The honeymoon period between streaming platforms and audiences is officially over – what can these companies do to keep the romance alive?
This article first appeared in Film Stories issue #48 in January 2024.
Price hikes. Crackdowns on password sharing. Films and programming being yanked from platforms. Promised projects being completed then deleted. Dwindling subscriber growth. Overexposure that devalues blue-chip titles. Flooding the market with sub-par fluff. Need we go on?
This past year has seen plenty of companies scrabbling for a foothold as the economic promise of a streaming nirvana failed to materialise. Share prices dropped.
Stockholders shook fists. Belts were tightened, new promises made regarding greater financial responsibility and it all felt like a far cry from the heady gold-rush days, just a couple of years back when streaming was the promised land that would yield profits in perpetuity and offer an abundance of choice for audiences, forevermore.
Here in 2024, no longer can ‘back up the money truck’ be considered as a viable strategy for competing in the next phase of the streaming wars. Companies have to now think about meaningful ways, big and small, to distinguish themselves from their competition. But how do they do that?
Interface design
Let’s begin with an easy win.
Netflix launched the first digital streaming platform all the way back in 2007. That just happens to be the same year as Apple released its first-generation iPhone. When you think about the countless small but meaningful ways in which the iPhone user experience has been continually iterated in the years since to make for a better hands-on interaction with the tech, it’s hard to say the same thing about Netflix. Despite improving over the years, the design interface still prioritises parading new things in front of your eyes over letting you easily enjoy things that you’re in the middle of. It’s not a new complaint but end-sequence skipping is still the most egregious example of this, though you can now turn this off (although annoyingly, you have to head all the way to the web version to do so).
Still, Netflix’s interface design is still way ahead of others. Amazon Prime Video’s user interface is as cluttered and random as its digital retail arm, whilst Disney’s more minimalist approach may look aesthetically pleasing but continues to be hideous to use, such as the ten clicks needed just to enable subtitles. The same is true for Apple, with the tech giant’s trademark clean yet intuitive design principles yet to be realised on its streaming platform.
What do we want? More customisation options. Give us more tools to build an interface that works for us, given how much time we spend using these applications. If we don’t want the auto-playing top banner, let us remove it. If we want to split Disney’s Star section into films and TV shows (or even get a basic pop-up description of plot and film duration as we tile-surf, Disney!) why not let us do that?
A less obvious algorithm
Here’s a thought: if I’ve just finished facing down the apocalyptic angst of Leave The World Behind on Netflix, try recommending something for me that doesn’t involve even more programming in which people grimly struggle to avoid desperate fates.
Unsurprisingly, almost two and a half hours of (entertaining) existential discomfort tends to be my limit for one sitting. To that end, whilst there’s no denying that the mighty algorithm is a clever beast, is it ever particularly inspiring?
Beyond offering us what the streaming platform in question wants us to watch, something that we’ve already hand-selected for our watch-list, or something that’s popular with other viewers, what can the mighty algorithm do when it comes to recommendations? As far as Netflix goes, what’s the point of us rating films post-viewing if the subsequent recommendations feel so… cookie-cutter?
Throughout 2023, the world (or at least some parts of it) seemed to acknowledge that treating cinema as little more than a never-ending kaleidoscope of browsable content tiles works to nobody’s advantage. Film works best as a medium when it is carefully curated and whilst not every streaming service can be MUBI, they could all strive to be a ‘slightly more MUBI’, perhaps just by including one left-field choice in those follow-up recommendations, not just the next big thing that the streamer wants us all to watch. Which leads us nicely onto…
Not content
Here’s the one that really would make all of the difference when it comes to ridding film of the cursed ‘content’ tag, not to mention adding the kind of value to its films that can’t be measured in dollars.
Try a little context!
For example: if you have a row of films titled ‘1990s gems’ or ‘critically acclaimed films’, why don’t streamers expend just a small modicum of their vast resources taking the time to ground these films within those advertised parameters?
A few lines would be all it takes. Then, the audience has a better understanding of why a film was a 1990s gem, or what is acclaimed about a so-called ‘critically acclaimed’ film. Otherwise, in our hypothetical case, you just get Spider-Man: No Way Home sitting right next to Monty Python’s Life Of Brian with nothing to distinguish the two, nothing to contextualise the vastly different (yet undeniable) impact that each film created upon release.
Again, this is something that smaller streaming platforms like MUBI or perhaps BFI Player do really well and let’s be honest, it really wouldn’t be that difficult to implement for larger streamers: at a baseline level, a paragraph of text would suffice to explain why a film is interesting or significant in some way. If you’re reading this magazine, then you likely share the opinion that every film has something of value that makes it interesting in some way or another.
However, despite regularly spouting words to that effect, we’re not sure that these larger streaming platforms such as Disney, Amazon and Netflix actually do feel the same way about it. If they do, this would be a meaningful (and relatively simple) way to prove it.
Preserving the past
Perhaps this is a rather fanciful addition to the wish-list but if a streaming service wants to earn some goodwill from fans and filmmakers, why not contribute to the debate regarding film preservation? It was only back in November 2023 when Christopher Nolan half-jokingly called streaming platforms “evil” as he pointed out that the only way to truly access Oppenheimer forever was to own it on physical disc.
Corporate trends in 2023 have seen films and TV shows disappear from streaming platforms, presumably to never be seen again. Given that we’re living in some kind of cloud-based, digital World of Tomorrow, stuff shouldn’t be going missing like an analogue reel of a 1960s Doctor Who episode that was mistakenly shoved in the wrong cupboard.
That’s what’s happening though, and should this worrying trend continue, it’s only a matter of time until something truly revered is removed, a moral panic breaks out and politicians and regulators step in. Long-term, streamers will be in a much better position if they at least help to shape the narrative rather than eventually being shaped by it. Like anything in life, there’s an answer out there somewhere to this problem but until the streamers begin talking about it, it won’t be appearing anytime soon.
Supporting cinemas
Granted, we saw some progress with this one throughout 2023: both Apple and Amazon made huge commitments to the theatrical experience, establishing deals that would see each studio’s major releases head into cinemas before debuting on their respective streaming platform. It’s taken time to get to this point but these Silicon Valley ‘disruptors’ have finally come to see the value in theatrical exhibition: it raises a film’s artistic, commercial and cultural value, helping to distinguish it from being just another tile, lost in a sea of ‘content’.
Napoleon, a 158-minute historical drama, is on course to earn $200m at the global box office. Whilst that won’t all be pocketed by Apple (the film’s financier), a hefty chunk will. Then, all of that critical conversation, commercial profile (plus any awards chatter) will feed into subscriber interest for Apple TV+. That’s without mentioning the next wave of buzz that will surround the project when Ridley Scott gets around to releasing his purported four-hour cut onto the platform.
In real terms, Apple isn’t going to lose a thing by putting Napoleon into cinemas. The studio only stands to gain, especially when you compare the film’s reception to 2022’s Emancipation. That was another historical drama backed by Apple that also had lofty aspirations, yet without the benefit of a theatrical release, Emancipation came and went on Apple’s streaming platform with barely a whimper. Not to mention leaving Apple $120m lighter in the pocket as there were no box-office takings to offset the film’s sizeable cost.
In an era where the economics of streaming are being seriously debated, being able to recoup a decent portion of your production costs via a theatrical release has to be a boon, harking back to the good old days of physical media where a film enjoyed two major financial runs – first theatrically and then on home formats. That system worked (until streaming came along), but rebuilding a similar operation where movies have two distinct chances to make money surely works to the benefit of everybody?
The one streamer yet to fall in line with this logic is Netflix, although the company’s long-running argument that platform exclusivity is the be-all and end-all is beginning to look increasingly short- sighted. Should this growing trend continue (and we suspect it will), years from now other streamers could be dropping big theatrical hitters (or buzzy mid-budget titles) onto their services, gilded by successful theatrical runs.
Netflix, meanwhile, will be left to either license these films (should its rivals even continue to allow that) or rely on its ‘made for TV’ movies to continue drawing eyeballs and maintaining subscriptions. You have to ask yourself, will that be enough to maintain its lead over its rivals?
Data transparency
To its credit, Netflix has led the way in this respect (even if it was pushed towards it by the assorted Hollywood strikes of 2023). Towards the end of 2023, the company released a huge swathe of data regarding what audiences had been watching in the first half of the year, with figures to show the total hours of viewing for almost everything on the service between January and June.
Hopefully, other companies will follow suit because frankly, this writer is tired of sitting in the middle of an increasingly polarised debate regarding streaming viewing. For example, on one hand, you have Disney CEO Bob Iger telling us that the latest series of The Mandalorian is extremely successful, whilst on the other, online haters revile it as the worst thing ever.
The truth no doubt lies somewhere in the middle but until streamers show some accountability by releasing more viewing data, the wearying pop culture debate will continue to dominate our ears. Whether it’s Star Wars shows, expensive Amazon originals or Netflix movies, it’s an exhausting and unnecessary conversation that could be instantly cleared up with the help of a few helpful figures.
Let stars shine
In fairness, this one isn’t just a streaming problem, but it is the streaming platforms that are in line to suffer the most from this looming problem: where are the stars? A widely discussed 2023 survey by Puck found that of the top 20 movie stars that audiences would pay to see, only one (Chris Hemsworth) was under 40.
With their unrelenting focus on intellectual property, studios and streamers are destroying the potential to create movie stars and notable filmmakers. We can all name directors that have crossed over from theatrical projects to streaming, but how many filmmakers can you name that cut their teeth on streaming projects first?
This is a problem for the entire screen industry, but it’s a bigger one for streamers. Why? Cinema will always have the advantage of scale. A screen that is 30ft tall tends to add grandeur to anything: it can make a new prospect into a Hollywood icon; it can transform a single powerful image into the defining moment of a generation. When the Tom Cruises and Julia Robertses of this world are gone and there is nobody to replace them, at least cinemas will have scale. What will streamers have?
As with every other problem here, there is a solution. We’ve already discussed the value of putting films onto cinema screens first, but there are simpler ways to foreground stars and directors: show behind-the-scenes footage, include actor and director interviews and biographies, and make the director credit both prominent and accurate – a simple win that both Disney+ and Max (in the US) seem to have a problem realising.
In fairness, some streaming apps already do some of these things, but the one that puts it all together in a user-friendly experience will position itself as a more serious steward of cinema… and that would be a welcome change.
