I'm a big fan of the "completely honest" series on the channel Geeks Welcome, and so I came up with my own script about the streaming wars and how everyone is losing now. Ian of Geeks Welcome, if you read this feel free to use any or all of it.
[Open on a woman in a suit in an empty boardroom type place looking off in the distance not knowing someone is there].
[surprised gasp] A PERSON! Hi I'm Kelly Campbell, head of NBC-Universal's streaming service, Peacock, but of course you already knew that. [dramatic pause] What do you mean you don't even know what Peacock is? Come on, NBC is one of the oldest television networks in America and Universal pictures is one of the few studios left that isn't owned by Disney, we're kind of a big deal. Our streaming service is the only place you can watch The Office, one of the most popular series on streaming ever. WE'RE A BIG DEA-[cut to test patterns].
[grunt of recomposure] Sorry about that. Yes, Peacock is NBC-Universal's answer to the streaming wars. For those who forgot, for the longest time on demand internet streaming was limited to Netflix and Hulu; Amazon Prime video existed, but people only had Prime Video because they already had Amazon Prime, no one was subscribing to prime just because they wanted their library, [stronger close-up] right!? [closer] We as one of the oldest media production companies on earth are better at this than some guy who just wanted to sell books to people over the internet 30 years ago and gradually started trying other things [extreme close up] RIGHT!?
[recompose] Again, I'm sorry. Well in 2019 seeing how popular this streaming thing was, Disney decided they were going to take all their content off the likes of Netflix and Hulu in order to make their own streaming service called "Disney Plus," a place where you could watch their entire backlog of content along with some original productions exclusive to the platform, key being The Mandeloreon. This was very successful, which encouraged Warner Brothers to do the same with their HBO brand, making HBO Max, a service where you could get not just HBO content like Game of Thrones, but also hit content from Cartoon Network, TBS, DC, Hanna Barberra, and Looney Tunes as well as all their movies, along with some original series like Infinity Train season 3 and 4, while also pulling their stuff off competitors like Hulu and Netflix.
Not to be outdone by the competition, we at NBC-Universal decided we were going to launch our own streaming service, and name it after our network logo mascot, Peacock. Here viewers could watch movies from Illumination such as those Minion movies everyone is obsessed about, and hit NBC shows like The Office, and exclusive original series like Bell Air and Saved By The Bell 2021, reimaginings of some of our most popular series because that's what people want, [close up] Right!?
Well it's times for me to face reality. You see, dedicated streaming services, are completely unsustainable in their current form.
What made Netflix and Hulu so successful in the past is that they were just a 1 stop shop for syndicated content. On them you could watch old episodes of Family Guy, NCIS, South Park, and of course, The Office, in addition to more obscure things like anime and British shows that weren't Doctor Who and Top Gear. However, they were like a MeTV or Nicktoons, or TBS, where instead of making their own content they just licensed other people's content, and when the license was up they could either renew it or just let it leave the platform.
Because of this constant risk of losing a popular show, Netflix decided to make some in house series that they could keep forever because they made them. You remember House of Cards, Netflix's first original program from 2013, that's still pulling in viewers because it's so good, right? Well this plan ended up being a good idea because, as I said earlier, Disney decided they were going to make their own streaming service, the only place you could get all their classic movies and TV shows with new original programs that were cinema quality all for just $8 a month. Which then prompted everyone to do that as well, not renewing their licensing contracts on competing platforms so they could make it exclusive to their own platform along with making their own high budget original content in order to attract viewers so they would subscribe to this new platform. It made perfect sense, The Office was the most streamed show in the world when it was on Netflix, surely people were keeping their subscription so they could watch The Office and if it wasn't on Netflix they would follow it to it's new home Peacock, [close up] RIGHT!?
It turns out that didn't happen, and instead of subscribing to all the streaming services in perpetuity you wait for everything in the multi-million dollar series to come out, subscribe for a month, watch it all, and then unsubscribe after a month. Why are all your favorite netflix shows getting canceled after a season? Because it costs hundreds of millions of dollars to make them and netflix only makes about a 80 million off the people coming in for a month and then leaving. Do you know how much it costs to make an episode of The Mandeloreon? A lot more than what it costs for all you free loaders to spend $10 for a 1 month subscription, watch all the episodes, and then cancel. Sure the returning cast of Saved By The Bell wasn't doing anything, but it still costs a lot of money to bring them back and make the sets and find young actors that look like them to play their children, and NO ONE WATCHED IT DESPITE IT BEING A CONTINUATION OF THE SHOW THAT STILL BRINGS IN LARGE NUMBERS WHEN RERAN ON TBS AND OTHER CHANNELS! WHY DID NO ONE WATCH THE SAVED BY THE BELL REBOOT!? [Cut to test pattern]
[Meditation calming and centering gesture] Sorry again, it's just stressful being the head of the least popular streaming service for a major media company by a wide margin. Where was I? Right, it's unsustainable to have productions like these. Back in the days of cable we made our money on running ads and retransmission fees. For a cable service to carry our channel, the cable company would have to pay us money for every subscriber they had regardless of if that customer was watching our channel or not. Remember when your cable bill was $100 a month, that wasn't because the cable companies were gouging you, that's because we media companies were charging them $1-10 per channel of ours they were carrying, and that's not including the major networks like NBC and ABC that you could get for free using rabbit ears, you were paying $15-20 per channel for each of those. And this was on top of the money we were making on advertisements. And you were never able to pick and choose what channels you wanted because we told cable companies "it's an all or nothing deal, if your customers want TBS and Cartoon Network, they're going to have to buy CNN as well." Then between seasons we were still collecting the cable money which allowed us to gather the funding necessary to make the new seasons of the shows you liked.
Well seeing that people weren't going for cable anymore, all of us tried to get that same money from selling directly to consumers, because surely they were scheduling their lives around watching these shows and weren't watching these reruns because they were what was on, right? And people were staying subscribed to cable because it offered all the shows they wanted and wasn't because it was that or not have any content, [close up] right!?
Turns out no, you were just watching it because it was what was on, and now there's this unsustainable precedent set that you expect these super high production shows to be available for dirt cheap, and then you can just cancel after watching what you want. You have no loyalty like back in the days of cable. How do you expect us to keep making these series that you enjoy so much if you don't keep giving us money. Sure, some people have said "just use your streaming service as a place to syndicate your existing movies and shows instead of making stuff exclusively for them," but that's ridiculous, we know how many people subscribe just for that and even though that's a completely sustainable and pure profit business model as it basically runs itself with almost no operating costs, we want to have everyone subscribed like in the days of cable. WHY AREN'T YOU SUBSCRIBED TO PEACOCK!? [cut to test pattern].
[She's now dishoveled sitting in the corner]. Dedicated streaming, it's completely unsustainable.
[credits and logo]
Oh, and you better watch your favorite original shows before they get removed from the platform. Even though we own them outright it still costs us money to keep them on the platform and if the accountants deem it as unprofitable we're taking it off and calling it a tax loss. There won't be any way for you to watch it because it won't a home media release, why would it, it's available on demand on the streaming service. We don't care about media preservation.
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