Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Wednesday, March 2nd, 2022
Is a credit report-like service coming for streaming subscribers?
Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Wednesday, March 2nd, 2022.
A CREDIT SCORE FOR STREAMING SUBSCRIBERS?
The co-founder of Antenna - which describes itself as the "data platform for the subscription economy" - was tweeting earlier today about the recent announcement that the company had closed a $10M Series A funding round. I recommend reading the entire thread, but this comment in particular stood out to me:
If I understand his point correctly, he is anticipating a world in which streaming services and other subscription-based companies would have enough overall data on a subscriber that they might be able to predict behavior. Is this someone who cycles through services and cancels them quickly? How many services do they use and are they any "gaps" in the types of services they subscribe to?
Customer acquisition costs and churn are major factors on revenue for any streamer and a service that could improve those numbers would be extremely valuable to any subscription-based company. While I am extremely curious about this idea, I also have a number of questions about how this might work in real life, including the inevitable privacy issues that are likely to arise from this.
One hint about where this is headed is laid out in the appendix from Antenna's 2021 Year In Streaming Report, which was recently released:
Antenna receives raw transaction data on millions of US consumers. The data is privacy compliant, as users explicitly agree to share their data and profiles are anonymized. Antenna processes the raw data by adding metadata and modeling in order to report on key subscription metrics such as Sign Subscribers, Churn Rate and more. The data in this report deals in Antenna-- ups, Covered Subscribers, which includes US consumers billed via Direct distribution, Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Hulu (addons), Roku, and YouTube TV (addons).
I've reached out to Antenna and I'm hoping to be able to speak with someone at the company about this. I actually think this is a potentially very smart idea, but I’m also very curious about the logistics of how this might work.
SPEAKING OF ANTENNA'S 2021 YEAR IN STREAMING REPORT
The entire report is well worth reading, but there were two slides out of it that I wanted to highlight:
Generally speaking, it's a bad thing if your streamer depends too heavily on sign-ups that are driven by major new content. That suggests your overall service is not that compelling on its own. And it also makes your service dependent on creating buzzworthy original content. Which is a challenge to pull off over the long-term.
Given what we know about the various SVOD's, it's not surprising that Peacock is the most dependent on content for sign-ups, with nearly 1/4 of all sign-ups in 2021 tied to new content. It's not surprising to see Paramount+ also overly dependent on new content for sign-ups.
At first glance, HBO Max's 19% seems surprising. But I suspect that much of that is tied to the move to shift so many Warner Brothers movie titles to same-day-and-date release.
And then there is this chart:
This chart illustrates continued bad news for both Peacock and Paramount+, who have a majority of subscribers coming for the ad-supported tier. It's fascinating to me that the percentage of HBO Max subscribers choosing the ad-supported tier is so low in comparison to its streaming rivals. My hunch is that it's the result of two factors: the percentage of new subscribers who came over from having a standalone HBO subscription and the fact that the core parts of HBO Max's content (movies and HBO) are likely best appreciated without commercials.
NETFLIX PAUSES ORIGINAL PRODUCTIONS IN RUSSIA
Netflix is pausing all future projects and acquisitions of shows and films in Russia amid Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, according to Variety:
The streamer had four Russian originals in the pipeline, including a crime thriller series directed by Dasha Zhuk, which was shooting and has been put on hold. The 1990’s set series was Netflix’s second original series filming in Russia, following Anna K which wrapped last year.
A source close to Netflix said the company was assessing the impact of current events.
Not a surprising move, and it's worth noting that pausing production isn't a big hit to Netflix's bottom line, since there was only one Russian-produced series currently filming.
STATE OF THE UNION RATINGS
I generally don't post ratings numbers, but I thought the viewer numbers from last night's State Of The Union was interesting:
Fox News 7.2 million
ABC 6.3 million
CBS 4.9 million
CNN 4.8 million
NBC 4.7 million
MSNBC 4.1 million
Does this mean that a lot of conservatives were hate-watching President Biden?
TWEET OF THE DAY
ODDS AND SODS
* Farrah Forke, who co-starred on the long-running NBC sitcom Wings, died of cancer on February 25th.
* Fox is bringing back the dance competition series So You Think You Can Dance this summer. with auditions beginning this month in NYC, Los Angeles and New Orleans.
* Spotify is closing its Russian office "indefinitely" in response to Ukraine invasion.
* CBS has renewed The Bold & The Beautiful for two more years.
* Lindsay Lohan has signed a two-picture deal with Netflix.
WHAT'S NEW FOR WEDNESDAY
Here's a quick rundown of all the new stuff premiering today on TV and streaming:
Against The Ice (Netflix)
Court Cam Season Premiere (A&E)
Neighborhood Wars Season Premiere (A&E)
Pridelands: Wilderness Reborn (Smithsonian Channel)
Savage Rhythm (Netflix)
The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle Series Premiere (MSNBC)
The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure (Netflix)
Click Here to see the list of all of the upcoming premiere dates for the next few months.
SEE YOU THURSDAY!
If you have any feedback, send it along to Rick@AllYourScreens.com and follow me on Twitter @aysrick.