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In response to
"I think you guys need to look at the Nielsen Top 10 charts as just good fun. -- (edited)"
by
Inigo
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I'm formulating a theory.
Posted by
Mop (aka rburriel)
May 24 '22, 08:33
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What we're seeing is not a crash in the streaming industry but the consequences of increased competition. I was thinking this throughout our ratings segment last week. As we've repeated ad naseum, these charts only show Netflix, Apple TV+, Amazon, Disney+, Hulu. But there's increasingly more streaming services with increasingly more high profile projects. There aren't fewer viewers... there are fewer viewers *of these specific services* (more to the point, fewer viewers *on TVs* of these specific services).
This is what we wanted with "cutting the cord" and "a la carte" and now we look at this and say "OMG, the market is crashing!" Since we don't have the data to tell us otherwise, that's the narrative people are sticking to.
But there's another aspect here that I haven't really touched on, but other analysts (other analysts? I guess that makes me an analyst?) Linear TV is dying. All the traditional services - Comcast, Dish, DirecTV, Cox, etc. - are all losing subscribers, at a rate - honestly - that if it were to continue, they'd have 0 subscribers in 4 or 5 quarters, but there's certainly a bottom (maintained largely by grandma and grandpa that'll never abandon linear). But OTT services like Fubo, Sling, DirecTV Now, Hulu Plus Live, etc., are also losing subscribers, too, or holding steady for years (Sling hasn't added any significant numbers in like 5 years, which is astounding). Only YouTube TV hasn't released subscriber numbers in about 18 months (if the numbers were good, they'd be telling us). What that information in hand, it's clear that linear TV won't be around for much longer. Where are these people going? Presumably to on-demand streaming. But may also to other "experiences" (and there's a whole other narrative here about experiences I'm not going to get into right now).
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