Back in January 2020, Disney’s and Apple’s subscription platforms were just a few weeks old, Peacock and the Streamer Formerly Known as HBO Max did not yet exist, and there was a ton of mystery surrounding a soon-to-debut streamer that sounded like a joke — and yet somehow wasn’t. Five years on, while Quibi is no more, those four other services are still very much around, as is one other thing: Buffering, which published its very first edition five years ago this month.
When we launched this column and newsletter, I wrote that our goal was to keep tabs on the “rapidly evolving business of making and distributing video content as streaming replaces old-fashioned linear television.” The winds of the streaming wars were just starting to pick up speed, and Buffering aimed to serve as a battle guide to the conflicts to come. And that’s just what we’ve tried to do, first by covering the rollout of the legacy media’s multiple Netflix wannabes and then by reporting on the almost predictable carnage when those (allegedly) carefully considered plans ran head-first into all manner of roadblocks: COVID, mergers, industry strikes, and Wall Street fickleness. We’ve also documented Netflix’s own rollercoaster ride this past half-decade as it responded to both its new streaming competitors and the continued well-funded resolve of its tech-based rivals at Amazon and Apple. And we have tried to be on watch as new fronts in the war for TV’s digital future opened up, such as the rapid growth of free streamers such as Tubi and the Roku Channel. One thing is certain: The last few years have not been boring.
Since Buffering is only turning five and not 50, my bosses at Vulture politely passed on my pitch for a primetime special and a series of documentary specials about the early years of this newsletter. That said, they are allowing me to mark this milestone with a special edition focused on five of the biggest developments that have shaped streaming since 2020, what lessons can be taken from them, and some thoughts on what to expect in the years to come.
1.
Netflix: Dominant then, dominant now
One of the lead stories in our debut edition revolved around Netflix racking up more Oscar nominations than any other studio or distributor for the first time. This was a huge deal back then, since it signaled the streamer would be able to reshape the film business in much the same way it had already transformed television. Five years later, what’s most remarkable to me is how — despite a few bumpy moments and the emergence of several strong competitors — Netflix still sets the pace in Hollywood. It’s the benchmark against which every other streamer is judged, and its successes (and failures) have resonated through so much of what we’ve covered here in Buffering.
For instance, when now co-CEO Ted Sarandos decided to push out his longtime deputy Cindy Holland in 2020, it was first and foremost a story about Netflix moving away from the premium, critic-friendly fare that marked its early years and toward its current status as the 21st-century equivalent of CBS in its Tiffany era: a mass broadcaster able to churn out everything from Mister Ed and The Beverly Hillbillies to The Twilight Zone and Harvest of Shame. But in retrospect, Holland’s ouster — and Netflix’s pivot — also look like the beginning of the end of streaming’s mini Golden Age, when the industry spent billions not just on content, but on getting the most audacious, star-studded, and not-even-really-TV-anymore programming that money could buy. Netflix pioneered the strategy of luring customers by trying to out-HBO HBO; its pivot to the center pushed most of the rest of the industry to follow.
We saw this pattern play out multiple times over the last five years, even when Netflix technically wasn’t the first to do something. The streamer decided to begin selling commercials a couple months after Disney+ announced it would do so, but it was Netflix’s entry into the space that felt like a sea change for subscription streaming. Ditto the industrywide crackdown on password sharing, or the trend toward ending even successful series after just three or four seasons. And even though Amazon has been airing Thursday Night Football games for a few years now, and Peacock has done playoff games and the Olympics, Netflix’s recent Christmas Day doubleheader still felt like an event. Netflix doesn’t innovate like it once did, but almost anything it does still makes the biggest splash.
Last week’s earnings report from the streamer underscores this point. Netflix said it added another 40 million–plus subscribers in 2024 — 19 million in the last three months of the year alone — and now boasts just over 300 million paid global customers, giving it a reach of more than a half-billion potential viewers. And while its peers are still mostly swimming in red ink or barely eking out tiny profits, Netflix has turned into a veritable ATM: Instead of losing a few billion dollars every year, as was still happening five years ago, the company is forecasting revenue in excess of $40 billion in 2025, with profit margins well over 20 percent. Adding subscribers, double-digit profit margins: “This is what winning looks like,” analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak of Pivotal Research Group wrote last week. This was true when Buffering first launched in 2020, of course, but that’s also the point: Despite the launch of several well-financed competitors, heavy spending from older tech rivals Amazon and Apple, and the usual laws of showbiz gravity, Netflix is still #winning. (And yes, that applies to Oscar nominations. It once again racked up the most noms of any individual studio.)
➼ Over the Next Five Years: Now that Netflix has gone from being seen as the cool future of TV to a generic word for TV, will brand affinity eventually start to suffer — not just among consumers but with the creatives Netflix relies on for programming? Or, as it has in the past, will Netflix continue to prove the doubters wrong?
2.
Streaming became more like linear TV rather than the other way around
As the 2020s got underway, there was still a sense that digital, on-demand television was going to be a completely new medium, one very distinct from what we’d seen with traditional TV since the 1950s. Not only were there no channels or time slots, but the biggest streamers didn’t even bother with commercials, and compared to what we’d grown used to paying for cable, it was substantially cheaper. Well, the arc of the small-screen universe apparently isn’t that long, and in the case of streaming, it reverts to the mean.
The move of Disney+ to introduce an ad-supported tier (followed quickly by Netflix and Amazon Prime Video) was the most glaring example of this network-ification of the industry, but there were many others. For example, all of the upstart streamers launched over the last five or so years opted not to adopt Netflix’s binge release strategy for most of their new releases, thus preserving the linear tradition of doling out episodes of a show on a weekly basis. Instead of focusing almost entirely on expensive scripted programming, streamers started investing increasingly large portions of their budgets on live sports and events, less expensive reality shows, and true-crime docs. Rather than keeping prices low to attract (and keep) customers, platforms began implementing dramatic increases to their monthly subscription fees — while also cutting back on the number of new shows they green-lit and the size of their libraries of older TV shows and movies. Then, when those price hikes and content reductions started facing pushback from consumers, streamers took a page out of the old cable-TV playbook and began offering consumers discounted rates if they signed up for a bundle of services at the same time.
All of this was probably inevitable once legacy-media giants such as Comcast, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount Global jumped into the streaming pond. These are the companies that shaped the linear-TV business for decades; of course they were going to bring their old habits with them. But that’s not entirely a bad thing, as evidenced by how quickly streamers run by tech companies adapted so many of these ideas. Apple might be the company that once urged us to Think Different, but its Hollywood wing knew that a series like Ted Lasso needed the sort of word-of-mouth buzz that can only be built via launching a show with weekly episodes. Advertising is annoying, especially when you’re already paying for a subscription, and yet cable thrived for decades with exactly that combination of commercials and monthly fees. At least with streaming, there’s still the option to pay more for an ad-free experience and the ease of canceling for a few months if a streamer’s programming slate isn’t meeting your needs.
I get that for many consumers, all of this seems like a case of dumb, greedy TV execs pulling a fast one in order to jack up profits for shareholders. And to be sure, there’s plenty of dumb and no shortage of greed in Hollywood. But the fact is streamers came into the market significantly underpriced relative to how much programming they offered and compared to what cable was (and is) charging. Netflix racked up billions in red ink getting you hooked on its version of streaming nirvana, and the legacy-media companies also went deep into debt trying to compete in the early 2020s — and most are still losing money, or just now starting to turn the tiniest of profits. Those heady days when you could pay under $20 for Netflix and Hulu and get just about every show and movie you’d ever want to see, plus binge watch the latest season of Breaking Bad or Mad Men a few months after its finale? They were never gonna last, and it’s not because David Zaslav is a Trump-friendly wannabe mogul who seems to delight in annoying as many fandoms as possible. Streaming needed to become more like regular TV because it needed to become profitable, and if there’s one thing network and cable TV were good at, it was making money.
➼ Over the Next Five Years: Will audiences revolt if prices get too high or the volume of commercials on streaming reaches the same level as cable? Or will the seemingly inevitable consolidation of streaming platforms and bundling of services result in a sort of equilibrium where consumers feel like they’re not getting totally robbed?
3.
Free streaming took off
The 2019 purchase of Pluto TV by what is now Paramount Global, followed by Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of Tubi just a few weeks after Buffering debuted in 2020, kicked off what has been a period of massive growth for free, ad-supported streaming (FAST). While such services had been around since the mid-2010s, getting bought out by bigger companies dramatically improved the quality and breadth of programming and tapped into new resources to market and promote the platforms. FAST also got a huge boost from Amazon’s early forays into the space via what was first called IMDb TV (and then Freevee) as well as device makers such as Roku and Samsung investing heavily in their own free streaming ecosystems.
Early on, FAST platforms (alternately known as ad-supported video on demand, or AVOD) were mostly just cash grabs for studios and content owners to pick up some advertising revenue by dumping their programming libraries onto streaming. While a show like Friends or Seinfeld can snag hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing revenue from a Max or Netflix, most subscription streamers aren’t going to spend much cash striking a deal for the exclusive rights to old episodes of Hell’s Kitchen or some random comedy from the 1980s. But as consumers started getting fed up by the cost of SVOD platforms, as well as overwhelmed by the decision fatigue prompted by the excesses of Peak TV, FAST is no longer just the on-demand equivalent of the Walmart DVD bargain bin. FASTies have begun finding success with first-fun fare, most notably with Freevee’s surprise hit Jury Duty, Roku Channel’s “Weird” Al biopic, and Tubi’s endless niche low-budget movies. What’s more, as studios like Warner Bros. and Disney look for new sources of revenue in their quest to make streaming profitable, they’ve become more incentivized to dig deeper into their libraries for titles that can be licensed to FAST — and monetized.
While there’s no denying its success, the FAST corner of streaming is still very much in flux. There’s been buzz that the new owners of Paramount Global are considering a plan to downsize Pluto TV into a tile on Paramount+. And Amazon recently shuttered Freevee as a standalone brand, in part because its decision to make commercials the default on Prime Video has lessened the need for a separate app devoted to ad-supported TV. But the company is still making shows that will be available to anyone, even if they don’t pay for Prime Video, and meanwhile, Tubi and Roku Channel are commanding an increasingly large share of the overall streaming pie. Nielsen’s most recent monthly gauge of overall streaming viewership had both services accounting for more viewing time in December than Peacock, Paramount+, or Max.
➼ Over the Next Five Years: With Amazon and possibly Paramount downsizing their free streaming platforms, will the growth for FAST no longer be quite so furious, and will we see even more consolidation in the space? And might we see some sort of “freemium” space in streaming emerge, where consumers pay a small monthly charge $3 or $4) in order to get the variety of FAST but with a fraction of the advertising?
4.
First-run movies became more essential to streaming
Jason Kilar’s run as CEO of WarnerMedia (now known as Warner Bros. Discovery) lasted a mere two years, but a decision he made in the middle of his short tenure had an outsize impact on the streaming business. It was Kilar who oversaw “Project Popcorn,” the COVID-era initiative that pushed virtually every 2021 Warner Bros. Pictures title onto the fledgling HBO Max the same day the film opened in theaters. It was a great deal for subscribers, especially the millions who were wary of heading back into theaters as the pandemic raged: They suddenly had access to new-release movies virtually every month that year with zero upcharge.
Of course, Hollywood’s film community, particularly Christopher Nolan, hated the idea, as did theater owners. This was a 2,000-pound bomb dropped on the notion of movies having a theatrical window before they hit TV. Anonymous sources started accusing Kilar of “screwing up” the film business forever, even though Kilar made it clear Project Popcorn was a one-year deal meant to deal with the problems of the pandemic (and, though not explicitly stated, build a bigger subscription base for HBO Max). And indeed, Warner Bros. went back to giving movies an exclusive theatrical window in 2022 while movies like WB’s Barbie still became billion-dollar hits in 2023 and beyond. Kilar, however, was dumped after Discovery and WB merged in 2022.
But while those Chicken Littles who worried Kilar had ruined movies forever were dead wrong, what is true is that Kilar’s Project Popcorn push — and a few other pandemic-era decisions — did pave the way for making first-run movies a much more important part of the programming calculus for streamers. While theatrical films have been part of the DNA of streaming since the days of Netflix Instant, big titles didn’t usually come to streaming until six months after they opened, or longer. But that has all changed over the last few years. Even before Kilar took action, Universal had used COVID to get theater owners to allow it to sell new titles on streaming barely a month after they hit theaters. And the combination of the Universal and WB actions prompted Disney and Paramount to shrink their windows as well. The result: It’s now not uncommon for a hit movie to pop up on a subscription streaming service six or eight weeks after it opens in theaters and just a couple weeks after it arrives for sale and rental on digital platforms.
I respect those in the film business who still think it’s madness to make movies available on subscription streaming (or any streaming, really) so soon after opening in theaters. But the thing is that most major movie chains pull all but the biggest titles off of screens a few weeks after they open. I get keeping Barbie or Oppenheimer off TV for five or six months, but for most movies, there’s a huge benefit to hitting an SVOD relatively soon after release: The marketing for the theatrical run is still somewhat fresh in potential viewers’ minds. That theoretically makes it more likely folks will decide to actually watch the film when it begins streaming or get the sense that they’re getting something valuable in return for their subscription dollars (versus just another tile in a row). Especially now that Peak TV’s demise has meant fewer new series premiering every month, streamers need a way to prevent subscribers from canceling — and first-run releases are a great tool to do just that. Some of the biggest titles on Nielsen’s top-ten lists every week have been newer movies, particularly ones with family appeal.
Post–Project Popcorn, companies like Comcast-owned NBCUniversal have also found a way to further monetize the shorter windows it helped open up. The company’s Universal and Focus movies generally premiere on sibling streamer Peacock within two to four months after they run in theaters, but then, after another four months, the films get licensed to Amazon’s Prime Video for a ten-month exclusive run. Sure, the same approach could be valid if movies didn’t hit Peacock until six or nine months after their release — the way things worked in the premium-cable era — but Amazon would pay a lot less for what would be “older” movies, and the benefit to Peacock would be diminished as well.
➼ Over the Next Five Years: Given how much windows have shrunk, will Netflix finally make peace with movie-theater chains and figure out a way to let its biggest feature films get broad theatrical runs? A deal to play Greta Gerwig’s next movie on IMAX screens a month before it streams has gotten some film industry insiders hopeful about a détente, though so far, Netflix execs insist no change is imminent.
5.
Gravity came for the streaming business
Back when I was a baby TV reporter in the early 1990s, an industry exec whose name I’ve long forgotten told me something that sounded like a mind-blowing insight at the time: “TV is a cyclical business.” By the wannabe Yoda’s logic, as successful as a network like NBC was at the time, within a few years, one of its lesser rivals would almost surely mount a miraculous comeback and leave the Peacock looking plucked. And then, of course, the whole cycle would repeat itself over again.
For a while, it seemed like the streaming business would be immune to this pattern of ups and downs: Streamers would just keep getting bigger and bigger as they pushed their linear-TV competitors closer and closer to the ash heap of history. That was never going to be the case, of course, and during the five years we’ve been doing Buffering, we’ve seen individual platforms settle into similar patterns. Disney+, for instance, came out of the gate like a rocket, only to sink into something of a funk under short-term CEO Bob Chapek for a year or two before bouncing back in a big way in 2024. HBO Max and Peacock both started slowly but have since carved out strong niches for themselves (even if their futures as standalone apps are hardly assured), while Apple and Amazon have also had both good and bad years. Even the mighty Netflix had to tough it out for a minute during the mini-panic that set in a couple years ago when subscriber growth stalled and Wall Street had a crisis of faith in streaming. It’s true that we haven’t seen the No. 1 position in streaming change up the way network rankings do — Netflix was and is the industry leader — but broadly speaking, we’re now seeing a business where success is tied to hit programs and movies and overall profitability rather than how many new subscribers signed up in the last quarter.
➼ Over the Next Five Years: That doesn’t mean streaming is anywhere near as stable as network TV in the 1960s or ’70s, when everyone assumed all the major networks would still be around in a decade even if not all would be super-successful in any given year. You might be able to make that case for Netflix — it really is that dominant — but there’s enough uncertainty in the business even now that major changes are still very possible everywhere else. Perhaps Disney decides to finally do away with the standalone Hulu app and make it a tile on Disney+, or Tim Cook wakes up one morning and comes to the conclusion that, even with increasing buzz and critical acclaim for Apple TV+’s programming, Hollywood is too much of a distraction. Far more likely: We see one or more of the medium-to-small players — Max, Peacock, Paramount+, Starz, AMC+ — either fade away or combine into a bigger platform.
But while there’s still a chance for consolidation or a platform or two going the way of our late, beloved Quibi, there’s no longer a question mark attached to the streaming industry as a whole. When Buffering kicked off at the dawn of the 2020s, execs at linear networks liked to point out that more people still paid for cable than subscribed to Netflix, and that broadcast and cable TV still accounted for far, far more viewing time than streaming. Well, a half-decade later, it probably will not shock you to hear that Netflix is now bigger than the cable bundle, and in December, per Nielsen, streaming accounted for 43.3 percent of all U.S. viewing, just a tiny bit less than combined audience for broadcast (22.4 percent) and cable (23.8 percent). And even if we might not know the long-term prospect of every platform not named Netflix, this much is certain: Streaming is no longer the future of television, because streaming now is television.
Correction: This article previously misstated Netflix’s forecasts for profits and revenue and has been updated.