Interesting Entertainment News was announced yesterday that should be discussed here.
Showtime is being consolidated and rebranded as Paramount + With Showtime.
As part of the changes, the company will “divert investment away from areas that are underperforming” and that account for “less than 10% of our views.” (HBO did this last year)
Once again the entertainment landscape is changing right in front of our eyes. Major studios buying all of the top tier AVOD streamers. Disney/Fox takeover. Amazon buying MGM. HBO - Discovery buyout. Now Paramount+ Showtime. Even the mid-tier deals like Chicken Soup For The Soul buying Crackle & Screen Media and Sony buying PureFlix are clear signs that old saying CONTENT IS KING is now changed to HIGH QUALITY CONTENT IS KING.
Now, when you look at what HHSE has been promising for 11 years you realize how far behind the eight-ball they really are. All of the majors have done massive research and decided that they can't afford to even leave underperforming titles on their platforms.
Apple is the only steaming portal that makes 100% of their content. (They do not buy or license 3rd party libraries) For this reason they pay way above premium to attract top talent.
Now let's discuss the elephant in the room; The yet to be launched MYFLIX portal that claims to have 20,000 titles that all of the other platforms seemingly do not want. Let's give the denifit of the doubt to the CEO and say there were legitimate delays that set the launch for 6 years. But the CEO claimed that for the sort launch 3200 titles would be onboarded to the MYFLIX site by September of 2018. Two things are very clear... No content owner has been waiting for 5 years for MyFlix to launch and... since there are no fees on the books for data storage, this claim of thousands of titles already onboarded is simply not true. In other words, they are no closer to launching MyFlix now than they were in 2012.
The CEO was definitely forward thinking back in 2012 when he first cooked up the idea of building a streaming video portal and would have made a mint had he succeeded. I think he would have made a large about of money even if the VODWIZ portal was just mildly successful. But in reality, the field is so many laps ahead in the race that it is impossible to even enter let alone catch up. I smell a new business plan coming.
Would love to hear everyones's true thoughts.
