The second is a convenience logic, employed by streaming sites. This is not concerned with one particular film, but amassing a whole range of content that sits within a broad portfolio. It is primarily concerned with getting a good spread of users and using data analytics to offer enough choice to keep punters happy. These logics constitute starkly different approaches; focusing resources on distinct offerings and different users. So far, both logics have served movie-makers and streaming platforms relatively well. Yet the pandemic has undoubtedly shifted the needle in the direction of streaming, putting the convenience logic at an advantage. For now, it is just that, an advantage.
It is possible that one of these two logics will offer a decisive victory for either the streaming sites or the movie industry. A dominant convenience logic would mark out the movie-making business and theaters as little more than fringe actors in the entertainment industry. Streaming would take up the slack, delivering highly personalized content in a sophisticated home-viewing environment that approximates a theater experience. Similarly, a dominant committed logic would hand Hollywood the spoils, relegating the streaming sector to the sidelines. But neither scenario is realistic.
Much more likely is that the effects of the pandemic will see an amalgamation of both logics emerge, absorbing elements of one another to create two further logics. One possible combination is committed convenience, whereby movie theaters remain dominant, but they learn from streaming by fully embracing analytics to produce a varied portfolio of content. Both streaming and theaters survive, but the former becomes a niche offering by having to diversify into the creation of blockbuster productions, episodic content and small to mid-budget films.
The other possible combination, conveniently committed, represents the most novel and transformational outcome of all four possible logics. It is also a logic that the movie industry has been slow to anticipate.
Under this scenario streaming becomes competitive, leading to a degree of churn among platforms that could make customer retention challenging. In normal circumstances that may be a cause for alarm among streaming services. But in this case, streaming at home becomes so prevalent and the content on offer so varied, that large numbers of people are happy to consume films at home, either alone or in small groups. While streaming fails to provide quite the same shared experience as the movie theater, technology steps in to try to plug the gap.
Online forums, new and existing forms of social media and augmented reality become the pillars of streaming companies’ social strategy. Hollywood, meanwhile, can do little more than stand back and watch as the world of content creation, production and distribution is re-shaped before their eyes. Theaters become a sideshow. The blockbuster strategy, once a lucrative and compelling proposition, becomes obsolete