2022 was the year that streaming took a breath. After dominating 2020 and 2021 because of — you know — the streaming industry stopped to consider itself in 2022. This was the year that the whole streaming economy changed. The change might be better for the companies themselves, but it sure wasn’t good for the consumer.
Netflix takes a tumble
Netflix’s big news this year was that they lost subscribers for the first time. No surprise, as they’re one of the most expensive streaming apps out there and one of the only ones that doesn’t include 4K in the base tiers. Netflix had been spending more and more on original content in past years, hoping to become indispensable. The problem? Most of it wasn’t any good. For every Queen’s Gambit there were ten Gray Mans… and speaking of which The Gray Man was Netflix’s most expensive movie yet. Reviews weren’t good and no one even seems to remember the movie less than a year later.
Netflix retooled and introduced an advertiser-supported tier to try to bring in new viewers. It’s hard to know if it will work.
Ad-supported has a moment
It seems like every premium service rushed to add an advertiser supported tier in 2022 if they didn’t have one. This was widely seen as a way to keep people from leaving expensive streaming apps and bring in a little more income. People seem open to the idea, but it’s hard to know how many people are actually taking advantage of those low-end tiers.
Still, with the average person paying upwards of $60 a month for streaming (plus probably keeping a live TV service of some kind) people seem anxious to find a way to cut costs. Streaming was supposed to eliminate high TV charges, and that hasn’t worked really.
Man of the Year (for better or worse)
In my opinion, the big story this year has to be the massive change in HBO Max. HBO and all of Warner Media fell under Discovery’s control this year, and that meant big cuts to the formerly premium service. The infamous Man of the Year title goes to Discovery’s David Zaslav, who slashed development budgets, canceled projects that were already complete, and started moving reality shows to HBO Max. Almost overnight, HBO Max went from a destination to an also-ran.
I understand why Zaslav is doing this. He has shareholders to satisfy and HBO Max was losing money at a terrifying rate according to some sources. Still it’s sad to see one of my favorite apps collapse as it has. I doubt I’ve spent more than 30 minutes a week on HBO Max since he took over.
In 2023, HBO Max is expected to disappear completely in favor of a merged Discovery+/HBO Max app. I am personally dreading this, as are most folks who get HBO Max free with their AT&T Unlimited plan. It’s a fair bet that you won’t be getting the new app for free. What you will be getting is roughly 12,500 episodes of House Hunters with the occasional theatrical release thrown in.
Outlook for 2023
I suspect that 2023 will have more focus on profits for streaming companies. This means fewer high-profile projects and more middle-of-the-road entertainment. We’ll look back at 2012-2022 as the era of “quality TV,” and find ourselves scrolling through more and more low-quality mass-market fare. Hopefully we won’t have to pay more for it. This new strategy may restore profitability to companies like Netflix, Disney, Paramount, Discovery, and Comcast (who together control almost the entire streaming landscape) but it certainly won’t win them any more awards.
The good news, though, is that with folks like David Zaslav moving their focus from streaming, all of a sudden traditional pay TV begins to look better and better. As someone who works for a satellite TV dealer, that’s bound to make me smile.
