- The honeymoon is over, time to get back to real life.
And that means more fighting,
more chaos, and more horrible extended analogies
like the one I'm gonna use in this video.
The point we're trying to get to here
is if streaming is moving into a different phase
what does that mean for you and me
the lowly viewers of all that sweet, sweet content?
Well, we're gonna get there.
First, let's back up.
The occasion for all this is a "New York Times" article
by Shira Ovide
about how the honeymoon phase of streaming is over.
It's an interesting article
and I encourage you to give it a look
and also a shout out to viewer Andrew Graining
who sent over the article in question.
You can do that too if you follow me on Twitter,
I love getting this stuff you guys send to me.
Now I don't tweet much, but my DMs are always open.
Anyway, the gist of this article
and dozens more like it is that,
"Yeah, the honeymoon phase is over for streaming."
Thanks to Netflix's two consecutive quarters
of subscriber loss rather than gain.
It's definitely sent shock waves through the industry.
Everybody panicked, stock prices tanked,
the end times were upon us, dogs and cats living together,
you get the idea.
But really we're just finally firmly in the next phase
of our relationship with streaming.
Now, for the purpose of this extended and stupid metaphor
we need to know what the relationship phases are.
And if you Google it,
you'll find 18 million different examples of people
who had their own relationship phases
or their ideas of how it works.
But we're all kind of familiar
with the basic structure, right?
You've got the honeymoon phase,
step two you've got the power struggle,
the who's in charge here in this relationship.
Then you get to phase three, which is stability,
where you learn to accept each other.
Commitment, which is conscious commitment.
And then finally bliss, relationship bliss, right?
That's what we all aspire to, even with our streaming.
But like I said, really, it's a horrible analogy
because it's not just streaming companies and viewers
it's more like a thrupple
'cause you gotta throw investors in there.
And then you've got the occasional fling with domestic
and foreign regulatory agencies
and so on and so forth, spicy stuff really.
But if we use the analogy for now
when we were in that honeymoon phase, oh it was sweet.
Netflix promised us infinite entertainment.
And back then it was like, what?
Seven or eight bucks a month. Right? Sweet.
Sling TV promised us the holy grail of a la carte TV.
Well it never really delivered on that
and neither did anyone else,
but for a while it seemed like maybe they could do it
or something close to it.
Now Netflix is losing subscribers.
And while that probably won't last very long
they'll get back to growing soon
but it has made them look mortal.
And now the entire streaming industry does too as a result.
So yeah, the honeymoon is over, but what does it mean
that we've moved on to phase two, the power struggle phase?
Well, it means that instead of seeing
only the strengths of streaming,
we're all starting to see its flaws as well.
Now a lot of us individually have been here
for a while and yeah
I'm looking at you salty YouTube commenters,
but I mean mean collectively the relationship
is starting to lose some of its initial shine.
Now in a real relationship, power struggles are difficult
but pretty straightforward
in this terrible tortured metaphor
it means that things are probably going to get weird
and kind of ugly again for a while.
Over at these streaming companies, budgets will be slashed.
Quality will go down. Prices will go up.
Advertising will become even more commonplace
than it is now and so on.
At least that's one way it could look
but that chaos is gonna look different at each streamer
so don't expect the same thing
from every single one of them
as they continue competing for your attention.
Now that "New York Times" article
quotes one Hollywood agent saying,
"The "Drunken Sailer" spending days are gone."
And I'm sure that's true for Netflix.
They've made that very clear
and it might be true for HBO and others like them.
For some companies though
spending will probably still be nuts for a while.
Apple and Amazon, for example use streaming
in a different way than those others
as far as how they use it to turn a profit.
So yeah, we're gonna see a lot more spending out of them
at least for the next little while.
But the point is the result of all of this malaise
in the industry will be a lot of chaos
and that will make our lives difficult for a while
as we try to just sit down and watch TV
but we discover that it's more expensive
or it has more commercials than we like or whatever.
Now we will get to the next phase eventually.
Thank goodness.
That's the stability phase where the general rules
of the streaming world will have been worked out.
And while it may not be exactly what we thought
we were gonna get while we were in that honeymoon phase,
it's at least acceptable to all involved.
Now at least to a certain extent, right?
Pricing will standardize across the industry.
Quality of content will standardize, that sort of thing.
So then as we move forward, what do the more mature phases
of this relationship look like with streaming?
Well, we'll never know.
Streaming will achieve stability
but the relationship phases will end there.
And why?
Well, because of us, you and me we will be the ones
to end this relationship.
The strength and weakness of dynamic capitalism
in this case is that we the viewers
are like serial daters,
we're always looking for the next thing to come along.
Now that sounds like a bad thing,
but the good news is we usually find it.
Streaming is way better than cable
which was way better than network only TV,
which was way better than, you get the idea.
Now, unfortunately, this isn't always true.
If we end up leaving streaming for say social media
as our primary entertainment source,
well then we're pretty much (beep).
Now I know you have thoughts on all this
so hit the comments,
let me know what does stability look like for you?
What can we look forward to
in our relationship with streaming?
And as a bonus please go Google relationship phases
and find some of the best one liners out there.
I found this gem that says,
"There is nothing worse than relationship uncertainty."
I can think of a thing or two.
Anyway, go enjoy that.
In the meantime, make sure you're subscribed
so you can come by every Friday at 2:00 PM Eastern
for the live streams I do right here on this channel.
Love to see you here.
Thanks for watching everybody.
I'll see you next time.
(upbeat music)