How Streaming Changed Television Forever

Episodic content has been evolving since the 1920s – in fact, the first ever soap operas were actually radio shows! But, since television first became popular in the 1950s, there was something consistent about daily or weekly episode releases, channel-hopping until you found something interesting to watch, and tuning into your favorite shows live. Streaming has, very obviously, transformed the network television format. So, what does television even look like nowadays?

Evolution of Television

Although episodic content began with radio, the studio system was still in full effect. Companies like NBC or ABC were spearheading the movement into episodic content starting with radio, as this was the device available in people’s homes at the time. With the invention of the television in the middle of the 20th century, the model of broadcast radio was replicated, and TV became the form of entertainment and news kept in the average American household. TV has been a central part of defining both pop culture and monumental moments in history. It has fostered a sense of community and been consistently evolving, both in content and its technology, with streaming being the latest change to this medium. The biggest changes to television during the streaming age have been the return to a form of the studio system, scheduling shows, and the audience that content is created for. 

Hollywood Returns to Monopolies

The studio system was something that impacted the film industry during the origin of Hollywood in the 1930s. The major studios – MGM, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., and RKO Radio Pictures as the Big Five, and Universal Pictures, United Artists, and Columbia making up the Little Three – had vertically integrated the filmmaking industry. Beyond these eight studios, it was nearly impossible for independent filmmakers to have access to the resources required to make or distribute films, as they controlled both aspects. 

What happened to Hollywood in the 1930s is reminiscent of what is happening today in the streaming age. Popular television studios have found an unregulated and direct way to distribute their content through streaming services. Although Netflix started the trend, old Hollywood studios and companies have been creating their own streaming services, such as HBO’s Max, NBC’s Peacock, or Paramount Plus. Here, they control advertisement length, subscription price, and, of course, all the content. This direct control, rather than having to subscribe to individual channels through different cable networks, has changed the stage of television drastically, and television is being created differently than it ever has been before. 

Filming and Release Schedules

Filming, release schedules, and season length are all aspects of the television industry that have been changing for the past few years, and have finally begun to settle in the streaming age. One of the most notable examples of this is with Stranger Things, a Netflix original series that first released in 2016. Then, the eight episode series with hour-long episodes felt new and cinematic, and the suspense for season two made it even more exciting. However, nine years after the release of season one, audiences are currently waiting on just the fifth season. Stranger Things is a more extreme example, especially because the two year gaps between seasons were heightened by watching the actors age dramatically, but with no broadcast quotas to hit, studios are taking longer and longer to release new seasons. Take Apple TV’s Severance, for example: season one ended in April 2022, and season two is just beginning to be released now, three years later. 

Another huge shift that streaming has created was binge-watching. Content that used to take months to be released is now coming out all at once and being consumed extremely fast. This is changing everything about the medium: episode length, on-set crew, and seasonal arcs. Streaming allows for writers to work longer on developing a script and more pre-production work, with story elements being more complex than broadcast. But writing for streaming changes how stories unfold. Cliffhangers are no longer needed to keep viewers hooked – they will already be planning to watch an entire season. Now, this is starting to trend in the opposite direction: Severance is coming out weekly, and Stranger Things has begun releasing seasons in two parts in order to keep viewers subscribed for longer. Streaming services have subscriptions with ads, people are paying for subscriptions that cost just as much, if not more, as cable used to. Additionally, the audience that writers need to keep in mind has changed. Demographics are turned into data – and put into an unnamed “algorithm” that is meant to dictate what people want to watch. 

“The Algorithm”

What is The Algorithm? Allegedly, it is meant to give you the best of the best content a streaming service can offer you. It is a personalized recommendation that makes it so that you will not have to shift through thousands of shows or films in order to pick what to watch. The Algorithm is meant to tell you what you want to watch, which was a huge selling point of Netflix in its early days. However, subscribers are beginning to be “trapped” in certain demographics. If you watch one dating show, it is all that would fill your streaming service’s feed for weeks until you begin seeking out different content. 

Writers and producers are also impacted by the power that streaming services give to their algorithms. Shows are meant to fit into a cookie cutter format rather than exploring genres and trying something different with their productions. Productions are no longer given the tools to succeed by their studios: writers are being kicked out of the production and post-production process, and watchtime is being favored over quality content.

The Algorithm cannot create interesting television: even today, the most talked about shows are still shows that are breaking boundaries and trying to do something different. No matter how robotic and removed streaming and algorithms might feel, it is important to retain creativity in a production. Breaking free of the streaming system means putting writers and creators at the forefront of production in order to keep humanity at the forefront of the television industry, regardless of what the algorithm might say. 

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