Video streaming took off because it offered a previously unavailable level of control and choice. It wasn’t just different than traditional TV. It thumbed its nose at it by liberating the masses from the bondage of the bundle. It felt rebellious. And fun. It was punk rock smashing the serenity of a Lawrence Welk waltz recorded on a set-top DVR.
All this raises one big question: Do we love the experience of choice or just the idea of it? The idea promises access to everything on demand. The experience results in confusion and chaos. The idea makes us giddy because we’re free. The experience can feel like floating untethered through space, the mother ship slowly fading in the distance. The truth is that most consumers have no idea where their favorite content resides. Is “Star Trek” on Paramount+ or HBO Max? Is “Ted Lasso” on Peacock or Apple TV? Voice remotes help, but it can still be a frustrating consumer experience to not quite know how many subscriptions you need to access the IP you love.
The cable industry understood this as early as the 1980s and started packaging new choices into bundles of “basic” and “expanded basic” programming. Sure, you’d have to take all the channels to get the ones you wanted. It wasn’t completely fair. But it required no work. And it meant you didn’t have to figure out which exact channels to buy to access your favorite shows. You just “surfed.” It also made the economics work, but consumers didn’t care, nor did they appreciate the convenience over time as rates gradually inched up and some programmers cynically hoisted repetitive channels into the ecosystem. Satisfaction became resentment. And by the time Netflix and other services came calling in the mid-2000s, people were ready for options. They were ready for choice.
Fast forward to today, and that choice has become an endless sea, with few landmarks to guide us: OTI’s VODTRAK auditing service calculates there are roughly 201,000 unique TV episodes available across just five prominent SVOD services, representing an increase of more than 12% over 12 months. This embarrassment of riches can create frustration as TV watchers learn about appealing new shows that they’ll never have time to binge.
Then again, this does seem to be what the people want based on linear TV ratings, which are down anywhere from 60-90% in the last decade. And according to TiVo’s latest Video Trends Report, the average consumer now subscribes to nearly nine streaming services vs. only four in 2016. Perhaps in response, the unbundling of content from linear TV into disparate streaming services is already starting to unravel – or perhaps re-ravel – into a future of rebundled content. Consider The Walt Disney Company’s package of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+, ViacomCBS pairing of Paramount+ and Showtime, and AMC Networks’ “best of” package as just a few prominent examples.
Streamers are also making alliances for mutual benefit, as happened only a few weeks ago when CuriosityStream launched its “Smart Bundle” adding both affiliated and non-affiliated niche streaming services like Tastemade, SommTV, Topic, One Day University and Nebula into one service priced 88% less than what it would cost to subscribe individually. And it’s not just small players. One driver of the proposed Discovery Inc.-WarnerMedia deal is the prospect of combining Discovery+ and HBO Max into one big, hulking streaming service able to compete with the likes of Netflix, Hulu and Disney+. And if the newly combined Warner Bros. Discovery could peel off CBS from ViacomCBS, it could clear the way for Comcast NBCU to buy the rest of the ViacomCBS portfolio, which could lead to Peacock and Paramount+ fusing into one as well.
It's unclear how much of this will come to pass, but someone who subscribes to nine streaming services today may find themselves only subscribing to five or fewer in the next few years – without ever cancelling anything. Just sit back and let those mergers take their course as those bundles reemerge and push the punk rockers off the stage. That is, until the next unbundling – probably sparked somewhere in the “metaverse” – reminds us that we’re mere cogs in the digital cycle of life.
Michael Grebb is Vice President and Lead Analyst for One Touch Intelligence, which provides market intelligence and industry analysis services for leading companies in the media and telecommunications space. The One Touch Intelligence STREAMTRAK series is a complimentary service offering industry professionals insights and context around developments in the digital media sphere.
Industry Voices are opinion columns written by outside contributors—often industry experts or analysts—who are invited to the conversation by Fierce Video staff. They do not represent the opinions of Fierce Video.