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A Glimpse at the Future of Streaming in 4 Mind-Blowing Stats

A Glimpse at the Future of Streaming in 4 Mind-Blowing Stats

Pea-Max? Para-flix? Regardless of what portmanteau they might end up with, odds are good that streaming services are going to spend a bit of time merging in 2024. Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount were already talking about it at the end of last year, continuing the trend that started when WarnerMedia and Discovery merged in the first place. After years of Everybody Has a Streaming Service, that plethora of streaming video apps is getting pared down as people start making tough decisions about which streamers are actually worth it. If ad-supported models, password-sharing crackdowns, and cancellations don’t turn streamers into profit powerhouses this year, consolidation might, and the results look awfully boring.

In a report released this week, Parrot Analytics, a firm known for calculating what value any particular show has for a streamer, looked at what various streamers would have to offer in four possible merger scenarios: Warner Bros. Discovery merging with Paramount Global, Netflix with Paramount, NBCUniversal with Warner, and Paramount with NBCUniversal, or NBCU for short. The results show a world where a Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount merger would create the greatest demand in terms of people wanting to watch the shows exclusive to those companies—and one where the results are so muddled they’re almost meaningless.

Let’s look at Para-Max. Should they merge, they’d control about 29 percent of demand for series in the US. Parrot also argues that such a consolidation would create a portfolio of sports offerings (Paramount controls CBS Sports; Warner has TNT and TBS) that could match up with Disney, which owns ESPN. It would also bring the home of Deadwood (HBO) together with CBS broadcast programming and all those Taylor Sheridan cowboy shows that America’s dads love so much.

That’s cool, but also feels like a bid to create an entity where only the juggernauts get airtime. More Yellowstone, less chance of a Westworld revival. And while a merger of these two companies would mean more than just a new-new version of Max and/or Paramount+, it would mean even fewer people are able to green-light new, inventive shows, and that rarely turns out well. (RIP Rap Sh!t, which got canceled as I was writing this.)

The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.

Similar outcomes arise in other mergers, though the numbers may not look as appealing to shareholders. If Warner Bros. Discovery were to merge with NBCU, Parrot predicts, they’d have just under 27 percent of that US demand. A marriage between Netflix and Paramount yields about 20 percent of that demand; couple up Paramount and NBCU and that number is a smidge below 22 percent.

These numbers may not seem huge, but they’re staggering when you imagine nearly a quarter of the most in-demand shows being in one place, and what the company with access to those eyeballs would do to keep them. For context, the only company with close to that figure is Disney, which controls nearly 20 percent of that demand.

Again, this is just one set of statistics about hypothetical mergers, but investment bankers are wishin’ and hopin’ for more of these deals in 2024, and marriages seem likely. The results wouldn’t just be new streaming services, but new media conglomerates responsible for big chunks of the culture and entertainment that people have access to in the US and beyond.

This has been happening for a while—ever since Amazon bought MGM and, of course, WarnerMedia merged with Discovery. R&D is now M&A. There’s likely a New Big Three on the horizon. Which companies they’ll be made of and what they’ll offer is anyone’s guess, but it’s looking unlikely they’ll be much different than what came before.

Dunkin’ Donuts Drama Is the Internet at Its Best

Dunkin’ Donuts Drama Is the Internet at Its Best

The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.

If you live on America’s East Coast—or date Ben Affleck—chances are you have an affinity for Dunkin’ Donuts. Even if you don’t like their baked goods or hate their coffee, you still know that pastel logo as a sign that you’re home. Same goes for the yellow checkerboard pattern of Waffle House in the South or the golden In-n-Out arrow out West. People feel brand loyalty to the Dunkin’ name. Or, well, they did until this week.

Actually, the problems started two weeks ago, when the breakfast food chain swapped its consumer loyalty program, DD Perks, for a revamped one called Dunkin’ Rewards, “designed to help keep you running all day long with the best that Dunkin’ has to offer.” Sounds amazing, but there was one problem: Coffee drinkers can do math. Soon, folks realized that, under the new program, they’d have to get twice as many points to get free drinks, and their beloved free birthday drinks had disappeared.

“What idiot do you think I am, Dunkin’?” wrote one Reddit user. “This reward system is CRAP,” wrote another. Someone called the removal of the birthday drink “a slap in the face.” In an excellent dig, a redditor with the handle PeepnSheep said, “Good thing I live 5 mis from a Starbs lol. RIP dunks, it was nice while you were actually rewarding, even tho you only got my drinks right ⅓ of the time.” There were calls for boycott; people were encouraged to submit complaints.

All told, it felt like the kind of consumer revolt only the internet can pull off. In meatspace, familiar restaurant signs unite people under a common love of “animal style” burgers or Mexican pizzas. Online, they come together to share their disgruntlement as well as their fandom. In recent months, chains ranging from Subway to P. F. Chang’s have altered their loyalty programs. Amidst a recession when rising food costs are leading people to look for ways to save, the internet is a place for them to mobilize when their loyalty becomes less rewarded. It’s also no surprise that a lot of the chatter on the Dunkin’ subreddit involved people just trying to figure out how to get the most out of the new Rewards system.

It’s unclear exactly what will come of all this. Maybe Dunkin’ will revert back to its old system; maybe customers will just give up on the chain and never come back. No matter the outcome, it’s a helluva way to ring in Posting Your PSL on IG season.

Westworld Has Entered the New, Better Frontier of Sci-Fi

Westworld Has Entered the New, Better Frontier of Sci-Fi

The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.

When it premiered six years ago, Westworld epitomized prestige sci-fi at its peak. An expensive HBO series with an old-school Michael Crichton pedigree, it featured a stellar cast and a mind-trippy premise: What if all the sentient robots, or “hosts,” at a Western theme park decided they’d had enough of being kicked and dragged around? Subsequent seasons revealed the influence of artificial intelligence and reached far beyond the borders of the Westworld attraction, a global mess of money, corruption, and consciousness-tampering that was nightmare fuel for viewers watching at home while scrolling through Twitter. It was a hit—even if a modest one.

But like many popular shows do as they sail past their second season, it went a bit off the rails. By Season 3, Westworld had become exhausting—a show with perhaps too many good ideas and not enough places to put them. As the host Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) made her way out of Westworld and attempted to destroy and/or save the humanity that enslaved her, she inspired a revolution that led to the destruction of the reality-manipulating AI known as Rehoboam. The Man in Black was revealed to be William, son-in-law of the founder of Delos, which built Westworld. Everyone had a part to play, lots of people (and androids) died, and by the end, keeping track of all, or any, of them felt like a chore.

For the first two episodes of Season 4, which launched June 26, things have changed—and for the better. Caleb (Aaron Paul), once a soldier in the resistance against the machines, now has a family and a steady job, and while he also has PTSD, he’s not as prone to histrionics as before. He’s once more being called to join Maeve (Thandie Newton), since they’re both again being hunted by shadowy hosts, but now their quest has the feeling of a think-y character drama, rather than a third-act scene in a Terminator film. Perhaps Westworld is going for a slow burn for the first half of its current season. Regardless, it seems as though creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan got the hint that with modern sci-fi, less is sometimes more.

The best shows and movies are often character dramas at heart; even Westworld was in its first season. But as we enter whatever new golden age of television this is, the show’s more focused direction signals a shift that’s been blessedly happening for a long time. Rather than science fiction with some interesting characters, the best shows now are thrillers or political dramas with a science-fictional backdrop. It’s For All Mankind playing out like Mad Men in space. Or After Yang’s family drama about the persistence of memory wrapped in a story about a defunct droid.

Or, in perhaps its best current incarnation, Severance. Apple TV+’s breakout hit functions primarily as a workplace thriller about coping with loss, but it’s built around genre premises like “Should we bifurcate our brains?” and “What if you lived in a company town where the company was extremely shadowy and maybe a cult?” Futuristic sci-fi can often come off as cold, which works when seeding a dystopian vibe but can also be kind of a bummer. What shows like Severance and Westworld are doing is burying philosophical dilemmas beneath that sleek veneer. The internal world-building is as strong as the external. It’s an ideal that’s been at the center of sci-fi for decades, but one that can get lost in the quest for ratings and razzle-dazzle.

For Westworld, the move has paid off. In the weeks since the show’s new season premiered, Vanity Fair wrote that the latest installments were “an upgraded model.” Daily Beast said it was “worth watching again.” This, too, feels right. Genre franchises often lose their way and then course-correct. Westworld’s latest season is the reboot it needed.

Netflix Struggles to Hold Its Place in the Streaming Wars

Netflix Struggles to Hold Its Place in the Streaming Wars

Yet, instead of filling out its catalog, Netflix is trying to diversify beyond video. Like, for example, beefing up the staff of the gaming service it launched in November 2021. “They’re going to pour money into branching out into different types of content to be as much of a four quadrant service as they can,” says Alexander, meaning they’re targeting not just men but women, and not just those under 25 but those over 25 too. “But at the same time, they’re aware the competition at this moment is stronger than it has ever been. They need to find a way to be Netflix again, and figure out how to revolutionize parts of this industry.”

But that costs money—which is why price hikes have been levied across large parts of the world. “From an analysts’ point of view, SVODs are still value for money, even with an increase in price,” says Gunnarsson. “You can watch as much content as you want for two pints in a pub, and have unlimited access to all that content.” According to Omdia, UK households subscribe to two services on average—half the amount in the United States. For now, Netflix, like Amazon, is seen as an anchoring service—one that users constantly have, switching out other, smaller competing services when they can afford to do so. “Netflix is the default streaming service,” says Andrew A. Rosen, founder of streaming insights consultancy Parqor. But that can always change.

With 75 million households subscribed to Netflix in the United States, Alexander believes that the service is close to its peak in the country when it comes to adoption. “What you’re really trying to do at that point is to reengage customers who may have left to subscribe to Paramount+ for a month or whatever it might be,” she says. Original content on Netflix, while some may find it underwhelming, falls broadly into two buckets: the reality TV and children’s entertainment that keeps existing subscribers happy, and the big action, drama, and sci-fi shows that reengage subscribers who have taken their business elsewhere. But lapsed subscribers are relatively rare for Netflix, says Rosen: “Their market churn in the US is like, 2.2 percent,” he says. “Their churn is low.”

And while there’s still plenty of room to grow in other markets, those users tend to bring Netflix and other streaming services less money per customer than in the United States, UK, or elsewhere. Average revenue per customer for Disney+ Hotstar in India, Brazil, or Mexico is around $1.06, says Alexander, compared to $6.13 in the United States. “It’s a huge difference when you look at tens of millions of subscribers,” she says. And to eke out the extra money from a market when subscriber growth slows to a trickle, as it has in the US and UK, you have to start raising prices.

Yet the challenge still remains that raising prices at a time of macroeconomic uncertainty is risky business. Rising gas prices, increased costs to heat homes, and squeezes on living standards driven by runaway inflation all have an impact on discretionary spending—which definitely includes streaming video providers. But there is another way to make money while maintaining and building customer numbers: tiered, ad-supported services. In June 2021, HBO Max launched an ad-supported, stripped-down version of its streaming service at a $5 discount to its full $14.99-per-month product. Disney+ is launching an ad-supported tier later this year, joining Peacock, Paramount+, and Discovery+. “Logically, common sense dictates that competition will necessitate more streaming services moving toward a hybrid AVOD [advertising-based video on demand]/SVOD model,” says Gunnarsson.

This Year’s Oscars Will Be Historic. Will Anyone Care?

This Year’s Oscars Will Be Historic. Will Anyone Care?

The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.

The Oscars has had a hard time getting its act together the last few years. Viewership is falling, and campaigns like #OscarsSoWhite have drawn attention to long-standing problems with how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences chooses honorees. Everyone on Twitter has a hot take about the show’s cringey comedic bits and who would have been a better host (or whether the show should have a host at all).

This year, folks—both pop culture junkies and Academy members—had strong feelings after the Academy announced that eight of this Sunday’s awards would be handed out before the live telecast. (They’ll be recorded, edited, and played during the show.) Others remain upset, or at least confused, about the inclusion of a new “Fan Favorite” award. It’s a fraught business, and in the words of this year’s Oscars producer, Will Packer, “everybody’s got an opinion about this damn show.”

Opinions, yes. Intentions to actually watch? Maybe not. After a peak in the 1990s, when viewership for the Oscars telecast topped 50 million, the overall number of people who watch the show has steadily declined. Last year, fewer than 11 million people tuned in. Ideally, the trimming down of the awards and inclusion of a category that people can vote for on Twitter is meant to draw more people’s attention and get them to watch the show live. As it looks now, it might do just the opposite. Either way, these adjustments are largely unnecessary—this year’s Oscars will likely be historic regardless.

For one thing, Sunday’s event will be the first Oscars since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic to take place back in the Dolby Theater. (The 2020 telecast happened right before lockdowns began; last year’s ceremony was a much more toned-down affair at Los Angeles’ Union Station.) For another, there’s the possibility that Lin-Manuel Miranda could attain EGOT status if he wins for writing the song “Dos Oruguitas” featured in Disney’s Encanto—the multi-hyphenate already has Emmy, Grammy, and Tony awards. But finally, and perhaps most significantly, Sunday could mark the first time a streaming service wins a Best Picture Oscar. The two top contenders this year are The Power of the Dog, which Netflix released (and promoted the hell out of), and CODA, which Apple TV+ released (and also promoted the hell out of).

Nothing great about the Oscars has ever been planned. Jennifer Lawrence falling down? That was an accident. Bong Joon-ho inviting his Oscars to make out? That seemed pretty off-the-cuff. Moonlight’s Best Picture award temporarily going to La La Land? That was a royal fuckup. People watch for these things, but in the Academy’s attempts to fabricate these moments, the levity gets lost. This year, as pundits are saying “put the Oscars out of their misery” and detailing “all the ways the Oscars screwed themselves,” the Academy is trying all sorts of tricks to curry favor. Nothing wrong with trying to disrupt the old way of doing things, but in this case, the Oscars are trying to manufacture history, when it’s already being made.


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