[jfman]

Originally Posted by Horizon

Just to come back to this from last week:Although I can not and nether can anyone else, say which streamers will be successful in the long term, do you not accept that the film/tv industry is going through a systemic change and it will likley be streamers which will be the winners overall, rather than traditional tv channels and cinemas. That is not hype, but a massive shift in how the media industry does business.

Streamers are/will be the business model.

I've never said that streaming won't be successful - only that it's not as black and white as being portrayed by some on the forum. There's also limited space in the pay-tv market (which streaming is part of). Not every new streamer is guaranteed success although the underlying hype is that they can all be the 'next Netflix'.

I agree that the industry is changing - content owners are pushing end to end distribution of their content and removing the middle men.

However at the same time I see it as an evolution not a revolution. It's still just television. The point I've consistently made is that linear remains cheap for anyone who owns the content anyway - these will be companies also involved in streaming content. These companies won't see it as a zero sum game the way it's portrayed here. It's an additional revenue stream (pun not intended) that costs virtually nothing to maintain.

On profits, if the streamers emulate Malone's way of doing business, they will always be in debt and never in profit, something we've spoken about before. And no, I'm not thrilled with that way of doing business, but I suppose not paying taxes is very "profitable".

The danger being that lenders are comfortable with cable operators because of the huge asset - the network. Even where massive state intervention funds FTTP networks the majority of consumers - worldwide - will end up in practice having a choice of one or two ISPs in addition to cable.

A streamer in a chunk of debt that is heavily reliant on third parties for content is always at risk of a new entrant (especially a content owner) coming in and offering a like for like service minus the huge costs in servicing the debt. That's a lower price point to consumers and greater market share in theory.