Nicholas Lising-White is a behavioural analyst at Canvas8. With a degree in human geography from UCL, he is interested in the impact of differing cultural conditions on human behaviour. Outside of work, he can be found meandering between cafes on his bike, testing his culinary skills, and intermittently pottering around a rugby pitch.

People expect products and services that feel made for them

Personal Worlds

People are refusing to accept purpose-washing

Assertive Audiences

Netflix began life as a DVD rental service, mailing people their favourite movies and TV shows via its website from 1998. By 1999, it was offering a subscription service for unlimited rentals, and by 2000, though not yet a streaming service, the brand had already begun using an algorithm to recommend movies based on users’ ratings of previous rentals. In 2007, the company debuted its streaming service, and by 2016, it was available in more than 190 countries. 

Netflix

However, while many have since portended the end of linear TV, in May 2024, it still accounted for over half (50.5%) of viewership in the US. 

Nielsen

Conversely, in the very same month, streaming set a new viewership share record of 38.8% 

Streaming platforms are catching up, and they continue to pursue domains conventionally held by linear TV. In January 2024, Netflix paid upwards of $5 billion for the rights to WWE‘s 

, and Peacock’s history-making exclusive NFL Playoff stream netted the platform an extra 2.8 million subscribers in the run-up to the game. 

Deadline

Front Office Sports

 But the outlook is not entirely rosy for streaming services – they 

 for the attention of Gen Alpha. People are also angry that they’re adopting 

 of cable TV that many sought to avoid when cutting their cords, and 90% of streaming media users in the US say that they would consider cancelling their streaming subscriptions if higher prices and stricter password sharing rules are enforced. 

Forbes

To understand this rapidly evolving technological, economic, and consumer landscape, Canvas8 spoke to Dr. Amanda Lotz, a media scholar, author, professor, and industry consultant. The conversation meanders from questions about Netflix’s initial innovation in the SVOD space through the effects of ad-supported SVOD on consumers to the future of TV as just one media channel vying for a finite amount of consumer attention.

Dr. Lotz's expertise is informed by a career's worth of research on the intersection of digital technologies and the media industry that began in the US. Highlights include, but aren't limited to, a PhD in radio-television-film and a certificate in women's studies from the University of Texas at Austin. She has also been awarded the Coltrin Professor of the Year by the International Radio and Television Society, and has authored, co-authored, or edited fourteen books that explore television and media industries. As of July 2024, she leads the Transforming Media Industries research program within Queensland University of Technology's Digital Media Research Centre.

Your research focus is on the evolution of video from linear to subscription models and the way that these two are compared. Can we start by outlining the broad differences between the two and why one’s popularity has skyrocketed?

When you're growing from zero, the growth always looks enormous. So, we had one technology that has been around since the 1950s and the other that was entirely new. At this point, the distinction is tied to business model and technology. Linear expects you to turn up at a specific time and works really well for advertising messages as a result. There's a certain kind of content that works in that environment, things that people have to watch in a moment or are part of everyday routine like a morning show. Having to wait a week between episodes of a story or having to sit through a commercial at a cliffhanger point was never a good experience, but that's what technology offered us for a long time.

So, it's not surprising that when we look at the subscriber-funded services, we've seen them stake a claim to scripted series and movies as their experience via an on-demand environment. But if you try to get money from a subscriber, you have to give them something worth paying for. My emphasis on complementarity in talking about the two spaces involves certain technological strengths that align with different kinds of content.

Many people left linear services to avoid advertising, but Netflix and others have added ad-supported services. How do you think audiences are receiving this, and how will it continue to evolve?

We don't have a good sense yet. It doesn't seem that a tonne of people cancelled their Netflix subscriptions and switched. We need longer windows to see what happens with Disney, which pushed everyone onto a different tier. When Netflix launched, it offered a very different experience. Part of that experience was no ads, but it was also being on demand and having full seasons or series. Those are still aspects of the experience that are retained despite the addition of advertising.

I’ve seen social media posts in which people are basically saying they want to be able to bundle their streaming subscriptions into something that looks strikingly like what they would have had with a cable subscription. Can you talk a little about whether that could be a widespread reality?

I mean, I think the other piece of it has to do with what they're willing to pay for, right? Many other things also demand our payment. Access to music, for example. I'm not a music person. I love my Spotify precisely for those reasons – I can listen in so many ways, and I can listen to so many things. But again, the economics of that industry are very different from film and television. So, we're unlikely to see that kind of a model which would be great for consumers. However, I think there's something in between. I think it can be better.

Can you see the balance of power in this industry swinging back toward the consumer?

If we're looking at television and video, consumers certainly have choice, and levels of choice that they didn't have before. But that's typical of these early stages. I keep waiting for the streaming services to become more like my old cable provider in the sense that they'll lock me into a long contract, they'll have customer service that's really difficult to use or, as Amazon is in court for, they'll make it really difficult to unsubscribe. It does seem that as markets slow, businesses go to those things instead of improving the customer experience.

Do you see consumer desire for content that reflects national identities or local stories increasing?

What Netflix has done is highlight that a 'national audience' was probably more a result of technology and how the businesses worked. There's a lot of commonality among people across the globe about the kind of stories they like. It's an important conversation within the industry. There has long been 'industry lore' about factors that will make a show 'travel'. In Australia, producers are often told things like: 'That's too Australian, you can't do that' – and the US dominance of visual trade didn't help. However, Netflix has offered us these sorts of natural experiments, which prove that if you put something on someone's living room screen, who knows what they'll connect with?

There’s massive competition for people’s attention. How do you see the TV industry fitting into this tussle in the future?

The ultimate balance might be a single multifaceted global streamer. Hopefully, at least one commercial broadcaster will focus on local content. I think the healthiest markets will also have a public service broadcaster – whether ad- or consumer-funded. We've also got entities like YouTube, which is the archive of everything that's out there. It's how you learn whatever you need to know, whether how to fix your dishwasher or the history of the Roman Empire. We have many different kinds of services targeting a wide range of interests. It probably won't be a big Fortune 500 company. But, if they can scale globally and take advantage of the fact that audiences worldwide are not all that different, maybe they'll be able to find that balance of content costs and subscriber support.

AI has been used in the algorithmic suggestion of content and throughout digital advertising, but do you see its use for creativity taking off?

I imagine it more as a tool – one that has already been integrated into certain roles. I'm a little more sceptical about the idea that anything fully AI is going to come and take over everything unless it's just radically cheaper. There are a lot of parallels here to the early-century digital expectation. Even if you look outside of media Industries, you saw how digital technologies helped every industry do what they do better or more efficiently. And my suspicion is that the same thing plays out here.

Generally, there continues to be this presumption that people watch alone, and the content or title is the key determinant of what they watch. And yes, we are on our phones a lot of the time. However, television viewing has always been very social, and it continues to be. So, thinking about that as the norm is something that I feel has gotten lost.

Understanding TV’s role in the media landscape

We tend to frame these different media channels as an 'either or' instead of 'both and'. At this point, we've got pretty good evidence that suggests most people will use all of these services on a daily, if not weekly, basis. What you can get in a social scroll or what you can get off of YouTube might satisfy different needs than the movie that you share with your partner, your roommate, or your kid.

I think we'll continue to have this mix of services that provide an array of experiences that respond to different viewer motivations. Hopefully, some more services will think about what they can do for consumers and try to drive strategy from there. The challenge will be doing this in a way that fits the marketplace, too – we are probably going to have a consolidation of services while consumer and advertising dollars will continue to be factors.

 of streaming media users in the US say that they would consider cancelling their streaming subscriptions if higher prices and stricter password sharing rules are enforced

However, streaming secured a record US TV viewership share of 

Despite technological advancements, TV viewing remains a fundamentally social experience, suggesting opportunities for content that facilitates shared moments and connections

People tend to use multiple media channels to satisfy different needs throughout the day, indicating a demand for complementary, cross-platform experiences

While algorithmic recommendations and AI tools are increasingly prevalent, human creativity and storytelling still resonate deeply with audiences

Amanda D. Lotz is a professor of communication studies and screen arts and cultures at the University of Michigan. Her research examines the operations of US television and the representation of gender on TV. She teaches courses about media industries and gender in media.

Australia

Global

Media and Entertainment

TV, film, and social media video

According to many commentators, streaming services should have subsumed linear TV by now. However, they’re still playing catch up when it comes to share of viewership. Canvas8 spoke to Dr. Amanda Lotz about what the growth of streaming means for the future of TV for consumers.