The streaming giants battle it out

Netflix’s popularity is apparently waning, but which other streaming services could be best placed to take over its crown?

New Zealand’s television and movie viewing options look set to undergo another revolution in the next few years. It might not be on the scale of the past two to three, when many Kiwis have abandoned traditional linear channels for a growing plethora of on-demand services (a survey earlier this week claimed one-third of us no longer watch terrestrial TV), but global forces and local changes mean you may need to be flexible when it comes to what you’re subscribing to in order to watch your favourite content.

Although all the recent talk has been around Netflix’s first signs of faltering as the world’s most popular streamer (cancelled shows and staffing cutbacks a result of failing to meet growth expectations), it still rates at the top of film and movie consumer website Just Watch’s ‘‘measured interest in Streaming Video On Demand services’’ for New Zealand.

Between the first quarter of last year and the initial three months of this year, Netflix only dropped one percentage point – from 30 to 29. Amazon Prime Video and Neon remained steady on 23% and 15% respectively but Disney+ was the big mover, rising from 15% to 18%, a boost that coincided with the arrival of a host of new Marvel and Star Wars content during the past 12 months.

So what does the future hold for Kiwi viewers? How might the New Zealand streaming landscape look come 2024 or 2025?

Stuff to Watch has looked into the crystal ball to speculate on where each of the other major services might be at, whether there could be any new players, and how one much-maligned online runt might just become the top dog.

Amazon Prime Video

While perhaps less talked about here than its big rivals, APV has definitely been building fans and content in the past year or two, and that appears likely to continue, at least in the short term.

Increasingly hoovering up movies that might have traditionally been genre hits at the cinema (Chris Pine action movies, teen comedies, horrors), we have also benefited from its acquisition of spinoff series such as 1883 and A Very British Scandal (whose predecessors originally had, or still have a home, on Neon), as well as its own commissioned content.

A burgeoning range of Bollywood and other Asian movies sets it apart, as does a massive back catalogue of the kind of flicks you would have found in a video store a generation ago. It will be interesting to see if it introduces its ad-funded option FreeVee to our shores. And, of course, looming on the horizon is a little New Zealand-shot (well, the first season at least) series called The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

Disney+

The flurry of new Marvel and Star Wars content since January last year has certainly bolstered the Mouse House-streamer’s popularity but its key growth move was more likely the introduction of the Star sub-stream.

Shows like Pam & Tommy and Dopesick, plus weird and wonderful Fox movies from decades past (Natural Born Killers, Fight Club just two edgy examples) have shredded the previous perception that it was just ‘‘you know, for kids’’.

And alongside fully exploiting virtually every potential beloved franchise it owns, it has now started ‘‘bringing home’’ some of its more popular US broadcast TV series, everything from Grey’s Anatomy to 9-1-1 and This is Us, as well as contemplating introducing a cheaper, advertisingfunded option for viewers.

TVNZ OnDemand

Which leads us to one of the major threats facing our state-owned broadcaster. The loss of some traditional and very popular US content (to Disney+ and Neon) has clearly forced it to look elsewhere and there has been a recent, increasing reliance on ITV and Paramount+ to provide fresh options (although that has resulted in recent hits like Halo and Secrets of Playboy).

Should Paramount+ decide to make a play for New Zealand (an Australian service has been running since August) then TVNZ could well be scrambling again.

Local content – especially reality series – will always be a strength, but who knows what the priorities will be of the newly formed entity that will come from the proposed merger with RNZ?

Apple TV+

Buoyed by Coda’s success at the Oscars, the future does look bright and star-studded for the technology king’s subscription service.

In the next 12 months there will be Henry Cavill and Bryce Dallas Howard-led spy thriller Argylle, Sundance-winning comedy Cha Cha Real Smooth, South Island-shot The Greatest Beer Run Ever and Martin Scorsese’s hotly anticipated Killers of the Flower Moon. New series include crime drama Black Bird and dark comedy Bad Sisters.

Free multi-month offers with every Apple product will continue to allow it to attract new viewers, and it recently started offering a services bundle (Apple One) which includes the company’s gaming and music offerings.

Neon

Still seen as consistently offering the international dramas that get New Zealanders binging and talking about (everything from Succession to Yellowjackets and Mare of Easttown in the past year), as well as an ever-changing small, but solid, range of new and classic movies, this Sky-owned streamer’s strengths are its local curation and mix of box sets and weekly episodes, often airing within hours of the US.

However, there has been an increasing dependence on the Warner’s empire (HBO, HBO Max and its other offshoots), something that could come back to haunt it when its present deal runs out (its length has been a closely guarded secret since it was signed in August last year).

ThreeNow

And that’s because the recently created Warner Bros. Discovery is the owner of this little service and its associated network TV channels.

Already we’ve started to see a subtle shift in the content, a few zeitgeisty documentaries here, a quality British or Australian drama there and definitely more Hollywood movies. But, while as a user experience it’s still more than a little clunky, imagine what the combined power might be of a global operation that owns everything from HBO and HBO Max to CNN, Animal Planet, Cartoon Network and Warner Bros. television, once the planets align (and existing contracts run out)?

Whether ThreeNow remains the flagship, or we see the arrival of HBO Max and/or Discovery+ it’s hard to know (although there is the precedent of Warner Bros. Discovery already stating that HBO Max will arrive in the UK, Germany, Ireland and Italy at the end of 2025, once its output deal with Sky’s equivalent in those countries runs out), but don’t bet against it shaking up and turning New Zealand’s streaming landscape on its head.