As another turbulent year in media and technology draws to a close, VIP+ analysts revisit their predictions for 2024 – and what they got right and wrong. First up: Tyler Aquilina assesses how studio and streamer strategies have fared in an era he predicted will be the year of “any means necessary” for traditional media.

If there’s a unifying theme in my predictions for 2024, it’s that they’ve mostly come true – but not necessarily in the way I expected.

As 2023 drew to a close, I was one of many media analysts to declare a end to the streaming warsby taking a new license agreement between Disney and Netflix as confirmation that the latter had gained the upper hand over its competitors.

With that in mind, I’ve been thinking about where Netflix and its rivals of traditional media were headed over the next year, noting: “Incumbent players must do everything they can to simply weather the ongoing storm, whether it be mergers and acquisitions, new forms of consolidation such that the Disney-Charter Pact or using their library content as currency to help them finance their business.

As for Netflix, I expressed his concern on what could happen in the entropy of victory, predicting that “this question will likely loom over Netflix in 2024, even as its success continues throughout the year: what exactly is the company’s narrative for the future? »

All of these predictions have unexpectedly come true over the past year, as Netflix executives began to reshape the way the company does business and traditional media companies were surprised by new tactics. and that one piece of library content in particular became Disney’s coup de grace to win the year.

Let’s break them down one by one:

Netflix Story
As I thought about the path forward for Netflix, I was optimistic about the streamer’s future. forays into gamingwhich has somewhat taken a back seat over the past year. But Ted Sarandos & Co. have indeed begun to rewrite Netflix’s pitch to investors, notably by deciding to relax the streamer’s quarterly subscriber reports.

Wall Street I wasn’t very nice on this news, but Big Red N’s continued outperformance in terms of revenue has trumped all other concerns this year, pushing Netflix stock to record highs just two years after its historic crash.

Meanwhile, a close look at the company’s earnings reports reveals a concerted effort to downplay subscriber growth and redirect investor attention.

“Engagement, our best indicator of member happiness, remains healthy”, the latest from Netflix letter to shareholders ” it read, adding: “As we look ahead to 2025, we are focused on improving every aspect of our service and continuing healthy revenue and profit growth.

And while Netflix hasn’t yet managed to grow its business through gaming, the streamer is working hard to do so through live events, a strategy I unwisely neglected last year. that of November Jake Paul-Mike Tyson the fight was highly publicized engagement success for the platform (despite the event Technical SNAFUs) and the streamer’s upcoming Christmas Day NFL Broadcasts could attract an even wider audience.

I would expect Netflix to move quickly to grow its live events business over the next year; WWE’s ‘Monday Night Raw’ Already Scheduled start weekly broadcasts on SVOD in January. Live programming – particularly sporting events – will be crucial to growing advertising as a revenue stream while driving audience engagement, and thus will continue to steer Netflix’s narrative towards these metrics and away from growth in the number of subscribers.

Mergers and acquisitions
THE Paramount-Skydance merger has made most of the media headlines when it comes to M&A in 2024, but for me the most interesting – and yes, unexpected – deal happened just weeks before the end of the year.

It would be Comcast’s decision to spin-off its NBCUniversal cable networks into a new entity (“SpinCo”), the latest and so far boldest effort by a traditional media company to ease the burden on its traditional businesses.

The strategy may seem obvious given cable’s economic decline, but I wouldn’t have predicted that Comcast, entrenched in the cable TV business, would be the first to make this move. Yet it seems unlikely to be the last: Warner Bros. Discovery’s brutal reorganization this month, which split its linear TV and streaming businesses into separate divisions, suggests CEO David Zaslav may be mulling a similar maneuver.

New forms of grouping
A prediction I made last year: the streaming world would see new forms of bundling continue to proliferate in 2024.

Of course, the legendary streaming mega-package still hasn’t seen the light of day, but the state of the market has always prompted inter-company cooperation that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have launched a collaborative streaming pack in July, adding Max to the Mouse House’s increasingly popular program Disney+-Hulu Comboand WBD continued to seek new distribution partners for its SVOD, including Charter Communications (echoing the agreement concluded by Disney with the pay TV provider last year) and even streaming rival Comcastwhich now has the rights, even plans, to bring Max together on its American platforms.

Of course, the most spectacular consolidation movement of the year was the one that never made it to market: Sports sitethe troubled live sports streaming collaboration between Disney, WBD and Fox. Like most observers of the media industry, I didn’t see this particular combination coming, but it fits what I described as the industry’s “all means necessary” strategy for 2024.

Library Content as Currency
Libraries and licensed content continue to drive significant streaming engagement, even though there has been no breakthrough in the market. “Costume” level This year. Netflix’s engagement machine fueled another surprise success story with “Your Honor” (licensed by Paramount), and the flow of popular traditional media series to Netflix continued with blockbuster titles including “Sex and the City,” “Gossip Girl” and “Lost.”

However, when it comes to leveraging library content, Disney remains the undisputed champion. The Mouse House did a better job of executing what every streamer tried to do by pulling its prized programming from Netflix: using that content to attract viewers and subscriber dollars.

This isn’t exactly what I meant by “using library content as currency”; I expected to see more offerings in the vein of Disney horse trading several shows for the broadcast rights to “Grey’s Anatomy”. Instead, the company used its unrivaled flywheel to turn theatrical hits into streaming hits, as I discussed at length in a previous article.

The success of “Moana 2”, which was fueled in large part by the popularity of its predecessor on Disney+, is proof that while blockbuster originals are still prime pigs, strong library titles have become streaming’s new cash cows.

• Coming December 26: Rob Steiner reflects on the year in the creator economy