Big Streaming Names Are Shifting Their Strategy

Streaming customers are likely to see more familiar faces and less megabudget content in the coming year. reports Marketwatch.

Shifting consumer tastes and corporate strategies portend changes in programming, with artificial intelligence looming in the background, as major streaming services consider how to use technology and new forms of programming without escalating annual multibillion-dollar content budgets.

“The big quandary is, how do we make [services] profitable? Things have shifted so dramatically and so quickly in how people consume,” Cole Strain, head of research and development at Samba TV, which tracks viewership of shows, said in an interview. “The streamers that find out what consumers truly want — they win.”

Streaming services are facing some big choices, noted Jacqueline Corbelli, CEO of software company BrightLine. “The cost of the content and the length of the content war will force them to make some major decisions. They are trying to figure it out,” she said in an interview.

“Great content has to be paid for, and investors want to see an increasingly efficient and profitable business,” she said, adding: “Right now the economics of these are at odds with one another.”

This year’s prolonged Hollywood strikes, the prevalence of up-close-and-personal sports documentaries and the increased licensing of older cable-TV shows are the most tangible evidence so far of how content is evolving. Throw in cost-cutting, and customers of services like Netflix Inc. Walt Disney Co.’s Disney+ and Hulu, and Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video are looking at a vastly different content landscape.