The Disney Grooming Syndicate’s new CEO, Josh D’Amaro, is wisely considering the launch of Disney streaming channels at no charge.
The industry lingo is FAST, or Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television, which, I am confident in saying, is the future of streaming.
Already, FAST outlets like the Roku Channel, YouTube, Tubi, and Pluto are attracting anywhere from 50 to 80 million average monthly users, while streaming outlets (not named Netflix) have hit a ceiling in signing up subscribers.
The thing you need to remember is that the corporate mindset now is all about growth, as in, How do we keep growing our revenue? It’s not enough anymore to make a nice profit year after year. Everything is all about the stock price, so if you aren’t growing, you are dying.
And Disney is dying.
So, with the subscriber ceiling, how do you grow your streaming revenue? There’s only one way, and that’s through advertising.
With a subscription model, you will eventually reach a saturation level where you’ve attracted every subscriber you can. Sure, you can offer discounts and sales, but that will only get you so far.
With an advertising model, the sky is the limit. If you stream a hit show or a big event, you can charge more and more for commercial time. It’s not just the number of viewers that establish the cost to air a commercial, it is also demand for that coveted space to advertise in.
What companies like Disney are discovering is that there is only one Netflix, and even Netflix now offers an ad-supported tier at a discount.
All of this is good news for consumers…
To begin with, we can now be sure that streaming will not go the way of cable and satellite television, where you are forced into an overpriced subscription package where you pay for 100 channels when you only watch four. That’s just not going to happen. Instead, we will continue to subscribe to the individual services we want, and pretty soon we won’t have to pay anything at all. The advertisers will pick up the cost of the programming.
Secondly, once Hollywood is forced to depend almost exclusively on advertising rates, that means Hollywood will have to go back to attracting the largest audience, which means better programming aimed at the masses. That wasn’t true when cable TV dominated. Cable TV was rigged so that Hollywood made billions from forcing you to subscribe to channels you never watched. By simply being a part of your cable package, Hollywood made money on basement-rated channels like CNN, MSNBC, the Disney Channel, Comedy Central, and MTV whether you watched them or not. This is why TV programming became almost exclusively degenerate and left-wing.
Finally, there will still be subscription streaming services for the likes of Disney and Paramount, etc., but eventually the programming on those services will migrate to the free streamers. For example, AMC is a cable network and has a subscription streaming service. Eventually, though, AMC shows end up on Pluto or Roku, where you can watch them for free with ads. In the same way, eventually, the hottest new Disney+ show will cool off and migrate to Disney’s free streaming channel.
The other streaming dilemma is all that inventory and no way to continue to re-monetize it. Eventually, all the streaming subscribers who want to watch, say, all those lame-ass Star Wars shows on Disney+ will have watched all those lame-ass Star Wars shows. Well, Disney spent billions on those lame-ass shows, so having them sit in Disney+ making no money makes no sense. A free Disney streaming outlet will allow Disney to move those lame-ass shows there and make money from the advertising. Disney needs a way to re-monetize all that crap, which means moving them out of the Disney+ silo.
How many millions of idiots continue to pay a fortune for cable TV, which still hits you with 20 minutes of ads every hour?
Get a Roku Player, dummies. There are more free TV and movie options than you could ever hope to watch and far fewer ads.
FAST is the future, and the future is looking good.