Allegedly Disney has declared "streaming is dead", if that is true, what comes next?

DreamcastSkies

DreamcastSkies

Gold Member
I've almost finished Andor Season 2 (just finished episode 9, I have a few episodes left I think). It's not my ideal take or flavor for Star Wars but I can't deny how well made it is. I think it's a very impressive work. I got curious and googled the series name just to see recent headlines about it and I see a lot of headlines covering a recent statement from the showrunner saying that Disney told him that "streaming is dead";

"In Season 2, they said, 'Streaming is dead, we don't have the money we had before'".
- Tony Gilroy (Andor creator)
Quote pulled from this Variety article; https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/andor-creator-disney-budget-streaming-dead-1236416780/


Is streaming dead? I assume what is being expressed by that statement is people are not watching new material made for and debuting on streaming services. But maybe people are spending less time watching content via a stream service in general. I feel like for years I've been hearing the sentiment that movie theaters are doing less business and the experience of going to a theater to see a great movie (something prominent in modern culture for decades) is something in decline. So if the movie theater experience is in decline and Disney is accurate in their assessment that streaming is dead and with physical media in decline, what exactly is next for being the main channel for consuming entertainment?

Are people simply just consuming less entertainment than they used to?
Are there too many options of entertainment for the customer to engage in for anything to do extraordinarily well?
Is Disney wrong (streaming isn't dead) and just deflecting, the low ratings are coming from damaged brands caused by a variety of factors (a lot of poor quality efforts being one of those factors)?
 
There's nothing next. It's a simple reality that comes up when we discuss GamePass that people struggle with.

Costs continue to rise and you hit general ceilings with subscribers, so you raise prices. They're all doing it, but since everyone is doing it it's lowering the ceiling at the same time. So they know they can't simply keep raising pricing without losing subscribers, so you have to start cutting content. A 325 million dollar a season tv show isn't sustainable in any way.

It was a gold rush and the gold rush is over. That's all they're saying here.

The industry responded to Netflix in the only way it could, but streaming isn't dead in the same essence that cable tv is dead. What we'll ultimately see is probably increased pricing and significantly lower subscriber rates until we reach an equilibrium with each service and they'll simply rely on stickier consumers.

It's not that their ratings are bad either. All of these services are all at like all time highs in subscribers.
 
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Mibu no ookami said:
There's nothing next. It's a simple reality that comes up when we discuss GamePass that people struggle with.

Costs continue to rise and you hit general ceilings with subscribers, so you raise prices. They're all doing it, but since everyone is doing it it's lowering the ceiling at the same time. So they know they can't simply keep raising pricing without losing subscribers, so you have to start cutting content. A 325 million dollar a season tv show isn't sustainable in any way.

It was a gold rush and the gold rush is over. That's all they're saying here.

The industry responded to Netflix in the only way it could, but streaming isn't dead in the same essence that cable tv is dead. What we'll ultimately see is probably increased pricing and significantly lower subscriber rates until we reach an equilibrium with each service and they'll simply rely on stickier consumers.

It's not that their ratings are bad either. All of these services are all at like all time highs in subscribers.
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They really should've just pushed Netflix and Hulu to catagorize better, this piecemealing of everything officially turned me into a non-subscriber of all of them
 
It's a horrible business that kills the value of your IP. It's talked about endlessly on this forum with regard to GamePass but Xbox shills refuse to believe it, or think because it's a good deal for them it's a good deal for the company footing the bill. It's just not.
 
DreamcastSkies said:
Are people simply just consuming less entertainment than they used to?
Are there too many options of entertainment for the customer to engage in for anything to do extraordinarily well?
Is Disney wrong (streaming isn't dead) and just deflecting, the low ratings are coming from damaged brands caused by a variety of factors (a lot of poor quality efforts being one of those factors)?
Click to expand...

I see my family members still consume plenty of content, just that most of the content is on Youtube. Streaming services did no favor by increasing their subscription price and this month I already stop paying for Netflix.
 
Puscifer said:
They really should've just pushed Netflix and Hulu to catagorize better, this piecemealing of everything officially turned me into a non-subscriber of all of them
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I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to here, but the reality is that the industry was getting its lunch eaten by Netflix. Netflix was profitable because it had such a large subscription base, but Netflix wasn't paying out what the industry received in box office, home video, and cable. They represented a massive drain on value and the only response was to get into an arms race with them and hope that over time they can bleed Netflix of subscribers bit by bit.

The idea that no one wants to pay for all of these services is absolutely valid, but that's the problem. The problem is the industry has no choice but to try and get that long term value back.

I think Netflix may be in for a rude awakening post Stranger Things' finale. It'll wrap up an era for Netflix that started nearly a decade ago. Netflix doesn't really have the heavy hitters it had when it was making its hay.

Squid Game and Wednesday are not going to carry this service... especially not long term.

I fully expect them to make big content deals to try and hold off a major decline. They'll probably renew their deal with Sony Pictures, they might try and get some shows from other networks onto their service like The Last of Us and Andor. Expensive shows that could probably use greater exposure.
 
If they're going to keep persisting with franchises which they already knowingly and deliberately sacrificed on the altar of wokeness, they may need to be more realistic with budgets, to account for the fact that they already drove away most of the audience.

Achieving the level of success required for Andor (no matter how great it might be) to justify its budget is likely impossible, because of conditions they have largely created for themselves through their earlier vandalism of Star Wars.
 
DreamcastSkies said:
So if the movie theater experience is in decline and Disney is accurate in their assessment that streaming is dead and with physical media in decline, what exactly is next for being the main channel for consuming entertainment?
Click to expand...

If I had to bet, There's a good chance that you're looking at the portal - your phone - right now, and it's the content that favours that delivery method that is the biggest competitor for other media.

So, Social media, YouTube.

Those high stimulation, dopamine providing shorts are grabbing and holding onto people who are spending more and more of their media consumption hours away from broadcast or streamed TV and cinemas, and on their phones. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that a decent percentage of people of all ages would rather watch their favourite YouTube (etc.) channels over a cinema trip or streaming service.
 
if streaming is dead, it's because streaming services killed it.

Insane fragmentation, ridiculous prices, awful content, bad service. You can only nickle-and-dime your audience for so long until they bail out.
 
Pretty much all of these streaming platforms are run at a huge loss right? With the idea being that eventually it's going to tick over to a point where they start making money hand over fist. But it seems like there was never really a plan for how to get to that point, just an assumption it was going to happen. With this kind of talk and them doing stuff like raising prices and including ads it seems like they're now scrambling to make it viable.
 
DKehoe said:
Pretty much all of these streaming platforms are run at a huge loss right? With the idea being that eventually it's going to tick over to a point where they start making money hand over fist. But it seems like there was never really a plan for how to get to that point, just an assumption it was going to happen. With this kind of talk and them doing stuff like raising prices and including ads it seems like they're now scrambling to make it viable.
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Netflix had a profit of 18 billion last year. So they are doing just fine.
 
I only know that asking a bit around my office, it looks like pirating is coming back full force. Most of them don't want to spent 80+euro, and have tons of different sub every month.
 
I think the popularity of live streamers who often goes on hours (Asmongold, Tectone, Hololive, live Tornado chasers, iSpeedshow, etc) also have taken entertainment time away from streaming service. The best thing about these live streamers is that its free and more often a lot more entertaining to its target audience.

So streaming is not dead, its just Disney's idea of streaming is dead.
 
Disney (through Hulu and other owned publishing departments) have put out some decent stuff though, it's just their internal DEI nonsense that is a shit show.
 
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Disney are just hiding their own mistakes for investors, like usual. If anything is dead, it's most of their biggest IPs relevance. Streaming is far from dead. Marvel and Star Wars are dead.
 
MayauMiao said:
I think the popularity of live streamers who often goes on hours (Asmongold, Tectone, Hololive, live Tornado chasers, iSpeedshow, etc) also have taken entertainment time away from streaming service. The best thing about these live streamers is that its free and more often a lot more entertaining to its target audience.

So streaming is not dead, its just Disney's idea of streaming is dead.
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I'm officially old. Unless it's halo championship series or The Spiffing Brit member streams , I never manage to get on YT live streams, let alone for that long.

How do people with a job and adulting responsibilities stream that long? At least with a streaming service, it is on demand. Or are people watching a YouTube live stream playback after it is done?
 
It's a shame that Andor was affected as that's been the only decent Star Wars thing in years, it's even more crazy considering that a lot of people at Disney didn't even WANT to make Andor and funnily enough it was Kathleen Kennedy that pushed for it as a favour.
 
I certainly miss the No Commercials Era of Netflix/HBO/Amazon. $7-$9 a month for that felt like a good deal. $15-$20 for no commercials and less content isn't very enticing.
 
I guess the economics of TV only really worked with customers who were captive to regional monopoly pricing. Hollywood never made TV shows with the budget of Andor before streaming. So they are both making less money and spending way more. It seems to me that the industry wants to go back to monopolies so they can massively cut spending.
 
Disney is for sure pulling back on all their major streaming fundings. I work with a lot of studios who are having to reconfigure their financial outlooks as orders they thought were sure things are evaporating (and not just Diseny, all areas, including commercials) . We're going to be seeing a lot more cancelations, fewer shows, and much much much tighter budgets. Expect a ton of small studio closures.
 
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Soooo
  • Streaming is dead
  • Physical media is dead
  • Theaters are dead


Question Mark What GIF by MOODMAN
 
Decal4 said:
I'm officially old. Unless it's halo championship series or The Spiffing Brit member streams , I never manage to get on YT live streams, let alone for that long.

How do people with a job and adulting responsibilities stream that long? At least with a streaming service, it is on demand. Or are people watching a YouTube live stream playback after it is done?
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I don't watch any of those live stream all the way, just some snippets from the whole stream.

Sometime I just let the live streams play in the background while I'm doing something else like driving to work or mow the lawn.

In fact, I'm currently saving up some videos to listen to for my 6 hour road trip tomorrow to do some work.
 
Disney has just been making a long string of bad decisions, both creatively and in the business sense; it has gotten too expensive for what they offer, and they'll just keep raising the price because they are losing long standing subs.
 
DreamcastSkies said:
Are people simply just consuming less entertainment than they used to?
Are there too many options of entertainment for the customer to engage in for anything to do extraordinarily well?
Click to expand...
Yes.
Yes.

We have a content glut, and that content no matter the final result takes long time and huge amount of money to produce. I would like to see the numbers, but I think a large portion of people are subscribing a few times a year and just binging on what they planned.

You release everything in one go? People sign up for a month and binge.
You stagger releases? People will calculate when to sign up for 1 month, catch up on new episodes + binge the rest.

Also - I think people just don't have time. Prices are going up, people are asked to work more and more, now companies cutting WFH make it even harder to find spare time.
 
SJRB said:
if streaming is dead, it's because streaming services killed it.

Insane fragmentation, ridiculous prices, awful content, bad service. You can only nickle-and-dime your audience for so long until they bail out.
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Yeah, it was good when it was cheap. Now it's priced like it should be having AAA content releasing at all times.
 
Cyberpunkd said:
Yes.
Yes.

We have a content glut, and that content no matter the final result takes long time and huge amount of money to produce. I would like to see the numbers, but I think a large portion of people are subscribing a few times a year and just binging on what they planned.

You release everything in one go? People sign up for a month and binge.
You stagger releases? People will calculate when to sign up for 1 month, catch up on new episodes + binge the rest.

Also - I think people just don't have time. Prices are going up, people are asked to work more and more, now companies cutting WFH make it even harder to find spare time.
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Yep, also add to it that they are running out of Nostalgia pieces and people's expectations and minimum quality bars have increased, while at the same time scripts have been getting worse and worse.

We're quickly running headfirst into an industry reset/shakeup that will see billions, if not trillions of dollars of value shed and major players disappear or get combined. The same thing is happening in the game industry.

The possitives to this? Well after such major resets, new talent and small productions tend to thrive. New ideas will be able to immerge and lots of people will have the opportunity to make a name for themselves.

The cons? A lot of things you care about are going to go away for awhile.
 
Decal4 said:
I'm officially old. Unless it's halo championship series or The Spiffing Brit member streams , I never manage to get on YT live streams, let alone for that long.

How do people with a job and adulting responsibilities stream that long? At least with a streaming service, it is on demand. Or are people watching a YouTube live stream playback after it is done?
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I guess a lot of the people who watch them that much don't have adulting responsibilities.
 
I personally think they mean the endless checkbook is "closed". The Ramp up to Covid and then everyone streaming a ridiculous amount of hours is over. People are working more, thus less time to stream. Not to mention inflation, people don't have the disposable income to have every streaming service.

I think these platforms will have to adopt a style similar to network tv. Have less shows, hopefully a higher quality. AND fill out the tv platform with other types of shows ie "live content". News, sports, documentaries, etc.
 
WhiteWaterM00se said:
I personally think they mean the endless checkbook is "closed". The Ramp up to Covid and then everyone streaming a ridiculous amount of hours is over. People are working more, thus less time to stream. Not to mention inflation, people don't have the disposable income to have every streaming service.

I think these platforms will have to adopt a style similar to network tv. Have less shows, hopefully a higher quality. AND fill out the tv platform with other types of shows ie "live content". News, sports, documentaries, etc.
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Yep. They need a tentpole franchise (like Stranger Things), anchor franchise (Like MCU/Star Wars content), live events (Sports) and then some type of reality tv mixtures (HGTV style stuff) to have a broad set of content that is "renewable", requires engagement viewing and can force ads. This is why the NFL contract is still the most valuable contract in broadcast media, it checks all the boxes and is consistent.
 
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Pagusas said:
Yep. They need a tentpole franchise (like Stranger Things), anchor franchise (Like MCU/Star Wars content), live events (Sports) and then some type of reality tv mixtures (HGTV style stuff) to have a broad set of content that is "renewable", requires engagement viewing and can force ads. This is why the NFL contract is still the most valuable contract in broadcast media, it checks all the boxes and is consistent.
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You are correct.

Despite what i wrote, i personally believe what should really happen is an "all in one" bundle for $59-$89/month.

Microsoft or Apple would be best suited to make this happen in North America. Where you get gaming, music, fitness, E-BOOKS, news, movies and tv streaming all in one bundle.

For this to happen though, Microsoft would need to stop acquiring gaming companies and should have been looking at acquiring Paramount. They would have had live streaming with news, network tv, sports such as the NFL, etc. They should also acquire a news outlet like Bezos did with Washington Post.

If it was me, and I ran MS i would consider.

Paramount acquisition with Xbox IP being put on priority for tv shows, and movies. I would play it safe and not make ANYTHING woke, or controversial. I would go extremely "safe" with a Halo movie trilogy, Or use Spyro, or Viva Piñata as a kids tv series. Minecraft series, movies, books, everything. For example.

If a bundle looked like this for example:
Microsoft:

Spotify membership
Xbox Gamepass
Paramount + with new content from MS
Live streaming of sports and CBS News
Membership to news paper and magazines
Fitness apps like Apple Fitness
Ebooks
Podcast

If this was reworked into one do it all APP platform. I think you could easily charge $49/mo individual and $69-$89/mo for family.

For Apple, in my mind it looks something like:

With Apple acquisitions of TV, media, sports contracts,

Apple TV+ with new content from IP acquisition. DC from HBO for example, or some older IP from around the world to be remade or adapted to today. Flintstones, or Jetsons, Yogi bear, scooby doo, etc.
Apple TV+ also desperately needs some "mainstream" hits. Not just big one off's. They need a NCIS, Friends, or Big Bang Theory style hit. A procedural show that is weekly, that plays to mainstream audiences.
WSJ membership
Apple Music
Apple gaming (true gaming with acquisition of EA or someone bigger companies.) Possibly Ubisoft, Capcom, and Konami. Apple would leverage DC into games and Ubisoft, Capcom or Konami IP into games and movies. (Mass effect trilogy, Plants Vs Zombies, Assassins Creed, Prince of Persia, Rabbids, Rayman, Metal Gear, Castlevania, etc.)
Apple Fitness
Apple creates a live news service with WSJ. Like a CNN or CNBC.
E-books
Podcast
Anime - apple should have some high quality anime. They may have to buy legacy IP and remake it. Cowboy Bebop, Fist of the Northstar as example.
Apple comes to terms with sports, to have live sports weekly worldwide. MLB, Japan, Central America and Korea baseball, golf, NFL or college football. Men's and women's college basketball, F1 or NASCAR, Worldwide fishing, soccer, futbol. Etc.
ICloud+

Services bundled like these could also easily go for $49/mo individual to $89/month family.
 
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Their agenda they've been pushing has made me watch less and the writing hasn't been compelling enough. But surely their focus on LGBTQ+ and Women for male-focused franchises should have drawn a huge audiance. I mean, that is who they focused on by making the gayest Star Wars ever and gender swapping all their marvel heroes as well as focusing on girl-bosses. I think they forget how polarizing children, teens and adults can be and will only watch what they relate to. Entertainment should entertain and if they're not willing to focus on a majority of people, they will be missing a majority of profits.

Streaming isn't dead, Disney is simply committing suicide, as are anyone that follows these trends.

MCU was great when they didn't focus on politics.

EDIT:
I wouldn't say this is a problem, but a lot of creative types tend to be a little more eccentric when it comes to the thing they like and I don't want to generalize but a lot of the entertainment industries creatives tend to be more LGBTQ. Which is fine, but they need to understand they don't run the world and need to focus on where the money is. The whole point of running a business is making money and if you don't, that's the fastest track to becoming a barista.
 
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Disney's egregious self-destruction of all their seemingly immortal brands over the past few years tells me we should never listen to a word they say.
 
Streaming is definitely not dead. This fucking morons are so out of touch. So people aren't bearing down the doors to watch your horrible marvel shows....that must mean streaming is dead.

Or disney wasted billions on (hate to say it) woke shitty programming. Andor does great but she hulk sucks ratings wise so let's get rid of our streaming budget.

The c suite execs have no idea what they are doing and frankly they don't care. David zaslav was just given a vote of no confidence from his share holders but he's still going to get $51 million payment this year. Dude should be making maybe a million. They are utterly worthless
 
I don't know if it's dead, but there's just too much stuff coming out. My watch list has about 30 or so series. Nobody has that much time.
 
If you throw away a franchises fanbase chasing a fake audience it will eventually die.
When you make original tv programs boring and uneventful for dual screen viewing the more exciting screen will win.

The whole industry needs a reset. Or at least a restore point. I suggest 1990s cable tv, vhs and £5 cinema tickets. Rewinding is less of a chore than scrolling through the same 100 shit shows recategorised / regurgitated on front pages of multiple apps. Who's with me?
 
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