Year of Streaming

The lack of live entertainment has meant we’re spending more time streaming, but 2020 has also been a year of job losses and worsening financial circumstances, so paying for a half-dozen monthly subscriptions isn’t feasible or even desirable for most people.

Hence this jostle for market dominance, which has been a windfall for audiences willing to brave the fire hose in search of quality. There’s more to watch than ever — name your niche and there’s someone catering to it — but there are also more barriers to entry, like a garbage user interface.

WarnerMedia finally reached a deal with Roku, bringing HBO Max, the company's nascent streaming service, to Roku devices starting on Thursday, Dec. 17.

The deal is a significant one not just for Roku users who have waited for the service to be available since it launched over the summer, but also for WarnerMedia. Roku is the leader in the streaming-device marketplace with more than 100 million users. That user base is important to WarnerMedia, which is trying to drive new subscribers to HBO Max. The service has notched 12.6 million activations since it launched in May.

The service has been available on multiple other devices such as Apple TV and, as of last month, Amazon Fire TV. Yet Roku was a holdout.

The timing is also notable. HBO Max will debut the highly anticipated "Wonder Woman 1984" on the service Christmas Day.

Quibi, of course, went belly up before the year would end. Even with $1.75 billion in funding, the mobile-only platform from founders Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman was a dud from the word go and a notorious footnote in a year that became primarily a stay-at-home experience.

Even before the pandemic, many audiences were staying home already, squeezed out by the rising cost of movie tickets.

Boosters of the theatrical-first model like to cite 2019's record-setting global box office ($42.5 billion) as proof that streaming will kill the goose that lays the golden egg. What they’re leaving out is the reality that theater attendance — the number of tickets sold — was down. Why did the industry make so much money last year anyway? Because it’s more expensive than ever for moviegoers to get in the door.

Also, here’s a fun fact: For years now, Oscar voters have watched the vast majority of eligible films — wait for it — at home. They like the convenience. To which a person might reply: Who doesn’t?

TV series are extremely important to the streaming ecosystem.

It was a year that included “Little Fires Everywhere” on Hulu, “The Boys” on Amazon, “The Morning Show” on Apple (which actually premiered a year ago November) — each tackling hot button issues in the glossy packaging of high-end TV.

But the inundation of content has become so intense that it can be hard to remember which streaming shows really broke through this year. Quick, name a new series on Peacock. Or CBS All Access. It’s not like the titles come immediately to mind. Not the way “The Queen’s Gambit” on Netflix might, and that’s because Netflix still has so many more subscribers than anyone else.

Originally a DVD-by-mail service, Netflix was the first to really grasp and harness the potential that streaming had to offer, and the company’s trajectory has shaped everything that’s come since. Here’s longtime entertainment journalist Richard Rushfield with some context:

“Thanks to Netflix’s success — it was the stock of the decade — Wall Street made the decision that streaming is how you make money: You start a subscription streaming service and ultimately it takes over the world. The fact that Netflix isn’t a profitable company hasn’t saved anybody else from that mindset.”

Consider the enormous success Disney had over the last 10 years with blockbuster movies in theaters. “That had no impact on Wall Street,” Rushfield said. “The stock didn’t budge, it even went slightly downward. And then the day they announced Disney+, the stock shot up.” Which explains the recently announced deluge of upcoming Marvel and “Star Wars” TV spinoffs specifically intended for the streaming service.

Will all these newcomers still be in business this time next year?

“December 2021, I think yes. But in 2022, I would guess not,” says journalist Rushfield. There’s a real possibility of mergers or buy-outs. “They can’t all survive spending at the level they’re spending right now, making these billion-dollar bets on TV series,” said Rushfield. “But there’s also a question of, can Netflix survive? Apple could swallow Netflix without taking a breath, really.”

Why is streaming’s current top dog so vulnerable? “It has a huge amount of debt. And it now has seven major competitors for the first time, and they’re not just competing for subscribers but talent.”

Plus, Netflix continues to lose its most popular library titles (everything not made by Netflix) including “The Office,” which moves to Peacock on the first of the year. (Peacock is ad-supported and therefore free, but there is also a premium tier that costs a monthly fee and would it surprise you to learn that executives have decided that all but the first two seasons of “The Office” will live behind a paywall?)

2020 has been a buffet of uncertainty and so often we turn to Hollywood to alleviate those anxieties, if only for a brief respite.

Here’s to strong internet connections in 2021.