THB #582: The Future of Filmed Entertainment: Episode Two -TV

(Episode One - Episode Three)

Here is is what one measure of TV looks like, roughly from Nielsen, right now…

They do this chart every month, but it doesn’t change much. Almost 50% of time with a television on is still going to cable and broadcast television, aka Linear. Of the 40% of viewing attributed to Streaming, YouTube leads, with Netflix fairly close behind, Disney with a chunk less with their combined D+ and Hulu, and Amazon Prime just behind.

I find the Media Distributor Gauge more suggestive of the future that is coming…

As you can see, the combination of all of Disney’s viewing assets is on top and the other 2 companies with Broadcast networks go from slots #9 and #10 to #3 and #5 on this chart. Warner Bros Discovery goes from #8 to #6, even without a network.

The future of television is more than one thing. But the industry continues to be stuck between The Past - what we now call Linear - and The Future - currently called Streaming… not because those old-fashioned Linear companies are dumb and have no vision, but because there is a lot more money in Linear still than in Streaming.

In an odd way, this leap doesn’t feel right. We are all under a constant barrage of “minutes viewed” stats, “coined” as a dominant measurement by Netflix and now others. The top non-sports Linear TV shows last season had between 8 and 9 million viewers a week, that’s just something between 240 million and 540 million minutes each week. But that’s nothing! The #10 minute count for streaming shows is over 1 billion minutes for the week!

So how could those puny Linear hits ever compete with the mighty power of the on-demand Subscription Streaming universe?

Well… it doesn’t need to.

Disney, at the top of the Media Distributor Gauge, is still in the very early stages of maximizing the model of their future. They did an experiment with Dancing With The Stars a couple of years ago, running it exclusively on Disney+, without commercials, in 2022. I can’t seem to find any confirmable numbers on how the show did, but the general consensus seems to be that the ratings were notably less than on ABC. They also gave up the not-insignificant ad revenue to run the experiment. But they haven’t tried again since.

At some point, ABC will have to become a full-fledged part of the Disney Bundle… which by then will likely just be Disney Streaming. Separate from the package, it seems, will be ESPN+ (or whatever it will be named), which will likely drop first, with the full ESPN offerings streaming for the first time.

This is not unique to Disney. It’s going to happen to most of the large scale streamers… not because it has to, but because it simply makes sense.

On Demand content, delivered via the internet, has freed television viewers to explore a world of content on any single day, week, month, or year than we have ever had the opportunity to explore in the history of mankind. But the way we each engage content is a little different. And there is really no upside for any outlet to limit itself to one idea of how to deliver content.

People gonna binge, binge, binge, binge, binge, binge (ht: TS). But imagine, if you will, an evolved version of Netflix that has 19 hours of time-programmed shows every week… a manufactured prime time. That’s 1140 hours a year. Doable at their current content release level. In the last week, Netflix has released 8 new shows and 6 movies.

What’s the downside? Well, it would take some of their programming out of the binge release system. But at the end of the time-released weeks of delay, they would have a more aggressively promoted multi-week bingeable program.

Netflix has actually been ahead of the streaming game on this front, experimenting with a broadcast-style series in The Ranch, which had four 20-episode seasons, the 3rd highest episode count amongst Netflix Original series and the only Netflix series with more than 14 episodes per season. How did it do? Well enough to get 4 seasons out of it. But it is the closest they have gotten to that fire.

And of course, a platform like Netflix could run all kind of marketing plays using the time-programmed idea. Tuesday and Thursday could be international nights. There could be a documentary night. The other 21 hours of the day could be marathons of series that have built up episodes. Today’s top new show is Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam… imagine the connected programming they could build around that 3-episode show, which they could launch as the while night of prime-time one night.

But Netflix isn’t really in need of dramatic structural change in programming at this point. They do what they do, they are successful, and there is no pressing reason to make this change.

My primary focus here is on everyone else… well, the Linear Legacy companies.

The new Primetime season at ABC consists (as of this writing) of a weekly new programming diet, of 5.5 hours of scripted programs, 6.5 hours of live sports, 6.5 hours of reality/competitive shows, 1 hour of news shows, and The Wonderful World of Disney, which is presumably library content for 3 hours every Sunday night. There are 3 more hour-longs and a half-hour that will join the line-up at some point in the fall. And of course, reruns and other variations.

Broadly speaking, every show that had at least 2.5 million viewers, on-air or DVRed - has been renewed from the network line-up (cancelled or ending) and none of their non-sports shows, ongoing or new, have delivered as many as 5 million viewers on average.

Outside of Prime Time, on the weekdays, ABC has 6.5 daytime hours of shows, 2 hours of late night. On the weekends, sports programming dominates the non-Prime Time and some of the Prime Time schedule as well.

So how does the network have a strong a footprint as it does, even with much smaller audience for so much of its schedule? In the case of ABC, 18 hours a day every weekend of just being there… the mixture of selected viewing and passive viewing.

If you want to know what is going on in the news, local, national or world, you are not on a major streamer… unless it is the streamers from Linear networks, Paramount+, Peacock or Hulu.

If you want sports… the same… with the addition of packages made available from each of the major American leagues.

If you want live daily programming… again.

Why doesn’t Netflix and/or other non-Linear-grounded streamers match those daily efforts? Because they cost a lot (especially live sports rights), they are natural underdogs because of their inexperience, and ad revenue is still not fully engaged to a point where it could be easily expanded to even more programming at high prices.

But this piece is primarily about how the Linear companies might convert their broadcast package of shows on top of the ecosystem of a streaming service?

Well… the first question is mathematic for each company. Can a crossover be revenue positive?

Like the choice to (finally) jump into Streaming, each of these companies have people running numbers all the time. And each of the companies has the opportunity to toe-dip and see how things go in small bites.

Paramount+ and Peacock have “live” channels on their on-demand apps. Some are news, some are sports, and some are FAST channels with various kinds of content. Paramount+ even has an “On Now” line which you can scroll sideways through to see their available “live” channels. But it’s the 18th line of content from the top of the page.

Because of the Olympics, Peacock has gone all-on in integrating that very specific live programming on top of the on-demand availability of the normal Peacock content platform.

Earlier this week, the page was topped by a 9-program carousel of options… SummerSlam Cleveland (event concluded), an Olympic soccer replay, the Olympics women’s all-around gymnastics relay, 2 more Summer Slam promos (1 for a show on Saturday, 1 for the Hub), a trailer for John Woo’s The Killer series (not on yet), a Dateline episode, Dreamworks’ animated Turbo, and an episode of House M.D.

Also, as you scroll down, there are 2 lines pushing to live content, the first “Can’t Miss Live Events” and the other “Live & Upcoming.”

But what you don’t see and won’t see anytime soon is the NBC line-up recreated in real time on the Peacock app… or on any of the other major Broadcasters’ sibling apps.

Even as NBC make a Simone Biles-ian effort to present the Summer Olympics from every angle possible at every hour of the day for nearly 2 weeks, if you wanted the freshest content, you need to flip back and forth between the Broadcast network and Peacock.

Of course, the reason for this conflict is simple. Money. And changing it is anything but simple.