For all the pre-launch chatter and years of build-up, we can rest easy! Starfield is downright incredible. Starfield is the best thing Bethesda has ever done – even besting my favorite entry in the series, New Vegas. I loved Skyrim, Fallout: New Vegas, and especially Oblivion so I am a huge Bethesda RPG fan. This will be a mostly spoiler-free review, but we can say with confidence this is a stellar new franchise for Bethesda and a labor of love for the studio. The RPG elements are strong, the secrets are the most I have ever seen in a Bethesda game, and there is much to uncover even in the endgame. There is so much to do and fall deeply in love with.

Starfield will be released tomorrow September 1, 2023, in Starfield Early Access for players who have purchased the Starfield Premium Edition, Premium Edition Upgrade, or the Constellation Edition of Starfield.

For players who purchase the Starfield Standard Edition or subscribe to PC Game Pass, Starfield will be released on September 6, 2023.

That’s not to say that the game is without its flaws – combat can feel awkward, planet traversal is sorely lacking vehicles, and the occasional pop-in for conversations or weird interactions will be seen throughout your journey. The “Bethesda games are always buggy on release” mantra leading up to launch is flat-out wrong, however. I encountered bugs mostly with the conversations because I launched them quickly and my companion could not keep up. There were no game crashes or major bugs after more than 100 hours of playtime.

There are, however, some performance issues. Starfield is extremely CPU-heavy, and even with our RTX 4080, Ryzen 7800x3D build we saw some performance dips. Most egregious – there is no DLSS and this is another title that will exclusively feature AMD’s FSR and FSR2 technology. We will never agree with locking out alternative features, especially since I would have loved to have utilized DLSS 3 on my RTX 4080.

I can see why the game is locked at 30FPS for consoles. Even with 10 months of extra polish time on consoles, there are still some drops in performance. I had a few really hard FPS drops walking into some major cities on the Series S that felt bad, even if they were rare. Hopefully these can be fixed. With some patches, we are sure this will be better. I cannot wait for mods, my mind is racing with the possibilities!

Portable PCs, like the ALLY and Steam Deck
Bethesda explicitly noted not to use Asus’ ROG Ally or Steam Deck in our review as they are below recommended PC spec. I could not even get the ROG ALLY to launch the game due to some weirdness with the Xbox app on our Ally but Xbox/PC streaming worked flawlessly. I had to repair the download, and spam the launch button for it to work after about an hour of messing with updates and settings.

Once loaded, the ROG Ally did run the game decently on low to medium settings with FSR2 enabled while in 15W or 30W mode and it is 100% playable for those who have these portable PCs.

How much will Starfield cost?
Gaming only ever wants to get more expensive. The trend continues here, and if you want early access, you will need to pay $100 or the upgraded difference if you are a Game Pass subscriber. Microsoft has been raising the standard game price to $70 USD, Starfield included. Luckily, Starfield has been confirmed as a day-one addition to Game Pass, so most can experience it without any extra upfront cost.

Starfield is epic in scale – Some may not like this

Let me be clear: Starfield is a near-perfect Bethesda RPG with one of the best campaigns they have ever created. I was genuinely in awe in the latter half of the game, and with respect to Bethesda and your journey, we cannot discuss much that occurs in this portion. There is so much to explore but I did find myself mostly traveling within the major cities.

– 1,000 planets, with many that are mostly resource-gathering areas, but most have their main areas to explore and have fun in with hand crafted secret areas and wildlife to discover.
– Multiple faction quests.
– A plethora of side quests that keep spilling into your lap, begging you to explore and talk to as many NPCs as possible.
– A 40 to 50 hour main story quest.
– Excellent end-game activities to keep you busy including many things we cannot spoil. New Game + is also a warm welcome and a nice twist.

I often found myself drowning in activities (do not ignore these!) that became full-fledged amazing side quests, which I had ignored at first. My advice would be to slow down, and this is where Starfield may be an issue for some who have no patience. The game really and truly does not fully show off everything it has until way after 80-plus hours. I have to really emphasize that the scale is massive, and you will get to see so much more if you take your time and enjoy each individual planet first for all it has to offer.

But that’s the beauty of this game – your journey is going to be massively different from mine. For some, however, who want to unlock all the features or systems at once, they may not like having to invest 100 hours or more to get the game “going.”

Here are a few highlights in my journey while trying to be as spoiler-free as possible:
– I stole over 10 ships and immediately went to jail when I went into orbit near a patrolled planet, not realizing those spacers had contraband onboard
– Got a DJ’s new music back from an overzealous fan.
– Saved a planet from trees’ massive vibrations.
– Spared a man’s life after I learned he only stole a certain thing because he was recently fired and had no other choice.
– Found the source of an anomaly and uncovered the mystery of an artifact.
– Stole a tea recipe so a barista could compete with a megacorp (my companion did not like that).

Missions, side quests, and exploration

There is so much to explore on those far-off planets, so much beckoning that you to hurry to them, that inner child screaming with joy to rush to the end to “power up and unlock it all.” Slow down! Starfield has many, many wild layers to uncover and explore, but I often found myself spending hours on a planet, taking it all in, hours on side quests, and talking to those in a town I just discovered. Then you lift off, steal a ship, fight some space pirates, gather resources, build your outpost, and find a new planet with another hour-long side quest. It’s epic and breathtaking.

I will try to avoid spoilers, so skip to the next paragraph if you wish to avoid a very light spoiler. A perfect example of a favorite moment of mine was running into a derelict ship in orbit – which no one can seem to hail as soon as you pull into the orbit of Paradiso (a paradise Resort planet). The wild quest that unfolds for the secrets inside once you finally board the ship were great. Another was finding a miners simple quest that became a 10+ step mission that was extremely engrossing in Cydonia.

You can easily jump from planet to planet- more on that in a bit. Each feels like its own mini Bethesda game. Want to experience the desert? Head to Akila. Want a cyberpunk planet? Head to Neon. Want to experience something akin to Mass Effects massive cities? Head to New Atlantis. Missions here and the people you run into are varied and fully scripted. It’s so hard to write this review without screaming for you to go explore (spoiler) and fight the legendary (spoiler).

Planet jumping is where I found the most dissapointment. Launching away from a planet or onto once is mostly a menu system. The landing and orbit cutscenes are great but the game loses some of its charm and it would have been amazing to be able to manually take off from a planet if I wanted to.

I am over 100 hours in and have barely scratched the surface of shipbuilding, crafting, modding, and building outposts. Companions are varied and wonderful, and there are many paths for romance or companions to bring along that each have their own conversational style to match your preferred journey. I am not bored, ever. I keep wanting to play because there’s always a different loop I can take. Do I want to finish some side quests, gather resources, or explore new planets? I can easily choose any with the best fast-travel system I have seen. Everything is easily fast-traveled to – with slight limitations during quests – but you can hop from place to place in the blink of an eye. The Series S did have some longer loading screens for me so keep that in mind.

I am very saddened at the fact that there are no land vehicles or ways to easily traverse the planet. I am exploring a planet for a quest that needs to me to survey 100% of the planet in order to complete it. I have been stuck at 98% for over 3 hours with no end in sight moving from location to location to find the missing fauna and it did become frustrating – until I realized I could simply open the world and fast travel across the globe to different physical locations…d’oh!
However, I am still stuck at 98% simply because I got sidetracked with so much to do and the lack of interest in returning to find that missing 2%.

Shipbuilding and space flying are a highlight

Shipbuilding in Starfield is a delightful adventure! It takes a little time to dive into, but once you’re there, it becomes an exhilarating activity as you refine designs, add rooms, balance engines, weight, cargo, and ship systems. I have a fondness for massive spacecraft, not for their power, but because I enjoy wandering around all the rooms and exploring the technology that makes them tick. Although I haven’t delved much into outpost building, it is efficiently designed, allowing you to create attractive bases with relative ease. There are still the same power issues from Fallout 4 but some great options to build and even transport from planet to planet. It’s just not my cup of tea, and the game doesn’t hinge on it except for mass resource collection which I have yet to need.

In the endgame, there is a much greater need to worry about this, so I would say when you first start the game, don’t worry so much about your outposts until maybe 50 hours in, when you begin to start getting overwhelmed with companions.

Space battles are simply one of the best systems Bethesda has ever built. I became quickly addicted even though I knew my ship was severely outclassed. There is nothing I have experienced quite like taking on five spacers at once and barely winning because I was able to knock out all their engines. I kept losing this battle coming into orbit on a planet that I gave up and decided to explore elsewhere – only to see a giant ship land in the distance. I quickly ran over, defeated the owners, made it my new home ship, and instantly got an upgraded ship that was more than the spacers could handle. What a rush!

Starfield is ‘near’ perfect, but there are some minor issues

Bethesda has made some curious decisions and even their refined gunplay from the preview trailer still feels a little off. Some of the game feels like the systems and tech in the Fallout series forced change in Starfield. The need to differentiate between the two “futuristic” franchises is obvious. In Starfield, you get a “watch” that severely lacks the character of the classic Pip-Boy, and some of that classic Bethesda RPG danger feels really off unless you are fighting enemies that over leveled from you. I found myself missing V.A.T.S especially since a version of it exists on your spaceship and things like the menus and radio stations in Fallout. The AI feels set on a path and not as dynamic as I would have hoped but gun fights did feel quite responsive.

No one really tries to flank you or outsmart you and they often get stuck being target practice at their default locations while your are exploring. Most quests and other activities felt better, and there is a “fight to the death” area you can find that is particularly challenging even at high levels. It’s a strange feeling of easily dispatched mobs or “difficult to even pop your head up” fights.

As mentioned earlier, often you will fast travel to a mission marker, which launches a Grav Drive into a planet’s orbit. But the planet is suddenly surrounded by 6 pirate ships that severely outclass you, so you end up in a death loop unless you load a previous autosave. Be prepared anywhere you decide to fly off to. There may be missions or ships that hail you for trades. You never know what you might be traveling to.

Still, the gun diversity, some secrets, boost packs, and looting are extremely well done here. The guns feel incredible at times, but some feel unbalanced – dealing massive damage with a shotgun for example made me quite over powered for a long period of time. I tried switching to the P90 “Grendel” model in the game and it barely scratched the enemies I would shoot. Most of this can be fixed with balance passes.

Basic skills like stealth or pickpocketing require unlocking the core ability, meaning you can’t perform these activities at all until you invest a point in the skill tree. You don’t NEED the skills to perform the actions or get sneak attacks but without the core skill unlocked it feels bad to have something like pickpocketing locked off.

I specifically unlocked the ‘stealth’ trait because, without it, stealth felt very bad, and I did not like the lack of visual feedback. While leveling up to progress is understandable, the complete denial of access to core systems like this is strange and the cost to unlock could have maybe been a part of the quest instead. Leveling takes some time as well and there are so many worthy skill trees begging to be unlocked for you to progress that it feels bad when you have to spend that precious point in what was a default unlock for Bethesda RPGs.

Additionally, with crafting, you can only track entire recipes, not individual ingredients, making encumbrance a constant issue. There are so many heavy items in this game – especially ship parts – to weigh you down and keep track of. Thankfully, your companion can hold things for you, and you can sell or craft using the inventory that is on your ship’s cargo, so no need to hold it all at once or jettison the precious cargo.

Despite these minor hiccups, everything functions smoothly and feels stable. Although there are occasional frame rate stutters and minor glitches, nothing catastrophic has occurred for me. I hovered around 60 to 70 FPS stable on 3440×1440 with an RTX 4080. Thank you, Bethesda, for providing wide-screen support at launch.- a easily added feature so many ignore!

Starfield is visually stunning, with intricately detailed cities and diverse landscapes. One memorable moment involved exploring a moon-like planet or first landing in Neon. Your jaw will be on the floor even on the Series S where the graphics are toned down. I suggest immediately opening your menu and turning off the over-tuned film grain, however.

Starfield is one of the best games of this generation

For me, Starfield is Bethesda’s masterpiece, the hit Xbox needed, and possibly the game of the generation for the Series consoles. This is a system seller that is also available on PC via Steam or the Xbox app and included in Game Pass. I suggest you try it, you will be happy you did. Tears of the Kingdom brought me joy and wonder this year, but there was nothing for me quite like exploring all the wild amount of dialogue and fun to be had in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, or walking into New Vegas for the first time. That feeling is hard to capture and explain – you just have to see for yourself what Bethesda can create.

The worlds Bethesda builds feature dense, lively worlds where every direction offers something new. Walking into an Oblivion gate for the first time or traveling to a new planet – this is what makes gaming great.

I remember first beating Oblivion‘s main quest at over 120 hours and immediately starting another run. Starfield is on a whole other level, with much left to see even after completing the main story. It’s simply a joy to play, and I cannot recommend it more to every gamer.

The feeling of uncovering new things and the natural development in Starfield as you journey through it is unmatched, highlighting Bethesda’s quarter-century of experience and their authentic mastery as one of the best to ever do it. You will literally be overflowing with things to do – or not do- in a universe is teeming with new planets to explore. A definitive masterpiece.

Familiar elements and combat awkwardness exist, but Starfield is completely new, and there are months ahead for me to explore and enjoy. I cannot wait to see the mods and community reaction. Have a blast, and don’t rush!
Starfield gets a 10/10 from BTR. Thank you to Bethesda for providing a review copy.

The artful master of linguistics and baseball legend Yogi Berra has been quoted as saying, “When you come to a fork in the road, Take It!”

Great advice … keep moving forward.

The problem for the video content industry is that there are too d**n many forks, each has potholes and everyone is certain his fork is the right one.

The one thing everyone can agree on is that linear TV is slowly, painfully fading and becoming a niche entertainment service at best.

US Pay TV subscriptions have fallen 6.1 percent per year with everyone feeling the pain – cable, satellite, telco – of steady declines. Similar declines were shown in Europe, while developing countries produced slight increases.

During the latest period, pay TV lost 2.1M customers; and while the loss might not seem alarming, it has been consistent for the past five years for all of the participants including Sling, DirecTV and Hulu Plus.

To balance their P&Ls, Pay TV services shifted from scripted to reality shows which are less expensive to produce and will undoubtedly impact a lot of content creators who relied on TV shows a major portion of their business.

Networks and studios moved their best scripted shows to their fledgling streaming services. In addition, linear TV services supplemented their bottom lines by expanding their ad slots.

Allan McLennan, Chief Exec/Global Head of M&E Industry Strategy, PADEM Media Group, said,

“The streaming revolution is refreshingly very transformative for the global media and entertainment industry.”

He noted that nearly 85 percent of developed countries population (up from 79 percent) and 49 percent of the world population now has internet access (up from 40 percent five years ago) and are eager to use online streaming services.

“People around the globe realize that one of the key benefits of streaming over traditional services is that they can decide what to watch, when to watch it and conveniently on the screen/device they prefer,” he commented.

“In addition, they are generally able to more affordably choose shows/movies/event from a much broader library than the earlier day/time services,” he added.

While the North American market has reached about 50 percent of the population streaming, there is still room for growth. For example, in Europe, penetration ranges from 42 percent in England and 14 percent in Bulgaria.

The most promising markets that Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Apple TV+ have been aggressively focused on (190+, 200, 100+, 100 respectively) include growing their content libraries and subscription bases.

But the consumers’ rapid embracing of the viewing options and every service’s belief that they have the types of quality content people will be willing to pay “a little more” for seems to be coming to a screeching halt.

Consumers are dealing with rising prices in every aspect of their basic household budget while service providers ignore this and are rushing to increase their subscription rates.

Consumers are also signing up for services based on promotional or discounted offers and at the end of the trial period canceling the services or retaining them and cancelling others.

To soften the churn impact, nearly all of the streaming services have or will shortly initiate more economic options – AVOD and FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) services.

McLennan said that AVOD services like Pluto, FreeVee, Peacock, Rakuten, Tubi, YouTube, Watch4, Joyn, Tencent, Baidu’s iQiyi and Alibaba’s Yokou, Vidio, Viu, and hundreds of others around the globe are set to see an increase in both Monthly Active User (MAU) hours watched and revenues.

He estimates that the services will more than double their revenue over the next two years to reach $56B.

Fast services like Roku, Samsung TV, LG Channels, Plex, Kanopy and others have grown rapidly in recent years because of the low cost of entry and lower cost of content McLennan noted.

However, he added that they all they suffer from content overlap, lack of service differentiation and increasing viewer growth.

He emphasized that FAST’s saving grace may be the breadth of distribution through smart/connected TV (87 percent in US, 40 percent globally).

To keep their growth on track – and to “justify” fee increases – the global SVOD service majors are maintaining their investment in new content.

Okay, so maybe new isn’t the right word. They’re focusing a lot of attention on franchise shows as well as prequels/sequels of projects in the most widely viewed genres – superhero, comedy drama, sci-fi drama, sitcom, and crime drama. Even shows/series from 2011, 2013 and 2018 are being re-released due to the added interest and their quality.

In addition, they’re clawing back shows they previously contracted to competitive services such as Yellowstone (and spinoffs) and Star Trek returning to Paramount + from Peacock as well as Disney’s Marvel and calling IP (intellectual property) like Iron Fist, Daredevil and The Defenders back home.

While these moves are good, they aren’t enough to maintain their steady growth now that consumers have an overabundance of good to great paid viewing options.

The rapid acceptance of ad-supported streaming is clearly showing SVOD management that many individuals and families will tolerate advertising to pay for some of their content.

Most of the SVOD services have, or will shortly, introduce their own lower-cost, ad supported viewing options because it has become obvious that families have reached their pain point when it comes to the size of their monthly streaming bill.

The size of the pay TV bill encouraged folks to cut their cable service bundle for one or two inexpensive streaming services. And now that the cost of their internet service and six to eight streaming services have reached a similar level, they have begun canceling services.

Netflix, which has already found the SVOD service ceiling – $16 for the standard plan – will slowly introduce ad-supported pricing in hope of winning back some if not all of their recent lost subscribers. The ad-supported tier may also convince friends and neighbors who are using someone else’s credentials to watch the service’s shows to sign up for their own Netflix service.

McLennan suggested that the new pricing plan could generate nearly 8M subscribers next year and as much as $1B+ in incremental income during the same period.

Disney has announced that its Disney+ ad-tier pricing will cost the same as the company’s current service and that they will be increasing the cost of their ad-free tier.

Hulu has long had both SVOD and AVOD service options. Their picture is murky though because with Disney owning 70 percent of the service (Comcast/NBCUniversal owns the remainder) Disney has also included it in a bundle offering with Disney+ and ESPN+.

In addition, while both firms want 100 percent of the service, there’s a very good chance Comcast’s CEO Brian Roberts will sell the company’s share at a handsome profit and use the money to acquire one of the services presently burdened with excessive $43B merger price tag.

Word is Roberts is looking hard at one of the content creation/delivery services that is struggling to right itself.

And it would certainly be a welcome addition to NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service which has had trouble attracting a significant subscription base in the fast-moving streaming entertainment arena.

The floundering organization is slashing staff and projects and has done little to spell out a clear path to recovery other than to talk about a 10-year plan that mirrors Disney’s MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) success in the theater and streaming.

“When there’s blood in the water, sharks gather rather quickly,” McLennan observed.

Amazon Prime already has the ad-free SVOD service bundled with its Prime service which includes free product deliveries (handy for the holidays) as well as its FreeVee ad-supported service. They could also be planning a FAST bundled service that includes content from other broadcast and studio organizations.

Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish has said they will raise the price of Paramount + SVOD service and introduce an ad-supported tier. Of course, he also gave families a reason to stick with their SVOD service, noting that they plan to release Top Gun: Maverick on Paramount + following its theatrical run sometime in the fourth quarter.

Apple TV+ may be the lone holdout to adding an ad-supported service but then it comes free when folks purchase products like phones and computers. In addition, their Apple One bundle is designed to be an all-inclusive entertainment and personal package that includes Apple Music, Apple Arcade, iCloud+, Apple News+ and Apple Fitness+.

Even Disney’s recently returned CEO Bob Iger, recently observed, “But they’re not going to stand pat. They’re going to continue to grow; and they’ll grow well. They have deep pockets. They have great access to consumers. They have strong technology platforms. They’ve proven they know how to do it. So, they stay.”

In other words, competition in the video streaming market is stiff with major services already well established in the consumer’s mind and budget. And with hundreds of channels out there it is only going to get worse.

The challenge for the consumer is finding just the content he/she wants when they want to watch it and minimize the amount of time it takes to find the content.

“While it won’t be a simple task,” McLennan said, “the obvious solution for everyone involved – content producer, service provider and consumer – is to develop a modified service bundling program.”

He emphasized that Disney has already moved in that direction with Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ which also includes content from Disney-owned organizations including Marvel, Fox, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marker Studios, Lifetime, History, ABC, A&E, and more.

Comcast’s NBC Universal has previously had talks to add Warner Bros properties and HBO Max to their bundled offering.

The move could become even more clear by 2024 when a lot of the legal hurdles are allowed to lapse following the merger of Warner Bros and Discovery early this year.

Peacock has had discussions with a number of smaller US and international streaming services but … we’ll see.

Offering a large bundle will obviously reduce the industry’s biggest concern right now – churn.

People will be able to discover shows and movies they want to watch much more easily thanks to a single user interface, but it come at a potential cost to the services because of their potentially lower ARPU (average revenue per user).

Competitive dynamics – ego – will probably be one of the biggest obstacles for an inter-company bundle because executives will undoubtedly view the bundling move as a sign that they can’t compete on their own even when it’s obviously in the best interest of the entertainment hungry public.

If we’re lucky, the services may be more amenable to adding their content resources to a third-party broadband service provider since they already provide wired and wireless internet service to the families that streamers need to reach.

It’s a lot like the inevitable line Vince delivered regarding Stevie in I Used to be Famous when he said, “All he ever wanted was a friend.”

# # #

Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com – is an author of more than 700 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software and applications. An internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant with a broad range of technical and industry expertise especially in storage, storage management and film/video production fields; he has an extended range of relationships with business, industry trade press, online media and industry analysts/consultants.

Lots of folks like to say that Netflix and the other streamers broke up screen-based entertainment (movies and TV), but they didn’t really. They just rode the coattails of YouTube and social media.

Video social media gave younger generations an opportunity to express themselves as well as entertain themselves and anyone else who wanted to click in.

So why should streamers and studios pay any attention to what social media is doing since they are creative giants?

They want to attract and retain the same kids/folks who have grown up with smartphones and social media that are delivering finely tuned experiences that are social, interactive, immersive.

While it’s true that streaming services may have disrupted TV/movies and its business models, but they still do things pretty much as they did 15 years ago when Netflix streamed its first subscription movies.

You know … here are the movies/shows, pick the ones you want to watch and pay us a monthly fee.

We regularly use YouTube, Instagram, or Snapchat to learn more about an upcoming film – trailers, outtakes, behind the scene stuff; and we can pretty much expect that our next click will bring up more about the project or similar movies we might be interested in.

Take when we first got interested in Prey.

Disney’s 20^th Century Studio and Hulu made full use of social media/video when they rolled out the film.

They had several great trailers and featurettes on YouTube that really whetted your appetite to see the project.

Capitalizing on the fact that the studio made it a point to let you know it wasn’t just a Predator prequel, but the film was about the people who roamed North America 300 years in the past.

The marketing build-up was not just intriguing, it was also subtly educational and extremely inclusive.

Social media was heavily leveraged to let you know that Native Americans throughout the project – writing, producing, directing, camera/crew and actors; included authentic language plus English and other language subtitles and that it was as true to the Comanche history/way of life as possible.

We liked the first Predator movie, and all of the social media content gave every indication that the prequel would deliver even more … it didn’t disappoint.

That’s what they’re designed to do, deliver finely tuned, personalized feeds of images, video, news, other stuff and all for free once you get past the periodic ads that folks hope will interest, engage and hopefully encourage you to buy something.

Yes, watching series and movies at home remains the top entertainment choice–except for the younger generation.

Chasing content across the growing number of streaming services takes more “valuable” time than Gen Zers

want to spend and then when they find it, they still have to pay to watch it.

Why?

User-generated content—which is usually short-form and easily consumable—is easier to find and watch because of the algorithmically fueled social media services.

YouTube’s and the other social video sites draw on the tremendous volume of user data that is accumulated to continuously refine themselves so that they continuously offer up compelling and engaging content (and yes, ads).

According to Hub Research, 51 percent the streaming public say they spend more time watching user-generated video content than video streaming series and movies.

Many note that they do it without any frustrating searching for content they find of interest because the content – and other stuff – comes to them.

Social media is more than just a gateway though to the Gen Z’s online global connection and is considerably different than FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) such as Roku.

The more personal data people provide and the more they use it, the better it becomes at serving up the content folks want and the longer they will view the video material.

More than 80 percent of Gen Zers report that they connect with their services several times a day because it helps them stay updated on news, current events and video stories.

There’s a variety of different types of social media video and different categories.

Social media video, especially user generated content, is often viewed as a time filler, something to keep you interested and involved in between your other entertainment activities.

The in-depth library of video content from around the world. YouTube has more than 500 hours of video content uploaded every minute, more than 2B users log in monthly and more than 2B videos viewed daily – and constantly refined viewing algorithms encourage folks to spend more time watching user and professional video than they had planned.

Deloitte found that 70 percent of Gen Zs have trouble pulling themselves away.

Short-form, user generated videos get the greatest attention and viewers, but it isn’t easy.

While it’s true that some social media video producers/posters earn upward of $1M annually, they have to continually update, refresh content to keep people interested and coming back for more.

It’s not an easy gig and has to constantly evolve to ensure the content gets put in front of the users because they have choices … lots of choices.

To keep people connected to their services, social media/video services use social algorithms that are fine-tuned to users’ preferences and behaviors which enable them to match the right content with the right audience.

For the social media/video service and the content creators, it’s all about keeping people engaged with their retention ability and keeping folks engaged as long as possible.

Although households have increased their use of “Smart TVs,” doubling the amount of time spent watching YouTube and other social video services, most of the content is viewed on smart phones.

That really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone–especially if you have kids, because the devices are seldom far from them–even when they’re sleeping.

Cisco recently reported that online videos make up more than 82 per cent of all consumer internet traffic and mobile video consumes more than 30 percent of that capacity.

In China and APAC, where mobile devices are people’s all-inclusive communications, computing, entertainment device, mobile video streaming is as much a 70 percent.

Most VOD services now view social video as major coopetition (cooperative competition).

Back in 2017, Netflix Reed Hastings said his organization’s biggest competition was sleep.

A year later, when the company entered the Indian entertainment market, he found that social media video services were even more aggressive competitors because they were free.

While social video is a competitor for more people’s time–especially with the Gen Z folks who account for 26 percent of the world’s population, they are also valuable services for them to promote their movies and shows.

That’s probably why every studio and SVOD service has a channel or strong presence on YouTube as well as TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and other social video services.

It’s a solid way to reach the folks most likely to go to the movie house in addition to grabbing their smartphone to watch a major number of minutes of online shows/movies.

The big problem is, they’re not very loyal.

Gen Zs think nothing of churning (cancelling a subscription, adding one, dropping, stiring and repeating).

Streaming series and movies at home will continue to be popular for the older crowd (millennials, Gen X, boomers), but Gen Z rates video games as second to simply browsing the internet followed by music, news (in capsule form) and their communities.

The key for streaming video services will be to remain a relevant part of their social conversations, focus on driving trend topics and working with their creators and team members to advance content ideas and interest.

This can be in the form of a continuous stream of project short-form videos and connecting with, assisting and rewarding user-generated material streams built around the services’ shows/movies and sharing this content with others in the social communities.

The two streaming video services that already have a strong and active presence in these areas are Amazon and Apple.

Both have a healthy range of video, news, music and gaming offerings but Apple has a key component that the others will have difficulty in duplicating … a solid social ecosystem.

Disney has all of the components; all they need to do is put them to work and focus on tomorrow.

Several of the others that in the process of tearing apart and reassembling their organizations may find it a little difficult and will repeat Barton Fink’s observation, “I’m having a little trouble getting started.”

# # #

Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com – is an author of more than 700 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software and applications. An internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant with a broad range of technical and industry expertise especially in storage, storage management and film/video production fields; he has an extended range of relationships with business, industry trade press, online media and industry analysts/consultants.

It was a sign of our times!

A few months ago, the industry held its annual upfronts where network and streaming execs tell potential buyers what a powerful draw they are going to be with the best content and biggest audience in the year ahead–all with the audience’s lust to buy stuff.

In between the parties, the content industry was serious with confusing fantom charts, eye-popping trailers and a parade of A-listers telling media buyers what a great deal the home viewing market is for advertisers.

It has become so confusing they had to divide the event into two segments:

• The upfronts are where marketers pitch commercial time on specific shows at specific times before the payTV season begins.
• The NewFronts are where marketers reveal their upcoming slate of shows to advertisers.

Sound confusing?

It is!

But streaming ads are nothing new.

Hulu has been doing it since 2007 … NBD.

It’s just that streaming is hot because appointment TV folks and marketers can’t jam any more ads into their hourly time slots…

Ad folks couldn’t be bothered with streaming before because the studios/networks all followed the example of the tech-born services – be ad free – so marketing could only be envious of their growth, reach.

Focus on the number of eyeballs signing up, keep growing and worry about the content costs … later.

Viola! wall street, shareholders and audience were happy.

People warmed up to Netflix, but not because they could save shave/cut their cable bundle. They wanted original content they could watch when they want, where they want without 20 minutes of ads.

Everyone jumped on the airwaves–Amazon, Apple, Disney, HBO, and hundreds or other SVOD options around the globe.

Suddenly people could sign up with a few inexpensive streamers, watch insanely great content on their terms and save money.

It didn’t take long for the services (with fresh, ad-free content) to blow a major hole in the family entertainment budget:

• ISP – $50+/mo.
• Netflix – $20/mo.
• Amazon Prime – $15/mo.
• HBO Max – $15/mo.
• Disney+/Hulu/ESPN – $14mo
• Apple TV+ – $5/mo.

BAM! folks were right back to their bundle budget with a bunch of services and the hassle of trying to find the one movie/show they wanted to watch without a program guide.

Consumers finally showed the “valuable/desirable” increasingly expensive SVOD services that enough is enough, the entertainment budget was going on a diet, and you may (or may not) still be on the menu.

Services needed a second income to cover some of the mounting content costs and a way to economically keep folks interested in them.

Tiered offerings with advertisers footing some of the costs seemed logical because:

• Services had something marketers wanted – direct viewer relationships
• Services had detailed information about viewers and viewing habits

Marketers didn’t need to “buy” viewers by the gross; they could finally reach people who most closely met their prospective customer profiles.

It was a win-win for everyone.

Marketing could be more effective in delivering messages/information to people based on their personal wants, needs, interests and viewing habits.

It was a lot more pleasant for the viewer who previously left the room during the 20+ minutes of ads in an hour show or sat there half watching the same ad four-six times an hour that bridged into the second hour just in case you missed it.

The ongoing problem for marketers is that the streamer’s data bank of viewer information is not something any of them are willing to share in much detail with rating services or marketers/advertisers.

The data – locked in a safe inside a vault inside a volcano – is valuable to the service because it enables them to be more valuable to advertisers and viewers.

Content and product messages are all about personalization.

The data enables services to develop/offer the movies/shows families most want to watch and keep them coming back for more in return for a few minutes of brief product messages.

It helps marketers to do a better job of personalizing service/product messages that recognize, respect and influence the consumer.

As long as their personal information is used properly and protected, the more personal information consumers will share. Trust and relationships are built from a foundation of trust and respect.

As opposed to the old appointment TV route, AVOD services and advertisers are listening to the audience to keep them involved from the beginning to the end of the message.

Marketers and ad folks initially balked at the idea of shrinking their “valuable” messages from 1+ minute down to 15-30 seconds.

Surprisingly, creative marketers found that the shorter the amount of time they shared with the consumer forced them to be more effective in their ad message presentation.

Those that don’t listen … don’t get heard.

In addition, services and marketers have also uncovered new digitally delivered opportunities with the right mix, location and types of ads – binge, preroll, home screen, pause, shoppable or interactive ads.

DTC has helped the advertising creative content team of writers, directors, actors as well as production/post crews to better understand how to attract and entertain consumers; capture audience attention/praise.

That data also gives them new opportunities to improve and enhance marketing messages!

The result of all of this behind-the-scenes work (attention to detail and taking their lead from the viewer/consumer rather than the salesperson) is that people like the change and are more receptive to the advertising message(s).

The major problem for most AVOD services is that they had a solid reputation of being the place you went when you were nostalgic. You know, when you wanted to watch the stuff that was great when you were a kid – I Love Lucy, Eight is Enough, Buck Rogers, Little House on the Prairie, Love Boat, V, Airwolf, A Team, Chips, Knight Rider, Xena, Walker and a gazillion more including some awesome – and not so awesome – movies.

To attract more of the SVOD crowd, the leading AVOD players – Tubi, IMDb TV (now Freevee), Pluto, Crackle, Tudou, IQiyi, Tencent, Eros Now, Rakuten TV, Hotstar and more – have joined the original content goldrush.

In the U.S., AVOD services have released over 100 new original titles in the last year with aggressive new project development programs in the years ahead.

The increasing investment follows the shift of subscription streamers to control exclusive content for their viewers as major studios bring content home for their own SVOD services. The more exclusive content, the greater the number of steady viewers.

Just don’t expect them to invest in new content – projected to be about $70B this year – compared to SVOD players including Netflix, Disney, Warner/Discovery, Apple and others which should surpass $230B in 2022.

It’s difficult to justify the multimillion dollars per-hour SVOD investments.

One exception is Freevee, Amazon’s renamed IMDbTV, which will have access to more of the MGM library and assistance from Amazon Prime TV to expand its visibility, penetration and global expansion.

The other exception is Paramount+ with a slow growing library with a number of family-targeted projects like Yellowstone, 1883, Star Trek: Picard, Halo and crossovers from Paramount’s cable offering, Showtime.

AVOD originals are good – and unique – but probably not enough to pull viewers away from favorite SVOD services.

SVOD subscribers like to think of themselves as first-class viewers that watch their movies/shows without any ad interruption.

Changing seats (churn) is okay but moving permanently to main-cabin viewing is tough. People still remember the bundle TV experience when the ad volume grew … and grew … and …

The pain still lingers.

As Netflix discovered this year, people aren’t willing to sign up for – and keep – every SVOD service that looks sorta, kinda interesting–especially when it’s so easy to sign up for a movie or two, cancel to pick up someone else’s inviting content and maybe come back … maybe.

Deloitte estimates that the average churn rate is about 37 percent in the US and 30 percent in countries such as the UK, Germany, Brazil and Japan.

The problem is there are just too d**n many good services with great content!

You have watched their stuff in their walled garden, going from garden to garden until you find just the movie/show you were looking for or simply settle for something to relax with.

We lower our blood pressure by using free services like JustWatch to look through movies/TV shows available and go directly to the service/project.

The more you use it, the more hints you give the site on what you like – and don’t like – the better the recommendations.

As if the personal/home entertainment didn’t have enough confusion, the most rapid new growth arena is FAST (free, ad-supported television) – services that bring together a growing range of AVOD – and some SVOD – services all in a single location.

You could access them with your new huge smart TV or CTV device – Xbox, PlayStation, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and others.

We chose several smart TV screens (beautiful images/sound BTW), turned off the smarts and added CTV devices connected to the screens in the house.

Why the added boxes?

Simple.

Our son prefers more serious gaming with a serious gaming device.

Our daughter prefers all things Apple.

Vizio introduced one of the first “smart” TVs that promised a perfect streaming video experience. It turned out they also captured/used/sold our personal information – even when the TV wasn’t on.

Our new LG smart TV probably doesn’t do that but?

Heck, we don’t really trust Alexa or Siri completely, but they are part of the family and do so much around the house so…

According to IAB Media Center, CTV/FAST accounts for 36 percent of linear and streaming time and is increasingly important to marketers (currently 18 percent of video ad dollars). The biggest push for advertisers is to enable them to manage cross-platform, cross-channel video buys which could happen as early as next year.

FAST entertainment options are growing rapidly.

Tubi has a library of more than 40,000 titles including news and sports. Freevee has more than 75 channels. Roku, perhaps the oldest FAST provider, has more than 200 channels and continues to increase its growth nationally and internationally. And the other entrants are expanding their linear and streaming offerings as quickly as possible to satisfy their growing subscriber base.

At the end of last year more than 129M folks regularly accessed ad-supported content on demand on a regular basis, according to Insider Intelligence. They project that by 2025, there will be more than 165M users and advertising revenue will increase by more than 50 percent per anum.

The gnawing question for content creators and subscribers is how will Netflix respond.

“The first thing they will have to do is harden their subscription service including more robust content protection and security to reduce/eliminate password sharing and piracy,” said Allan McLennan, Allan McLennan, CEP of media, head of M&E North America for Atos.

“In the near term, they may lose some subscribers,” he continued, “but over the long haul, it will be appreciated by the content creation industry and users who appreciate the best unique video stories.

“The other SVOD services will quickly follow that lead which will benefit everyone in the industry,” he added.

“When it comes to an ad-supported tier, the company’s home market – the Americas – will experience the greatest change,” he continued. “The most popular speculation is that people will be able to sign up for FAST/AVOD service for about $10 or a 50 percent discount from the subscription rate. The same will be true for their international subscribers.”

McLennan emphasized that with a subscriber base of more than 200M, the company continues to be the world’s largest SVOD service, far ahead of services that tout their 50-80M subscribers.

“They continue to be the people everyone else is chasing,” he said, “and they will continue to be one of the top three subscription services, even when the dust settles.”

“Quality ad-free and ad-supported content services can live side by side,” said McLennan.

Then he informed me as Jack Burton did in Big Trouble in Little China, “… and your phone is dead, by the way.”

Darn!

# # #

Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com – is an author of more than 700 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software and applications. Internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant with a broad range of technical and industry expertise especially in storage, storage management and film/video production fields. Extended range of relationships with business, industry trade press, online media and industry analysts/consultants.

We love all the noise about what a rich, deep and broad library streaming folks have compared to the “new kids” – Netflix, Apple.

O.K., Amazon cheated by buying theirs (MGM for $8.5B) … whoopee!

We’re just not a library kind of guy because if it’s old stuff we’ve probably seen it or don’t want to.,

The idea of watching an old show or series is boring–especially if we’ve seen it before.

Unless there’s a darn good reason!

To prepare for John Wick 4 a few months ago, we relived John Wick – 2014, John Wick Chapter 2 – 2017, John Wick Parabellum – 2019 and we were ready to see Keanu Reeves back in action.

For Matrix: Resurrection, we dug around and found Matrix – 1999, Matrix Reloaded – 2003, Matrix Revolutions – 2003 and sorry Keanu, it just wasn’t a good video game remake for us.

To prepare for Top Gun: Maverick, we had to venture back to 1976 to refresh ourselves on the antics/action of Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer.

Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Comcast, Amazon/MGM, ViacomCBS, Apple, and AMC Networks all tout the tremendous value of their libraries that extend back to the era when Hollywood was really Hollywood.

Their accountants are probably placing a huge value of the old content on their books and the edge they have over the techie newbies – Netflix and Apple.

Despite that bravado, all of the studios and streamers are projected to spend a combined total of $230B this year for new stuff.

2022 Investments

According to Wells Fargo, Disney is estimated to produce 145 plus titles this year – 60 unscripted series, 30 comedy series, 25 drama series, 15 docuseries, 10 animated, five made-for-TV (streaming) movies and more.

While Zaslov is busy building his new Warner Bros. Discovery infrastructure wasting some of his $22.4B investment on sports, most of the money is earmarked for new content.

Netflix is intent on growth – especially outside the Americas – by committing $19B to its global content production.

Paramount+ (ViacomCBS) is estimated to spend $3.8B this year on content, an increase of about 25 percent year-over-year.

Originally, Wells Fargo estimated that Apple would be spending $8.1B on new content but after coming off the spectacular Oscar win for CODA this year so, instead of doubling their output this year, you will undoubtedly see them dip a little more deeply into their reserves for 2022 and beyond.

Comcast/NBCU/Peacock will invest a lot for them (increase of 22 percent) with $2.2B earmarked for new content but still well behind the other streamers. Fortunately, Comcast has a number of other sources of income to make up Peacock’s projected losses.

We realize creative folks in the Americas are already looking to pad their savings accounts with all that fresh money coming in, but only about 16 percent of the investments will be at home.

All the rest is going to the markets – 195 countries – the streamers are targeting to conquer.

Fueled by the production spending of global and regional streaming providers, content creators everywhere will see a boost in attention because streamers have to produce at least 30 percent of their content locally.

While Netflix and Amazon are already well established in these countries, everyone else is busy increasing their local production budget – Africa, Middle East- 46 percent, Latin America – 33 percent, Oceania – 33 percent.

The two have found that creating content locally is also good globally because production costs are lower and, more importantly, the content travels well from one country to another … including the Americas.

In addition, the streaming industry investment will probably be twice that amount when you also factor in things like co-financing and acquiring rights to indie films/TV programming.

Video story production is accelerating even as the Hollywood/network establishment brags about their vaults full of ready-to-show stuff.

But will people watch it?

Back in the day, we LMAOed watching Airplane and Blazing Saddles … great storylines, great scripts back then.

Consider just a bit of the Airplane script:

First Jive Dude – “Shiiit, man. That honky mofo messin’ mah old lady – got to be runnin’ cold upside down his head, you know?”

Jive Lady – “Jive-ass dude don’t got no brains anyhow! Shiiiiit.”

On the film’s 40^th anniversary, the producer was asked if he could make Airplane today and he responded, “Of course, we could. Just without the jokes.”

Blazing Saddles had a great Mel Brooks script:

Bart – “Hey, where are the white women at?”

Lili Von Shtupp – “Tell me, schatze, is it true what they say about the way you people are … gifted?”

Governor Lepetomane – “Are you crazy? They’ll never go for it. And then again, they might. Those little red devils … they love toys!”

Times change, people’s tastes/priorities change and there’s a greater attention (and hopefully understanding) of the need for diversity, inclusion and equity in the video projects that are produced and made available.

Then too, there are the films we’re just embarrassed to watch because honestly, it’s hard to believe that it wasn’t that long ago, we didn’t treat people as people.

We couldn’t figure out why Taraji Henson had to walk across the NASA facility in the rain to go to the bathroom as we watched Hidden Figures.

There had to be a bathroom closer, and we were disgusted, ashamed.

When Kevin Costner smashed the bathroom sign and said, “We all pee the same color,” we nearly cheered out loud (we were on a plane), but we did whisper ‘way to go’ under our breath.

When John Glenn (Glen Powell) said, “if she says they’re good, I’m ready to go,” we thought you’re pretty smart for a guy who’s going to ride a rocket to the moon.

Don’t get us wrong, we don’t mind being embarrassed about our past and learning that backward people were in their thinking/actions just a few years ago because it makes us realize how much further we have to go.

But has anyone ever looked, really looked, at those vast libraries of really great, attractive content people are just itching to see again or for the first time?

Amazon’s MGM library has more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows that go back to the mid-1920s.

Warner Bros Discovery has a film library that extends back before Gone With the Wind and lots of projects that they wouldn’t want to put on HBO Max without a warning label.

And when do you think Paramount + will schedule All in the Family for streaming?

Yes, all of the streamers have libraries of expensive content they’d probably like to use to beef up their streaming content inventories; but times change, attitudes change, priorities change.

Consider the globally recognized and loved Disney.

Every month, Chapek and his team gather for a video conference with advisors to evaluate/discuss films in the can as well as new projects to do what Walt Disney first envisioned the company to do when the conglomerate was founded in 1923…be the family-friendly folks that made movies, TV shows, park rides for everyone.

The monthly cross-section meetings are designed to pick out stereotypes, insensitive imagery and provide perspective.

Some shows/films are added to Disney + as is, while others are considered to be ready for the streaming roster with some editing/rework.

Still others have a disclaimer added “negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures.” And an unknown number of projects are moved back to the darkest portion of the content vault to fade into oblivion.

Chapek’s predecessor, Bob Iger, pushed the entertainment company to emphasize diverse casting/storytelling and to have greater inclusion and equality.

Iger’s goal was to encourage people to accept multiple views of cultures, race, differences.

And it worked pretty well…

Black Panther had a largely Black cast, was a powerful Afrocentric story line and was a global blockbuster.

Star Wars was refocused around female characters and animated movies like Moana, Coco, Raya and the Last Dragon, Soul, Encanto showcased a variety of races, cultures, ethnicities and were widely enjoyed by their audiences.

But…

The real world seems to be suddenly ugly with every partisan side/view insisting Chapek isn’t doing right by his people.

In trying to offend no one, Chapek and Disney are suddenly affecting everyone.

In March, Chapek told employees, “Our diverse stories are our corporate statements. I firmly believe that our ability to tell such stories is the best solution.”

He’s probably right because what is trending on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest and the range of other social media sites is often replaced tomorrow by a new complaint.

But still, there’s a lot of content sitting in studio/streamers libraries that were wrong then and they’re certainly wrong today.

The key is being aware of the missteps of the past and preventing them again in the future.

Streaming services have to focus on today and tomorrow. Otherwise, it’s like Jacob said in The Librarians, “It doesn’t feel like you’re trying to build a team. It feels like you’re trying to fill a void.”

New, unique content may be a better solution for building a service’s future.

We’re pretty sure content creation and production folks will agree.

# # #

Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com – is an author of more than 700 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software, and applications. An internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant with a broad range of technical and industry expertise especially in storage, storage management and film/video production fields; he has an extended range of relationships with business, industry trade press, online media, and industry analysts/consultants.

In California, where we live, people bid on the average of seven homes before they finally get one they want/can afford.

When we visit Puerto Vallarta and see something we kinda like at the mercados, we’ll visit at least four stalls before mutually agreeing on a price we’re willing to pay … one we feel is good for us, good for them.

And that, my friends, is how most people choose their entertainment services.

O.K., there’s a segment of the viewing public that can only enjoy something if it is free (pirated) but there’s a pretty easy way to stop/slow the thieves. MESA (Media & Entertainment Services Alliance) has a whole group of folks who have developed solutions to protect content from beginning to end – https://tinyurl.com/4zp3rap2 – “because we want you to make it difficult for the ‘totally free’ folks.”

If those users dislike streamers capturing/using their info, what do they think the Torrent sites do? … jeezz!

As for the industry, we’ve never figured out why services brag about how many times a movie/ series is pirated. It’s not only money out of their pockets but it also means the rest of us foot their bill!

Piracy costs streamers an estimated $30B plus every year and password sharing (freeloading) costs about $6B.

It’s not free advertising!

Every streaming service is saying enough is enough.

Despite Netflix’s miserable numbers for the 1^st quarter, the bottom didn’t fall out of SVOD…far from it.

But SVOD has reached a point where it has to evolve.

No one really knows what the next phase will look like, but everyone has an opinion.

In August 1997, Netflix sent out its first red envelope (which started out white) and at their peak were sending out 12M DVDs a week.

In 2007, the company turned on the streaming spigot. Demand for new, unique content grew to 221M plus.

There are still 2M plus folks out there who want the envelope.

When they were “the only game in town,” studios fell all over themselves to have them distribute their film/series titles … until executives figured out they could do that too and make even more money.

In a little less three years, nearly all of the studios have reshaped their theatrical priorities and networks, moving from the day/time TV bundle to their own any time, any place, any screen service.

They all want to be the place where a subscriber will go so they can charge a fee based on “the value” of their content (translation … as much as they can get).

After all, $20/mo. is a lot less than the old $200/mo. subscribers used to pay for that overweight cable bundle.

There are more than 300 SVOD/OTT services around the globe and that is expected to grow to 600 by 2025. All are focused on capturing their share of the 2B subscriber market by spending billions on “new, unique” content because … content is king.

Streaming investments led by Comcast, Disney and Netflix saw the global spend on content reach $220 billion in 2021 with the pot set to exceed $230 billion in 2022, according to a new report from Ampere Analysis.

In the US, 80 percent of TV households or 122.4M, have at least one SVOD service while the average number of services per household is four, according to Ampere Analysis.

In addition, the average churn rate is 35 percent.

Tough but tolerable.

Consumers will spend about $82.5B this year for subscription video content or $69.49 ARPU (average revenue per user).

But around the globe there are home/personal video entertainment options available that people can spend money on for ad-free services as well as less expensive and ad-supported services.

To entice folks to its service, Netflix set the bar high by signing multiyear contracts with leading content producers/developers and then funding/controlling the resulting projects.

That worked great by serving up popular shows like Ozark, Orange is the new Black, House of Cards, Stranger Things, The Crown and more. They’ve even shown the industry that regional shows have global audience appeal.

Netflix took a page from Hollywood and bragged about how many Torrent downloads – free word of mouth advertising – projects it had.

They really wanted to recover some or all of that revenue but …

While Netflix has tiptoed around the password sharing issue for a long time, most recently by offering phased pricing for friends and family viewing.

The test program was a resounding failure coming at the same time the company increased monthly fees which after years of overlooking password sharing didn’t go over well … to say the least.

Went over like a lead balloon.

Long time content producers/servers like HBO Max, Disney, Hulu, Amazon, Apple have had password protection capabilities and enforcement from the outset, so password sharing is minimal and aggressively discouraged.

Netflix, the globe’s leading SVOD by a wide margin, invested heavily in local content development which has helped them grow nicely in 190 countries in regions like the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), SEA (Southeast Asia) and LatAm.

But the service has always been a lot like Henry Ford’s Model T observation, “You can have it in any color you want, as long as it is black,” or in their case, all the content at one set fee.

Have they been considering growth options?

Sure!

The most tangible action has been its video game acquisitions (Next Games, Night School, Boss Fight) to tap into the lucrative, constantly connected Gen Z (10-24 years) $6B download and streaming gaming market.

It has worked … the games have attracted the younger crowd to its platform and its shows.

But offering tiered pricing options is something Hastings has resisted for years.

Snobs have been drinking the Kool-Aid … people cut their cord to escape advertising.

BS! Study after study has proven that’s not the case.

We’re not a reverse snob but we like ads … good ads.

We don’t like 20 minutes of ads an hour.

We don’t like the same stupid ads again … and again … and again …

That’s probably why advertising exploration/explanation was such a hot topic at NAB (which we covered earlier); and Hastings is right … there’s a lot of work to be done! And people want choices.

But Hastings and Netflix now have the opportunity to take the lead again not only with the content creation industry and the consumer but, more importantly, in helping the ad folks clean up the crap and do things right.

Netflix has the richest (most valuable) database of global viewer information (followed closely by Amazon and Apple) which can be used by the company to educate, assist marketers in developing more effective ads, understanding the best balance of ads and how to create ads people interact with as much as they do with the firm’s entertainment content.

Much as advertisers would love to have access to that data, it shouldn’t be shared.

The company needs to use the information to help advertisers give viewers a better experience when they view and interact with the ads.

Of course, it starts by Hastings making good on one the company’s founding precepts – giving consumers choice.

Sure, it will undoubtedly be expensive in the short term as an unknown number of subscribers shift to the lower-cost options.

That will only give Wall Street yoyos who only a short time ago were pushing folks to buy their stock to say, “See, we told you they couldn’t do it.”

However, many will stick with their ad-free status, others will “adjust.”

More importantly, it will increase the number of people/households using the service and mitigate churn.

Hastings has already signaled that the company will examine its options over the next year or two and make decisions that are right for the content creation industry, global consumers and last, but not least, investors.

Turning the industry leader won’t be easy or free of pain but in putting a positive spin on the change of heart Netflix COO Greg Peters said adding ad tiers, “is an exciting opportunity for us.”

The ceiling for Netflix isn’t 222M subscribers.

The ceiling is really 1B plus folks around the globe who want their entertainment when they want it, where they want it and, on the screen they have in front of them.

Tiered service options that include efficient, effective, intelligent ads will give folks the opportunity to watch what has clearly been the most sought-after content in a way that is budget friendly and treats them as intelligent individuals instead of targets.

Netflix has the data, infrastructure, experience and understanding of UI as well as recommendation and integration capabilities.

They offered something totally unique that people came to want/expect back in 2007; and now, they have a chance to do it again.

They enriched the content creation/distribution market before and now they have a chance to repeat it in the years ahead.

There was certainly plenty of interest at NAB on how content providers and marketers could improve the quality and effectiveness of advertising.

Netflix might have the opportunity to take it to the next level.

The goal for everyone is to understand and interest folks, keeping in mind what the Girl in Anon said, “It’s not that I have something to hide. I have nothing I want you to see.”

Imagine getting ads in your content that you stick around to watch instead of running to the kitchen or bathroom.

It could happen, but it’s going to take time.

It’s not an end to original content creation, but it could improve ads.

Think about it … sitting there watching original content advertisements.

# # #

Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com – is an author of more than 700 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software and applications. Internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant with a broad range of technical and industry expertise especially in storage, storage management and film/video production fields. Extended range of relationships with business, industry trade press, online media and industry analysts/consultants.

Don’t you just hate it? You go into the family room and turn on your big-screen set so you can watch a certain movie or program

Suddenly, you have absolutely NO idea which of your paid and ad-supported services it’s on and end up watching something, anything.

We recently read a Deloitte study that found 84 percent of consumers reported they are spending more time with their online entertainment at home.

Well, Yeah!

We’re not atypical. Have a film/show we really want to watch so we cruised Netflix … not there. Moved on to Disney +…then Amazon Prime…then HBO Max and; just for the heck of it, tried Apple TV+.

Bummer: but we really want that film now, so we try our free services … Pluto and Tubi.

Note: Your services will probably vary depending on where you live and your entertainment taste/financial budget, but the big hunt isn’t any different, is it?

Back in the ‘50s, TV enticed families to enjoy the convenience of staying home and watching a well-ordered schedule of movies/shows, each strategically planned by some arbitrator to build the audience. Really hot (sure thing) projects led into others that needed audience exposure.

Lots of folks wondered why go to the movie theater when it will be right on our channel(s) sooner or later.

Folks added one channel after another because no one service had everything they wanted. Soon, it became overwhelming.

So, the cable guy said don’t worry we’ll give you everything you want – 100s of channels for a modest fee and we’ll throw in a neat program guide so you can figure out what is where and when.

The channel numbers went up, the content offering went up, the cost went up and the service went down.

You went to the movie house less and less because TV was so easy to watch and getting out of your cable contract was like escaping from Alcatraz … way too much work and the water outside was deep, dark, freezing.

Eventually, the price outweighed the benefits.

Decision Data recently reported the average cost is $217.42 per month.

The red envelope guy – Reid Hastings – didn’t set out with the idea he was going to take on the cable guy but very simply give people access to films/shows (many of which were only available on DVD); when they wanted, where they wanted and on the screen they had handy.

Viewing was instant and for $8 in 2011 you could watch show after show after …without any bothersome ads until you fell asleep with the remote in your hand.

Susan Wojcicki had already talked her Google bosses into letting YouTube get in on the act and Amazon’s then-CEO Jeff Bezos thought adding streaming video to his book, game and audio services would make the company’s Prime membership look even better.

Studio execs saw an opportunity to bypass the theater owners’ and TV network split so they took back all of the movie and TV deals they bragged about to Wall Street and said their stuff (new and in the library) was so valuable, so in demand that they could charge a premium for their service.

Netflix and Amazon cranked up their own production budgets and schedules.

Last year, Netflix released 129 projects worldwide in the 3^rd quarter and the same number in the 4^th quarter.

Amazon didn’t say how many new video stories they released in the same period, but they were also a little busy wrapping up the deal for MGM for $8.5B which includes one of the most revered libraries in the industry which includes such iconic titles as James Bond, Rocky, Silence of the Lambs, Legally Blond and more.

Apple, the “gentle giant” valued at $3T, is often overlooked because of its modest roll-out of beautiful content but it surprised everyone during the Oscars in taking away the Best Picture statue for CODA.

It was a first for a streaming service because CODA was also the first streamer movie that didn’t appear in theaters before it was streamed.

Streaming was legitimate!

Studios and networks around the globe like Disney, Warner/Discovery, Sky, BBC, Paramount, Peacock, France24, and more offered their bigger, better services, each knowing their content was more valuable than the other guys’ and therefore should be a value at just “a little bit more.”

In North America, the average household streaming service budget was $55 and home internet connection was $61 (streaming stuff needs the pipe to come to your screen).

Suddenly, that “less expensive” home entertainment service was costing $116 a month–way less expensive than the cable bundle ($217.42) but still…

People had some options – go to a pirate site and download your content along with all of their malware, system hooks, etc. or simply share service passwords with your friends, neighbors.

Going to pirate sites is downright stupid.

With the other approach, the rest of us subscribers, directly or indirectly are subsidizing those who want the content but don’t want to pay for it.

They’re both wrong.

It’s true, SVOD damaged the profits of the cable bundler but there are still more older folks than Gen Z/Millennials, so TV bundled services are still doing OK.

There were about 1.1B subscribers at the end of last year, but the bundlers can see the high profit years are behind them.

That’s why you see the networks greenlighting fewer new series and hanging onto the proven shows.

To fill in the schedules, they add reality TV, dumb sitcoms that went on forever and cop/fire/med stuff while the subscription folks roll out a steady stream of very good and OMG content that appeals to people emotionally, intellectually or simply lets them sit back and watch.

It’s true.

Today, some of the best content in the world is as close as a few clicks for us since we have the best five subscription services (our opinion) available and the two best ad-supported services.

That also means we have too many video streaming services. We come for the content and leave for the cost just like households around the globe.

Well, you don’t exactly leave; you drop one service and pick up another that has more of the content you want.

And later probably return.

It’s a little like the pony express in the old West. Ride a horse – hard – for a period of time and then jump onto a fresh one and continue your entertainment journey.

Of course, like the horse you left at the station, it’s not that you disliked the subscription service, you just wanted “a change” to something “new,” “fresh,” “different”.

On your return trip, you find you’re getting tired of that new horse, so you jump onto the horse you left awhile back and ride on happy with the new/old service.

In the entertainment and communications industries, it’s called churn where you drop one service for another and then later reverse the process.

It’s far from new – the phone guy has seen it for years – and it costs streaming services millions because it’s more difficult to recoup their subscriber acquisition costs.

The old rule of thumb was that it cost 5x more to get a new customer than to keep an existing customer. That’s because streamers must build new content from the ground up to personalize it and appeal to a new subscriber.

The cost could be as much as 500 percent greater.

Over the past few years, we’ve discussed this issue with Allan McLennan, CEP/Media, Head of M&E North America, Atos, multiple times and he always points to the same issue. “Consumers are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of content from streaming video providers and are increasingly frustrated with the efforts needed to access it.”

Growth for the major North American subscription services like Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Warner/Discovery, Paramount and even Apple has slowed, which is why they have expanded their scope to the global market with new local and regional content as well as their exported projects.

In the past two years, subscribers have become increasingly frustrated when they lose content on one service, have to juggle multiple subscriptions and have the service’s recommendation engine serving up poor or meaningless viewing options.

McLennan noted that studies have shown that churn has held steady at 37 percent for paid streaming services as people subtract/add services in search of content they want and 25 percent return in 6-12 months for the service’s new unique content.

“Netflix deep data analysis has shown that consumers are more than willing to share their personal information with their streaming service in return for being able to manage and search for movies/shows they’re interested in or might be interested in,” said McLennan.

“But even they know they have to constantly improve and refine the service to improve their retention,” he added. “And most of the other services are just beginning to realize that simply adding new projects to their service isn’t the solution. They need to earn the trust of their subscribers so they can improve and expand their recommendation data in addition to using the data to greenlight projects that meet the subscribers’ entertainment demands.

“It’s a long, hard and expensive road,” he emphasized.

But that’s still not the solution for the consumer because what folks really want is a service that searches across all of their services – subscription and ad supported – and offers up the movies/shows they might/should/could be interested in watching.

If it sounds a little like the solution of the old cable bundle days … it is.

“As we’ve discussed before, what consumers want is a channel of one,” McLennan stated. “An aggregation service that eliminates all the pain and frustration of the entertainment search.

“In other words, they want a service on top of the services that manages all of the user’s accounts as well as content discovery and recommendations,” he continued. “The company that comes up with the solution or the services that join forces to offer a singular one-source solution will deliver the entertainment value people really want.”

Of course, that service of services will make it difficult for outsider as well as mid-sized and smaller streaming services to compete but there’s always the merger route–survival of the service(s) with the deepest pockets or ready access to funds.

Who knows, maybe the bundled service will be better the second time around.

Of course, for the content creation folks, Kofuku’s observation in Drive My Car seemed to have the right attitude when he said, “From a social standpoint, that’s not good. But it’s not necessarily a drawback for an actor.”

The consumer is happy, the bundler is happy, streaming services are happy. What could possibly go wrong?

# # #

Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com – is an author of more than 700 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software, and applications. An internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant with a broad range of technical and industry expertise especially in storage, storage management and film/video production fields; he has an extended range of relationships with business, industry trade press, online media, and industry analysts/consultants.

Just in case you don’t know it, we live in Silicon Valley and have worked in the technology industry like forever.

It’s good because you get to see new things born and grow rapidly or die … “quickly.”

It’s bad because you’ve lived with the stuff “forever” (O.K., six months) and know that everyone knows it, everyone uses it, everyone enjoys it and everyone is ready for the next great thing.

It’s not until we leave our bubble do, we find:

• People who have cellphones (the cheap barebones type) because if they need to connect to someone they’ll call instead of text ‘em
• Folks who drive their car rather than having the vehicle take control
• People who don’t have computers/email (our dad) because if we want to chat with him, we should “pick up the phone and call”
• Folks who think reality TV is kinda dumb because if you want reality … go out and experience it
• People who watch the news at five, six, 10 or 11 p.m. because that’s when it’s on
• Folks who vacuum their house, turn on/off lights with their fingers, cook food the way they like it by watching the stove/oven and if they don’t want to cook, they go out for dinner or pick it up and come home to eat
• People who must decide which show they want to watch if two they’re interested in are on at the same time and hope the other one will be repeated … later

Back in 1991, Geoffrey Moore in his book, Crossing the Chasm, coalesced the idea that it’s a long way between developing/introducing a product/service and getting to the point where it’s mainstream.

Home video entertainment is a perfect example.

Pay TV has been around forever (O.K., only worth talking about since early in the 20^th century) becoming the thing that brought the family together, stimulating such important inventions as the TV tray and TV dinner.

TV networks emerged and prospered around the globe, each fighting to acquire more viewers than the next guy so they could charge more for their advertising space.

It was the battle for the eyeballs.

And if you wanted to see it best and have the most entertainment options, you signed up for a ridiculously big cable bundle.

Sure, it was a little expensive; but OMG you had 500+ different channels to choose from with thousands of different shows.

All you had to do was be home and in front of the screen at just the right time or you missed the show.

It was okay because you could wait until summer when all the channel folks went on holiday to prepare new shows for the fall, and they showed reruns of all the old stuff you missed on purpose.

It didn’t really matter because you had an endless lineup of video content – game shows of very shape, size, color you can imagine and comedies about families that no one really think exist with titles like The Brady Bunch, Archie Bunker, All in the Family, Maude, All in the Family, Mulberry, The Village, French Fields, Kaboul Kitchen, H, Kaamelott, Mr. Squiggle and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

If a show was a smash in one country, you can bet one of the networks in another country would franchise and localize it.

Of course, folks have different tastes so, nets and studios would develop blood and mayhem shows; ultra-violent weeklies; murder, gangsters, private eyes, good/bad/marginal cops and then there were the western bad guys, good guys and damsels in distress.

Ah yes, and cartoons–lots of cartoons to serve as the kiddies’ babysitter.

If you couldn’t find a movie you liked, no problem; you simply ran over to Blockbuster and picked something to suit your taste. Better yet, subscribe to the little red envelope company and they’d send the DVDs right to your mailbox; and when you were done, you simply mailed the discs back.

What could be better, more convenient?

But still, TV kept people informed about the world around them with news and weather.

The common denominator?

Sports, lots and lots of sports – football (American), football (rest of the world), baseball, basketball, tennis, bowling, darts, wrestling, cricket, boxing, anything that pits one person against another or one group of folks against another.

The other common denominator?

Ads!

As TV spread around the globe, the driving desire of cable bundlers and networks was to monetize their viewers as much as possible.

At the same time, marketers wanted to reach and influence as many of the right people – those who might buy.

For decades, Nielsen has been the de facto judge on how many people watch a particular program, hence how much the network/show could charge marketers for the “privilege” of renting the airtime during a particular period and/or show.

Obviously, it’s more complicated than that including prime time – 8 – 11 p.m. when the peak number of people would be in front of their sets. Of course, specific shows with higher viewership also meant higher costs for the ad slot as well as the length of the ad.

In addition, major sporting events (world series, super bowls, golf tournaments and others) also had their own set of high-priced rules.

As the ad slots became more valuable, the amount of time devoted to ads per hour slowly inched up like your monthly cable bill for all the marvelous viewing choices they offered.

If you thought your TV shows were getting shorter, you’re sorta, kinda right. Actually, the time slot hasn’t changed, it’s still an hour (on the average) but networks have gotten creative about how many 15-, 30-, 60-second ads they can squeeze into the hour. It turns out they can “sell” 20 minutes of your viewing time and you’ll hardly miss it.

That kind of money and money directly into the streamers’ pockets is very inviting.

Through it all, pay TV viewership continues to remain strong, despite the industry’s detractors.

Newton Minow newly named FCC (Federal Communications Commission) struck the industry the hardest back in 1961 when he testified before a Senate subcommittee, saying:

“When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.

But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.”

It was a wasteland filled with ads that “allowed” folks to watch what the networks decided was best for a specific day and definite timeslot.

In 2007, after seeing how people of all ages flocked to YouTube to watch stuff (2B individuals watching more than 1B videos a month), Reed Hastings and his crew determined they might accomplish two things at once – reach people with ad-free content in the U.S. and around the globe while eliminating a huge bill with the post office.

While Amazon followed suit, Netflix made a strong strategic move in 2012 by doing more of its own originals rather than acquiring content from studios.

At the same time, studios began launching their own SVOD services and BAM! the industry went wild with everyone, everywhere producing new content for people who had cut their cable bundle and subscribed to one or more OTT service.

And demand grew modestly until about 2019 when folks suddenly had more time at home and wanted good stuff to watch.

“Almost” overnight, networks and studios began launching their own VOD services including Apple, Disney, Warner, Paramount, Peacock, BBC, Canal, iQiyi, Tencent, Hotspot and hundreds of new streaming services everywhere.

Each were touting the fact that they were stripping content and subscribers from cable services and producing dramatic growth with new consumers in every corner of the globe.

And they were … sorta, kinda.

According to Strategy Analytics, the 20 leading global VOD services reached more than 850M; and they project that the industry has a lot of headroom for growth to reach an estimated 1.5B by 2026.

The rapid and continued growth of home entertainment has shown no sign of flagging, creating new opportunities for filmmakers across the board and around the globe to develop new content for general and target market consumers.

New shows – comedies, sci-fi, horror, fantasy, docuseries, dramas, reality, contests – for Gen Zs, millennials, boomers and boomers plus are continually in demand.

What is even more important for content creators is that their work is not bound by country borders or a specific entertainment channel.

Indian works by Shah Rukn, Allu Arjun, Priyanka Chopra and others have found followers around the globe.

Spanish thrillers like La Casa de Papal; German titles like Dark; South Korean titles like Kingdom and Squid Squad; Japanese titles like Midnight Diner, Yasuki, Ghost in a Shell and content projects from around the globe are finding opportunities to reach a totally new, interested audience–regardless of their origin.

If it’s a video story that entertains folks at home, there’s an opportunity for individuals and organizations to come together profitably and make people laugh, cry, scream and enjoy the story.

As for the cable bundle folks, they don’t really care what kind of stuff people want to watch or who’s service they want to sign up for because they’re still the last 100-ft connection to the household TV set and other screens.

They aren’t exactly certain what you want to watch, which makes them a little like Dr. Emmett Brown in Back to the Future when he said, “Whatever you’ve got to tell me, I’ll find out through the natural course of time.”

And if you want to get out of the house and enjoy a flick at the movie house periodically, that’s alright with them.

They’ll be waiting to deliver new stuff when you’re ready.

# # #

Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com – is an author of more than 700 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software and applications. Internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant with a broad range of technical and industry expertise especially in storage, storage management and film/video production fields. Extended range of relationships with business, industry trade press, online media and industry analysts/consultants.

Sometimes we get so enamored with movies in theaters and content on our home screen we think that’s the alpha and omega of the entertainment industry.

It takes our kids to bring us back to reality.

We’re looking forward to seeing Top Gun: Maverick with our son. After all, it’s been 35 years since we saw Cruise climb into the cockpit and take the stick.

The kid really prefers to take the controls with Ace Combat 7 and rule the skies. We have to admit he’s darned good at it too.

Of course, he should be … he spent hours on his GeForce NOW account in the cockpit. Then had to add Google’s Stadia when Badai Namco suddenly disappeared from his preferred cloud gaming platform.

It gave us pause to think maybe M&E isn’t all about movies/TV shows.

We make a big deal out of people shifting from pay TV to streaming.

Analysts like Ampere Analytics had already developed a new classification for households … super stackers.

You know, households that had three or more SVOD subscriptions.

Ampere recently reported that more than 29 percent of U.S. streamers already had five or more services.

That’s because Hollywood has always been glamorous … at least from the outside looking in.

Beautiful people … beautiful projects … beautiful award events … beautiful deals.

O.K, so a lot of it is fantasy, but folks like to believe it.

Some like to simply look.

Others like to get fringe folks and outsiders involved in the industry.

In his memoir The Ride of a Lifetime, Bob Igor didn’t say that he and Steve Jobs had discussed a merger or acquisition but then, he didn’t say they didn’t either.

Still, there were those nasty Hollywood rumors.

The two firms have always had more in common than differences because both organizations are creative and have a positive global image/following.

Disney has billions of folks who enjoy visiting the parks, taking the cruises, watching the movies, buying the merchandise and, with the roll-out of Disney+, watching the content at home.

Apple has hundreds of millions of device lovers around the globe and, with the roll-out of Apple TV+, millions of content viewers.

Only Igor knows whether Jobs took a pass on the merger, and it looks like he wants to keep the Jobs mystique intact.

All of that didn’t stop Wall Street from saying Tim Cook blew it when he didn’t snap up MGM when it was being shopped and allowed Amazon to acquire it for a mere $8.46B.

A media merger may still be in the future for Apple – it has the financial reserves for it – but they’re in a stronger M&E position than the boys in the Street give them credit for.

Certainly, better than AT&T when they racked up $85B in debt to purchase WarnerMedia – total debt load $153.39B – before realizing it would be better if someone who understood the industry and people controlled its future.

Building a great global streaming service takes talent and luck but it also requires a heavy dose of relationships and … listening.

Discovery’s David Zaslav knows relationships count and surprising the creative and distribution folks isn’t cool.

There are more media acquisitions to be had because streamers around the globe need all of the stuff in the libraries as well as the production facilities/leases and creative development resources.

The real key is understanding where the audience is and their interests today … and tomorrow.

That’s something Apple has attempted to do for a long time. It was apparent when they announced Apple TV+ back in 2019.

Sure, folks got all excited about the content Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Jason Momoa and others were going to create for the new service.

But like Disney and Amazon, what they really rolled out was a multi-legged entertainment home/personal service.

Disney had its destinations, deep library and roster of new content as well as a bustling (and profitable) video game business.

The ecommerce company had subscription and free streaming (Prime Video, IMDb) as well as reading options, games and music galore.

Apple reminded people that in addition to video stories they had games, news and music to keep the faithful busy in their closed garden.

With all three of the services, people didn’t have to jump from one app to another.

The faithful could move from movie to TV show to games to the full spectrum of entertainment and stay in their pond.

Netflix’ Hastings and Sarandos haven’t been resting on their content or sitting around counting their film statues.

They may be the leader in streaming content with more than 210 global subscribers, but they’re also considering a bundle of games – many based on some of their most popular project storylines, not unlike Apple Arcade with exclusive/timed exclusive games.

Why?

Well, first off, subscribers want a continuing stream of new content and once they’ve burned through the new stuff, they’re ready for something new … even if it’s somewhere else.

One way to keep people is to give them interactive shows (which the industry is trying to master) to allow viewers to engage with the stories and experience different viewing segments and endings.

Warner?

Naw, they shed their gaming business (Sony snapped it up) because games don’t have red carpet events.

But entertainment is more than just movies and streaming shows, especially among the emerging influencers – Gen Z.

Constantly with a screen in hand, they prefer to play video games, stream music, connect/engage on social media and, in their spare time, watch TV or movies

Gen Zs have been early adopters in the entertainment market and they influence what next generation, millennials and Gen Xers connect with.

According to Deloitte, 87 percent of Gen Z, 83 percent of Millennials and 79 percent of Gen X people regularly play video games on their smartphones, game consoles, computers and big screens.

SVOD bosses liked the idea that 49 percent prefer paid gaming, and they tend to stick with their single-person and multiplayer games for a long, long time.

Most Gen Z players report that video games help they stay connected with others and more than half note that they will cut back on other entertainment activities to play games.

When they’re not playing video games, more than half of the young adults (18-29) stream music every day.

And they aren’t alone.

More than 40 percent of young and old folks list music as one of their top three entertainment activities.

And for the SVOD service, 45 percent of the listeners – 67 percent Millennials – would rather pay for their service than have it interrupted with ads.

Perhaps that’s why last year, 80 percent of music revenues came from paid streaming services.

Churn – moving from one service to another – is a continuing issue for video services because people find it difficult to manage 4-5 subscriptions, find it tough/frustrating to find the right entertainment and manage their entertainment budget is a juggling act.

Younger generations rely on social media influencers and social media ads to find the content they want to view or determine which services they should add, drop, retain.

We admit that we don’t understand it, but people found the ads in social media for streaming video content were “likeable” if they helped them find the movie/show they were looking for in their service.

When they couldn’t, they switched.

But the main reason for deleting/adding services was cost.

Cost isn’t an arbitrary figure since consumers already have a service budget in mind, regardless of how valuable the provider feels their content is.

Consumers are most willing to pay $12/month for ad-free service (40 percent) or 10 min/hr. of ads for free service (39 percent).

One of the reasons Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV and Nvidia Shield have become popular with people streaming their entertainment is that they offer a centralized location for viewers, players and listeners to find the content they want without having to move from one app to another.

In addition, you can scroll through their paid and free offerings.

Both Roku and Amazon offer value for everyone in the distribution chain.

For viewers – more content selection.

For advertisers – broader audience.

All of that works well when you watch, play, listen to your content at home because most households still have their robust broadband connection from the old pay TV days.

Great but…

The biggest issue is one that is outside the content producers’/distributors’ control … mobile bandwidth for on-the-go entertainment.

In the U.S. and in a number of high-volume streaming content countries, the mobile service providers deliver 4G performance, at best.

So, if you wonder why, you’re not enjoying brilliant 4K HDR streaming video with your device, or your video game has a little lag, it’s because content delivery service folks have to throttle back “a little” so the content/performance is still acceptable … just not perfect.

We know you bought a new 5G iPhone this year and life is good, getting better–especially if you live in South Korea, Canada, England or just about everywhere but the U.S.

Verizon and T-Mobile have been aggressively building out their 5G infrastructure over the past few years.

Now, even AT&T has shifted its attention from selling content to delivering 5G service across its entire spectrum.

Of course, you may be experiencing high-speed wireless service if you’re in the right location.

If you do … don’t move!

If you’re streaming Netflix content, you’re likely to be able to watch 4K.

Understanding the issues, the company developed advanced codec solutions that deliver quality with a minimum of bandwidth.

In addition, Akamai, Cloudflare and other major CDNs (content deliver networks) are helping streaming services by closely managing their services and strategically locating content servers closer to the edge of the network to improve streaming performance.

While your mobile service provider proudly touts their 100Mbps or 144Mbps service in your area, services in other countries would say that is very good 4G (maybe LTE – Long Term Evolution) performance.

The U.S. wireless service may not be broad and fast, but it is one of the more expensive wireless services around the globe. It’s also why most users are advised to switch their device streaming from 5G to Wi-Fi for viewing/playing.

Quality is good and it’s easier on the budget.

For the time being, you’ll probably agree with Loki when he said, “For the record, this really does feel like a “killing me” type of room.”

It will get better–soon.

Until then, check the settings on your iPhone or just listen to music.

# # #

Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com – is an author of more than 700 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software and applications. An internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant with a broad range of technical and industry expertise especially in storage, storage management and film/video production fields; he has an extended range of relationships with business, industry trade press, online media and industry analysts/consultants

Looking down from the top of the Hollywood Hills, it’s impossible to imagine what a beating the M&E industry has taken in recent years.

According to many, it’s all been caused by streaming.

Streaming is something that really didn’t (seriously) exist until two years ago.

Oh sure, the technology goes back further with kids watching stuff on YouTube and adults watching shows on Netflix, which was quickly followed by Amazon.

But no real creative person/team took it seriously.

Netflix and Amazon were just a place to make a few extra bucks by letting them show your series or movie to the folks who wanted to watch their content when they wanted to watch it, free of ads.

A few social media people in China (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent – BAT), TV folks in India (nexGTV, Ditto TV, Sony Liv and others) – the 2^nd and 3^rd video entertainment markets – thought streaming was a good idea but…

The real creative industry didn’t take them seriously because the real money was in theatrical and TV shows.

Of course, they occasionally created some special projects that were really good/great but obviously beneath being considered for an award because they weren’t shown on the movie house screen.

The idea looked “interesting” because streaming seemed easy since the technology was well established, people seemed interested in the anytime, anywhere, any screen viewing and the Hollywood, Bollywood, Nollywood, Hengdian World people knew the tough part…how to create video stories folks really wanted to watch.

Then, at the end of 2019, the world shut down. Theaters went dark, productions came to a stumbling halt, people stayed home and turned to their big home screens for something new, different, better for entertainment.

Studios around the globe quickly realized they had tentpoles, major/minor projects that were expensive cargo.

Initially, things were easy because the shutdown was only going to be temporary, so you hold back all the best stuff and license the rest to the streamers.

But it didn’t take long for studios to realize that “those guys” were making the real money; and if a bunch of tech people could get into the complex world of entertainment, they could just as easily use the hardware/software to entice the entertainment-hungry public into their service and develop a closer relationship with their audience.

For the past two years, it hasn’t been easy to determine when the time is right to bring the film out of the vault.

Breaking the theatrical window – and upsetting AMC’s Adam Aron, NBCUniversal’s Jeff Shell released Trolls World Tour as a PVOD (premium video-on-demand) day/date release racking up more than $100M in rental fees … more than the studio would have made with the theatrical first 50/50 split.

After some behind the scenes negotiations, the two organizations and NATO (National Association of Theatre Owners) resolved the issue with “mutual” satisfaction.

The idea worked pretty well early on but quickly faded from the firmament as studios and networks opened their own streaming services with monthly fees that varied from reasonable to ridiculous as service marketing heads determined what was best for a long-term relationship between the consumer and service or how exceptional they were.

Disney’s Bob Chapek thought the best thing to do with Wonder Woman 1984 was to release the film to theaters and their Disney + channel at the same time to give themselves an edge in turning a profit.

The simultaneous release didn’t work out too well because ticket sales were “modest,” signups for Disney + were just okay and to add insult to injury, he didn’t read the backend payment fine print in Gad Gadot’s contract.

Most producers’/actors’ lawyers designed their contracts, so they received a tidy sum for their work on the film and a sweet bonus on the backend after the film has appeared in theaters.

Just as important is the fact that A-listers like it when people see their creative work on the giant screen with beautiful Dolby Atmos sound in a dark room with 100 or so close, personal strangers so they can appreciate them and their work more.

Of course, Chapek wasn’t alone in making that “little” mistake and studio/network lawyers have since reworked the old cookie-cutter contracts to address as many contingencies as possible.

AT&T/Warner’s Jason Kilar made a bigger misstep by saying the company was going day/date with all of their projects in 2021.

In addition, he didn’t bother telling folks what he had decided because he was the head of one of the industry’s most respected studios. What could possibly go wrong?

His boss, AT&T’s John Stankey and Kilar quickly learned how to damage relationships with directors and actors.

The two ended up writing a bunch of large checks to quiet the storm and it may have been during that period that Stankey decided peddling phone service might be more fun than the M&E industry.

He and Discovery’s David Zaslav talked very privately about moving everything over to a new organization called Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) and let Zaslav and his friend, Kevin Mayer, a Disney alum, clean up the mess and rearrange the house to return luster to the film/TV production and streaming service.

Zaslav is so focused on complete M&E success he’s not only moving to Southern California but has also said that with he, Mayer and a new team make WBD once again be a driving force in the worldwide theatrical and streaming industry.

It’s a long shot, but not an impossible shot.

Like a lot of people, the idea of watching stuff on our schedule and our terms was great.

While it seems that lots of people still like a predictable schedule and “decent” set of viewing options, we did away with our monthly cable bundle bill.

Ditching the cable bundle promised people an entertainment life of broadband-only simplicity.

Just like that, we dropped our payments to them to $60 for their 1Gbps broadband service and moved to $13 Netflix (complete with regular price increases) and Amazon Prime (doesn’t really count, wife gets free package delivery) along with ad-supported IMDb TV, Pluto and Tubi services.

Yes, we do have to put up with some ads with the free services, but they are much less frequent and once they learn more about us and our preferences, we’re pretty sure the ads will be more personalized and less abrasive/repetitive.

Hey, we can hope!

As soon as they were available, we added Disney +, Apple TV + and played around with a few others just to see.

But jumping from one to another to find something we want to watch is … confusing.

In addition, people everywhere have to decide what is the best use of their entertainment budget as well as face the cold hard facts that they have to eat, sleep and work periodically.

While pay TV is relatively stable, there is still plenty of growth potential for OTT entertainment around the globe.

Netflix, Amazon, Disney and Apple will be fine in the increasingly competitive space:

• Netflix has a solid subscription base in more than 190 countries with a steady investment of more than $17B in new local and international content.
• Amazon has more than 200M ecommerce customers in more than 100 countries, more than 100M global Prime Video subscribers and a content budget of more than $11B.
• Disney has one of the most valued global names and images in the world. The firm’s parks, cruise and retail businesses have rapidly recovered and have captured nearly 120M VDO subscribers in a little less than two years in nearly 50 countries and is on target to be available in 160 countries by 2023. Its content production budget is … keeping pace

Zaslav and his team will be busy this year, cleaning up messes and rebuilding relationships with theater bosses and A-list creatives to become a major streaming provider by 2024. Fortunately, the organization has a solid backlog of DC comics, Discovery documentary/reality projects and Warner film/series projects to financially help them move through the changes.

It’s difficult to see how smaller video services can build the necessary subscription momentum to be little more than niche players or easy targets for merger or acquisition.

We often tend to overlook the Middle Kingdom because of the restrictive/prohibitive control over content available to Chinese citizens.

However, iQiyi, Tencent and Youku spend aggressively to reach the countries 1B online video viewers and increase their subscription base among the nearly 1.5B population.

In addition to competing with local pay TV providers, they are also intent on increasing their entertainment penetration throughout SEA (Southeast Asia).

AVOD services around the world will see a slow but steady increase as they draw viewers away from TV networks with broad libraries of nostalgic projects and marketeers increasing their understanding of the potential for more targeted/relevant advertising with fewer ads per hour.

Or more bluntly stated … quality over quantity.

The dust has settled after the explosive VOD growth of the past two years; and despite what some might say, people aren’t tired of the changes and looking for ways to simplify their lives.

Instead, they quickly adapted to the new normal because … they had time on their hands.

And they were happy as (you know) when Snake Plissken stared at the crowd and nonchalantly said, “I’m going to Hollywood…”

We also agree with his observation that your rules are really beginning to annoy us.

# # #

Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com – is an author of more than 700 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software and applications. Internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant with a broad range of technical and industry expertise especially in storage, storage management and film/video production fields. Extended range of relationships with business, industry trade press, online media and industry analysts/consultants.

A while back, we read an article on the top 10 best brands of 2021 in the U.S. according to consumers.

Three of the top 10 were entertainment folks – Netflix, Amazon, Apple.

Where were the rest?

• Disney – 13
• HBO – 60
• YouTube – 75

Who’s missing?

Warner, NBC Universal (Peacock), ViacomCBS (Paramount +) , Comcast, Charter.

And, of course, that doesn’t include leading EMEA and Asian pay/streaming entertainment services that have a major impact on what/when/where people watch their content.

So, what do all the reports from JustWatch, Parks Associates, Parrot, and the other M&E research folks have on who’s winning the streaming battle mean?

Think About It

It means people have a couple of regulars that they go to regularly for their entertainment and then a few others when they simply go to their screen to watch … something.

It also means the missing brands – and they are brands, not just one good show after another – are spending so much time looking at the numbers of the other guys they forget what those numbers mean … people, subscribers!

Yeah, we know the Hollywood adage – content is king – but this isn’t precisely true.

Mindshare and distribution are an important part of the streaming world.

Streaming changed entertainment’s ground rules.

Now when a person wants to watch something, they don’t simply scroll down a day/time program list, they move from app to app.

That’s work!

To simplify things for people, the service’s recommendation engine suggest content you’ll probably be interested in because of what you’ve watched in the past.

Or, if you’re a snobbish cinephile, you can tell us you researched for hours – checking out Rotten Tomatoes, JustWatch, Reelgood, THR (The Hollywood Reporter) and all of the streaming recommendation apps – to make an informed decision.

Yeah, like folks believe you.

Whether it’s a movie or TV show, it’s just not the way the entertainment industry runs today, and studios/streaming services know it.

The key is hooking a consumer/subscriber and keeping them entertained with your shows/movies as long as possible using a healthy dose of emotional appeal and technology.

Disney, Netflix, Amazon and yes, even Apple, know it.

The best example of emotion and technology is arguably Apple with the products and apps folks use around the globe – 100M Mac users, 1B iPhone users, 2.22M apps including Apple TV+ with 660M total subscribers and a modest but growing library of attractive games/apps/music/publications/movies/shows.

The world’s online shopping store, Amazon has 300M active accounts and 150M paid Prime members who watch something in between purchases.

Netflix, the red envelope folks who upset the “normal” entertainment industry, has more than 200M subscribers in 190 plus countries with a constant flow of new global projects that keep people coming back to watch their favorites and new stuff.

Their exhaustive database of what resonates with people everywhere – and for how long – helps them pick projects folks will probably want to watch and gives creatives a boost on what visual stories that should resonate with audiences and award judges.

Yes, awards are important because the social media noise attracts subscribers.

That same social media noise, as well as their subscriber analytics and viewing entertainment in its total context and not just video also stimulated them to begin adding gaming/games to their entertainment roster.

Games have proven to provide stickiness for Apple, Amazon and their large/often overlooked competitor — Google/YouTube – especially on a global scale.

According to a recent Limelight State of Online Gaming Report, https://tinyurl.com/47mdncxz, the time spent and the number of people around the globe increased 14 percent, meaning it is increasingly a part folks’ everyday life.

But when it comes to entertainment for entertainment’s sake, Disney is often viewed as the gold standard in creating, monetizing projects.

In the past two years, it has shown folks it’s a quick learner when it comes to the new entertainment space.

The “normal” path for Disney’s – and every studio’s – projects around the globe was thrown in complete disarray.

They responded as best they could given the fluid environment they were operating in at the time, making no one completely happy except entertainment-hungry folks.

They maintained strong M&A (marketing & advertising) pushes including partnerships with major companies, tie-ins with toys, social media feeds and a flexible release schedule based on the investment in the project and the ever-changing consumer environments.

Consumers who “had to” see a major film in a theater put seats in seats whether it was a 45-day window or day/date release.

There are people – a lot of people – who simply can’t enjoy/appreciate a film unless they see it in a darkened room with a bunch of strangers on a huge screen with Dolby Atmos sound while sitting in a cushy lounge seat with their drink and popcorn close at hand.

There are people who will wait quite a while before they take their unvaccinated kids to enjoy the video story.

There are folks who can’t remember when the last time they saw something at the cinema because watching it at home was easier and enjoyable, especially with their huge screen, surround sound and favorite recliner.

Some individuals will wait until they get their DVD set so they can enjoy their film and dissect every portion of the project.

Youngsters raised with a screen in their hand are perfectly happy streaming the show to their iPhone with decent audio.

Unfortunately, there’s even a segment of the population who can’t really enjoy a film/show unless it’s “free.”

They like it more when they download it from a Torrent site or borrow someone’s password.

Don’t kid yourself, there’s no line item for them on the M&A budget.

Even as the halcyon days of the global box office is past, the shift from theatrical to broadcast/cable to streaming isn’t easy for studios or streamers.

Just ask Disney’s and Scarlett Johanssen’s lawyers. Or Warner’s legal team when Jason Kilar bravely said the company was going to throw all its 2021 slate onto HBO Max and big screens wherever possible.

AT&T’s John Stankey sidestepped the issue by doing a deal with Discovery’s David Zaslav to take over the rich Warner Bros assets and let the respected M&E industry veteran turn it all into a global entertainment entity.

But straddling the full spectrum of video story distribution is complicated because license fees, key member upfront/backend payments, episodic orders and financial models for each distribution venue, various country distribution guidelines/fees and aftermarket potential/fees, as well as hundreds of agents and lawyers.

Netflix minimized the quagmire by paying higher project front ends whenever possible to more effectively control their use/distribution of content.

Tech, Internet born competitors followed suit while studios and networks worked through their new “opportunities.”

Pay TV is no longer the tool for mass reach.

Connectivity and the growing streaming video options have also shown that racial, ethnic and sexual identity/orientation are important and more easily/more economically addressed and appealed to with tailored content and marketing.

Knowing who is watching what and for how long is becoming increasingly critical for streaming services and, in the case of AVOD services, vital for brands.

Creating content that resonates with specific audiences – especially those that have been historically excluded with pay TV – has become an important part of the strategy for streaming services to win and retain viewers.

It could also mean that much of the studio’s/network’s “high value” library needs to be repurposed to appeal to the new audience(s) or forever retired.

High-profile originals will attract new subscribers, but exclusive content keeps people regularly involved and reduces churn.

Global streaming service winners will have to adopt a lot of new guidelines and be more flexible/reasonable in their dealings with content creation partners.

Everyone in the new entertainment environment also must understand their value in the changing M&E world and remember what Coach Don Haskins said, “Nobody can take something away from you you don’t give them.”

Being granted a slot on the Cineplex/AMC calendar is becoming far less important in reaching today’s global audience.

There are new, perhaps even better, ways for content creators and consumers to connect.

# # #

Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com – is an author of more than 700 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software, and applications. An internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant with a broad range of technical and industry expertise especially in storage, storage management and film/video production fields; he has an extended range of relationships with business, industry trade press, online media, and industry analysts/consultants.

My wife hates it when we stumble across one of the really old Godzilla movies, complaining that the effects and dubbing are so bad.

Sheess, that’s what makes them great.

You never realize how far we’ve come with project special effects, CGI and realism until you revisit the past.

We also like to watch the action and actors to see the action noise and vocal utterances are just a few seconds off (lip-flap – when the mouth movement and dubbed voice don’t sync).

Come on … it’s fun to watch.

If you really want to visit the M&E’s past, invest some time in the Library of Congress National Film Registry, your countries film preservation location, the Hollywood Museum, or beg a studio boss to let you holiday for a week in their content vault.

You’ll see how far the industry has come.

But we’re just as anxious to see “new” content from producers around the globe.

When we get the chance to watch foreign visual stories, we prefer them to have subtitles rather than being dubbed.

But…we’re weird.

Think it comes from our college days when we’d watch whatever was playing at the funky little art theatre in town.

They showed foreign films as they were captured; and if you wanted to follow the dialogue, you could read the subtitles or simply enjoy the richness of the dialogue and muddle through to catch the gist by reading periodically.

That’s why we were confused about all the sub vs. dub noise that was raised when Parasite, a Korean-language film, won Best Picture Oscar back in 2019.

The story, acting, shooting and editing were good. What more do you want from a film?

Think only local kids can do good stuff?

There were undercurrents of racism, xenophobia and classism after Bong Joon-ho gathered up his statuettes but that couldn’t/shouldn’t be because the industry is global.

Great films are great films no matter who does them.

So maybe the issue really was that it had subtitles rather than being dubbed.

Joon-ho clearly stated which creative approach he thought audiences should experience when he said, “Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.”

Fortunately, there was no such noise surrounding this Fall’s release of CODA (Children of Deaf Adults).

It’s a gentle family drama by Sam Heder that was snapped up by Apple for $25M for Apple TV+.

It was a corny, effective film about a mostly deaf family (father, mother, son) that earns a living the hard way fishing regardless of the weather.

It’s also a coming-of-age story of the daughter (Ruby Rossi – Emilia Jones), the only hearing member of the family, whose first language is ASL (American Sign Language), so dubbing was out of the question.

After all, speaking was her second language.

The family was so eloquent and clear with their ASL you really didn’t need subtitles or other characters to translate.

While our daughter isn’t completely fluent in ASL, she did help us learn key signs.

Every so often we’ll silently tell each other “I love you.”

But the film also made us feel a little envious that they – and others we’ve seen – were able to “talk” to each other making us feel inadequate, deprived.

It’s like being in a meeting in another country where you only know the basics of the language and just knowing they’re talking about you.

ASL … it’s on our bucket list.

It was refreshing to later learn that the mother (Marlee Matlin), father (Troy Kotsur) and brother (Daniel Durant) were actors who just happened to be deaf. Not someone faking it.

Sorta makes you wonder why you don’t see more deaf people included in films as with other disabled and diverse actors.

But we digress because this discussion is about subtitles vs dubbing, not diversity which should be a natural part of film/show production.

Granted dubbing has improved tremendously since people produced our early Godzilla films, but subtitles are more natural, they’ve been around since the industry’s earliest days.

Alice Guy-Blache, the first female filmmaker, didn’t have the crutch of audio back in the late 1800s and produced more than 1000 short and long projects that were initially silent and later had subtitles.

And they’re still great to view if you really hunt for them or catch the 2018 documentary, Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, narrated by Jodie Foster.

Thanks to her and creatives of both sexes, folks like Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Mabel Normand, and countless others perfected their talents and techniques with subtitles added.

Now that a talking/sound video story is the standard people come down on both sides of the subbing, dubbing issue citing the key issues of intellectualism, accessibility and ableism.

Folks who are pro-subtitlers take the position that people can follow the action/dialogue and “experience” the actors’ full performance.

Without a doubt, they also help deaf and hard of hearing viewers understand the dialogue, even if the film is in their native language.

The nay-subtitlers say it’s difficult to read and follow the action at the same time so people often miss the nuances of the film/show.

Folks like to cite the BFI (British Film Institute) study that found on average, a third of a project’s original dialogue was often discarded when a video story is subtitled which can result in quality and full meaning loss.

Those in favor of dubbing note that it preserves the cinematic experience more completely than subtitles.

When a project is dubbed, a voice actor translates the script in the native language and viewers often lose the nuances, timbre and inflections of the original actor.

At the same time, we feel – and lots of folks agree – that people would prefer to watch films/shows in their native tongue.

Admit it, when you’re visiting another country for work or pleasure and go to a movie or watch something on TV, a lot of the enjoyment is sucked outta the room when you’re listening to it in Japanese, Thai, Spanish, French or another language you’re less than conversant in.

Of course, friends in Australia, Canada and England have had the same complaints about video stories built around American English.

We very nicely say to them … yeah, back at ya!

A major reason viewers prefer dubbing to subtitles is often overlooked.

Whether our kids are watching a film/show on their iPhone or iPad, reading subtitles isn’t just difficult … it’s impossible.

Or, if they bother to sit with us and watch the film on the big screen, they are also busy with their iPhones texting, reading posts, watching TikToks or something so, keeping up with the subtitles is impossible.

But in many countries around the globe, the smartphone – or if they’re lucky, tablet – isn’t just one of their communications/entertainment screens … it’s their only screen.

By the numbers, Statista reported:

• About 1.75B TV households worldwide last year
• 28B tablet users worldwide this year
• An estimated 3.8B smartphone users–48.20 percent of global population this year

As with all the problems of streaming, you can lay the issue of international films being shown at Netflix’s front door.

The company is focused on signing up – and retaining – subscribers no matter where they live.

Operating in 190+ countries, Netflix is committed to developing/producing/streaming as much as 40 percent of their film/show lineup locally.

If a film is a hit in France, Argentina, Dubai, Nigeria, or another country; there’s a very good chance it will click with folks in neighboring countries and perhaps around the globe.

Most of the Netflix projects are subtitled and dubbed in a wide variety of source languages and cultural codes, including native language.

Local, regional or around the globe, Hastings and Sarandos simply want to attract (and hopefully appeal to) everyone including visual, hearing challenged, dyslectic or people with other disabilities.

It doesn’t much matter which side of the debate you’re on because we’re just glad it is being recognized and discussed so everyone can be “heard.”

This past year + we became accustomed to watching an ASL interpreter explain the pandemic warnings/statistics regularly.

And here in California, where fire raged everywhere, we’d watch the interpreter explain the fire dangers.

We were honestly entranced—not just watching the individual sign but also his/her body language, facial expressions/emphasis.

We recognize that they weren’t really deaf and didn’t understand the “words” but some of the folks we could watch for hours because we were “listening” to their intensity.

That’s also why we particularly enjoyed an Amazon commercial – https://tinyurl.com/5mkrubjb – featuring Brendan G., a senior UX designer, who is part of a group working to create a more inclusive, accessible world.

His work and the increased awareness and inclusion of people with special abilities/disabilities will enhance the M&E industry’s ability to help folks around the globe enjoy more great, diverse movies/shows.

There’s no right or wrong way to experience video content; but as the industry has moved to make racial and sexual diversity an integral part of the projects developed, created, and presented, it does enhance awareness, understanding and acceptance.

Streamers and studios are producing projects around the globe; and regardless of the language, a good story is still a good story.

The M&E industry can’t solve the world’s problems, but it can move the needle with the right films/shows.

We’ve made a lot of creative and technical progress since the early Godzilla movies. Now it’s time to polish and share the stories.

# # #

Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com – is an author of more than 700 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software and applications. An internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant with a broad range of technical and industry expertise especially in storage, storage management and film/video production fields; he has an extended range of relationships with business, industry trade press, online media and industry analysts/consultants.