Philippe Jean Poirier reports for CMF Trends on Streaming Wars: Using Nostalgia as a Weapon.
He starts by linking to a Wall Street Journal story that reveals Netflix’s top shows from 2018. Surprise: they’re not their new shows:
“The Office” and “Friends” are more popular than “Orange is the New Black” or “Ozark“. (Interestingly, neither of these Netflix shows made their 2019 top ten.)
He then lists competing streamers who stole those shows and what Netflix did:
- “Peacock (NBCUniversal) recently bought “The Office” from Netflix for $500 million over 5 years.
- HBO Max (WarnerMedia) managed to grab “Friends” for $425 million over 5 years, and apparently spent over a billion dollars for the exclusive rights to “The Big Bang Theory”.
- Netflix retaliated by acquiring “Seinfeld” for $500 million over 5 years.”
He then quotes vMedia co-founder George Burger:
“You always think you want to watch your favourite shows from 20 years ago, and yet you end up not devoting all that much time to them. When video stores started opening everywhere, I remember thinking: wow, I can catch up with all my favourite old movies. But that feeling doesn’t last. And that’s not a sustainable business model. Eventually, 80 percent of what you found in video stores was less than a month old. Netflix’s move from distribution to a production and distribution model is based on the fact that, once they had demonstrated that there was a business in streaming, they realized they were at the mercy of the studios for content. They anticipated the current trend, where studios want to be their own distributors.”
He concludes, “With the arrival on the market of several new OTT platforms, Netflix’s catalogue has somewhat been depleted. And these new players certainly don’t intend to stick to recycled content. Peacock, HBO Max and Disney+ are all investing massively in the production of original shows.”
My take: The mediascape expands each year, both in terms of content and in terms of outlets for that content. On the other hand are two things that are for the most part finite: individual viewing time and entertainment budgets. This means more content and more outlets will simply be ignored by viewers; the audience must fracture into niches if the smaller outlets are to gain any traction. Nostalgic content may attract an audience to a streaming service but new shows and content will keep them there. So much to see, and so little time! More curation is required.