Why marketers should focus on better TV shows—not streaming platforms

The streaming revolution has just begun, but it’s already time to stop the madness. There are too many competing platforms to justify the cost, and the latest entrants only underscore the alarming shortage of quality programming. Once upon a time, there were just three channels, before cable gave us hundreds. One day, hopefully soon, there will be only one. One channel to rule them all, an open platform where all your favorite programs co-exist. Programming, or content, is where the money is going to be, so marketers playing the long game shouldn’t get distracted by the internecine warfare of the streaming services, because, well, nobody cares. Let’s start by acknowledging that channel brands don’t matter, and they haven’t for a really long time. People watch shows, not channels or platforms. And now that our shows are jumping from one service to another based on the latest bidding war, we exist in a permanent state of searching to find “The Office.” When three broadcast networks first entered our homes via rabbit ears, they offered variety—a little bit of news, some daytime drama, evening entertainment and late-night talk. Comforting programs designed to bring a regular rhythm to our lives. Cable disrupted that by catering to niche viewing habits, from stand-up comedy and real housewives to sharks, 24 hours a day. No more test patterns at 3 a.m., no more shared experiences around the water cooler. Channels multiplied and attention spans splintered across the nation until, like the people of Babel, we had lost our shared language. It took Tony Soprano to bring families together again. (Yes, that was a Mafia pun.) Look for any evidence of cultural cohesion in history and the glue you’ll find is entertainment. During a tumultuous period in a divided country, “Game of Thrones” and the Marvel Universe did more to bring us together than politicians ever will. When we’re sitting next to each other sharing popcorn, the boisterous blowhards in Washington don’t seem all that interesting. That’s why the streaming wars are a distraction, a corporate race to the bottom. We care about stories, shared experiences and the social currency of knowing enough about our favorite programs to keep up at work. We don’t care if those shows appear on Peacock any more than we care that NBC’s logo dates back to the first days of color television. It’s ancient history and it’s irrelevant. Cord-cutting is accelerating because the average cable bill is over two hundred dollars. Add up the streaming services you need to replicate your favorite channels and you break a hundred bucks a month, easy. As higher bidding inevitably leads to more content getting walled off, the number of streaming services you’ll need will balloon like the national debt. Think of the business dilemma as a formula with only three variables: People want things to be simple. People want to be entertained. People want things to be affordable. The greater the perceived value of the entertainment, the more people are willing to pay. Netflix has some great shows, but most of their content is marginal. Amazon produces solid original programming, but their broader inventory feels like Showtime leftovers. As for HBO, it desperately needs another home run, not a double or triple like its last two hits. All the hype and marketing money is going into launching and promoting the platforms, when it should be going into better and more distinctive programming. Why isn’t it? Hollywood and TV executives, like brand managers and ad agencies, love to talk about storytelling, but most of them couldn’t tell a story good enough to get out of a speeding ticket. The entertainment industry is enormous, but very few people behind the big desks are entertainers. You’d be hard-pressed to find a writer, director or editor among them. They are shills standing outside the theater, forcing fliers and playbills into the hands of passersby without knowing if the show they’re promoting is any good. Franchises and remakes are the risk-averse formula that led to dwindling theater attendance long before the pandemic, and the recent volatility of Netflix subscriptions demonstrates the same point: Without original and well-crafted stories, you lose your audience. They say content is king, but “content” is such a vague term that it’s meaningless. It’s a word that gets overused by entertainment execs who thought Quibi was a good idea. What we should really be talking about is talent, not content. Creative talent. Filmmakers, showrunners and editors who consistently make the stuff we love to watch, no matter where it appears. Hollywood trained the press to talk about actors, not creators, and Wall Street loves to talk about brands, deals and the launch of a new distribution platform. Yet watching from home, all we care about is what might happen in tonight’s new episode. Marketers and media professionals need to place their bets. Do you want to try and monetize the next streaming platform that nobody asked for, or start new creative partnerships that give you control of original, proprietary content? This is the critical question, not only for the studios behind the networks and streaming services, but also for the brands that pay to reach their audience. The choice is simple. You can be standing outside the theater or standing on the stage. It’s up to you.

Why the streaming wars are just a distraction for marketers

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