The Streaming Era

 Once upon a time, many years ago, there once existed this place in towns and cities everywhere called "Video Stores" some of these stores were chains of franchises like Hollywood Video and Blockbuster. Other video stores were locally owned and locally ran, Ma and Pop video stores run by people who loved movies that would spend their own money on buying copies of VHS tapes, DVDs and even some video games to put out on their floors and let families show up and rent these movies to either watch on a day off or over the weekend. 

You would RENT these tapes and DVDs for a week or a few days and would need to return it, otherwise the store would charge you late fees and when you'd come back, if you kept the movie out for so long, then you would have to pay for the movie and the late fee. 

In the midst of this, a subscription based mailing service for films came out when the internet was but a wee lad. This subscription service would let you rent DVDs to be sent to your home and you could have it for a longer amount of time than the video stores would let you and on top of that, you didn't have to worry about ANY late fees. You could return it whenever you wanted, of course depending on the plan you picked you could rent Blu-Ray discs as well if you happened to have a Blu-Ray player. After awhile, Netflix then went to streaming and a new era of watching movies began. 

Instead of getting in your car or walking down to the video store to find out whether or not the store had a copy of say "Batman Begins", you didn't have to worry about that anymore, with a good internet and a computer you could watch Batman Begins within seconds by typing in a web address and clicking a few links. Why would you EVER want to go back to renting movies from the video store? You'd have to get dressed, brush your teeth, make sure the car had enough gas and drive down to the store. Deal with traffic, deal with that bum who's always hanging out by the store and look around the store for the movie you wanted or were felt like watching.

Heaven forbid you were so busy during the week you rented the movie and forgot about it, because after that the store would probably call you to remind you forgot to return the movie and now you'd have to pay a late fee. Heck, depending on who you were living with, you'd have to worry that the kids or the dog would ruin the DVD and then the store would charge you even more to replace the movie someone ruined!

WHAT A DRAG RIGHT?!

Of course I'm exaggerating  but hopefully you understand what I'm getting at. Eventually, when people began to realize all the cons to renting movies from the video store, people started to move their dollars to Netflix. Subscribing to the service and finding most if not all of their favorite movies, tv shows and even original movies or shows on the service. It cut a lot of the busy work from watching movies. You could instead have an entire service at your finger tips where you could find your movies easier and pretty cost effective when compared to renting a movie. Pay a static fee, watch a LOT of movies, Friday night movies were much easier to decide on and weekend movies with your boyfriend (and/or) girlfriend or your folks were easier to decide on cause everyone could see what was on offer and jump with excitement to the movie they spotted on the service. 

How about watching TV? 

Well there just doesn't seem to be anything to watch right now, eh? Re-runs of Friends AGAIN, Seinfeld re-runs on the free access basic cable network, the new show EVERYONE is talking about just isn't your thing and there's shows that are just too violent for you to be watching with the kids around. 

How about Hulu!

What Netflix was for movies, Hulu was for television. You could watch entire television shows that either were not on the air anymore or currently weren't airing and you could have TV on demand. Heck, why even keep paying the bill for cable? You could have an entire service for watching almost ANY television show you wanted for a flat rate and not dip into your wallet.

From there, you started to see more and more companies begin to launch their own streaming services with their own gimmicks so you would be interested in paying a subscription fee. 

Shudder was the streaming service exclusively dedicated for horror movies, tv shows and documentaries. 

Disney + was the subscription service for anything Disney. TV shows, cartoon shorts and movies. 

AMC + was anything that was on AMC etc. etc. etc. 

Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit. 

Before we knew it, the entire United States was in lockdown, people were told to stay in their homes and not to go outside. Stores were shut down, offices were emptied and people turned to streaming in order to entertain themselves while they waited for the world to figure how to tackle this new pandemic. We were suddenly thrust into having all this free time on our hands (with some working from home) so with nowhere to go and nothing to do, we turned to streaming movies and TV shows. 

As for the movie business, movies that were planned to go out into the theaters were then shifted to go out on the streaming services. Wonder Woman 1984, for example, was a movie that was meant to be released in theaters but then forced to release on HBO Max. After that, we started to see movies would release both in theaters and on streaming platforms or shortly after the theatrical release you would see the movie in a matter of weeks. At first, this made sense for a lot of people, the pandemic scared a lot of people and going to a theater surrounded by people who may or may not be infected with this new virus was enough to make people forgo the theater experience and instead stay at home to watch the new movie instead. On top of that, many people went a great length of time without a job which meant no income for bills or fun time spending like, you guessed it, going to the theater. Maybe they had enough for a subscription service and there was a good chance those movies hitting the theaters would pop up on the streaming service. You didn't have to spend whatever money you had and you could still have fun watching movies. 

People pretty much got used to this being the way of life when it came to watching new movies. It was a safer bet to see the new movie hitting the theaters at home instead because it meant you didn't take a chance exposing yourself to the Covid virus and it meant you weren't risking bringing it to anyone else at home. Plus, for anyone who saw a new movie hitting the theater and was skeptical whether the new movie was actually worth your time or money, you could save some money by waiting for it to be released on streaming instead. At the end of the day it only cost you your time and not an overpriced theater ticket plus overpriced popcorn.

However, what seems to be happening now is that the streamers are losing subscribers and in turn losing money. Disney + just recently lost over four million subscribers (now 11 million as of writing this). More and more people are giving up their subscriptions to Disney +. Netflix is also losing subscribers and other subscription based services are not gaining more subscribers no matter the amount of content they are offering. 

The Verge, for example, talks about the content boom that streaming services brought us. In the article, the issue is not that there isn't enough content to go around, the issue more over seems to be that there is not content that appeals to the broader audience. Stranger Things is a good example of a show that has a large audience but not every show can be Stranger Things. Shows like The Midnight Club may have a loyal and dedicated fanbase but if it doesn't have Stranger Things numbers, there's a good chance the series will be cancelled and won't see a season two. 

The New York Times, on the other hand gets into the economics of it and simply put, this idea of throw all the money you have at these projects has not worked as well as it used to when we had this boom in streaming content. Now, because of the economics of streaming platforms and television, the streaming services have had to cut down on content and now begin to put efforts into quality productions instead of a quantity of productions. 

We have seen this happen over at Netflix as a new series is released and before you know it the series has been cancelled after one season. In fact, just recently Netflix has ordered a pilot episode for a series instead of a full fledged season release as has been the norm for quite some time with Netflix. 

Despite the fact that people avoided the movie theaters during the pandemic and despite the fact that streaming services took away the theater-going audience, the theater is still where most film lovers would find themselves going to according to a new study as reported by Deadline. 

All of this is to say that what I think is happening is the streaming era is losing it's steam and it is because people have more fun going to go watch a movie together as opposed to watching a movie at home, alone, in your underwear, with the shades drawn and a half eaten tub of ice-cream. People want to have experiences, not content shoved in front of their face to keep sitting at home. 

On top of that, streaming services might not even have what you want to watch in terms of both television and movies. Many nights ago, me and my friends wanted to watch Blade through MAX (formally HBO MAX) and despite that we saw it on the list of films one day, fast forward a couple of days and suddenly the movie was off of the streaming platform. Then fast forward a month or two, Blade is back on the service. While some streaming platforms can offer massive libraries of content, often times the movie or the show we really want to watch is not there and it becomes annoying when you cannot watch the thing you wanted after seeing it was there not too long ago. Some shows are flat out just nowhere to be found on these streaming platforms and it leaves you searching for the show or movie you want to watch to only find out that you need to pay for ANOTHER service that has that one show or movie you're looking for. 

What also is happening, is the resurgence of physical media. There are a  handful of articles written recently that is shedding light on a trend of people buying physical media. Vinyl records, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays and apparently even cassette tapes are coming back. This is happening because as people are realizing or as people have already figured out, digital media is fugacious. No matter how much money you put down to buy a digital copy of a movie, a song, a game or otherwise, that comes with certain limitations. If you do not have an internet connection and you have an Amazon account with a ton of movies and shows purchased, how do you access those movies and shows now? What if one day, Amazon is told to no longer stream a movie because the rights holder or whoever, tells them to no longer stream the movie on the platform? You cannot do anything to keep that movie for yourself and watch it anywhere you would like, that movie is gone. 

Physical Media does not have that problem. You buy a movie on DVD, Blu-Ray (or VHS if you like to go old school) you have a Blu-Ray player, DVD player or VHS player, TV and  you are set. That movie is yours to keep and you can take it to your friend's house, your parent's house or your siblings house, you can watch it there. Even if you cannot play the disc because your friend does not have a blu-ray player, dvd player or whatever it is they do or do not have, at the end of the day, you still own that copy of that movie. 

Streaming has been fun and easy to be sure, but as time goes on, at the end of the day physical media still holds up as a more solid means of owning media from movies, television shows and music. Long live physical media.