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Prime Video Dethrones Netflix as Top Streamer in U.S.

According to Deadline, “Prime Video has supplanted Netflix as the No. 1 subscription streaming outlet in the U.S. in an annual ranking compiled by research firm Parks Associates.” For a majority of the past decade, Netflix had taken the title of top streamer in the United States, with Hulu and Prime Video following behind. However, due to the saturation of the video streaming sector, audiences are far more fragmented than they have previously been.

Though Prime Video is stated to have over 200 million subscribers as of the previous year, and “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has been viewed by more than 100 million Prime subscribers worldwide,” the primary reason researchers believe the service to have gained such prominence is not connected to streaming at all. ScreenRant claims that many consumers have in fact purchased Amazon Prime for its other benefits, which include free same-day and next-day delivery options for merchandise, and view “Prime Video as a fun little bonus to their shopping spree savings.”

In regard to Netflix potentially reclaiming their title, Parks Associates’ Jennifer Kent, VP of Research, has stated that “Netflix’s ad-supported plan gives the company a way to win back subscribers who left over high subscription prices. It also gives Netflix a path to creating unique accounts for those who have been content to share passwords with friends and family in the past.”

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HBO Max and Discovery+ Merger Expected Spring 2023

According to CNBC, the expected name of Warner Bro.’s Discovery+ and HBO Max merged streaming platform will be “Max”, though the title is “is [still] being vetted by the company’s lawyers.” The merger is expected to take place by Spring 2023, and changes are currently being made to HBO Max’s existing platform, such as the addition of Discovery content to streamline the transition.

Variety quotes JB Perrette, president and CEO of Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery, who has stated “The merged HBO Max/Discovery+ will combine the best elements of both services…HBO Max has had “performance and customer issues” — including most recently with the premiere of “The House of the Dragon” — but offers a rich set of features; Discovery+ has more limited features but provides a more robust underlying delivery infrastructure.” He also emphasized the merger is aimed towards reducing churn rates by providing a wider variety of content, while preserving the HBO brand and the “quality” content it offers. Collider reports that this will be upheld through the creation of a platform that is similar to Disney+, as it will “show Warner Bros. Discovery’s brands as individual icons for users to peruse, while titles from HBO, Discovery, DC Comics, and Warner Bros. will be among the initial landing hubs for consumers to select.”

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Hulu Live TV Adds 14 Channels, Announces Price Increase

Hulu has recently been bolstering their premium live TV streaming offering with the addition of 14 new channels. According to Engadget, “most of the new additions will arrive a week before Disney increases the cost of its Hulu + Live TV bundle. After December 8th, the with-ads package will cost $75 per month, up from $70 currently.” Deadline notes that these additions have been slowly phased onto the platform, as "on November 1, the Weather Channel and Comedy.TV came aboard” and the “Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries joining, with Hallmark Drama available as a premium add-on offering” on November 14. “A suite of channels from music video specialist Vevo will light up” on December 1, “along with African-American-focused TheGrio Television Network, JusticeCentral.TV and The Weather Channel en Español.” Hulu currently features over 85 channels and “[ranks] sixth among all pay-TV outlets across cable, satellite and the internet.”

TechCrunch cites Reagan Feeney, senior vice president of Live TV Content Programming and Partnerships for Hulu, who has announced that “[Hulu] [has] been listening to [their] subscribers and [is] thrilled to bring some of their most requested channels to [their] service just in time for the holidays.”

Despite positive rankings, any upsurge in price by the service may cause unease in subscribers. The Disney-run outlet hopes to insulate themselves from raised churn rates as a result of raised costs by providing users with additional channels. The addition of channels such as Hallmark, famed home to a plethora of Christmas-themed romcoms, prior to holiday season may allow for higher retention rates.

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Netflix Announces First Global Live Streaming Event; Chris Rock to Perform

Netflix has announced their first global live streaming event ever, according to Deadline. The streaming platform purportedly began testing this technology in May and have finally decided to utilize it—beginning with an upcoming Chris Rock comedy special in 2023.

CNN cites Robbie Praw, Netflix’s Vice President of stand-up and comedy formats, who has publicly stated that “Chris Rock is one of the most iconic and important comedic voices of our generation” and that “[Netflix is] thrilled the entire world will be able to experience a live Chris Rock comedy event and be a part of Netflix History.” This will be Rock’s second special on Netflix, as his Netflix stand-up debut, “Chris Rock: Tamborine,” was released to subscribers of the platform in February of 2018. This follow-up also succeeds this year’s Oscars’ spectacle in which Rock was slapped by Will Smith onstage, garnering substantial amounts of publicity.

Though this will be Netflix’s first livestreaming event, Netflix has previously hosted live comedy events, such as this past spring’s “Netflix is a Joke: The Festival,” which “featured more than 330 comedians who performed 295 shows across more than 35 venues in Los Angeles” and “sold more than 260,000 tickets.”

Sources from the BBC speculate that this event may “open the door for more live content on Netflix - like sport, real-time reality TV and other major events.”

Numerous competitors of Netflix including Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+, have recently retained sports rights. If Netflix were to broaden their live streaming to sporting events, they may be able to best their opposition and revive their dwindling subscriber base.

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HBO's Performance Bolstered by 'Game of Thrones' Spin-Off; in Talks to Expand Franchise

HBO has recently been reaping the rewards of House of the Dragon’s success; however, the Game of Thrones spin-off was not initially predicted to perform well with audiences. Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO of HBO and HBO Max content, told Vulture, “We had never done a reboot to Sopranos or Six Feet Under or anything like that.” The platform deliberately took its time to select material from which to create the follow-up, due to the high pressure that came along with franchising such an iconic series. HBO wanted a reboot that audiences “would accept as a worthy successor and keep watching every week." House of the Dragon has achieved this feat, as Nielsen recorded “same-day ratings for the 9 p.m. premiere telecasts of Dragon — which measure people who watch the premiere on cable the same night it airs — show episodes pulling in about 2 million viewers each week” and “recent episodes notching just over 1 billion weekly viewing minutes just on connected TVs.”

According to Yahoo Life, “The Season 1 Finale of House of the Dragon became HBO’s most-watched season finale since the series ender of Game of Thrones, with “The Black Queen” viewed by a total of 9.3 million people across all platforms during its premiere on Sunday Night.”

AV Club reported that HBO is in potential talks to expand the franchise further by issuing a second spin-off of the original series, with Bloys recently stating, “I try not to comment too much on development, so there’s not a whole lot to say, other than when we find the story that George [R.R. Martin] is happy with and we’re happy with, we’ll move forward.”

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UK Living Costs Cause Brits To Cancel Streaming Subscriptions

Churn rates are currently soaring in the United Kingdom, due to the increased cost of living within the nation. According to The Guardian, “the total number of UK homes that have at least one paid-for subscription has fallen by 937,000 between January and September.” Families are beginning the process of cord-cutting in order to be able to pay for essentials such as food, energy, and mortgage bills.

Kantar reported that “Netflix accounted for just under 1 in 4 SVoD churners in the latest quarter, but…45% of these Netflix churners dropped out of the SVoD market altogether.” Though Netflix is known for their loyal viewership, with many of their viewers opting to solely subscribe to their service, they have been struggling to retain these subscribers. Deadline stated that the streamer “is in the process of implementing “a new ‘Basic with Ads’ package aimed at attracting new subscribers. The £4.99-a-month ($6.99) option will launch in the UK and US on [November 3]” and will hopefully allow them to make up for recent losses. Disney has also announced that they are debuting an ad-supported version of their service on December 8.

As individuals continue to terminate their streaming subscriptions, it can be predicted that more services will follow the lead of Netflix and Disney+ by announcing economical, ad-supported versions of their platforms to entice viewers.

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Netflix Pursues Gaming Market in New Deal

As the video game sector continues to dominate globally, Netflix is placing effort into creating their own video games to retain subscribers. Netflix Games, which had consisted of three gaming studios and 32 video games based on original series such as Queen’s Gambit and Stranger Things, launched in November 2021. However as of August 2022, “fewer than 1% of Netflix’s 220 million subscribers were engaging with the games daily” according to CNBC. In order to ramp up their gaming engagement, Netflix “acquired Finnish developer Next Games” for $72 million and is building their fourth gaming studio in Helsinki, which S&P Global confirms will serve as their “first internal video game studio”. Netflix Games is projected to expand to 50 video games by the end of 2022 and considerably more gaming content in the future.

Netflix has had a lackluster 2022, with losses of 200,000 subscribers in Q1 and 1 million subscribers in Q2—their “first subscriber decline in more than a decade.”  Though Statista projects the global market value of video games to grow to $268.81 billion by 2025, the market value of the video-on-demand market is considerably smaller, as Statista projects video streaming’s (SVoD) global revenue to amount to only $108.5 billion by 2025. Netflix’s planned move to the video game sector is therefore, a calculated move to salvage their losses and partake in a more profitable industry than SVoD.

Other streaming services appear to be following suit in producing games as well as content inspired by gaming IP. Digiday states Paramount+ series Players, a “mockumentary series spoofing the League of Legends scene” was executive produced by “Riot Games head of League of Legends…Naz Aletaha.” As the SVoD market continues to become increasingly saturated, more companies are predicted to venture into the gaming sector.

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Paramount Considers Eliminating Showtime Streaming Service

According to inside sources, Paramount executives are discussing the termination and merger of Showtime’s streaming platform with Paramount Plus. Showtime is offered at the price of $10.99 and offers shows such as their latest hit, “Yellowjackets”, as well as their long-running drama “Billions”, and the reboot of their popular series, “Dexter: New Blood”. However, with the development of countless new streaming services, from NBC’s Peacock to Disney Plus, vying to compete in this digital era, Showtime may have reached its end. The Wall Street Journal revealed that in 2022, Paramount’s direct to consumer services, including Showtime’s streaming platform, lost 2.4 million subscribers in their second quarter alone, while Paramount Plus gained 3.7 million. Paramount has already made attempts to gain Showtime subscribers by offering a discounted bundle in which subscribers can access both services for $7.99 a month with advertisements and $12.99 a month without advertisements. However, with Showtime’s decreasing numbers, these attempts may have been futile.

A representative of Paramount told Variety “[Paramount] [is] always exploring options to maximize the value of [their] content investment by giving consumers access to great Paramount content through an array of services and platforms,” in response to rumors, while refusing to confirm or deny them. Consequently, Paramount CEO Bob Bakish conceded that Paramount is “having that conversation” in regard to merging the two streaming services, but has not “made a decision to do something on such and such a date” according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Executives are currently incentivizing cable and broadcast channels to allow this merger. If the merger is successful, it would allow for Paramount Global to reduce expenses as the company nears financial uncertainty.

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About Me

Hello, and welcome to my blog, Netflix and Net Profits! My name is Ruchika Bist and my sector is Video Streaming. I will be using Variety, Screen Rant, and Hollywood Reporter as sources. I look forward to keeping you updated on the latest news!