The next development of visual content in the home could feature some familiar faces. According to Jimmy Ivory, a professor in Virginia Tech’s School of Communication the same companies dominating today will be the ones set to monopolize televisual media going forwards.
Hence, the main players are set to be:
- Walt Disney, which includes ABC, ESPN, and Hulu, as well as the rights to properties like Star Wars and the Marvel Universe.
- Paramount Global, which was formerly known as ViacomCBS and includes Nickelodeon, MTV, BET, and Comedy Central.
- Warner Bros. Discovery, which includes HBO, Turner Broadcasting, Discovery, and CNN.
- Comcast, which includes Xfinity and NBCUniversal, which includes the USA Network, the NBC news networks, and Universal properties.
- Amazon.
The reason that these companies are deemed to be sufficiently robust is, according to Ivory, because they have enough diversified interests and, simply put, they own the stuff people want to watch.
Ivory presents this as: “You’re the king if you own the content. Disney+ showed that. The day they opened; the landscape was totally different.”
Ivory sees the expansion of streaming services as a trend that follows the pattern of new technology. No matter how perfected the innovation, he maintains, it typically does not become widely successful until people are ready to embrace it.
Ivory says that the growth in popularity of streaming services has helped to create and also benefit from the shift from people enjoying content together and at the same time to largely doing so alone and on their own schedule. In other words, social change has been very influential.
Streaming has also been greatly enabled by the increased accessible to broadband Internet and the availability of streaming services on non-traditional screens, such as tablets and smartphones.
The early growth of many streaming companies was largely due to their ability to stream other companies’ content. This created large mix of service providers ranging from new companies, like Netflix, to more traditional content producers, such as HBO and Paramount.
This trend, however, is shifting and streaming has now become worth big companies’ time. Those companies that control most of the material that has proved popular to screen are now starting to expand into streaming to directly control their own content.
Ivory thinks that this will benefit the consumer in the long run, providing convenience and affordability.
Most at risk are Roku and Netflix, who serve has as a ‘middlemen’. Unless they reform, that is. Ivory sees this taking place with Netflix, which is developing in terms of independent film production. Netflix will need to continue to diversify as its competitors continue to pull their own content back.
