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Our Favorite Streaming Experiments That Seemed Strange Until They Worked
Fans of David Letterman, coyotes, and the 1995 crime epic Heat are having a great summer.
That’s because all three were recently featured on John Mulaney Presents: Everybodys in LA, Netflix’s limited run live talk show that aired throughout the month of May. Over six hour-long episodes, John Mulaney interviewed local experts, advocates, and celebrity guests about Los Angeles, a city that “fascinates and confuses” the famed standup and late night writer.
To no one’s surprise, the show was a huge success. While Netflix famously does not release viewership data for most shows, Everybody’s in LA dominated social chatter for weeks. Vulture even went so far as to call it a “Strange TV miracle.”
While the show was ostensibly created to promote the Netflix is a Joke standup festival, it actually achieved much more than that. Everybody’s in LA was a long-awaited confirmation that Netflix can and should pursue more live content.
All Together Now: Why Bundling is the Latest Trend in Streaming Pricing
The calendar says it’s May, but major players in streaming are starting to bundle up.
In the early stages of streaming, the value proposition was simple, “Get rid of your bloated cable subscriptions. Just pay for the content you like.”
Turns out… viewers like having a lot of options.
Or at least, that’s what entertainment companies of all sizes are betting on with their latest subscription offerings. Outlets ranging from indie darlings to legacy media are eschewing exclusive offerings for greater value, offering disparate and diverse bundle options to keep audiences subscribing for the long term.
So what does this mean for everyone else in the streaming space? How should you price your content to stay competitive with other industry leaders? Are we returning to cable packages but this time over the internet (which, we remind you, is also a series of very long physical cables).
Market Moves: FAST Channels Are Dominating Major Media Company Strategies
Ten years ago, Paramount gambled on an unheard of business model called “FAST channels.” What may have seemed like a bizarre group of television-like, single-content channels is now called Pluto TV and the billion-dollar company just ran its first Super Bowl ad this year.
To celebrate Pluto’s aluminum anniversary, Tom Ryan, CEO of Paramount Streaming and co-founder of Pluto TV, spoke with Fast Company about the evolution of, well, FAST. (Paramount née ViacomCBS purchased PlutoTV in 2019)
“We realized people would not lean back and watch for the amount of time we needed them to watch for when it was short-form content stitched together. They would also not do that on web and mobile, so we needed to pivot. We did something that looked a lot more like—ironically—traditional TV, which was long-form, more premium-television-like programming, and then delivered it to the living room on the actual television through connected TVs.”
The entire interview is fascinating but the most relevant portion for content owners comes at the very end when Ryan emphasizes Paramount’s commitment to FAST in its streaming growth plans.
“There’s huge headroom here in the U.S. I think we’re just scratching the surface when it comes to the FAST opportunity in the U.S. I think a lot of people still don’t fully appreciate what an amazing complementary value they get from a FAST service like Pluto TV to complement whatever it is that they’re doing for their other TV viewing, whether that be paid streaming or whether that be cable TV.”
Spring Cleaning Comes For Streaming
Spring is an opportunity for taking stock, for the smelling of roses, and the cleaning out of our winter hibernation dens. Thus, sometime between the devouring of Easter candy and the filing of taxes, every household must assess which streaming subscriptions they hold most dear.
When you engage in your yearly Spring Cleaning ritual – digital or otherwise – you might take a look at the recurring charges you spend every month. Checking your bank statements, you notice that while your favorite services are there, you’re still paying for a streaming app that you haven’t used in months. As the monthly fees rack up, you can’t even remember the last time you logged in.
This is not uncommon.
In fact, it’s the norm for many home viewers of shows and movies. Just last week, I realized that I was still paying for Disney+, which I had signed up for solely to watch the Star Wars spinoff series Andor all the way back in 2022.
With so many new options for streaming, you can likely relate. Turns out, my experience is actually one of the biggest trends in the streaming industry.
According to the new, annual “State of the Subscriptions” report from Antenna Research, users in the United States canceled a whopping 140.5 million streaming service subscriptions in 2023. It’s the largest drop in half a decade, with 36 million more customers canceling last year than in 2022.
But what do these numbers mean for an industry as large as streaming television? How do these numbers stack up to streaming service growth? Do those lapsed subscribers return or do they seek a new streaming model entirely?
Who Won Awards Season? Streaming.
How the Oscars, BAFTAs, and everything in between embraced streaming… and what that means for your digital content business.
When the Oscar for Best Picture is handed out sometime late Sunday night (most likely to Oppenheimer, right?) it will signal an end to the 2023 awards season.
But awards shows are a year-round business. From books to podcasts and even to subreddits, the Oscars – and an array of other industry awards – remain an indelible part of pop culture discussion and obsession.
So how and why are people watching these shows? And what does that mean for your streaming strategy? Even if you don’t have a decades-old industry guild award to give out, there still must be some learnings to draw from awards season fervor.
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