Observations on Streaming
By Dr. Ted Baehr, Publisher
With the collapse of the DVD market that was producing two or three times the Entertainment Industry income of the theatrical box office, the major movie studios rushed into streaming as a solution to their financial problems. Of course, there were already some companies in the streaming business, including Netflix, Amazon and Apple.
Recently, two studio heads, when they spoke at a private conference we held, said that the rush to streaming was disastrous for the major studios, especially in the Wall Street financials. The problem is that streaming doesn’t give the Entertainment Industry company any real way of determining the value of the product that you’ve just spent millions of dollars producing. In other words, to sell a product overseas, to China, Germany, England, whatever the market, the country or market evaluates your movie based on the US box office, and then they pay to distribute the movie in their territory according to the amount of money it earned in the United States. Variety twice a year publishes the amounts of all the different countries are willing to pay for A movies, B movies and C movies, which are ranked by box office success. In 2022, the average big movie in Hollywood was costing $160 million, and the movie studios as well as the other streamers rushed in to compete by producing big movies for streaming. According to Nielsen, Disney and Netflix led the pack with $27 billion dedicated to streaming. The result of the streaming fiasco was that Wall Street decreased their valuation of the studios and streamers. In many ways, the strikes by the WGA and SAG benefitted the movie studios by improving their bottom line since they weren’t throwing any money into productions they couldn’t measure.
The two studio heads mentioned above said that the solution to this problem is: 1, to have creative people in positions of authority at the movie studios; and, 2. to rebuild their brand to reach the family audience. Also, both of them said that eventually there will be better measurements devised for streaming.
In the wake of this rush into the streaming financial quagmire, several Christians have decided to get into streaming. Of course, there were several groups that were there already, such as GAC Pure Flix and Redeem TV, who built their businesses on narrow casting, whereas some of the new groups want to build their business on reaching the public at large.
There is always the God-given miracle that some of these will work, but it must be recognized that the public wants constant new programs and movies, which is why Disney and Netflix and others are spending $27 billion. For example, from the theatrical run, one theater company says that we can’t alienate the major movie studios because we need a movie every week, whereas an independent movie studio may give them only one or two movies a year. Another collateral example is MOVIEGUIDE®, which reaches 89 million a month by constantly putting up new articles and reviews. When one Christian investor could not compete with his $4 billion investment, the major entertainment industry magazine said he needed at least $6 billion to have a chance.
Besides these considerations, the question is: is pouring millions of dollars into streaming going to influence the entire entertainment industry to benefit our children and grandchildren. It is highly unlikely that it will. On the other hand, several advocacy groups, of which there are hundreds in the entertainment industry, have achieved tremendous success through their advocacy, such as Planned Parenthood, GLAAD and many other groups.
The Christian Film & Television Commission® is among those groups. In fact, at one point the chairman of the company that owned the largest TV network said that GLAAD and the Christian Film & Television Commission® were the two most effective advocacy groups.
Advocacy means for us that we show the entertainment industry that they can improve their bottom line by producing entertainment that celebrates the Good, the True and the Beautiful.
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