The streaming wars will intensify. So will the competition among free, ad-supported streamers. TV networks will face the potential fallout from acquiescing to advertisers’ flexibility demands, while advertisers will see whether the money they moved to streaming in last year’s upfront was well spent.

After TikTok’s biggest year yet and Snapchat’s big rebound, those two platforms will continue to face off with Instagram, and all three will attempt to contend with YouTube for creators’ allegiances. And the uneven return to traditional production for shows, movies, digital videos and commercials may put new pressure on TV networks’ and streamers’ programming pipelines or prove that remote production is no longer a trend but an accepted tool for producers.

How exactly 2021 will further shape the future of TV is anyone’s guess. But here are the major factors that will affect its formation.

The next phase of the streaming wars

The battlefield for the streaming wars is close to being set. Discovery kicked off 2021 with the debut of its standalone streamer Discovery+ on Jan. 4, and ViacomCBS will follow suit with the relaunch of CBS All Access as Paramount+ sometime early this year. Meanwhile, although WarnerMedia’s HBO Max and NBCUniversal’s Peacock launched last year, they were somewhat handicapped. Neither were available on Amazon’s or Roku’s connected TV platforms for months after launching. Peacock is still not available on Amazon’s Fire TV, but it reached a deal with Roku last fall. And HBO Max secured distribution on Amazon’s and Roku’s platforms by year’s end.

Now that nearly all the major subscription-based streamers are in market, the fight for audiences’ wallets will escalate. Netflix has the high ground, but Disney+ quickly raced to 86.8 million subscribers in just over a year after its 2019 launch. With the average U.S. household paying for four streaming subscriptions, per Juniper Research, that leaves two slots for Discovery+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and Peacock. The competition is not limited to them, though. With 38.8 million subscribers, Hulu remains a major player. Then there are the niche streamers, like AMC Networks’ horror-centric Shudder and documentary devotee CuriosityStream. Considering the challenging economics of operating a subscription-based streaming service, the heightened competition will put additional pressure on streamers to find ways to acquire and, as importantly, retain subscribers in 2021.

Free, ad-supported streaming bubble

There are so many free, ad-supported streaming TV services that the category has begotten its own acronym: FAST. Companies including Amazon, Roku, Samsung and Vizio have raced to roll out their rivals to ViacomCBS’s Pluto TV and Comcast’s Xumo, and TV networks and digital publishers have similarly sped up to spin out their own 24/7 channels to distribute across …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron