All Over But The Streaming

Media behemoths want to conquer a realm now dominated by the likes of Netflix. Think The Hunger Games

- Felix Gillette and Gerry Smith

Anyone who wants to watch a dramatic, treacherous race in the months ahead should check out the escalating competition in the world of streaming video-on-demand TV. It promises to be the media industry’s equivalent of the Badwater Ultramarathon, the annual spectacle in which a steely group of endurance athletes gather in the arid lowlands of California and race uphill on foot for 135 miles. In the summertime. In Death Valley.

By this time next year, AT&T’s WarnerMedia division, Comcast’s NBCUniversal, Walt Disney, and Apple will all have released sinewy new streaming video services, taking on the existing ones from Amazon.com, CBS, Hulu, and Netflix. It’s unlikely that any of these media and tech giants will escape this looming showdown unscathed. Even the ultimate winners are expected to limp into the future bloodied and battered. Next year “is shaping up to be The Hunger Games for the streaming services,” says Jamyn Edis, an adjunct associate professor at the New York University Stern School of Business.

The media conglomerates are trying to win on Netflix Inc.’s turf now because they don’t have much choice. The success of Netflix’s model—charging a monthly fee for a large amount of ad-free, on-demand programming that streams to any internet-connected device—has inspired millions of people to cancel their pay-TV service and get their home entertainment online. At the same time, the telecommunications and tech industries have watched Netflix and Amazon Prime Video harvest vast amounts of valuable consumer data from their viewers and decided that starting a successful streaming service might be a great way to sell more of their existing products—phones for Apple Inc., wireless contracts for AT&T Inc. The trick will be to persevere through the short-term hazards.