Free Streaming Is Democratizing Cinema

With all the problems going on throughout the world right now and even on our front door step , it feels at times indulgent or perhaps gauche to place the peril of Hollywood and the American entertainment industry on that list. It’s hard for people outside of the world of making film and television (or content as many would tell us to call it) to understand that the majority of the workforce behind this industry is not the uber-wealthy, but upper middle to working class like most others around the country. They’re technicians and craftspeople. Drivers and caterers. Even writers and actors, who took to the picket line last year to fight not for some exorbitant, unreasonable ask, but a livable wage, often surviving paycheck-to-paycheck. To understand and maybe even relate to the struggle they’re going through, the best metric to look at is one found in nearly everyone’s home nowadays: Streaming.

Streaming Just Broke Another Nielsen Record

Netflix: $6.99 to $22.99/month

Hulu: $7.99 to $17.99/month

Disney+: $7.99 to $17.99/month or bundled w/ESPN+ and Hulu from $9.99 to $24.99/month

Max: $9.99 to $19.99/month + sports package for additional $9.99/month

Apple TV+: free seven-day trial then $9.99/month or Apple One bundle from $19.95 to $37.95

Peacock: $5.99 to $11.99/month or $59.99 to $119.99/year

Prime Video: $8.99/month or free with $14.99/month Amazon Prime subscription

Paramount+: $6 to $12/month or $60 to $120/year

YouTube TV: $57.99/month for first 3, then $72.99/month thereafter

Total: $136.92 to $194.92/month with alternative options that cut into these fees and price hikes that can happen at any time.

Above, IndieWire has listed some of the top performing streaming platforms according to Nielsen, along with their price points and what the total for having all of them would be. Obviously, we don’t assume everyone signs up for every platform and there are other ways to cut into these fees by purchasing as channels on a single app or by bundling, but what this list illustrates is a nickel and diming of the consumer that runs in contrast to what spreading culture and entertainment should be about. In simple terms, people are getting priced out of viewing and experiencing art as much as they are in making it. However, within streaming, a middle-ground has started to form over the last few years that offers a promising future for those who may not be able to afford the price of admission on major streamers.

AVOD services, such as Tubi (owned by Fox) and Pluto TV (owned by Paramount), have started inching their way into the fray, competing with their parent companies according to May’s Nielsen Gauge of how American viewers were receiving content. Streaming makes up the majority of views at 38.8%, with Broadcast at 22.3%, Cable at 28.2%, and other modes at 10.8%, but within that 38.8%, for May 2024, Tubi makes up 1.8% of that, while Pluto grabbed 0.9%. Those figures may seem meager, but put them up against Max and Paramount+ at 1.2% or Disney+ at an even 1.8% with Tubi, you may start to take an interest in what these companies are offering.

Not only are Tubi and Pluto TV free, but their libraries, as written about in a previous piece for The Hollywood Reporter , are now filled with quality programming and not just the low-end, direct-to-video material many assume is all they offer. In the THR piece, VP and Media Entertainment Industry Advisor at market research company Circana, John Buffone said, “Free is a great driver to get people to try something. Free doesn’t keep you there.”

Put a different way, Tubi’s Chief Content Officer, Adam Lewinson, said in a recent interview with IndieWire that Tubi wants to offer “a little bit of that Netflix experience,” in the sense of offering on-demand viewing, then using algorithms and AI to build a catered experience to each viewer. This may be different from how 52.5 million people watched the finale of “Friends” at the same time, but Lewinson believes we need to accept that we no longer live in a “monoculture.”

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“When I grew up, there were basically three or four big broadcast networks and there were a bunch of cable networks, but these days, everything is just so fractionalized,” Lewinson told IndieWire. “There’s this concept of an omniculture where everyone’s kind of doing their own thing and social media really fuels that. So unless it’s the Super Bowl or presidential debates — those are big Temple Mountains that you’re probably watching or you’re gonna get some information on it — but everything beyond that just gets fractionalized. So we create these rabbit holes of engagement. And that really fuels this mission that we have to give people access to all of the world’s stories, reflecting culture, and engaging fandoms.”

Currently available on Tubi are huge blockbusters like “Wonder Woman” and “Jurassic Park,” classics such as “The Third Man” and “Cabaret,” and even full series of “Scandal” and “NYPD Blue,” all curated with a mix of human interaction, data, and real-time assessment. For example, with “Horizon: An American Saga — Part 1” now in theaters, Tubi has a plethora of Westerns to choose from, including the History Channel mini-series “Hatfields & McCoys,” which Costner co-stars in. Similarly, Pluto TV also offers both VOD and live viewing, with a program guide and channels ranging from genre-specific to brand-focused like “Star Trek” and “I Love Lucy” episodes ad nauseam.

Compared with the “six or seven” human curators Lewinson said can be found at Tubi, Pluto TV’s SVP of Programming, Scott Reich told IndieWire there is “a team of 50 people behind the scenes curating” for their platform. By focusing in on not just how content is organized, but how that content is ultimately viewed, Reich believes Pluto TV performs as a cross-generational streamer.

“What’s interesting is the older side of the audience feels nostalgic towards the EPG [Electronic Program Guide] because it looks like the original cable [menu] and then the younger audience is like, wow, this is revolutionary. Because they’re used to the YouTubes of the world and just this endless search engine,” Reich shared with IndieWire. “So it’s interesting how different sides of the audience interpret it, but the takeaway is still, thank you for organizing this in an easy way. So I can at least get to and find things that are of interest to me.”

While Pluto TV may put more care into their curation, Tubi believes in a much wider view of it than just how it organizes its library. Part of it is also sourcing original content, including the upcoming Noah Beck/James Van Der Beek football film “Sidelinded: The QB and Me” and the Lauren Graham half-hour workplace comedy “The Z-Suite,” as well as sourcing the next generation of talent with programs like Stubios and The To Be Commissioned Initiative through The Black List . Lewinson added when speaking to IndieWire of their broader mission, “You name the market, I’ve got someone there screening films and looking for the next big Tubi movie. Curation is a part of the acquisition process.”

This wholesale approach to streaming that mirrors larger companies may serve Tubi well, but Pluto seems to be just fine wading in calmer waters. Reich thinks that as more and more film and television gets produced, Pluto TV will naturally continue to grow as eventually these programs will trickle down from the big streamers to the smaller ones like theirs.

“I see the compression of linear to subscription to free getting smaller. Our content will continue to grow because as people make new shows and they become hits, they kind of go down this waterfall,” Reich explained. “So we’re gonna constantly be fed the building blocks of what’s already there. It’s just momentum. And then when technology changes, who knows what it’s gonna be?”

Technology is a big factor in the shifting entertainment landscape and has been for quite some time now. Shooting on film was eaten by the ease and cost-effectiveness of shooting on digital. VHS was replaced by DVD, then Blu-Ray, and now 4K UHD Blu-Ray. Even in the context of this article, streaming was once cable and is slowly picking that model back up after years of trying to create something different, fleecing workers and consumers in the process. No one denies the benefits of streaming, the wide access it offers to art and entertainment both old and new, all at the click of a button, but financially, there’s no real long-term feasibility without jacking subscription costs or running advertisements, which Tubi and Pluto TV were built around and what other much larger streamers have only caught up to in the last few years. This doesn’t even factor in the high cost of theatrical ticket prices, a result of the move towards streaming that is now forcing more viewers out of theaters and back onto the apps. In truth, the deeper one thinks about it, the more the snake starts to look like it’s eating itself.

In truth, it feels as if the value of over a century’s worth of work has been reduced to data points and finite analysis. Another way for your phone or computer to know something more about you. One streamer that’s trying to change this viewpoint — and is also ad-free and available with a library card — is Kanopy. In a conversation with IndieWire, Kanopy’s General Manager Jason Tyrell spoke on how, in many ways, his company is trying to create a space for communities to find a passion for the arts again.

“We’re trying to do right by our supply and be like a meaningful piece of the puzzle when it comes to maximizing the value of films,” Tyrell shared. “I think what’s unique about us in the streaming space is because, you know, we are a library resource and libraries are for the most part, in essence, publicly funded. They draw their collective development budgets from the community, from taxpayers, from, you know, funding drives. It’s like a national public resource. So costs are really important. We have to effectively work within their budgets and make it sustainable for libraries of all sizes.”

This hasn’t always been easy, as back in 2019, the New York Public Library, the largest library system in the country, and the Brooklyn Public Library both stopped offering Kanopy as one of their services, marking rising costs as a factor. They have since updated their cost structure and currently, Kanopy is available in over 5,000 public and academic libraries, offering monthly themed lists on top of their thousands of viewing options ranging from recent A24 releases to foreign and independent selections and even cinema dating all the way back to the silent era. Part of what sets Kanopy apart as well is that its app features no ads. Tyrell believes “dropping low quality ads every five minutes” is not the best way to earn the affection of younger generations, nor is it how cinema is supposed to be viewed. It all goes back to how the company is trying to recreate the library experience in a new form, while still supporting the brick and mortar institutions that many communities still rely on.

“I think what’s nice about the library is you can have a guided recommendation and curation experience either through a service like Kanopy or through the librarian that you talk to at your local branch,” Tyrell told IndieWire. “And there’s no agenda behind it other than like, let’s just keep feeding your passion for art and whatever expression that takes.”

At a time when concern for passions being fed doesn’t seem to factor into most streamers mission plans, it’s nice to know there are some out there who make this a priority. And indeed, based on the conversations had with executives at both Tubi and Pluto TV, growth at each company seems to be driven both by accessibility and figuring out how to cater to individual viewing habits vs. mass appeal. This requires a large swath of film and television from various genres and decades, a selection that could serve as a macro message to an industry intent on reserving most of their major investments towards a few tentpole films each year rather than a wider array of options. Bringing it back to the streaming equation as a whole, most of these services exist to upend structures that had been working for decades, but the ones that have the most promise — Tubi, Pluto TV, as well as The Roku Channel and other AVOD services, plus library services like Kanopy and Hoopla — they’re succeeding by incorporating the old with the new. And whenever you see another price hike from Netflix or Max, as there are sure to be more, remember there are other options available more concerned with you finding growth and entertainment than picking your pocket.