TV So Long, Peak TV. We Hardly Knew Ye
How streaming services are becoming just like the old networks — and bringing an era of wild creativity to an end.
How streaming services are becoming just like the old networks — and bringing an era of wild creativity to an end.
Streaming television has been one of the few constants of our strange and scary pandemic lives — except in all the ways it hasn’t been. Yes, it’s been reassuring to binge Schitt’s Creek or The Sopranos when we can’t go out to see movies, or friends, or families, or . . . anyone. But the streaming world has gone through a huge amount of tumult since March. Those changes may not be fully felt for a while, but they’ll still significantly transform how and what we stream.
The past nine months have seen the launch of three high-profile streaming services: the confusingly titled HBO Max, an amalgam of HBO programming and other WarnerMedia properties; NBC’s ad-supported Peacock; and the already-defunct Quibi, which sold itself as your premiere destination for short-form video content to watch on the go, only to debut in a world when no one was going anywhere. Quibi’s short and unintentionally amusing lifespan has rendered it the New
Coke of the millennial generation, but its inevitable implosion happened in a remote corner of the overall streaming picture. HBO Max and Peacock both arrived to relative indifference, learning the hard way that if your app isn’t available on every platform (in this case, neither was on Roku or Amazon Fire at launch time), you will not matter.
There have been big executive shuffles at stalwart outlets like Netflix and newbies like HBO Max. Established streamers have been through rebrandings both minor (Hulu is framed as the adult alternative to corporate sibling Disney+) and major (get ready for CBS All Access to expand into Paramount Plus). And as high-profile films like Hamilton and the Borat sequel bypassed struggling movie theaters to premiere directly onto streamers, the chairman of no less than the Walt Disney Corporation announced that streaming would now be the company’s primary focus.
This is a bold statement, given that most of the current appeal of Disney+ is its awesome library of pre-existing titles, while only one project made for the service, The Mandalorian, has broken through in any palpable way. But it’s also a necessary one, because streaming is increasingly becoming all that matters. FX has long been one of the most exciting and reliable channels in all of cable; now, many of its shows premiere directly on corporate sibling Hulu. Nobody knew the cyber-stalker drama You existed when it aired on Lifetime; on Netflix, it was a word-of-mouth sensation. When you wonder why various decisions are being made in television, from shifts in overall programming strategy (basic cable channels are sprinting out of the scripted-TV business) to how shows are structured, the answer is inevitably tied to streaming. As Baby Yoda’s gruff guardian would tell you, this is the way.
But perhaps the biggest sign of a fundamental shift in the streaming-verse was when Netflix discovered a newfound love for canceling shows — in some cases, pulling the plug after new seasons had already been ordered.
In abruptly ending series like GLOW and I Am Not Okay With This a few months ago, Netflix certainly isn’t alone. Cancellations and “unrenewals” have been rampant throughout the pandemic, thanks to untenable costs for PPE (some producers have estimated that Covid-proofing adds more than $500,000 per episode) and other logistical difficulties. But there’s something about Netflix — long the biggest, baddest, most influential streamer of them all — doing it so cavalierly that felt like a
seismic shift, and perhaps an end to the era of programming excess known as Peak TV.
In the early days of the streaming revolution, Netflix created an unwritten contract with subscribers: Cut the cable cord and you’ll be able to find every show you want in one place, for one low, low price. We’ll let our creators tell the kinds of unique stories they want, without interference, until the tales reach a proper ending.
One by one, those implicit promises have been undone. The days when Netflix’s library contained virtually every non-HBO show of note are long gone, as other conglomerates have taken back the likes of Friends and Parks and Recreation to build up their own services. Netflix’s own subscription price keeps rising at the same time that all these competitors have popped up to demand even more of your money if you want to have access to all of the content on your list. Meet the new cable bundle, same as the old cable bundle.
Those promises of creative freedom have proved more complicated than they first seemed. Many writers of streaming shows say they’re told to write to the “10-hour movie” model, where one hour simply bleeds into the next. Most of the streamers don’t have advertisers to appease, but they do have global reach, and thus other concerns about content, like the time Netflix pulled an episode of Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj in Saudi Arabia at the request of that country’s government.
Where Netflix and its ilk once acted like boutiques, now they are big-box stores, with the only thematic programming link being, “Here’s a bunch of stuff we own the rights to.” In particular, this newfound lust for cancellation is very much business as it’s always been. Barely any Netflix shows make it past three seasons — a junction when cast and crew contracts can get substantially more expensive — and only some of those short-timers have gotten adequate warning to wrap things up. The confidence that you could sample any show on Netflix, Hulu, Prime, etc., and have a complete narrative experience is gone. Quirky, original series once did well on the streamers because audiences felt secure about checking them out; now, fear they’ll end prematurely could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading to a more homogenized creative landscape.
Audiences used to complain similarly to CBS, Fox, NBC, and the rest; no one expected any better from the old broadcasters. But with the streamers, we thought, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Unfortunately, that’s how it goes with new discoveries. First, there’s the Wild West period, when anything seems possible and familiar laws do not apply. Eventually, though, territories are settled, and an era of seemingly limitless possibility gets codified in the name of civilization and profits.
The streamers aren’t going to run out of content to provide distraction from the state of the world. But that content is going to feel more familiar, harder to find, and less stable. Streaming is where all the money’s going — yours most of all — but you may be getting much less than you once paid for.