Streaming To Overtake Pay TV Subscription Revenue For the First Time in US This Year

Streaming revenue will overtake pay TV subscription revenue in the U.S. for the first time later in 2024, helped by the addition of ad tiers by various streamers, according to a new forecast. From a report: Total revenues from streaming, including subscription and advertising revenue, will start topping revenue from pay TV subscriptions in the third quarter of 2024, research company Ampere Analysis projects in a new study unveiled on Monday. "Streaming will continue to race ahead as traditional pay TV declines -- with the value of pay TV in 2028 expected to fall to half the value it saw at its peak in 2017," it predicts. Streaming subscribers overtook pay TV subs in the U.S. in 2016, but "streaming's lower average revenue per user (ARPU), which currently sits at around a tenth that of pay TV, means that revenue is only now catching up," Ampere explained. U.S. pay TV revenue will still be narrowly ahead of streaming revenue in the second quarter at $17.1 billion to $17 billion, followed by a $17.3 billion to $16.7 billion streaming lead in the third quarter, according to the research firm's projections.

Of course, linear TV got greedy (as did streaming)

[Coopjust]

Of course, linear TV went for zombie TV [nytimes.com]. Everybody wants their own streaming service, so the incumbents that used to air things on TV or put them on associated streaming services have all created their own walled gardens. The end result has been... content being more divided than it's ever been. Rather than having a cable package or a Netflix sub now everybody and their mother has their own streaming services. With inflation in particular and losses there's been a severe contraction as services like Discovery+ and HBO Max merge to become Max, Paramount+ absorbs Showtime as a separate addition (whereas cable subscriptions used to include Showtime Anytime for free or you could subscribe for it online if you didn't have cable)...

Combine that with rising prices and worse content and it just gets more and more unenviable. MAX is the worst, Zaslav has cut content that was already paid to be made and streaming only to not pay royalties... effectively erasing it if you aren't willing to cross the line and pirate. Add in password sharing crackdowns, fees to not see ads that previously didn't exist (Prime Video) and you have a recipe for disaster.

The end result I've seen in the younger generations is a return to piracy, because legitimate access to content has become so expensive, limited, utterly unavailable, or a combination thereof that it's just easier to download something than it is to pay and have an app that provides through a menu.

Cable TV is the worst dinosaur, as broadcast networks have been able to offer direct apps (advertising supported), and paid networks have instead leaned on making everything streaming exclusive...

Re:

[Brain-Fu]

Well the big-and-bundled subscriptions were always very expensive and always included a whole bunch of crap nobody wanted to watch.

Now that it is all broken-out, we can pay a much lower price for just what we want to see, and we can easily rotate our subscriptions on a monthly basis to see the other stuff we also want to see.

Yeah, it is fussy. But it is a whole lot cheaper this way.

Also, most of the really good stuff is available on dvd/blueray anyway, so people with the slightest degree of patience can bo

whatever

[BoloMKXXVIII]

Streaming is on the same enshitefication path as cable TV. Trying to convince my wife to drop all Streaming services. We already dropped cable. There just isn't much worth the time.

Consumers are bad at estimating value

[OrangeTide]

We have consumers who pay their local internet provider some free similar to what a cable bill was 10 years ago, then on top of that pay for multiple streaming services. Services that generally started off at $7.99/mo but are all pushing $14.99/mo now. Multiple services run their own studios that make series for 2 seasons and then cancel. And have the guts to leave those often highly incomplete series listed on their site.

I'm convinced that consumers have no idea what they are doing. They pay money and over time get a worse product in exchange. Eventually the industries decides to hike rates, to cover all of the marketing costs. And consumers take an attitude of: Well, that's life. What can you do?

Re:

[nealric]

I still think the current state of affairs is better than the days of the cable package. At least I'm not paying carriage fees for channels I would never ever watch and have "on demand" for all content. Before, even the most bare bones cable package was $50 a month, and that got you very little over OTA channels (Basically ESPN, the talk heads news channels, and the History channel). Today, $50 will get you Netflix + Prime (ad free) + Youtube Premium, which is way more content. Plus, it's so much easier to

Re:

[Gilgaron]

Oddly, my cell phone carrier has a few bundles for streaming packages that are far cheaper than subscribing directly, and cancellable with a radio button in the carrier app. I'm not sure if the services are hard up for expanding the user base or if the carrier is subsidizing it on their side as a perk.

Poor urban planning

[BishopBerkeley]

To a great extent, this is a reflection of how poorly urban areas are planned that there are no public spaces, no nearby nature preserves or adequate social outlets for people to want to congregate or go on a hike or go on a bike ride or do any number of things other than watch a TV.

Maybe it's too expensive to go have a beer at the bar.

Or maybe all this media has turned the majority of the population into totally unimaginative, unthinking drones who cannot do anything other than sit on a couch and watch TV.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose

[BishopBerkeley]

Normally, when I hear that someone say that expression, I want to pop them in the chin, but in this case, it happens to apply: people are giving up 1000 shitty cable channels that are not worth watching for 10 shitty streaming services offering nothing worth watching.

The blade fell a decade or more ago...

[TigerPlish]

The blade fell and severed the linear TV head 10+ years ago. Only now is the body getting the signal that the head was dispensed with long ago. The zombie is finally, after a great long wait, dying.

But.. streaming isn't the panacea people thought it'd be either. Yes, there's enshittification. Yes, there's balkanization and all the other troubles.

But the worst thing is the quality of the writing.

It's telling I spend more time with old movies and my main intake of "new" is from Japan. The domestic cartoon product has become unwatchable ever since.. let's call it.. 2015.

Why reward this? Why? Fuck 'em. Let 'em eat static.

All tv will be streaming in the future

[xack]

While linear tv channels will still continue to exist, it will all be delivered over streaming aka IPTV. Both Sky and Virgin Media in the UK offer streaming versions of their services instead of satellite and cable now, and terrestrial is getting replaced with 5g broadcast and dvb-i.

How many streamers get free service?

[larryjoe]

Video streaming subscribers really need to be segmented into paying and non-paying customers. For example, I get Netflix free from T-Mobile. If I didn't get Netflix for free, I wouldn't pay for it. There are millions of people getting Netflix and other streams for free. Some of those people would be willing to paying explicitly for the streaming, but some would not.

Maybe streaming is becoming more popular, or maybe the cell phone companies have gotten more aggressive in offering free streaming.

No Ads!

[groobly]

The promise of "pay TV" back in the day was "No Ads!"

The promise of paid streaming not long ago was "No Ads."