Expansion during the pandemic
It was a bit of a double whammy – streaming services sold more subs and customers watched much more content durning lockdown…. but during lockdown global film and tv production pretty much stopped dead. So the streamers are now cash rich but content poor – all the customers have watched everything they want to and now don’t have much reason to keep subscribing
Production is going absolutely gangbusters at the moment as everyone desperately tries to add new stuff to their menu – but theres going to be quite a considerable lag before any of that new content reaches subscribers. I’ve been working non-stop of film and TV that will end up on streaming sites for the last 20 months (its been a gold rush for set builders because location work and travel have been so problematic)- but nothing I’ve worked on during that has found its way onto a customer’s screen yet. But how much longer are subscribers going to wait before they cancel their DDs
The costs of working during covid has been immense – worked on a reasonably modest 6 part drama recently and our budget* for covid protocols and testing was more than some feature films I’ve worked on in the past
(* there isn’t actually a ‘budget’ – the streaming service just committed to spend whatever it takes to keep the production running – the spend ran into millions.)
So while production is booming the channels are making some of the most expensive-to-produce content they’ve ever made but not all that cost is going to show as value on screen – but if subscriptions tail off then the return on that investment is going to be pretty low.
