For many of us, streaming has entirely replaced the former dominance of broadcast television. Convenience, quality, and scope; all of these aspects and more benefit enormously from these new online systems. Despite this advancement, however, we have recently been seeing developments in streaming services which have left us exasperated and more frustrated than satisfied.
The problem
The primary issue which we now see with streaming services is one which these systems originally combatted; that of choice. A big appeal of streaming services is that they manage to tie together shows from an enormous range of channels, each available whenever the viewer wants.
As streaming has grown so successful, with like likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime making especially great strides, many others have risen to take a piece of the pie. To guarantee the success of their own systems, some of these newcomers have purchased the exclusive rights to key shows.
An example of this is The Office, developed by NBC. As NBCUniversal is now working on their own service, they are taking the show, one of the most popular streaming shows ever, and locking viewing to their system.
With more streaming services such as Apple TV+, Peacock, CBS All Access, and Disney+ entering the fray, the offerings of each streaming company will only further dilute.
Drawing parallels
This isn’t the only way in which we have seen entertainment media carved up in the last few years. Such a development has also been occurring in gaming, and it is in this that we might find an eventual solution.
In major traditional gaming, it was Steam which held the largest market share by far. Recently, however, others like the Epic Games Store have been finding success by offering better deals to publishers and developers. In these cases, games are usually held as timed exclusives. Players on both systems will eventually get access to all games as a solution, but one will obtain first-sales rights.
Another method could be taken from what online casino services offer. Many of these offer the same, or at least functionally similar games such as slots, roulette, dice, and blackjack. For these systems, many games are shared, meaning it is the quality of the individual service which makes the biggest difference.
In this way, we would appreciate a more cooperative effort among major streaming providers, though collaboration on this casino level is probably not as likely as with the video gaming example.
Going backwards
With the inevitable result of these systems being a dissolution of a big part of what makes these services great, at least some components still remain superior to traditional broadcasting. We will still be able to watch on our time, and as many times as we want. The element of choice, however, is not to be underestimated.
Early days of high-speed internet, before streaming became mainstream, had high levels of internet piracy.
This raises the question of how exactly these disparate systems will affect greater viewing figures. How many otherwise happy viewers will turn to other means, and what could this mean for the overall viewer numbers and growth of streaming services?
As frustrating as these developments have been, at least we’ll find out soon exactly how the greater customer base plans to respond.