EXCLUSIVE: HBO’s streaming walled garden is coming down, it seems. In a hugely surprising move, Deadline understands that Warner Bros. Discovery is shopping some of its HBO library titles to rival …
This makes sense. There’s too many streaming services which leads people to piracy. Reducing the number will drive people to the one platform. If you make it easy for people to obtain content the rights holder will get paid.
Piracy is alive and well these days, especially for streaming network shows. Most who download pay for the network they come from, but want to save a copy in case the show is canceled and forever removed (see Max for thousands of examples)
Something like a syndication model makes a lot of sense. Certainly more sense than every studio or legacy network trying to operate its own streamer. I also see a lot of potential in FAST services like Pluto, Freevee, and Tubi. Locking old content behind a premium-priced ad-free streamer isn’t necessary.
Streaming services really don’t print the money the executives thought they would. Netflix originally made so much money through subscriptions and it paid for the licenses for shows. Everyone won in that situation. Then executives got greedy and wanted it all. They created their own Streaming services but the subscribers were not there. They diluted the market and wasted billions on original content. Only now do they realize the mistake.
Of the big streaming services I think Paramount fails first with Max being second. Peacock will be around losing hundreds of millions a year because NBC will ignore it. The failure of putting NFL games on there and not getting viewers will be a big story. Eventually everything will go back to Netflix except Disney+ which will absorb Hulu and use it as it’s main platform for licensed shows.
