Post Corona Film and Television: Stream It, Skip It, or Revolutionize It?

Abstract

Post Corona Film and Television:Stream It, Skip It, or Revolutionize It? Dennis Broe (bio) Before quarantine, when a phrase like "shelter in place" seemed like something out of the apocalyptic future forecast in The Walking Dead (AMC, US, 2010–), the main issue in film and television was how the industry would manage the transition from an actual to a virtual world. That question has now been heightened by the confinement to the point where the new question is, "Will film theaters and the network television industry survive a now accelerated transition?" The studio conglomerates and the major television networks were being challenged by the already existing streaming services and their response was a wave of consolidation that merged studios (Disney–Fox), paired communication distributors with product (AT&T–Time Warner), and cable networks with satellite production companies, TV networks, and film studios (Comcast–Sky–NBC–Universal). The result of this consolidation and increasing monopolization is a group of behemoth streaming services—Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, Peacock (Comcast NBCUniversal), Apple+, and HBO Max (AT&T–Time Warner)—that are set to challenge first US domestic and then global production, and particularly government-supported film financing and television channels across the globe. Already before the Coronavirus Crisis, Netflix and Amazon Prime's silent war was being waged worldwide against state-sponsored television. This can be seen most dramatically in France. Here, the pay-per-view service Canal+, similar in its place in the French mediasphere to HBO in the US, must reinvest [End Page 202] after they open in the theaters rather than the state mandated three years. These funds, as did British government funds for the public BBC Channel 4, frequently finance some of the most progressive and socially conscious film and television not only in France and Britain but around the world. With the American streaming service onslaught, Canal+ revenues are down (they rebounded somewhat in 2019 through a global outreach, but revenues still decreased from the height of 2015 by approximately 25 million euros.)1 Thus the 12.5 percent the company is required to contribute to financing local and global film and television declines proportionately. This change constitutes a net loss for progressive and socially involved film and television programming not only in France but also globally. The nature of work and viewing are now both moving rapidly online, hastened by the crisis, and with corresponding benefits for studios and producers. With this move, the streaming services are now full-fledged participants in the digital economy, sometimes referred to as the surveillance economy, which means they not only profit from attracting audiences but also from monetizing data from their "users" or viewers. The rapidly globalizing nature of these services opens up the potential for a worldwide homogenization of content as local networks and cultures succumb to the vast amounts of money available from this globalized revenue. Is there an alternative to this juggernaut? Potential challenges include those stemming from independent media, from government fightback through financing and taxation, and from the possibility of exploiting twin contradictions in the Netflix model involving the gesture toward "artistic freedom" and the way artists are paid. The Tech Companies: Corona Crisis Winners While Main Street—small businesses and their workforce—is floundering, the stock market, flush with government giveaways that it simply reinvests in itself, and the tech companies. whose success bolsters the market and which now include the streaming services, has thrived, to the point where Silicon Valley companies have now become "the grand winners of the confinement." Thus, at least from the European perspective, Amazon and Alibaba dominate delivery, Windows is on 95 percent of computers, Google is "the unique motor of western research," and Facebook quickly buys up and incorporates any apps that challenge its dominion in the area of social media.2 These giants "short circuit the states" as during the crisis Google and Apple blackmailed Germany into using them to track Coronavirus contacts, rather than developing a state database, by threatening to deactivate mobiles and iPhones.3 [End Page 203] These companies that in France go by the acronym GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft) have, partly as a result of the crisis, attained a net...