Studio's Split-Channel Scam Causes Stall in Streaming Economy
Hollywood’s greed has done it again, rerouting yet another positive step forward in media availability for the sake of corporate wealth, and essentially ending the streaming revolution once and for all.
Now, instead of cutting our the exorbitant cost of cable for the ease and variety of Hulu or Netflix, a vast number of Hollywood studios and other assorted startups have taken their content hostage, refusing to allow the conglomerate streaming services to carry it, and then subsequently attempting to weasel their way into your wallet for $6 to $15 per month. At this point, to get everything that you may have gotten with early 2000’s cable, you’d be paying an arm and a leg for no less than 7 or 8 of these services, both with your hard-earned wages and with your data, which is being harvested in unconscionable ways.
Americans are officially over it, it seems, as the streaming market is now in full stagnation.
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The proportion of U.S. households who have video streaming services has stalled at 86% (up 0.4% points quarter-on-quarter), after seeing substantial growth in the fourth quarter of 2021. This means there are now 110.2 million households accessing streaming services, as of March 2022.
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While flat overall, there are growth differences across the streaming tiers. SVoD (paid streaming without ads) is down 0.2% points to 81.4%, while AVoD (paid ad-supported streaming) grew by 2.2% points to 20.2% household penetration. FAST (free, ad supported streaming) grew by 0.9% points to 25.3%.
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While AVoD and FAST streaming continues to grow, their growth slowed compared to their rapid growth in previous quarters.
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Live Pay-TV is flat, continuing to have 60% of U.S. household penetration
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8% of U.S. households accessed a new service in the first quarter, down from 9% in the fourth quarter of 2021.
It was nice while it lasted, but it appears as though we are no longer able to receive the bang for our buck that the short-lived streaming revolution promised.