admin There was a time when Movie Theatres were amongst the few places where you can go to entertain yourself. It hasn’t taken much time to dilute this concentrated channel for entertainment. Now Data is all around you. You just need to tap and the whole ocean of entertainment flows towards you.
From being producer centric to being consumer-centric, this ride has been adventurous. It had a movie theatre-centric phase, a cable network-centric phase, and a streaming-centric phase.
Some people may believe that streaming is here to stay, but going by the fact that how unpredictable this industry has been and how inaccurate humans have been in predicting trends, it is best to look at the future with our eyes wide open.
A Brief History of Cable Services
Cable services started in the late 1950s and bloomed between 1960s-2000s around the globe. Nobody ever imagined to watch multiple shows on their TV screens and this was a revolutionary idea. But as this idea progressed, people started to notice loopholes. The highlighting one was that it became a big dent on personal expenses. People had to pay hefty amounts to watch select shows and had to pay for channels they never streamed.
Eventually, this loophole was filled by streaming platforms. They hopped in and made the whole experience of pursuing more personalized video-based entertainment inexpensive and brought it to the comfort of our homes. This idea revolutionized the Media Industry.
Netflix, Amazon Prime Videos, Hulu and others were amongst the prime change makers.
Forcing Innovations in the Way Movie Theatre Chains Function
Last year in July, in an aggressive move, Regal Cinemas offered monthly subscription plans to watch unlimited movies. This was always coming after getting a tough competition with online streaming services. AMC Theatres, which is the largest U.S. chain, started ‘AMC Stubs A-list’ system in which movie-freaks can watch three movies a week at the amount of $20-24 a month.
In June, last year, the AMC Theatre chain reported a huge increment in their monthly subscriber’s list as they celebrated 1 year of this service with 860,000 subscribers.
Other Cinema Chains have also started playing this aggressive game to counter the effects of Online Streaming Platforms.
Economic Conundrum
At $7.99-$14.99, Netflix stands at an average subscription price range. And they provide a wide selection of movies and TV series to select from. But the deal is that we have multiple streaming platforms to choose from like Amazon Prime Videos, Hulu, YouTube, HBO Go, and Sony Crackle.
Add to that the heavyweights like Apple TV and Disney + that recently came in the arena and may disrupt the streaming ecosystem.
All these streaming platforms offer a wide range of content consumer wants to watch. And, from a consumer point of view, there seems only one way to do so, that is, to subscribe to all these streaming platforms. But then ‘cutting the cable’ stops making sense.
This has, in turn, made it hard for the streaming focused companies to survive as many of them are facing losses. It is easier for a company like Amazon to fund the company from other sources but the ones solely based on streaming are bound to face serious issues in the coming future.
One feature which seems to become mainstream is that these service providers may start a tier-based system in which they will provide videos with and without-ads based on the tier selected.
Conclusion
We are amidst a new phase of Entertainment and Streaming Universe and it will be very interesting to know, which way this industry turns. We have already experienced some sudden changes in this ever-evolving industry and we must brace ourselves towards a different reality of the future.
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