The video business is learning what those of us in the news business learned two decades ago.
You can’t beat free.
Newspapers and most magazines died because they chose to put their content behind paywalls, broken only through subscriptions, which require enormous consumer permission to obtain.
The papers never even considered an idea I suggested long ago, that they offer “daily” or “article” rates, that they organize to collect this money from readers, and that they share the benefits in the form of data and ad revenue.
Everyone is a loser here. Readers lose access to news, except for those outlets subsidized by video. TV stations are now the main local news outlet, cable networks the main national papers.
Things are about to get worse.
That’s because TV networks, faced with competition from free services like TikTok and YouTube, are playing the same subscription game the newspapers did. As I have said repeatedly, time is the gating factor for content, not money. The Clouds are going to win this game because they have other sources of cash flow.
The pain is just beginning. Disney is talking about jettisoning ABC. Paramount is looking for a buyer. Warner Brothers Discovery is joining them in cutting back. Comcast and Disney are looking shaky. All are issuing dire warnings to viewers that the “cable bundle” of $150/month entertainment is coming back, that there’s nothing consumers can do about it.
The only wise heads are at Netflix, because at least they know the streaming business. Few companies ever cross the bridge from one technology to the next unless they have government help. The networks got that in moving from radio to TV, when they were given broadcast licenses, and from TV to cable, when they were able to control distribution of their content.
There are some people who will buy every streamer, just as there are people who will buy several newspaper subscriptions, but they’re a tiny portion of the audience. Most of us will gladly do without. Why should I pay $15/month for any of them when I can get more from Amazon, with free shipping? Apple is taking away the sports rights which were the old networks’ last firewall against disaster.
Two years from now this will look very different. A ton of video content is about to disappear forever, having lost its business model. The Cloud Czars will rule because of their deep pockets. Then we’ll see what government will do about it, if anything.
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