• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, November 27, 2024

Corporate-wide legacy media companies continue to have high consumer demand for their TV and movie content in the latest quarterly period -- even as new digital-first companies are gaining ground, according to Parrot Analytics.

For example, streaming industry leader Netflix continued to see rising consumer demand for its original TV catalog with a 9.6% demand share, compared to 8.4% share in the third quarter of 2023.

Netflix, which launched in 1997 as a DVD rental service and began producing original TV shows and movies starting in 2011, now has higher consumer demand for its original content than NBCUniversal, whose original TV programming dates back to the 1940s.

now has higher consumer demand for its original content than NBCUniversal, whose original TV programming dates back to the 1940s.

Corporate demand share for NBCUniversal is at 9.0% for all its platforms, compared to a year earlier, when it was at 9.6%.

Parrot defines "demand share" as user data gathered from daily "expressions" of demand -- social media and other sites -- from over two billion people in over 100 languages in more than 200 countries.

Still, Netflix has a long way to go to match other legacy media companies' consumer demand efforts. Walt Disney still has a leading 18.4% share, while Warner Bros. Discovery has 16.7% and Paramount Global has 11.1%.

The positive is that NBCU's Peacock did add three million subscribers in the period -- largely due to its big hit, “Love Island.”

Paramount Global also lost ground in overall corporate-wise consumer demand -- at 11.1% in its most recent quarterly period versus 11.9% share in the third quarter of 2023. The positive is that it added a decent level of new business -- 3.5 million streaming subscribers. In the year before, it added 2.7 million.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max posted the best results in terms of new subscribers -- 7.2 million new subscribers. (By comparison, Netflix added 5.1 million.)

Still, like Paramount Global and other legacy media companies, WBD lost ground when it came to overall corporate demand share -- at 16.7% now, down from 17.2% a year ago. While Walt

Disney maintained its top position (18.4%) it was down from 19.9% demand share a year ago. For all its streaming platforms, Disney added 4.8 million subscribers. (In the year ago it signed up 4.1 million).

Like Netflix, two other digital-first streamers made up ground in demand share.

Apple TV+ rose to a 2.1% in corporate demand share (from 1.9% in the year-ago period); original content demand share inched up to 8.8% (from 8.4%). Amazon Prime Video rose in the same areas, with corporate demand share at 2.4% (vs. 2.1% a year ago), with original demand share at 9.4% (from 9.2%).

Consumer expressions are those that "interact with content and talent," Parrot Analytics says.

Data comes from over 2,000 distribution platforms and over 100 million metadata tags.