AvocadoChz OP t1_j1ec1tm wrote on December 23, 2022 at 5:59 PM

Reply to comment by WeDriftEternal in How are streamed shows’ success measured? by AvocadoChz

Thanks for the detailed answer. I’m really interested in reading about these kinds of things (the business of the entertainment industry? Not sure how to call it). I have a couple questions after reading you answer:

Is watching a show on an Ad-version of the streaming site worth more to them?

If a show was recently added to another service, is that a sign that the original one may get rid of it from theirs or value it less? For example, I really like this show called The Orville. They just got added to Disney Plus even though they’re labeled as a Hulu Original (it originally aired from Fox). I’m confused if this interaction has anything to do with the future of the show and season 4.

Thanks again.

WeDriftEternal t1_j1edfdw wrote on December 23, 2022 at 6:08 PM

>Thanks for the detailed answer. I’m really interested in reading about these kinds of things (the business of the entertainment industry? Not sure how to call it). I have a couple questions after reading you answer:

You can look into some materials on media distribution and content acquisition, plus some basic media finance stuff should help you do a bit to learn. Its unfortunately though one of the things that is semi-secretive, so many learn on the job. Generally stay away from production related things other than just to get a basic understanding, the stuff we're talking about is distribution.

>Is watching a show on an Ad-version of the streaming site worth more to them?

There is no single, uniform answer to this unfortunately. It can be all over the place depending on all sorts of factors

>If a show was recently added to another service, is that a sign that the original one may get rid of it from theirs or value it less? For example, I really like this show called The Orville. They just got added to Disney Plus even though they’re labeled as a Hulu Original (it originally aired from Fox). I’m confused if this interaction has anything to do with the future of the show and season 4.

Ok, so you could have just asked this one... this was your actual question -- anyways, Orville seems to be an outlier in that it has some complicated contractual situations stemming from the Disney purchase of Fox, no one appears to be entirely sure what the deal with the show is. What we do know is that The Orville is supposedly a pretty expensive show to make and that getting S4 together may be tough as all the actors options expired. There's odd stuff with this one, you picked one show that as an extreme outlier, so a lot of the metrics and things we're talking about arent potentially as important as a variety other factors going on with this show behind the scenes.

AvocadoChz OP t1_j1eebs9 wrote on December 23, 2022 at 6:15 PM

Thanks! And yeah that was my true question but I wanted to ask what was in my title for both more general information and to not potentially violate any sub rules. This has been really insightful though. Of course my favorite show is the complicated one lol

All of these companies owning other companies does get very confusing.

longblack90 t1_j1fe7eq wrote on December 23, 2022 at 10:30 PM

Just to add to the other users great points-

Acquisitions by streamers/broadcasters can be by program (by season, run of season commitments, life of series commitments), they can also be acquired through output agreements with certain distributors (this gives one streamer/broadcaster priority over the programs they want from that company up to a certain spend per year), and then also through company mergers and acquisitions (like the Disney/Fox example above - this is when you’ll start to see the catalogue switch between streamers but licence periods from the old deals still need to be honoured so they’re often on both for a little bit).

Outside of that most new programs are under exclusive licence to one channel, or exclusive licence per broadcast segment (streaming, pay tv, free to air). Older programs can be under exclusive licence too (so one place has the whole series) and that is a premium cost. Having programs across multiple services may seem like it diminishes value but depending on the show it can also just mean it’s evergreen and has value everywhere so exploit it for what they can.

Before shows are made, production companies aim to get a distributor on board who will pitch to streamers/broadcasters or to get funding as a commissioned program. The first protects the inherent rights in the program and the latter gets the producers money up front by selling off those rights to the network. The show you mentioned is a co-production between 20th Century Fox and a smaller production company, Disney are both the distributor for S1-S3 after buying out Fox, and now also the network/acquirer for those seasons. The next season depends on if Disney take their first look option to continue on as co-producer - if not, and depending how the rights were structured, the production company could pitch the series elsewhere or Disney might still act as the distributor and decide whether to pitch elsewhere/sell (without offering financial backing to commissioning the production).

Obviously hard to know how anything will pan out without seeing how the deals were structured. It’s a super interesting area though - Deadline usually have info on all those deals as they go down.

In Australia, we have a service called Binge which is the streaming arm of a pay tv network. They mostly have Fox, HBO and AMC shows but now HBO and AMC are launching in Australia, those shows will start to move over while the Fox/Disney stuff is already on its way out. Binge doesn’t have too much commissioned/owned content so they’ll need to pivot to investing in that type of content if they want to stay relevant (this also means they become the distributor and the production company which as we can see from all these mergers and acquisitions is the sweet spot media companies want to be in).

Edit: Orville is actually licensed to segments (like I mentioned above) in Australia which is cool - linear tv service + that channels streaming arm (which is a free public broadcaster) + Disney+. So you can see here there’s value having a non exclusive licence if you can see where you can attract a wider audience base (ppl watching on this particular linear tv network and the free streaming platform aren’t likely to cross over but might eventually if they recognise the programming on D+).