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When Will TV Reach ‘Peak Streaming’?
While obituaries are written for broadcast networks, are streaming services in danger of fracturing?
I’ve been enamored and obsessed with TV ever since I could first understand spoken words. As a child of the 90s, my childhood and adolescence were marked by dependency on live broadcasts and VCR recordings. Netflix and Hulu simply didn’t exist, back then.
It wasn’t until the mid-aughts when Netflix began to become a noticeable giant. One decade-and-a-half later, streaming services are giving both cable and broadcast networks a run for their money…and their eyeballs.
I remember the days when the Big Four were ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS. In 1995, The WB and UPN joined the fray as minor “netlets.” In 2006, the latter two merged into The CW.
Since I didn’t own my first DVR until 2008, I was behind the curve. To this day, the only streaming service I use is Hulu. For this reason, there are tons of original TV series on Netflix and its other competitors that I’ve never seen.
But, as Deadline recently reported (via Lynette Rice), just like broadcast networks feared getting overshadowed by their “trendier” cable counterparts throughout the late-1990s and the aughts — now, cable networks are facing that same threat from…
