Paramount Global reported its fourth-quarter financial results on Wednesday with a streaming loss posted ahead of a sale of the studio to Skydance Media.
While I do agree competition is healthy. I don’t think every company should have their own streaming service, it’s not sustainable and means that each company needs to be churning out consistent content. It would make more sense if they just let their content be accessible through the platforms that would dedicate themselves to streaming.
I guess the issue is what would they be competing on and what would these premium features be? The more features you add, the less it becomes a place to watch things. That’s why you have Netflix offering games with your sub as well now. You can add multi-viewing parties and more experiences like bander snatch again, but at a certain point it just becomes a platform for general content versus shows and movies.
A feature I’ve seen oft-discussed but never implemented is the ability to create your own personal channels or playlists on a streaming service. For Paramount specifically, I’d create a “Star Trek” playlist that would play an episode from a random Trek show, and at the end of each episode it could ask me whether I want to keep going with that show or “shuffle” to a new one on the channel.
For Netflix or other services with extensive catalogues of comedy (or other single genres, like police procedurals), I could see people using a similar feature.
The idea would be to find a middle ground between the choice paralysis of selecting a movie or show to stream, and the lack of control that came from traditional television.
I’d argue studios shouldn’t own the channels at all. It’s hamstringing the industry, starving out movie theaters and preventing creatives from shopping their content to competitors.
I think it’s slowly moving backwards again. For example, I am starting to see some parmount+ content popping up on Netflix, though it’s about 6 months behind of when it’s released.
While I do agree competition is healthy. I don’t think every company should have their own streaming service, it’s not sustainable and means that each company needs to be churning out consistent content. It would make more sense if they just let their content be accessible through the platforms that would dedicate themselves to streaming.
competition is healthy but fuck i wish they didn’t compete on catalogue - i wish they competed on features, or maybe “premium offerings” or something
I guess the issue is what would they be competing on and what would these premium features be? The more features you add, the less it becomes a place to watch things. That’s why you have Netflix offering games with your sub as well now. You can add multi-viewing parties and more experiences like bander snatch again, but at a certain point it just becomes a platform for general content versus shows and movies.
A feature I’ve seen oft-discussed but never implemented is the ability to create your own personal channels or playlists on a streaming service. For Paramount specifically, I’d create a “Star Trek” playlist that would play an episode from a random Trek show, and at the end of each episode it could ask me whether I want to keep going with that show or “shuffle” to a new one on the channel.
For Netflix or other services with extensive catalogues of comedy (or other single genres, like police procedurals), I could see people using a similar feature.
The idea would be to find a middle ground between the choice paralysis of selecting a movie or show to stream, and the lack of control that came from traditional television.
I’d argue studios shouldn’t own the channels at all. It’s hamstringing the industry, starving out movie theaters and preventing creatives from shopping their content to competitors.
I think it’s slowly moving backwards again. For example, I am starting to see some parmount+ content popping up on Netflix, though it’s about 6 months behind of when it’s released.