Netflix, after preaching left and right that it would never include ads in its content, offered a cheaper subscription option with advertising in November 2022. Ted Sarandos, CEO of the platform, defended this change of course because, in essence, Netflix was characterized by giving the viewer options: “Many people, including my son, are willing to watch ads and pay a lower price.”
A month later, Disney imitated the rival company in a decision that could not be considered unusual: platforms installed in the United States such as Peacock and Paramount had always had a subscription with advertising for those who wanted to pay less. Now it's Amazon's turn.
The transport company plans to make those who want to watch the Prime Video catalog without interruptions pay more. Starting January 29, in the US they will have to pay $2.99 more per month to access movies, series and programs without advertising, and later in 2024 these modifications will be implemented in Spain.
The decision, from a business point of view, is understandable: streaming has proven to be a loss-making sector for everyone involved except Netflix and, by introducing advertising, part of the costs can be offset. The platforms know the profile of their subscribers inside out and, therefore, can offer interested advertisers the exact target they are looking for.
However, seeing that not even Amazon, which has a turnover of more than 460,000 million euros annually, confirms an open secret: streaming blew up traditional traditional television to end up imitating it.
When content platforms began to arrive from the other side of the Atlantic, they did so with more or less explicit promises about how they were going to shape the future of audiovisuals. The monthly rates were going to be cheap, especially compared to the television packages of the telephone operators. Advertising was a thing of the past. The series were going to have minimum quality and production values in line with this new era, where the line between film and television was increasingly finer.
And, as for the original series and movies, the viewer would never have to suffer anymore: they would be available in the catalogs for all eternity. Companies like Universal, Paramount or Disney sold shareholders that there was nothing better than squeezing exclusive titles from their catalog to obtain a direct economic return. When you turn on the television and scroll through the platform applications, you can see that these predictions were not fulfilled.
Netflix, after promoting account sharing, now penalizes those who want to save a few euros per month while having increasingly less symbolic rates (12.99 euros per month for the standard rate with an additional charge of 5.99 euros if you subscribe). wants to add someone who lives outside the home to the plan). And, to give another example, it is striking that Apple TV, which has a very limited catalog, costs 9.99 euros per month. It is very indicative of the state of the sector that two companies like Apple and Amazon, which have pockets that allow them to waste, are raising rates or controlling expenses for platforms that, curiously, enter the territory of broadcasting live sporting events. (after payment of extras in subscriptions).
The contents, furthermore, turn out to be not eternal. Willow is no longer at Disney despite being a well-known intellectual property and one of the big bets of last spring. Original HBO productions such as Westworld and The Nevers are also out of the HBO Max catalog, after ceding the broadcasting rights in the United States to streaming channels that can pay off the series with advertising.
If content generates maintenance costs and internal reports indicate that it barely receives views and does not bring new subscribers, the company considers it as dead weight that is better to make profitable by selling it to the competition. It is better for it to be missing from all platforms than to have it causing losses in the catalogue. It seems like an insult, something terrifying, when generations from millennials up can still remember what it meant to not have the series available whenever we wanted. The expiration of content, including original content, was part of the television experience: either the series was watched immediately or they vanished.
As for titles that are not deadweight, new avenues of exploitation must also be found through the non-exclusive transfer of broadcasting rights. This is how Netflix now offers historical HBO titles such as True Blood, Blood Brothers or Six Feet Under and even recent ones such as Insecure; broadcasts Suits that NBCUniversal previously operated alone through its Peacock platform or Young Sheldon that Warner Bros Discovery had on its HBO Max service; and now it is preparing to popularize Disney-owned titles such as Lost, This is us or How I Met Your Mother.
Streaming, in theory, was aimed at exclusivity and, consequently, Netflix had to increase the volume of production to ensure its own catalog for when the big studios stopped collaborating with them. Instead, exclusivity has died as studios seek greater dynamism to get value out of their series and movies, in the same way that movie rights moved between channels.
And, while it is time to digest that some of the recent streaming hits denote a return to the most classic sense of fiction (Reacher, The Night Agent, My Life with the Walter Boys, A Place to Dream or the new adaptation of Percy Jackson, a priori phenomena on their platforms, they seem to be series that are not particularly outstanding on television in 2005), the Spanish television revolution this fall is that the public has to watch the new edition of OT on Prime Video.
What is revolutionary, ironically, is that it confirms the transmutation of streaming into something that, in essence, is more or less the same as always.
