Meet the game changers of TV industry

Things are only get tougher for TV players to survive these days. With newbies are popping out all over the place to heat up the competition, and viewers get more picky with the shows, the challenge for TV’s execs to grab more audience are getting bigger. Unfortunately, their problem doesn’t seem to wear off anytime soon. In fact, they’d likely to get multiplied in times.

We know that networks and cables are already in a war mode to scramble their cookie which only getting smaller (thanks to all the techie out there for now we could watch video content on various platform). Now, the streaming sites have decided to weigh in to the battle as they’ve been trying their luck on making their own original series. And, the result doesn’t make the conventional TV players really pleased.

picture from LittleTechGirl.com

There are three major video distributor players which have been expanding into the realm of original content: Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon. Hulu was the first one to step out of its comfort zone by produced its own in-house web series ‘The Morning After’ back in 2011. A year later, the site announced its first original scripted series ‘Battleground’, a dramedy about a team of campaign workers who have to live on the campaign trail.

Honestly, I haven’t seen any of Hulu’s original series since the site does not available in Indonesia, so I couldn’t stream it. And I can’t download it either, because it was really hard to find. I’ve been looking into some download sites I know, but nothing came up. I’m pretty curious about ‘Battleground’ though, as many reviews showed it was good. And it has 8.9 rates on IMDB, so I guess it’s enough to safely sum up the quality.

For the second half of this year, Hulu has announced seven series to premier. Among them, there’re couples of famous names fill in the role for the series, like Seth Meyers, Chris O’Dowd, and Eva Longoria. The series are: ‘East Los High’ (June 3), ‘Moone Boy’ (July 10), ‘The Awesomes’ (July 20), ‘Quick Draw’ (Aug 12), ‘The Wrong Mans’ (Sept 1), ‘Behind the Mask’ (Oct 1), and ‘Mother Up!’ (Oct 1).

After Hulu proved to be pretty success on landing to the original content side, Netflix gathered itself to follow on Hulu’s foot step. Last year, the site has released its first original series ‘Lilyhammer’, a dramedy which follows a former New York mobster who moves to Norway after joined a witness protection program.

‘Till now, Netflix has launched four original series. After ‘Lilyhammer’, it has released ‘House of Cards’, ‘Hemlock Grove’, and former Fox’ narrated comedy, ‘Arrested Development’, all out in the first half of this year. I’ve seen ‘House of Cards’ and ‘Arrested Development’ and both of them are proved to be well executed. I dare to say that ‘House of Cards’ in fact, is definitely an Emmy material.

Kevin Spacey (lead role and executive producer of ‘House of Cards’) once said to the press that unlike networks and cables whom used to ask for the pilot first, Netflix execs instantly asked him how many episodes he’d want to do with the show and then provided him with everything he needs.

Compared to the networks, cables, and Hulu, Netflix offers a totally different experience of watching TV shows for its audience. Instead of release the show one by one per episode each week, Netflix decided to set the whole episodes to be available all in once on the premiere date. Therefore, Netflix binge-watchers could do a marathon for the show they love without waiting a whole week for the new episode to air.

On July 11, Netflix would release the highly anticipated drama ‘Orange Is the New Black’. The show certainly has caught Netflix’ execs eyes, since it’s already got their approval to continue to the second season even before the premiere date. Wait for my review on this one, guys ;)

Just like Netflix, another smart move was also run by Amazon. The streaming site started to plan its own original content early this year by released 14 pilot episodes. Amazon then left the faith of whether the shows would likely get continue to the next level or not on the hands of its subscribers. The pilots that get most negative response, would automatically say adios to a full-season production.

Based on this scheme, for the first time, audience got to feel the power to decide which show will survive. And Amazon would likely be deflected from the possibility to get backlash if they were to pull the plug on a show that turned out to be a fan-favorite. As a result, Amazon has given the green light to five pilots on May, which were political comedy ‘Alpha House’, (another) geek comedy ‘Betas’, and three kids series ‘Annebots’, ‘Creative Galaxy’, and ‘Tumbleleaf’. Those winners will air exclusively on Amazon later this year and in early next year.

The only Amazon pilot I’ve watched was ‘Zombieland’ and it didn’t get picked up. The show wasn’t that bad though. I guess it got bashed so much because people already had a high expectation due to the epic movie. I admit, the jokes were a bit redundant and contrived, but the slapstick was quiet funny. I was pretty pumped about ‘Those Who Can’t’ and ‘Onion News Empire’ too, but before I could lay my hands on them, they already got cut off. So i didn't bother to watch them anyway. I mean, what’s the point of watching the pilot if we know already that it doesn’t make it to a whole season, right?

So, with their aggressive movements, Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon were already proved that they capable of grabbing more subscribers through their original contents and probably steals some viewers of conventional TV in the process. In 2012, Hulu has reported in increasing its number of paying users to 3 million and boosted its revenue 65% to US$695 million.

Great figures also appeared in Netflix’s 1Q13 financial report. Its total subscribers have surpassed 36 million, of which 29.2 million are domestic based users (topped HBO’s domestic user which grew to 28.77 million), while revenue surged to US$1.02 billion respectively. On the other hands, Amazon showed a solid upside in 1Q13 as well with revenue climbed 24% to US$16.07 billion.

The numbers clearly don’t lie. ‘The Three Musketeers’ in the streaming world now has tasted the sweetness of the cookie in original content side. And I bet they determined to have more. Could the conventional TV players defend their share? Or could this be the beginning of online TV era? Either way, networks and cables better bring up their A-game, for the battle is now absolutely ON.