In mid-2022, a month before Tom Cruise and the US Navy did their very best to show that the big screen was in rude health, the apparent king of the small-screen announced that it wasn't doing so great. Some said it was all over for the company, but two years later it might be all over for its rivals instead.https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-Death-of-Netflix-may-have-been-greatly-exaggerated-or-maybe-its-rivals-are-all-just-doing-even-worse.808404.0.html
The real winner in all of this is Sony. They made the right move and abandoned platform development and instead just invested in content creation and acquisitions.
Now they just sit back and collect royalties.
Disclaimer: I enjoy streaming and dislike being forced to watch advertisements. :)
Indeed,
the "big companies" each have enormous catalogs of content. However MUCH of it played on primary, secondary and even 'retro markets' already at some point in the past.
Hence the 'marketability' of much of it is limited at best making its 'value' and 'cost' to those that wish to offer it equally limited at best.
Here Netflix had a winning formula where they bought the rights to distribute content that few others had any interest in and packaged it all in a inexpensive package that almost countless viewers found compelling enough to buy into.
The sheer volume of content that WAS available on Netflix for commercial free viewing was to attractive for many to pass up.
Fast forward to today where the content owners have pulled MOST of their content back for their OWN streaming platforms and now consumers/viewers have a multitude of streaming options, ALL OF WHICH have very limited content.
Many of (if not ALL) the streaming providers include advertisements.
Personally, I wish the majority of them would simply GIVE UP and return to licensing their content to Netflix.