Jiayi Li, Business of Media Fall 2023: Video Streaming

November 27, 2023 

As the ratification vote deadline is approaching, which is December 5th, the SAG-AFTRA released a contract term which is more detailed than the previous one which ends the 118 days of actor strike. 

The contract gained 86% of vote within the SAG-AFTRA members, which symbolized a success in compromise and an official end of this whole Hollywood strike. This monumental Hollywood strike on history lasted from July 14th to November 9th in 2023, and finally ended with new negotiations made and rights owned. 

The term includes more than $1 billion of the new compensation as well as benefit plan funding for the actors. What’s worth mentioning is the inclusion and guarantee of AI guardrails within the term, which will form protections to the actors from the AI generated content. 

AI has been a trending topic in society nowadays. As a threat to multiple industries, people are well aware of what AI is capable of, but remain questioning whether AI can really form contents with the same quality of the ones human formed. With fear and uncertainty, the Writers Guild of America which has a corporation with Hollywood studios has already expressed the concerns regarding AI in threatening the writers’ jobs. Now, a similar issue happened to the actor strike. 

Arguments exist within the members of SAG-AFTRA regarding the AI guardrail term, as some believe the solely AI guardrails is far from enough to actually protect their careers. It is intriguing to see what AI will bring to the industry in the future. 

November 12, 2023 

NASA announces the launch of a new streaming service called “NASA+”. The service has no subscription fee and is completely ad-free, which allows space fans and anyone who has an interest in space to access and enjoy the content of it. NASA+ will be available in the NASA app on all major devices and streaming platforms. 

Unlike the other mainstream video services which usually cover a wide range of content, NASA+ focuses only on space as NASA is a brand devoted to the research and exploration of space. The service will cover a wide range of content including documentaries, live launches of rockets in the future, and original series all about space. Its mission is to “better tell the stories of how NASA explores the unknown”, with the goal to provide people more opportunities to get to know about the universe. 

NASA+ is seen as the latest competitor within the video streaming market. As the competition within the video streaming market is becoming more fierce, it is pretty surprising that NASA as a Congress-funded federal agency and a company non-related to entertainment joins the competition and launches the corresponding video streaming service. Potential trends of the video streaming market can be detected through this cross-industrial connection, as more genres and creative contents are being implemented to the category, the whole video-on-demand market might be brought to a new level in the upcoming future, making video streaming one of the most influential media agencies within contemporary society. 

Announced by NASA, new original series is coming soon within NASA+, such as “Space Out” which will cover a wide range of real universe imageries, bringing visual astonishment to the audiences. 

October 31, 2023 

As the members of SAG-AFTRA arranged a letter supporting the ongoing actors strike, thousands of SAG members including famous stars such as Sarah Paulson, Christian Slater, and Kal Penn, with the resolution of “rather stay on strike than take a bad deal”. Contradicted opinions exist, as stars such as Scarlett Johansson and Bradley Cooper decided to end the strike with their own wills, but others still choose to insist to argue for a fair treatment. 

The actor strike started approximately three months ago. The argument mainly appears on the unfair treatment towards actors, shown on  compensation. Reason of these actors’ feeling of threat mainly comes from the change of streaming model and media form in the contemporary society which largely impact their receivable residuals. Concerns of AI also exist as the rapid development of technology might lead to the tendency of AI substituting human actors, which is huge as it is the essential factor to shift the whole direction and structure of the media market. 

The letter signed by thousands of members in SAG expresses the concern of actors’ future and eager to alternate the situation, as well as the strong solidarity and consistency in continuing this strike regardless of the severe sacrifice made through the process. 

Negotiation continues these days especially focusing on the AI usage of productions, as opposite opinions exist and deals are yet to be made. This significant strike on actors impacted the whole video streaming market as many studios stopped the production progress on media productions, leading to loss on all agencies evolving in the market. Thus, it is expected to end soon before the end of this year, as the whole market needs to start operating again and recover from the loss as soon as possible. 

October 14, 2023

As two subsidiary brands of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Crunchyroll and Game Show Network (GSN) have announced to launch a 24-hour free streaming channel targeted on the anime audiences. The Crunchyroll channel can be found in various video platforms including Amazon Freevee, Roku Channel, and LG Channels. 

This new FAST channel will be fully free and ad-supported, focusing on the category of Japanese animation. The reason for this action is mainly to gain more customers with specific targeted segment. Popular series including "Ranking of Kings", "To Your Eternity", and "Horimiya" will be all included within the channel. 

Since the competition within video-on-demand market becomes more fierce in nowadays society, companies seek ways to be stood out within the public and gain attractions from the customers. Sony's Crunchyroll has not yet becoming one of the main video streaming platforms. However, through the action of Sony brining a substantial amount of anime productions from its premium streaming towards the free streaming in Crunchyroll, more new anime lovers will be attracted from other mainstream platforms which don't serve a specific section of anime and come to watch this free 24 hours channel, providing Crunchyroll a chance to be competitive against the mainstream platforms. 

More revenues will be generated from advertisements while less will be generated from subscription fees, as Sony's premium subscribers might cancel the subscription due to Sony's action of converting paid contents to free contents. Meanwhile, this sign of Sony shifting a part of focus from subscription based product to ad-based ones also hints on a current trend of video streaming market. Adding on to Amazon's current announcing of ad-supported subscription as well as the addition of ad-supported subscription in many more video platforms, video streaming market is exploring new ways to attract customers with more variety in order to be able to compete within the market. 

October 2, 2023

The AMC+ streaming service has released an advertisement supported subscription for $4.99 per month, which is four-dollar cheaper than the ad-free version that costs $8.99 per month. AMC users are able to save a portion of costs on video streaming subscription by watching some inserted ads within the video productions. The limitation of ads is set as "less than five minutes per hour".

This service will start from AMC's own app and sooner be expanded to third-party platforms including Shudder, IFC Films Unlimited, and channels including IFC, BBC America, Sundance TV. "Dozens of advertisers" are already joined and prepared to be settled, according to AMC. Not only the quantity of advertisers will ensure the economic growth as well as the integration of targeted customers, AMC also plans to add more varieties of ads' forms such as the shoppable ones which the subscribers can directly buy things through the ads, which builds a more interactive and flexible ad system for the subscribers.

The action of introducing ad-supported subscription is becoming a common trend within the video streaming market, as not only many free ad-supported television are introduced, companies such as Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video also have released similar ad- supported plans in order to boost the subscriber bases. Served as one of the ways in which the video streaming market uses to evolve and develop, the ad-supported plans is successful and appropriate as it provides flexibility for the consumers while generates additional revenues for the companies.

For AMC, new ad-free plan is also introduced as an alternative choice for the subscribers who do not wish to be interrupted by ads, which the annual subscription becomes 20% cheaper than the monthly subscription, served as the purpose to retain more long term subscribers. In conclusion, these actions and efforts made within the video streaming companies all showed the tendency of evolution and seeking of new ways in order to remain competitive within the market.

September 18, 2023

As the first time in the history of entertainment industry, the visual effects workers (VFX) at Marvel Studios have voted to unionize with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) during an election held by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with zero against.

IATSE is a labor union representing over 168,000 technicians and artisans who work at the entertainment industry. The reason behind this action of unionize was the increasing complaints coming from the audiences after they watched the recent Marvel Cinematic Universe projects. The audiences criticized towards the quality of visual effects and CGI in those films and series, which provoked the VFX to make a voice of their unfair treatment provided by Marvel Studio that resulted in these low quality productions.

According to a VFX artist, the working conditions in Marvel Studio has been highly stressful with unaffordable demands and long hours of works, largely due to the extensive film schedules of the MCU, the last-minute changes requested by the directors, along with the inflexible released dates. Moreover, the lack of director on photography during the post- production process leads to not only more workloads, but also the inconsistency of visual style, which ruins the general visual language of the production.

Therefore, marking a significant milestone for VFX workers to gain rights, the workers unionized with IATSE, and the union plans to negotiate with Marvel Studio's executives next in order to create a contract which confirms the rights of the workers while finding a reasonable balance between these workers and the studio.

These negotiations plays a vital role in enhancing the working conditions for those VFX workers, potentially resulting in an improvement in the quality of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies and series, as Marvel Studio plans to delay the released dates of the upcoming series. Bringing impact to the whole video streaming market, this first time action provokes people to think about the reasons why many movies produced by big companies in recent years have experienced a significant drop in quality by revealing the story behind the scenes, questioning the whole market of how this phenomenon can be solved and improved.

My sector is Video Streaming and I will be following the Screen Rant, Deadline, and Hollywood Reporter.