Broadcast television is dying. This is something we covered on a number of occasions.
The Holy Grail for the major studios is to get into streaming. This is something that was touted as being a huge money maker. However, this is something that is providing false.
Across the industry we see a ton of companies losing money. They all believe in the Netflix model but that had first mover advantage. Even now, it is struggling to maintain relevancy.
Disney had their earnings call it the numbers were mixed. What should be most concerning, on top of everything else is the fact they lost subscribers.
Streaming relies upon subscribers. Getting people locked in to a monthly fee is paramount.
This is what all broadcasters are trying to achieve. The challenge for Disney is that its streaming service is not growing. In fact, it is contracting.
Subscriber losses continued, with the company reporting 146.1 million Disney+ users during the most recent quarter, a 7.4% decrease from the previous quarter.
This is a big drop in one quarter. It is a trend that started many quarters ago.
To make money, these platforms require a growing number of users to boost the revenues.
For Disney, this is going the wrong way. It is an other burden on top of their movie business which is struggling this year.
My hypothesis is that Web 3.0 combined with technology is going to really upend this industry.
When discussing streaming, this is really just a distribution mechanism. We already saw this disruption with the introduction of the Internet. Obviously, Netflix came at the expense of Blockbuster. This did not impact broadcast television a great deal.
What was not interrupted too much was content creation. We still see the overwhelming percentage of the shows and films coming from a few corporations. This is also going to change.
Software is going to radically alter the abilities of people. Just like anyone with coding skills has the potential to create an application that generates 100 million downloads, we are going to see people do the same with video.
People are going to put together shows and films, much of it done by AI, that will garner 100 million viewers.
A major problem for the likes of Disney is that we are in the early stages right now. We are going to see things improving over the next few years, to the point where people are going to be blown away by what is possible.
Early adoption is always a bit messy, regardless of the technology. However, over time, things get less expensive and easier to use. In short, the product improves.
Take any technology you use today and the early version of it. Notice how things changed over the years.
This is going to happen with script writing software and image conversion technology. While it doesn't provide much competition right now, this will not be the case in a couple years.
It is easy to overlook all this now. However, there is a chance that companies like Disney are surprised by what takes place.
In the meantime, Disney is losing subscribers for its streaming service each quarter. This is a trend it will have to reverse.
