How Streaming can Negatively Impact News and Media

 Welcome back to my Strategic Communications blog! For those of you you are not long time readers, my name is Harrison and I am a Troy University Graduate student. I started this blog to discuss interesting topics within my field and share some of my opinions and experiences. In addition to my extensive educational background, I also have experience in film production, broadcast news, digital writing, and film/art criticism. If you would like to see some of my earlier work, you can check out my previous articles at https://harrisonscommunication.blogspot.com/

For my first returning blog post, I would like to talk about streaming and its effects on how we consume data. It is no understatement to say that streaming has completely changed the way people absorb content. On the other hand, it also creates multiple negative side effects that will permanently alter the industry and its ability to create fair, unbiased and diverse content for the public.

First, the advent of streaming rewards media conglomerates and punishes smaller, independent creators. When Netflix first introduced streaming, it had an incredibly wide variety of movies and television it had the rights to, meaning it could cater to a wide audience. Thanks to algorithms such as the one Hulu uses, it was still able to feel customizable and personal to each user while still boasting a large library (Morgan 2020). Back then, Netflix was the only service of its kind available, but now streaming has become the standard for the whole industry. As a result, the corporations who already hold the rights to a wide variety of content and bankable IPs have dominated the field. As a result, this has incentivized media conglomerates to continually absorb other companies and hold tight to its properties. The most obvious example was when Disney recently bought the studio 20th Century Fox and all the Intellectual Properties it had created throughout its history. Likewise, WarnerMedia, which includes such assets as Warner Bros, HBO, DC Comics, and CNN, recently merged with Discovery to form a new media company. This move was motivated by the desire to combine the amount of content each company held to further dominate streaming (Kasternakes 2021). 

The result is a future where news, entertainment, and all other forms of content are increasingly controlled by a smaller group of powerful entities, which has ripple effects on both the industry and consumers. First, there have been a massive amount of layoffs whenever these companies merge. Secondly, it pushes these industries further toward a monopolistic atmosphere. As a result, there is less competition between these companies, which means tighter grip on content and greater homogeneity amongst their products. This might seem inconsequential when talking about giant blockbuster movies, but it becomes much scarier when you remember when the same thing happens to the country’s major news sources. 

Streaming has plenty of aspects that appeal to consumers, from its personalization to its wide variety  of content to its easy access, but unless there is some form of regulation, media company’s approach to streaming may create more harm  than good.

References

Kastrenakes, J. (2021, June 1). Discovery announces new name of warnermedia merger: Warner Bros. Discovery. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/1/22448140/warner-bros-discovery-warnermedia-new-name-merger-att. 

Morgan, B. (2021, February 18). What's the future of tv? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2020/11/02/whats-coming-in-the-future-of-tv/?sh=184dd2a6fd1e.