THB #122: The Next Big Streaming Question

The Big Question coming out of the last Netflix and Disney Quarterlies was, “Is Streaming A Good Business?”

My issue with this - besides being 2 years late in being asked by so many - is that Streaming is not a business. Streaming is a paradigm shift within a very well-established business… television. It’s a new delivery system.

I think what confuses people in this regard is Netflix itself. Because it is a standalone AND the leader in Streaming, people somehow let it define Streaming in their thoughts and imaginations.

Netflix is fantastic. But it is a $30 billion a year business in a (broadly) $250 billion worldwide television market. That ain’t nothing. But it ain’t everything.

Netflix is more than a shiny object… but in the world right now, it is a shiny object.

Disney’s television-only business is bigger than Netflix. ABC, ESPN, Disney+, Hulu, Star, production (not just in-house), etc. Market people, who are unlikely to be opining on CNBC by the time linear becomes a marginal reven…