Facebook is in talks with Hollywood executives to start broadcasting TV-quality programs. At the same time, Buzzfeed’s CEO Jonah Peretti is predicting companies like Facebook and Netflix will blot out TV entirely in the near future.
Here’s what Peretti said the two new types of TV will look like:
One will be best represented by Netflix and HBO, and that will be subscription-based revenue models, with no advertising and premium, expensive, high-cost-per-minute content. Think ‘Game of Thrones’ or ‘House of Cards’ type stuff.
There will be another bucket dominated by Facebook and YouTube, and a few others — we’ll see who ends up on the traditional media side being able to step into that space — that will be ad-supported media and kind of replace what broadcast TV used to be. So, massive reach. No affiliate fees. Advertising supported. And it will be lower cost per minute, but it will become more premium.
If this is the case, then TV networks (which are already suffering, as more high profile shows move to Amazon and Netflix) will go the way of the dinosaur. Of course, a CEO like Peretti would say something like this, as companies like Buzzfeed stand to profit from TV’s evolution.
But the facts back the statement up. Video became the fastest growing medium on all social networks in 2017, and in the past few years, streaming shows have captivated both critics and audiences. In addition, both Facebook and Twitter have signed deals with professional sports leagues to live-stream games. All of this is made possible by advertising.
As video content on sites like Facebook and streaming sites like Netflix becomes more prominent, the rest of the industry that supports entertainment will have to adapt.