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- FAST to the Future
Hello Hollywood tech nerds!
In this week’s post:
📺️ FAST to the Future
🦳 Martin Scorsese - King of the Kids
🍿 Kernels: 3 links worth making popcorn for
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FAST to the Future
If you’re in the content or streaming space, you’ve probably heard the term FAST. No, I’m not referring to the rate at which I lost money on my personalized line of NFTs (or as I foolishly called them: NFSteves). FAST stands for “free ad-supported streaming television,” and as Variety reports: “FAST is likely to replace subscription-based models as the preferred viewing option by 2030.”
Why is this happening? As always: follow the money! From the article:
It now costs more to have access to the top streaming services ($87 per month) than cable ($83).
Consumers face a thoroughly Balkanized content landscape. Just as an example: if you’re a big South Park fan, you can watch most of its episodes on Max. However, if you want to watch South Park’s special event movies like Joining the Panderverse, you can only see those on Paramount Plus. From a customer service perspective, does this make any sense? Nope! But that’s modern day streaming. It’s no surprise consumers are rebelling.
Streamers know this too, it’s why so many that originated as pure SVOD (subscription video on demand) have added a tier for AVOD (ad-supported VOD) and expect revenue to triple over the next few years.
I spoke to one of my contacts with previous experience at an AVOD streamer, and they gave me some insight:
It’s much easier to boost revenue with AVOD than SVOD. Add one extra ad break to every movie and TV show on the platform, millions of dollars of ad space inventory is instantly created. Trying to achieve that by acquiring subscribers is significantly more work and more spend.
It should be no surprise, then, that streaming services are engaging in tactics like “pause ads” as a way to generate such inventory. Just what I dreamed of: pausing a movie to take an important phone call from my parents and getting slammed with an ad for dog food. The future is now!
Martin Scorsese - King of the Kids
My tongue is only somewhat in cheek for this headline and art. I covered some great Scorsese profiles a few newsletters ago, make sure to go check those out if you haven’t already. My focus here is Killers of the Flower Moon’s opening weekend box office and what it means (if anything).
According to the AP, KOTFM was Scorsese’s third best opening, “following “Shutter Island” ($41 million in 2010) and “The Departed” ($26.9 million in 2006)".” Not bad! Most fascinating to me here was this tidbit:
“Killers of the Flower Moon” also reeled in more young moviegoers than one might have expected. Paramount said 44% of ticket buyers were under the age of 30.
As longtime readers know, I am an eternal optimist about the continuing potential of the theatrical experience, and the box office for this year - from “Barbenheimer” to Taylor Swift to Scorsese - gives me hope that we can possibly look forward to more at movie theaters than endless comic book cinematic universes and soft reboots. Can theaters unshackle themselves from Hollywood’s risk-averse instincts? Some have!
I love theaters like Vidiots in Eagle Rock, CA or The Loft in Tucson, AZ - monuments to cinema that mix new releases with localized programming. It’s this model that I think will continue to draw people together, and one that more theaters should attempt to emulate. OR we can just continue pumping out the diminishing returns of movie superheroes fighting a giant beam in the sky. Whatever works!
Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)
Here’s a round-up of cool links about Hollywood and technology:
Jon Stewart leaves his Apple TV show due to conflicts with Apple on China and AI. (link)
The Black Book is Nigeria’s first runaway Netflix hit. (link)
Has AI become a Band-Aid for bad tech industry design choices? (link)