I see two things happening on the digital media landscape.
The first has been going for a while, but may be soon reaching its bursting point: Fragmentation.
Once it was discovered that viewers would pay a small fee to access a select brand or program, everyone began rushing out their own services.
If left unchecked, we'd eventually have a separate service for every show or movie we'd want to watch.
I see this winding down soon as companies realize that some niche programs and channels don't have an audience large enough to support its own service.
The other thing that I see, which appears to be moving into place, is the bundle streamers like Philo and Sling.
But even more-so, the FREE ad-supported ones, like Pluto, Xumo and Stirr, are gaining in appeal.
I think we'll start to see fragmentation slow down.
However, Disney+ will be huge and it could revive fragmentation.
But for anything to compete with it, they'd have to bundle together to be just as big.
And the only service I see reaching that level would be HBO Max.
Hulu and Netflix have been safe because of brand recognition. They're the old kids on the block, and they have established users.
Netflix has done the most to ensure it'll be relevant in the future by making tons of original shows.
Hulu has done a few originals, but its biggest strength has been access to network shows the day after they air.
This would go out the window when the broadcast networks get on a bundle streaming service with dvr capabilities.
Hulu has some challenges ahead if it wants to stay in the game.
We currently keep Amazon Prime, because it bundles with our ordering from Amazon and because our digital library is there. Everything we buy digitally is bought on Prime Video.
So it's convenient that we can watch our owned content and the streaming content with one service.
We had Sling, but dropped it for Philo. However, we're now giving Sling another chance, but I'm still edging towards Philo.
My other half is currently digging Sling more, and we added a few extra channels to it to cover most of the things I'd lose if we dropped Philo.
We'll be keeping one of the two. Place your bets!
We have DC Universe, but we rarely use it. I'd use it for reading comics, but hardly anything post-2011 interests me. The '60s Batman tv series isn't carried on it and to prepare for dropping DC Universe, we've bought all the Superfriends episodes available on Amazon Prime.
So DC Universe is on its way out.
We may pick it back up briefly for Season 2 of Doom Patrol if it's still around.
Same thing happened with Boomerang. Really cheap service, but I only kept it for Scooby Doo.
So we started buying the seasons of Scooby Doo on Amazon Prime and dropped Boomerang.
I'm also enjoying Pluto.
Xumo and Stirr are both still kinda new.
And I'm glad to see Comet TV is now on some of these bundle streamers because it cuts down on the number of apps to keep up with.
We also have a digital receiver/dvr for our antenna outside, and our main channels on it are PBS Create, MeTV, AntennaTV and CoziTV, all of which aren't available streaming.
Although, some of the shows we watch do appear on streaming channels if we search for them.