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As Disney And Apple Battle Netflix, The Big Losers In The Streaming Wars Could Be Us

This article is more than 4 years old.

When everything is just content, and nostalgic reruns are bigger attractions than the next big thing, nothing, not a big movie or a big TV show, matters as individual entertainment beyond a notch on streaming wall in this era of “peak choice.”

With Apple TV+ launching this past weekend and Disney+ gearing up to roll out on November 12, the “streaming wars” have begun. Having perused much of the offered Disney and Apple content offered to critics in advance of the big launch, the big offerings from Apple TV (The Morning Show, Dickinson, etc.) and Disney+ (High School Musical The Musical The Series, Encore, The World According to Jeff Goldblum, Marvel’s Hero Project, etc.) which I have thus far sampled are… fine? They aren’t aggressively bad,” (although High School Musical tries and thus far fails to be Glee Jr. without knockout musical numbers), but nor are they essential viewing.

Netflix will continue to be Netflix, throwing unholy amounts of borrowed money into new shows and movies to compensate for the popular third-party favorites leaving the service for their proverbial home planets. Hulu will be essentially the “adult” arm of Disney+ (while Disney+ will be powered by kid-friendly nostalgia and Marvel/Star Wars shows), and Amazon Prime will continue to be the one you have because you like the two-day free shipping. Meanwhile, Comcast will launch Peacock sometime next year, offering both a pay-per-month variation and an ad-based version free of charge. Last week’s big announcement came from Warner Media, which made its big presentation for HBO Max.

For the $15-per-month price that folks pay for HBO Now, consumers can get the whole Warner Media sandbox, including, Friends, the various Warner Bros. movies new (Aquaman), old (2001: A Space Odyssey) and niche (Studio Ghibli movies, which convinced about 90% of Film Twitter to sign up). No word on the fate of $72-per-year DC Universe streaming platform, or whether HBO Max will provide some solace for folks mourning the death of Film Struck, but those willing to pay that $15-per-month will get 10,000 different shows and movies. Like the DC app (which features comics, blog posts and a message board), HBO Max will emphasize interactivity with podcasts and celebrity recommendations.

All these major streaming services will offer different price points, different hooks, but a similar goal: That consumers will decide that their streaming service is worth a subscription while another one isn’t. The established likes of Netflix and Amazon will begin with an advantage, while Disney+ will have an edge with the Star Wars, MCU and various Disney brand offerings. HBO Max and Peacock face a comparatively uphill battle, as I can’t imagine kids begging mommy and/or daddy for HBO Max or the Comcast offering. Apple faces the biggest challenge, both because it’s not known for filmed entertainment and because, lacking in IP, it launched with comparatively original content.

Apple’s initial line-up will emphasize Hollywood-worthy production values, big stars and the kind of adult-skewing content that once defined so-called “peak TV” before the streaming wars sent everyone else diving back into brands, franchises and IP. Apple’s launching price is just $4.99 per month. Apple’s super-cheap price point isn’t that much less than Disney+’s ridiculous $6.99-per-month launch price. Not counting any early bird discounts (like the $142 upfront fee I paid for a three-year subscription just after D23), you can get Disney, Hulu and ESPN for $12.99 per-month. And, yes, anyone who uses Amazon Prime’s two-day shipping automatically retains their Amazon streaming subscription, making it like a bonus feature.

Peacock has the misfortune of being last and in being “Oh, the other one” among major studio streaming services, which is why it’s offering a “free with ads” version too. CBS All Access ($5.99 with ads and $9.99 without ads) and DC Universe may not be long for this Earth, with the latter possibly getting sucked up into HBO Max (hopefully with all the bells and whistles) and the former latching onto an existing service, such as Netflix. Save for Apple TV, all these services currently offer or will offer more streaming content, new and old, than anyone will ever have time to watch. There’s something for everyone, for better or worse.

Whether they intend to or not, Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ and HBO Max will be emphasizing quantity or quality, the familiar brands and IP over the original or new-to-cinema/TV franchises, the niche over the zeitgeist. That’s not to say that these sites won’t offer good movies, great TV and important art. The niche will of course, as we’ve seen with Netflix, allow underserved voices to get a seat at the table. But these positive offshoots won’t be the goal, to the extent that they ever were. The goal will be to hook new subscribers and offer just enough new content for them not to bother cancelling. 

To the extent that any company is going to “win” the streaming wars, the services may be cheap enough to ensnare general consumers. As much as we’re all talking about the flood of streaming options and which ones will or won’t get your entertainment dollar, let’s look at the whole package. Without (yet) counting the various streaming platforms which will be offered free for service phone/cable customers (Netflix, for T-Mobile, Disney+ for Verizon, HBO Max for AT&T, etc.), how much will it cost to subscribe to all this stuff? Frighteningly, potentially less per month than a single trip for a family of five, with concessions, to the movies.

CBS All Access runs you $10 sans commercials, while a month-to-month Disney/ESPN/Hulu plan costs $13. Disney+ by itself will be $7 per month, or $70 per year, while Hulu sans ads is $12. HBO Max will be $15 per month, while DC Universe remains either $8 per-month or $72 per year. Presuming you want the best Netflix plan (four Ultra HD streams), that’s $16 per month, although a “standard” plan (two HD streams) runs $13. Amazon Prime, for non-students, costs $119 per year or $13 per month. Apple will cost $5 per month, while Shudder (a horror-specific streaming site) will cost you $6 per month or $57 per year. 

Noting the Disney/Hulu/ESPN bundle but otherwise buying everything else on a month-to-month ala carte basis, that’s “just” $86 per month. If you go for the cheapest Netflix and buy “in bulk” for the whole year for Disney+, Amazon, DC Universe and Shudder, that’s around $74 per month for almost every streaming site of relevance. Considering most cable bills run over/under $100 per month, that’s almost reasonable. If you can convince enough folks to just subscribe to everything, under the bet that it’ll be a pain to cancel, well, we’ll see. The bigger question is whether this rush to streaming devalues everything by emphasizing “choice” and “your old favorites” over “must-see new stuff.”

It’s that odd mournful feeling I get every time I see a Lord of the Rings DVD in the discount bin, or a major movie that I breathlessly anticipated now existing as a basic cable afternoon movie, that a film that was once a major cinematic event and a cultural touchtone is now another brick in the wall. The focus on streaming for the near future will offer a continuous variation of that feeling. Everything will just be a random selection on a random streaming site, of little value in and of itself but existing merely to inflate the amount of content a service happens to offer.  

It’s no coincidence that, even in this “streaming original” era, huge mega-deals are being struck for oldies like Friends, The Office, South Park and The Big Bang Theory. The various new offerings will be so targeted toward specific interests that the very idea of the shared entertainment, that big movie or that water cooler TV show that everyone watches and talks about, may become an endangered species. I’m not the first to say this, but the concurrent releases of Avengers: Endgame and series finale of Game of Thrones felt like the end of communal entertainment. Even Star Wars films or big-budget Jennifer Aniston/Reese Witherspoon episodics will now be notches in the content mill.

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