Make no mistake, the streaming wars are on in full and have been for a while now, but at this point we’re just waiting to see what NBCU is going to bring to the table that will differentiate it from a very saturated market. As we’ve already learned it will become the next home for The Office, which will be leaving Netflix at the end of 2020 as Robin Burks from ScreenRant has reported. That might be regrettable on its own, but Netflix will also be losing Friends it would seem, and as people have already seen the streaming giant is focusing heavily on original content, something that NBCU doesn’t have much of at this point. but one thing that might also help or harm the new streaming service will be free to those with a cable service, but will still come with advertising. So basically it’s a streaming service…with advertisements….kind of like TV it seems. Trying to find the difference between the two is a bit mind-boggling but many would insist that the streaming network will be something new and different that can be embraced.
NBCU seems to be trying accumulate upsides to its service, but one major downside that Brian Steinberg and Cynthia Littleton from Variety might agree with is that it’s going to have to learn to live with or overcome is that the market for streaming is so heavily saturated at this point that trying to outdo the competitors is going to require a lot of patience and a lot of content, which it doesn’t quite have yet. What’s the difference here? Netflix, Amazon, and even Hulu have years on just about anyone trying enter the arena at this point. In fact the only reason that Disney will have a chance to do much of anything is that it’s taking all of its content that Netflix has been using and will be opening its service come November, thereby asserting its own dominant stance. What’s going to be interesting about the Disney Plus streaming network though is that since so much is owned by Disney at this point one has to wonder just what’s going to show up on the network, or if it’s simply going to focus on its more family-friendly content. After all, Disney did purchase Fox, which includes a LOT of properties that aren’t quite as geared towards being all about family fun as they might like.
On the other side of things, NBCU really has an uphill battle upon coming in since there’s no doubt that the other streaming networks aren’t going to lend much of a hand in this fight since it wouldn’t make sense to do so. They might all be trying to achieve the same goal, but unless someone’s willing to be uncharacteristically kind to the competition it’s likely that the newest network on the block is going to be in for a rough and very rude awakening should they come strolling in with the intent of being the big dog in the yard.
For some people it’s kind of hard to remember just what it was like to live without streaming TV, when we had a limited number of channels and a TV remote the size of a brick. Things have certainly changed quite a bit in the last several decades, and in some cases it only tend to get more confusing. The streaming network you choose is a matter of personal choice of course, but with so many either emerging or setting up to emerge it would seem that a lot of them are promising this, ready to give that, and then end up having to change things up when their business plan doesn’t seem to hold up to what they wanted. Right now NBCU seems as though they’re doing their best to provide a different streaming service than the rest and could possibly pull it off, but their competition is going to be pretty stiff. Whether or not they can pull through the first quarter upon entering the fray is going to an interesting proposition, but it does seem likely since most companies at least make it through the initial beating, and they’re not such a small network that they won’t be able to pump enough money into the effort to make it worthwhile.
How the other streaming networks are going to react will be equally interesting since both Netflix and Amazon have been pretty intent on creating original content for a while now and have been tearing it up in a big way. From the shows to the movies to even documentaries things have been heating up in a big way, and it seems to indicate that they’re gearing up for a major storm that will be coming when other networks open up and start to pull their material back into the fold. At this point it’s the network that can adapt the quickest that will do the best.
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