Commentary

Streamers Tout Big Content Libraries, Marketing Goes Deeper

New premium streaming services constantly tout big overall numbers when it comes to libraries of TV shows and movies. It's a great initial selling point.

Of course, the devil is in the details. (A good name for a TV show.) Specifically, what kinds of specific content -- shows/movies -- a streamer has.

“Game of Thrones,"“Stars Wars” or maybe a show with “Tiger’ in the title? That’s good. Better still, it would be helpful to know the depth of “quality” on the site when making a subscription decision.

Many realized the importance of Warner Bros.-produced “Friends” episodes now being pulled from Netflix for WarnerMedia’s own HBO Max, or the value of NBCUniversal produced episodes of “The Office” -- also at Netflix -- headed to Peacock.

Still, quality can be a fuzzy thing to measure. Consider other related factors: original shows and high viewing. Despite its recent high-profile losses, recent analysis shows Netflix continues to score well in many of these areas.  

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As of mid-June, it has the most original TV shows among all premium streamers -- 674 (with 1,275 being licensed TV shows), according to Reelgood, the discovery/search app for streaming content. 

The closest competitor is HBO Max: 190 original TV shows and 239 acquired licensed shows. Amazon Prime Video is next at 134 original; 2,102 acquired.

Digging deeper, the next level of data comes with what ReelGood says is “‘high quality” -- defined as any TV show with a “8.0 rating on IMDb (the big consumer entertainment information platform), with more the 300 votes.”

Again, Netflix is tops, with 151 original high-quality TV shows. HBO Max is next at 75 original high-quality shows. Then comes Amazon Prime Video, 40; Hulu, 16;  Disney+, 5; and Apple TV+, 3.

What does all this mean? That consumer perception matters -- as well as the marketing of that data.

In recent TV advertising -- still in its launch phase of marketing -- HBO Max has been showing video/images of thousands of “titles,” programs (and movies) regular appears on its programming guide/interface, all this to give consumers a sense of its deep library.

But, as the business matures, the next wave of TV marketing will presumably focus on the actual popularity/and or quality of product.  This would be a change, as many premium video sites are still “walled gardens,” only offering up select metrics to how content is used by consumers.

From all this, expect the streamers to get much more competitive, maybe releasing a bit of devilish detailed data.

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