One brisk Friday evening in January at around 9:30 p.m., 15-year-old Ella rushed down the stairs of her home in Stevenson Ranch, California with an announcement for her parents, who were watching "Lupin," a new Netflix series, in the living room.
"Can you get off of Netflix in 15 minutes?" she asked. "I'm having a watch party at 10. Thanks."
Every few weeks, Ella and her four best friends assembled at their laptops, snacks and drinks in hand, to watch something on the popular streaming service with Teleparty, a browser extension that lets users view the same Netflix movie or show at the same time. On tap for tonight? Two episodes of "Gilmore Girls," a show Ella and her "best friend crew" had never seen. Although Ella, whose parents asked us to withhold her full name because she is a minor, couldn't be in the same room with her girlfriends, this solution proved the next best thing — and for the girls that night, it was.
<p>Ella and her friends are just a handful of the millions of people who have adapted to these unprecedented times. With people now spending more time than ever at home because of the pandemic, streaming services are meeting demand by doling out fresh content and serving up new features that expand the viewing experience.</p><p>Over the last 12 months, Hulu, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video and Sling all rolled out virtual watch parties, enabling groups of people to watch shows and films at the same time. These features were in the works well before COVID-19 struck, but the pandemic spurred them to step up development.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<a href="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTUzNzI4NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyOTM2MzQ0NH0.FGywAz6tLjJPMGjSAPOKa4hLuNK1vdwx_xOnNftsjMc/img.jpg?width=980" target="_blank"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTUzNzI4NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyOTM2MzQ0NH0.FGywAz6tLjJPMGjSAPOKa4hLuNK1vdwx_xOnNftsjMc/img.jpg?width=980" id="2e915" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="074203eaf0c50aa8394ae630fa6c0802" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Hulu's Watch Party feature" /></a>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Hulu's Watch Party feature launched in May 2020.</small>
</p><p>Rolling out features like virtual parties is crucial in the battle for attracting and retaining users. According to a <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/technology/digital-media-trends-consumption-habits-survey.html/" target="_blank">Deloitte survey</a> published this month, 62% of people who signed up for a streaming service, did so to watch a specific show or film and canceled their subscription once they were done watching it. Features like virtual watch parties bring a social element into the equation that keep users engaged longer.<br/></p><p>For Hulu, the Watch Party feature it launched its beta version in May 2020 started as an employee and intern hackathon project nine months before. But when the pandemic forced local governments to issue stay-at-home orders, Hulu accelerated plans for Watch Party and developed the feature in less than eight weeks. They rolled it out after initial tests indicated that over 75% of subscribers who hosted a Watch Party said they would do it again. </p><p>"We know that watching your favorite shows and movies has always been a social experience, and with TV becoming more synonymous with streaming, streaming has inherently become even more social," said Jason Wong, director of product management at Hulu, who added that the speedy development of Watch Party also stemmed from the fact that 60% of Hulu subscribers already streamed shows and films with others in their home, yielding a social experience unto itself. </p><p>"It was an ambitious timeline, but once we identified this need from our viewers, our team was very motivated to quickly deliver something." </p><p>In the 24 hours after launching Watch Party last December, Hulu saw over 10,000 unique Watch Party sessions with 60% of viewers in a Watch Party coming from its ad-supported plan. Moreover, Hulu tells dot.LA exclusively that users have held about 1.5 million Watch Party sessions to date, in which nearly 30 million messages were sent through the feature — and it continues to grow in popularity. According to Wong, the number of Watch Parties grew 5x from November to December last year.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-proxy-image shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image image-crop-16x9">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTUzODYxOC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzOTU0NzUwOH0.bK85sSVpMJdnzisE7Lm5WB_78tK8zW-H1y8_g82jz-w/image.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=375%2C156%2C366%2C261&height=700" id="a8485" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="33b9d41dfb350bde6dc24eaaf060e640" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Hulu's Watch Party feature" data-width="1245" data-height="700" />
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Hulu experienced a 97% increase in Watch Parties when Christmas comedy "Happiest Season" debuted in November.</small>
</p><p>New show premieres like the LGBTQ+ coming out series "Love, Victor" and Season 2 premiere of the teen comedy "Pen15," as well as films such as "Deadpool<em>,"</em> "Parasite<em>," </em>and the Hulu original film "Palm Springs," proved particularly popular for Hulu Watch Parties. Also big? Episodic premieres, like "The Bachelor" and "A Teacher," a Hulu original limited series starring Kate Mara. When "Happiest Season," a Christmas comedy starring Kristen Stewart, Daniel Levy and Alison Brie debuted on Thanksgiving, Hulu experienced a whopping 97% increase in Watch Parties.<br/></p><p>Five months later, Disney Plus released its own GroupWatch feature. The rapidly growing streaming service, which reported 86.8 million subscribers in December, took a different tack with GroupWatch, however: users can click any one of six "reactions," or emoji, that pop up onscreen during a viewing, but they can't send text-based messages. </p><p>That was a purposeful decision, contends Michael Cerdà, vice president of product at Disney Plus. </p><p>During GroupWatch's development, the Disney Plus product team conducted extensive research to identify what worked and what didn't. For instance, GroupWatch currently allows up to seven people in a GroupWatch session — a number the group settled on after agreeing that any more people in a session made it "too noisy." </p><p>"In our research, one of the big takeaways was that people wanted to feel like they were a part of something, but we didn't want to get in the way of the content," said Cerdà. </p><p>While Disney did not disclose engagement numbers around GroupWatch, Cerda acknowledged that Disney Plus users are more likely to hold GroupWatch sessions when highly-awaited new films and shows premiere, when Disney Plus launches in a new region, and around the holidays. Last Halloween, Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" was the focus of many GroupWatch sessions. Other programming like the recently-released series "WandaVision," "The Mandalorian," "Frozen 2," "Lion King," "Clouds" and "Avengers: Endgame" also proved popular for GroupWatch sessions. </p><p>Sling's Watch Party, which launched last September, takes things one step further than its rivals, allowing up to four people to participate through video chat. For the Sling product development team, video chat was a "must have" part of Watch Party.</p><p>"When you're watching something in real-time, so much of our responses can't be verbalized," explains Jon Lin, vice president of product at Sling TV. "If something is really impactful, you'll see it on the faces of your friends and family. That's the kind of connection we wanted to capture with Watch Party, which is why we focused so much on creating a video chat feature — so it felt like the people you are watching with are actually right there next to you."</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-proxy-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vbWVkaWEucmJsLm1zL2ltYWdlP3U9JTJGNWVhOWY1MzA3ZDgzMWY4MTdhYjgxZWRiJTJGNjAwMWY3Yzk3OTk1ZWEzZjlkMWVjZDJlJTJGYWIxNGI4M2FmYmQ1NmE1OGQ5OTA3NDUyMDZiMzRlNzclMkZHV185LnBuZyZobz1odHRwcyUzQSUyRiUyRnRyZWxsby1hdHRhY2htZW50cy5zMy5hbWF6b25hd3MuY29tJnM9NTI5Jmg9NjNhMWY3ZjIxYWIyOTQ0M2JjY2M1M2Y2NDJhMzNkZGVkOTcxY2E4NzY3Zjc5NTI1ZDU5ODA5ZjQxZWMxZGViZSZzaXplPTk4MHgmYz0zMTEyNjg2MzI1IiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2NTY5NjQ1NH0.2R95AS4bGyJc3UxUBV9YpM-PFzgApCf3O3_y-F0glWc/img.jpg" id="a0351" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="bbe9860c7dabd2c7a75aea862e6445bf" alt="Disney Plus' GroupWatch feature" />
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Disney Plus is currently exploring expanding the ways users can communicate and share during GroupWatch sessions</small>
</p><p>Sling also would not disclose specific engagement numbers around their new feature, but said live events like sports have proven very popular for Watch Party users. The streaming service also saw an uptick on the evening of the 2020 U.S. presidential election in November, as well as around Christmas movies during the holidays, says Lin.<br/></p><p>Netflix doesn't offer a comparable group watching feature yet — the third-party extension from Teleparty fills the gap for now — but it's likely coming. For services like Hulu, Disney Plus, Sling, Prime Video and others, the feature is yet another way to incrementally boost engagement on their platforms, particularly during a time when it's difficult — or in many cases, strongly discouraged — for people to mingle in groups. </p><p>"Streaming services have quickly adapted, and I think it makes absolute sense — it brings a social element, sort of like going to a movie theater," says Eunice Shin, a digital strategy partner who leads media entertainment and direct-to-consumer efforts at Prophet, a growth strategy consulting company. "It's smart for them to pull the feature onto their platform, as opposed to using a separate app like Airtime." </p><p>Virtual watch parties aren't just here to stay, it seems. Services are also finding ways to shore up the experience to make them more compelling. </p><p>Based on user feedback, Disney Plus is currently exploring expanding the ways users can communicate and share during GroupWatch sessions, including possibly text-based chat or offering more emoji reactions. Hulu said users are clamoring for the ability to throw a Watch Party with their friends on different devices. (The feature only works on desktop browsers at the moment.) Meanwhile, Sling recently updated the design of Watch Party's chat messaging and upped the number of non-Sling TV subscribers who can join Watch Parties, from one to three. </p>"It's only going to get better — it's going to get more refined." says Cerdà of virtual watch party experiences. "I think we're at the front end of something even bigger."<p><br/></p><p><em>***This story has been updated to correct the timeline provided by Hulu regarding its Watch Party data. </em></p>
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ViacomCBS has struck a deal with Disney to distribute more of their content on Hulu Plus Live TV. Terms of the deal announced on Monday weren't disclosed but the agreement gives Hulu access to 14 channels including BET, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1 and Paramount Network.
CBS already had a deal with Hulu to provide its broadcast channel along with the CW, the Smithsonian Channel and PopTV.
<p>Since merging in 2019, ViacomCBS has made a flurry of carriage deals and has been seeking to capitalize on the combination of the company's film and television assets to compete as the threat of <a href="https://dot.la/streaming-wars-2649636149.html" target="_self">further consolidation hangs over the industry.</a></p><p>The deal comes ahead of Viacom's plans to rebrand CBSAll Access to Paramount Plus this year, a streaming service that will compete with a slate of original shows and gets its name from the company's film studio, Paramount Pictures. </p><p>But the streaming landscape is becoming increasingly competitive as the pandemic has pushed <a href="https://dot.la/hbo-max-movies-2649127184.html" target="_self">theatrical releases into people's living rooms</a>, imperiling the box office. </p><p>And even traditional cable fare is now streaming. On Monday <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/03/business/media/streaming-shows-discovery.html" target="_blank">Discovery Plus</a> debuted its subscription service for multiple platforms, relying on a heavy dose of unscripted and reality television content from networks like HGTV, the Food Network and Animal Planet.</p><p>Discovery President and CEO David Zaslav <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/04/discovery-launches-in-us-on-monday.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">told CNBC on Monday </a>that he thinks he can capture viewers with the niche. </p><p>"We're a great companion to Disney and Netflix," he said. "If you have Disney or Netflix, you have two great products, but we're completely different and we go really well with them." </p><p>The two-tiered service costs $4.99 with ads or $6.99 without them. </p>
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Want to watch the next season of "Stranger Things" when it comes out? I know I do, so I pay for Netflix each month. "Jack Ryan"? That's over on Amazon Prime. "The Handmaid's Tale"? Hulu. If you think Picard was the best Star Trek captain, you'll need CBS All Access – but at this point in your budget you may be choosing between that or "The Mandalorian," for which you'll need Disney+. And let's not forget the new content exclusive to HBO Max, Apple TV+, BET+, and NBC Peacock.
Most of us are aware of the recent fragmentation of content across subscription streaming services, and we've either had to make some hard choices about which content we will watch or else we're now paying bills for streaming services that resemble the bundled cable bills we paid before we cut the cord. And it's not just the cost that bothers us. When nearly everything was on one of just a few services, we knew where to find it. Now, keeping track of which services have which content – and whether we currently have that service – seems like a job in itself.
<p>I don't think I need to convince most readers that this scenario isn't ideal for the consumer. So why are we here? </p><p>It's not that producers and distributors of entertainment content don't want to satisfy customers… they certainly do! But over the last decade or so, movie studios and television networks have seen the incredible power of using data analytics to inform decisions about what content to make, how to market it, to whom to market it and more. Subscription streaming services (like Netflix) observe everything that their viewers watch, and in turn use that information to determine what content to suggest to each viewer next. They even use it to inform decisions regarding what content to license or produce themselves and then to market that content most efficiently. They effectively create a series of personalized channels for each of their viewers, helping to connect you with content that you would love but might not be aware of. And in doing so, they can make investments in content in ways that differ from the traditional models and they reduce the inherent risk involved in bringing new shows and films to market. If you don't believe me, just ask the two professors from Carnegie Mellon who <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/streaming-sharing-stealing" target="_blank">wrote a book about this</a>.</p><p class="pull-quote">In an era where there is more quality content – both old and new – available to us than ever before, it feels increasingly hard to know what to watch and where to watch it.</p><p>The problem that a traditional television network (or movie studio) has is that they do not get this kind of personalized data on each of their over-the-air or box office viewers – nor do they usually get these data from the subscription services that license their shows and films. Even if they had such data, they don't have a platform that serves as a direct connection to the consumer, and so they cannot personalize which shows they market to each viewer and how they market them. That's what subscription streaming services have been able to do. And for a while, networks and studios have felt pretty left out of the new data-driven entertainment revolution. This largely explains why so many major players in the industry want to have a successful streaming service now — to gather individual data about each viewer and have a personalized connection / marketing channel to every one of their customers.</p><p>If you are a major network or studio trying to get into the streaming game and you need to compete with an established service like Netflix – who consumers already know and like – what do you do? You fall back on what you are already great at and make content that everyone wants to watch, and you make it exclusive to your streaming service as a draw to new customers. Or you stop licensing your best catalog content to the established streaming players and make it exclusive to your new service (sorry, "Friends" fans, <a href="https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/warnermedia-hbo-max-friends-exclusive-streaming-1203262335/" target="_blank">you'll need to pay for HBO Max</a>!). Hence, nearly every one of the subscription services out there has at least a few shows that you probably want to watch, and great content feels fragmented across a plethora of services for which you struggle to remember all of the names. </p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjg5MDU3My9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMzU4NzQ4OX0.kYtlXCAgQgJImnpuJu_qrRxRbDcXSlRQg5amTw9uCpA/img.jpg?width=980" id="bbe33" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0ba97dd5d6db1cbf28848b002d24dc76" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Watchworthy" />
Watchworthy's app is one of several trying to make it easier for viewers to find the content they're looking for, across services.
<p>But even if the current fragmentation of content across so many services can be explained as a form of business competition, that does not make it ideal for the end consumer. I've already mentioned the obvious result that consumers are back to facing the choice of paying an ever-increasing multitude of subscription fees, missing out on content, or else <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1381827" target="_blank">turning to piracy</a>. But there is another, less obvious consequence for the customer. When most content that was online was centralized on just one or two services, those services observed most of what a customer viewed online, and thus had a strong understanding of each consumer's preferences. Those services also had an incentive to recommend or market to you the content that you would like most.</p><p>Now, however, if you only do 15% of your online viewing on, for example, Hulu, they observe a lot less about your viewing preferences than when you did 50-60% of your television and movie viewing there. They just don't know you as well. Moreover, a service like Netflix or Disney+ only has the incentive to recommend to you the content that is on their service, even if there are shows or films that you would meaningfully prefer on other subscription services. And this leads us to the irony that in an era where there is more quality content – both old and new – available to us than ever before, it feels increasingly hard to know what to watch and where to watch it. By fragmenting content across so many services in an effort to draw in customers and have a more personalized relationship with them, players in the industry have unintentionally left customers struggling to search for and find the content that is best suited for them.</p>
<p>One of the most commonly offered solutions to streaming fragmentation is that we should <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/one-fee-netflix-amazon-hulu-digital-tv-bundling-gains-momentum-1174725" target="_blank">just bundle the services again</a> – some have suggested that you should be able to pick up a bundle of Hulu, Netflix, HBO Max, etc. for perhaps half of what it would cost to buy them each separately. This may partly solve the customer's budget problems, but note that it does not solve the problem outlined above – if our viewing is spread out across a multitude of services, then the underlying viewer data are still fragmented. No one service knows us particularly well, and no service has the incentive to connect us with the content that best matches our preferences.</p><p>Where this eventually leads is a subject for another article – perhaps we will see the failure or consolidation of some of these services, or perhaps a third party can solve the problems I have described even while a number of subscription services retain exclusive content. <br/></p><p>There are examples of companies trying to address this issue such as <a href="https://www.likewise.com/" target="_blank">Likewise</a>, <a href="https://www.justwatch.com/" target="_blank">Justwatch</a>, or <a href="https://watchworthy.app/desktop" target="_blank">WatchWorthy</a>, but it is not clear whether or not they will succeed (disclosure: I myself am involved in a stealth startup working on a solution to this). Either way, I see this problem as one that requires a consumer-friendly solution, and I fully expect that the market will provide this one way or another.</p><p><em><a href="https://www.chapman.edu/our-faculty/brett-danaher" target="_blank">Brett Danaher, Ph.D.</a> is Assistant Professor of Management Science and Economics at Chapman University's Argyros School of Business and Economics.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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