The streaming landscape got complicated and fragmented just in time for the bottom to fall out. Netflix announced its first subscriber loss in a decade in early 2022, cratering its stock; despite some recovery, it’s still only worth about two-thirds what it was at its peak in late 2021. Other streamers are feeling similar pains.
Since then, streaming companies have set about price-increasing and belt-tightening, cracking down on password sharing between households, adding ad-supported tiers and making ad-free tiers much more expensive, canceling shows earlier and more often, and removing recently canceled shows and plenty of older content from their libraries entirely. In many cases, this has left those shows completely unavailable. And that’s to say nothing of the finished or nearly finished products that aren’t being released at all because of, I don’t know, tax reasons?
Bear in mind that the most recent price increases are happening against the backdrop of an ongoing strike on the part of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and SAG-AFTRA. If new show premieres have seemed mostly steady over the summer, the well of scripted content will begin to dry up in the fall, when network TV shows don’t come back for new seasons and the supply of finished stuff that streamers have stockpiled starts to run low.
Even if the strike ended today—which doesn’t seem likely, given that it’s the first time both sides have been at the bargaining table since May—we’re being asked to pay more for these services just as the flow of new shows slows to a trickle.
And while I’ve focused most on the viewer experience, it’s clear that the streaming era has been a failure for the artists who actually make TV, who are being paid less money less consistently than they were before, and who are being told virtually nothing about whether their shows are actually succeeding. Dickinson showrunner Alena Smith outlined the issues eloquently in a post on The Ankler earlier this week:
“In their mad rush off the digital cliff, these companies transformed Hollywood from a high-wage, high-profit, hits-driven industry into a low-wage, low-profit, subscription-driven one,” writes Smith. “They also broke the basic bargain at the heart of show business, which is that creative artists and independent producers will share in the financial success their work creates.”
