One of the key assumptions of the WGA and SAG/AFTRA strikes has been that audiences would soon notice the effects of the work stoppages as broadcast, cable and streaming networks started running out of originals.
This would make sense in a normal world, but given that we’ve just come off of several years of “Peak TV,” it may not be the problem many expected it to be.
With around 500 original series produced every year for the past several years, there’s a lot of TV that people haven’t seen.
So rather than a period where people are bemoaning the lack of anything new, we’re looking at a period where a lot of people are catching up on all the series they’ve missed over the past five years.
This will have multiple consequences for the industry affecting a number of different areas.
Binge Watching Picks Up
To begin with, it will lead to an increase in binge watching, a habit that people were starting to give up pre-strike.
Not that audiences no longer like binge viewing, but the pressure to watch an entire eight- or 10-episode series in the course of a few days was high, and there’s something about the weekly release schedule that viewers seem to find comforting, convenient, or some combination thereof.
If you recall, at the beginning of the streaming era, the assumption was that we would all be binge watching everything, ad free, and at the time, the drop of a new bingeable Netflix series would be a major media event.
The Shift From Public to Private Viewing
There was something about bingeing, too, being able to watch shows on your own schedule, that changed the way we regarded TV, which became much more of a private medium, if you will, than a public one. We were our own programmers, deciding what we (and “we” could be anywhere from one person to an entire family unit or friend group) would watch and when.
The renaissance of this sort of behavior, as people catch up on all those shows they missed over the past five or so years, is likely going to have an impact on traditional pay TV, which is decidedly not bingeable. That’s where viewers are going to find a paucity of anything beyond reruns and reality shows. Throw in the growing availability of news — local news in particular — and sports on streaming and this newly readopted behavior may be what pushes many more people to cut the cord.
At the same time, streaming services with the rights to popular network series may find this working to their advantage.
This applies to long-time favorites like The Office and Seinfeld, but also from primetime series like The Good Place that came out during the streaming boom, where they were likely ignored by the sorts of audiences who might actually like them and decide to binge them, now that they are available on streaming sites like Netflix, Amazon and Apple TV Plus.
Similarly, we’re also likely to see some unexpected new hits from the Peak TV Bingeathon, series that slipped under the radar the first time, but find new audiences — largely through word of mouth — during The Great Catch-Up.
Churn, Baby, Churn
One unfortunate outcome of all this catching up is that it is likely to result in a higher than average degree of churn as viewers sign up for a particular SVOD service to watch a specific series, and then let the subscription lapse once they’re finished.
That’s bad news for streaming at a time when churn is already a major problem, and reminding viewers of how easy it is to unsubscribe is not going to help.
The Content Hangover
Starting pretty much initially at launch, all of the streaming services set out to entice new subscribers with a steady flow of original content.
It sounded like a great idea at first — an array of new series would give viewers a reason to subscribe and then to stay subscribed. Only every streaming service had the same idea, which is why the industry now finds itself in the position it is in, with hundreds of series that have yet to find their audiences.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s that everyone — broadcast, cable and above all streamers — can start making do with less, focusing on a handful of shows, promoting them and helping them grow a following.
It’s a lot more effective than merely throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Linear Channels Redux
What many of the subscription streaming services do have though, is massive libraries of older programming. And if they were to take all that library content and create some linear channels out of them, the way the FASTs have done, that could be a very smart move indeed.
Especially on their ad-supported tiers where not having to pick a show to watch next will increase the amount of time viewers spend watching, which will in turn increase revenue.
It’s a great way for these services to get real value out of the massive libraries they have invested in. This is not to mention the fact that I am going to keep harping on the wisdom of doing so, until more of them listen and take my advice.
