What do you do if you are a media and entertainment company today?
Plain old cable TV viewing is down, with most shows seeing flat or no growth, and many declining. Netflix is on the rise, and the streaming giant is spending $6 billion on content in 2017. It’s already at 100 million subscribers, and has committed to spending $20 billion on new content in the future … which some say is not sustainable.
It’s not just Netflix
Streaming giant Hulu is spending $2.5 billion. Amazon is spending $4.5 billion. Apple is bringing a billion dollars to a multi-billion dollar fight. HBO usually spends about $2 billion, but is probably upping its investment. Meanwhile, pro sports, the last bastion of live TV (beside politics and catastrophes), is streaming into the cloud too. Amazon is streaming NFL. Twitter is streaming live sports, news, and fashion. Facebook just launched Facebook Watch and will stream NFL highlights, UEFA Champions League games, MLB games, Crossfit Games, and World Surf League events.
And we haven’t even talked about ESPN, Crackle, Overstock, Warner Instant Archive, Tribeca, Snapchat, Vice Media, Twitch, Awesomeness TV, and dozens of others OTT, social, network, mobile, and other kinds of companies attacking the video streaming market. Oh, and maybe the biggest of all in terms of time viewed: YouTube.
Back in 2015 I calculated that Americans alone spend an average of 8,061 person-years on YouTube every single day.