Sweet Streams or an Indisputable Nightmare?

Every week, the Wonder Newsroom asks our community to pose questions on topics confronting our world today.

Everything, everywhere, all at once… all the time.

Legacy companies had already been warring (and wooing) for audience attentions for over 100 years by the time Netflix went digital with the launch its streaming service in 2007. But this time, Big Media faced a new existential threat: Big Tech.

Within a decade, former video-veteran Blockbuster was 7 years into its stay at a farm upstate and Hulu, Youtube, HBO, AppleTV, & Amazon (amongst others) were already diverting eyes, time, and wallets from an eager public peckish for compelling and convenient content.

With the dual arrival of Baby Yoda and a deadly (yet couch-friendly) pandemic in 2020 thereafter, attention deficit made-to-order had hit it’s nadir. Then, subscriber growth came to a halt.

Last week, The Wonder Newsroom set out to answer our network’s toughest questions about the digital dogfights at the heart of the Streaming Wars.

STREAMING WARS, BY THE NUMBERS:

15M years (yes, that's millions) of video content was streamed by Americans in 2021.
$250M paid by Amazon in a bidding war for a TV adaptation of The Lord of The Rings.
58% of 18 to 29 year-olds prefer to binge-watch every episode of a season at once.
1.65B hours were streamed of Netflix's Squid Game within its first 4 weeks.