Author Topic: Streaming vs Broadcasting  (Read 299 times)

AZRedhawk44

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Streaming vs Broadcasting
« on: July 08, 2021, 06:54:11 PM »
What do you think is more costly or more profitable for a content deliverer?  I guess in old parlance, that would be a TV channel or network, and in new parlance, a streaming service.

Take someone like ABC from broadcast 1980's, or TNT back in their peak in the 90's, or AMC at their peak in the 2000's.

ABC will fill day time TV with game shows and several varieties of soap operas to satisfy the stay at home customer demographic, then have cartoons starting around 3 or 4PM, newscasts from 5 to 7 (local and national) and then sitcoms or dramas in the evening.  Some syndication finds its way in there but it seems to me that ABC in the 80's was largely new content.

TNT got heavily into redistribution rights for popular action movies, and they got into NBA broadcasts for awhile, some original programming, but they made bank by giving people "movies for guys who like movies" and such.

AMC became a channel dedicated to re-running popular movies, but then really hit their stride with Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and The Walking Dead.  They'd produce one of those shows every season, then shift to the next original show next season in order to keep viewers hooked on their network.

Now we are in the heyday of Disney+ offering a back-catalog of 75 years of content, and producing 1-2 shows every 2-3 months in order to keep viewers hooked.  But in contrast to the past, they don't have to schedule or broadcast anything, they just control authentication to their huge library that is stored on global content distribution networks.  On demand consumption eliminates the need to program 24/7/365 broadcast of content.

Obviously the Mouse House is sitting pretty with their deep library, and other streaming providers handle things differently.  I subscribed to HBOMax for awhile and they seem beholden to the HBO model of content distribution.  A limited set of content that cycles on a monthly basis, and the old content is then no longer available.  Netflix, in contrast to Disney, often has a dozen or more new products every month... but in contrast to HBOMax, they don't seem to pull anything ever (as long as it's theirs... they do have limited time distribution for 3rd party content they acquire from other producers).

Do you think the old daytime fillers of soaps and game shows will survive as more and more of society shifts to streaming and away from broadcast consumption?  And what does that do to talent markets?  Lots of metro areas used to have original programming on their affiliate local channels.  In Portland OR, my home town, we had a show in the 80's called Ramblin' Rod.  It was a children's variety show like Bozo the Clown in Chicago, or Wallace and Ladmo in Phoenix or many others that were out there.  And evidently Jensen Ackles of Supernatural got his start on some shitty daytime soap opera before making it big with Supernatural and recently getting on with The Boys.  With centralization of production and on-demand consumption, is there only room for Chris Pratt/Evans/Hemsworth to star in everything and no one else to get any roles?
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cordex

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Re: Streaming vs Broadcasting
« Reply #1 on: July 09, 2021, 04:16:53 AM »
Seems to me there is plenty of low budget, junk filler on streaming services.