LogFAQs > #893183108

I ask myself this very question from time to time. I think what we're going to see is the inevitable zit-popping of many of these startup streamers -- we're already seeing it with a few of them in the last two years, and it will continue happening so long as new niche services like Shudder continue sprouting up. Consumers can only get stretched so far and there is already a ton of negativity swirling around society across the many younger people who cut the cord and switched to Netflix on the (inevitably short-lived) premise that it would just have "everything" and that would be that.

We saw it when they grumbled over "having" to get Hulu. We saw it with the grumbling over Amazon. We see it with the grumbling of Star Trek fans over the -- apparently -- not-so-terribly-unsuccessful CBS All Access. We'll continue seeing it through niche portals like CW Seed. We will absolutely see it with The Mouse, or Disney Vault, or whatever they decide to call it. (But that won't matter one bit; that streamer is destined for success, let's be real.)

At a certain point, it's going to hit a paywall that up-and-comers can't match, because the smaller-fry streaming services just won't be able to afford anywhere near what Netflix and Amazon etc are tossing into their original programming budgets, and the allure of "premium" will fade, and we'll be left with something akin to the network TV prime Big Four. (I think it'll be closer to a Big Eight, seeing as basic cable is taking repeated beatings over this as well; a 0.6 is ample legroom to survive on most cable networks now -- can you imagine the Save Farscape campaign in that environment? We wouldn't have gotten a miniseries; we'd have never had to worry. A 1.4 series low. Good grief, they'd have renewed it for three more seasons!)

So no, I don't think streaming is going to die anytime remotely soon. I think it will continually expand until ~2020 or so and then it will visibly contract. I think by 2025 we'll have that Big Eight, and everyone will have that Big Eight, and there will be packaged deals aplenty (we see them already) that combine them all into the must-haves. And somewhere along the way, some late-blooming millennial philosophers will come along and say, "wait, I'm watching these old 90s sitcoms and all these characters are commiserating that there are 700 channels and nothing to watch. Why do I only have 8?"
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