Ads for Netflix and Disney+, fewer episodes: where do streaming services go from here? The key takeaways from an annual conference

“Old is new” and “learn from the past” were two key takeaways from the recent Future of Television Conference, which was organised by Digital Media Wire and brought together representatives from the television, video and digital entertainment industries.

Library content – films and old television shows like Seinfeld – will continue to make up a big part of streaming services, especially now companies feel threatened by a possible recession.

Meanwhile, streaming companies have learned some lessons from traditional television, especially when it comes to advertising.

Channels like Disney+, which have eschewed running advertisements in favour of ad-free, subscription-based services, are now planning advertising-based tiers. These are needed to bring in more money now that subscription growth has slowed.

“Ad tolerance is back on the agenda,” said Reemah Sakaan, chief executive of digital video service BritBox.

As for the shows themselves, streaming companies understand that content is still king. But companies like Amazon are now trying to get more programming for less money, by stretching and squeezing budgets and making fewer episodes of a series.

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Shows like Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are extremely expensive – Amazon reportedly paid US$250 million to buy the rights from the Tolkien family, and spent a further US$465 million on producing the show – and such expenditure is starting to become prohibitive for a subscription-based network, even if the show is a hit.

Producers are already cutting back. According to Bloomberg, Amazon is looking for ways for its Hollywood studio to trim costs, and it will also be reducing the number of episodes in a season for some shows. Other platforms are set to follow suit.

“Content may be scaled down,” said Carol Hanley, president of licensing and research platform Whip Media, at the conference.

Advertising deals could affect programming, said Hanley, as streaming platforms show more violence and sex than traditional television.

“Mass-market advertising has always been more conservative,” she said. “A lot of the content that has been made for streaming has nudity and any number of things that someone might find unacceptable. So telling a story with that kind of content may become more challenging.”

Advertising spots that cut into programmes unannounced may also change the way streaming companies make their programmes, Hanley said. Shows made for broadcast television time their scenes to take account of the ad breaks.

“A lot of streaming content has been designed without ads in mind,” Hanley said. “One of the changes that we will see is that programmes, and even the way we create content, will have to be adjusted somewhat to take account that there needs to be natural breaks that don’t negatively impact the quality of the storytelling.”

Will viewers mind the ads? Ira Rubenstein of US public broadcaster PBS thought that they would accept the disruption of ads as part of the deal.

“On broadcast TV, the trade-off is that you are getting to watch it for free if you take an ad. So I’m not so sure ads will have much of an impact on content,” he said.

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Rubenstein thought that involving advertisers in the process might affect the kind of programmes that are made in a different way, as advertisers want to appeal to a younger audience demographic than streaming platforms, which target the whole family.

One issue that streaming companies have finally become aware of is that there is so much stuff available on their platforms that it is difficult to find something you want to watch.

Searching for a specific show can take a long time, especially as shows often change platforms when their licences expire – the Star Trek universe recently warped to Paramount’s streaming channel from Amazon, for instance.

Interfaces are crowded, and most viewers do not look beyond the first three rows of shows, panellists agreed.

Companies are continually trying to improve their use of user data and their recommendation technology to allow viewers to navigate their sites more easily, panellists said.

One unexpected result of streaming is a boom in non-English-language programming. In the US, viewers have been notoriously reticent to watch subtitled shows, something which resulted in the appalling English-language dubs of Hong Kong films by companies like Miramax.

The success of shows like Squid Game has changed all that, and viewers can expect more non-English fare.

“Non-English-language programmes have become mainstream with the success of [Spain’s] Money Heist and [Korea’s] Squid Game,” one panellist said. “US audiences have been conditioned to subtitles; they can now watch global programming.

“I think that’s exciting, as there are so many great non-English programmes out there that can now find an audience.”

Two things that received scant attention at this year’s conference were the metaverse and NFTs. With tougher economic times looming, companies are taking a back-to-basics approach.

But Joanna Popper, chief metaverse officer at Creative Artists Agency, noted a few interesting developments in the sector – notably that, instead of television companies trying to get their shows into the metaverse, metaverse experiences were trying to get themselves made into television shows.