! A brand-new show came out, but only on the internet—with the whole season available at once?! WILD! With the mere push of a button, the lowly consumer became a liege, ruling over a vast kingdom of unlimited, commercial-free content, and there was much rejoicing.  But our collective celebration came too soon.

While the general public ran around delighted by the vast trove of riches ready to be plundered, studios felt the same way. The demand for content was huge, and unfettered by the dinosaurs at the FCC, the streamers forged furiously ahead, assured clout would create profit. Hollywood was suddenly the oldest start up around. Ratings didn’t matter and cost wasn’t a factor. Commercials would no longer stomp their way through an otherwise well-crafted story. Innovators eagerly rallied behind the sleek new way to blaze trails of artistic freedom, with presumed fortunes to follow.

Turns out, it didn’t actually work. The problem with treating television like a tech company is the burn-through rate. Generally, tech is fast and disposable, while TV is forever. Star Trek barely made a blip when it first aired, but off-network syndication deals beamed it around the globe at all times of day and night for literal decades, sharing it with infinite audiences which begat decades of fandom that craves fresh content to this very day.

TV is an intimate artform. It’s in our living rooms, offering entertainment during the best and worst moments of our lives, and all the moments in between. The subtle miracle of television is its omnipresence, and in the pre-streaming days, we fell in love with shows by encountering them again and again—either at a regular weekly time, or out in the wild, at random. The characters became friends to enjoy in perpetuity, while their stories comforted us with their predictable repeatability.

Because streaming services keep their content in a proprietary stranglehold, people will only watch content if its handily suggested or something else reminds them to do so. Stranger Things may be one of the most viewed streaming shows of all time, but new viewers can never accidentally stumble onto it and wonder what it is unless the algorithm specifically offers it up. A sick kid in the hospital can never listlessly flip through the channels and organically discover and fall into the world of Hawkins.

That same containment is part of the reason the streamers want to cry poor mouth. Amidst all the hoopla and wild rushing ahead, no one paused to figure out how to generate endless income from of a product confined to one distinct space, locked in at one very low monthly price. Without sweet syndication packages, commercial revenue, and physical media sales, there’s only so far any streaming program’s legs can carry it. Now, corporations need to eradicate the profit losing system they created. That’s why Netflix wants more money from us while insisting fewer people must use each account. It’s also why Paramount threw 2018 episodes of Yellowstone onto the CBS prime time schedule, and are dancing in the streets over the ratings.

It’s time to acknowledge streaming was never an unbelievable boon to humanity. The artists who create television are suffering, and viewers are too. Consumers who triumphantly broke up with cable now exhaustedly juggle too many services and their assorted inventories. Ongoing mergers continually morph disparate streamers into stackable package deals that cost more while making no sense. Commercials are back with a vengeance, with even more on the way. Soon, some wunderkind will create an ultramodern system to gather every streamer into one tidy package, creating seamless transitions for the consumer with only one easy monthly bill. It seems I’ve seen the future…and it is cable.