10 Ways To Save Streaming Services
2. Stop Spending So Much Money
It’s kind of ridiculous how obvious this one is. With monthly fees from millions of subscribers, streaming services love to hurl their money at new content, which is admirable in some ways, but not an approach that can keep bringing in positive results.
The biggest example once again comes back to Netflix, who currently have more than $4 billion in bank loans, and an overall long-term financial commitment of $20 billion. Major streaming services are clearly doing well, but when your business plan involves taking out loans higher than the GDP of Barbados, it’s maybe a sign that you need to scale back your ambitions a little.
And this isn’t an isolated incident. Despite subscriber growth, Hulu lost $920 million in 2017, and Amazon could be dropping anywhere up to $1 billion on its new Lord Of The Rings series. And when you put such a ludicrous amount of money into things, you’re banking far too much on their success. In fact, if Lord Of The Rings flops, Amazon could be in serious trouble because of how big a financial commitment it is.
The times when money is no object won’t last forever, so streaming services need to gear up for the future by producing shows with a more reasonable budget. Making a new comedy series for $5 million only to find that it goes down like a cup of cold sick is something fairly easy to row back from. Producing the same show for $100 million (like Amazon Prime’s Crisis In Six Scenes) is an entirely different story.