For the TV industry, what’s old is new again

There is no such thing as a new idea. At least, that seems to be the case in the TV industry.

“Remember when streamers told you, ‘We’re going to do television a new way, so I’m afraid we won’t be needing your little commercials anymore?” Seth Meyers said during NBCU’s annual upfront presentation on Monday. “Cut to a few years later, every episode of Shōgun is interrupted by, ‘Whopper, Whopper, Double Whopper.’”

Ad-supported tiers, which are now commonplace on just about every major streaming service on the market, are just the beginning. This upfronts season highlighted the extent to which streamers are embracing some of the most tried-and-true business strategies of old-fashioned TV, whether that’s finding ways to squeeze more ads into TV shows, embracing the most reliable types of programming, or even returning to the kinds of service bundles that were once the norm in the old days of linear. In other words, what’s old in the TV business is very much new again.

It takes three (?) to tango

After years of consumer frustration about the difficulties of keeping track of different streaming services’ offerings and log-in credentials, streamers seem to have come up with a solution: an updated version of the old-fashioned cable bundle.

Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery are planning a bundled version of the Disney-owned services Hulu and Disney+ and the WBD-owned Max, the companies announced ahead of upfronts week.

The new bundle, which will become available over the summer, isn’t the only cross-company bundle soon to hit the market. Disney, WBD, and Fox are working on a joint sports-streaming service, whose name—Venu Sports—was announced after upfronts week wrapped. That service is slated to debut this fall in the US and will bring together the companies’ sports networks and “certain direct-to-consumer services,” according to a press release.

That’s not all, folks: Streamer Peacock will be paired with Apple TV+ and Netflix in a new bundle from Comcast called StreamSaver, which will roll out later this month.

The bundles swiftly hitting the market could stand to help services fight churn rates while also potentially delivering some financial relief to customers weary from the rising costs of streaming subscriptions. But they also come with their own potential challenges for the companies, including how revenue is split among the participating parties, and which company owns the customer relationships built from bundled services.

Ad it up

As is typical for a week of presentations directed at advertisers, streamers made clear they are also laser-focused on securing even more advertising dollars. Netflix’s foray into advertising, which began a year and a half ago, is only growing more complex, with the streamer rolling out an in-house ad-tech platform, new programmatic partners, and additional places where brands can place ads, like customized branding inside the ring where a fight between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson will take place.

Amazon Prime Video, only a few months into its ad-supported experiment, is rolling out additional ad formats for advertisers, including interactive pause ads and other shoppable ad formats. WBD introduced shoppable ads for Max, as well as interactive video ads and advanced contextual targeting, at its upfront event. Fox also touted its own shoppable ad formats, as well as tech that allows advertisers spending on its free streamer Tubi to access audiences across Fox.

And NBCUniversal, which will air the 2024 Paris Olympics, officially made the games programmatic through a partnership with The Trade Desk, it announced earlier this year.

Play the hits

This year, even more streamers are embracing what has long been loved in linear TV: live events. Netflix, whose live sports ambitions have previously been limited to live specials and documentaries, will stream two NFL Christmas Day games this year and at least one Christmas Day game in 2025 and 2026. And it’s soon bringing WWE programming to its platform as part of a 10-year deal announced last month.

Peacock, which found big success with an exclusive NFL wild-card game earlier this year, will stream a Dec. 21 NFL game, and it’s gearing up for its live airing of the 2024 Paris Olympics. (Not to be left out of Olympics content, Netflix is releasing several Olympics-related series of its own, some of which, including one centered on Simone Biles, will debut this summer.

Over at Prime Video, the streamer will continue to stream Thursday Night Football programming for the third year running, and will also air its first-ever wild-card game and its second-ever Black Friday game. It is also pushing into basketball with the airing of 21 WNBA games, and is, according to The Athletic, in the process of negotiating with the NBA for the rights to carry some of its games as well.

And some platforms aren’t joking around when it comes to comedy. Netflix, which has been one of the few streaming services that has embraced comedy specials over the years, is increasingly doing it live, streaming The Greatest Roast of All Time: Tom Brady, its first-ever live comedy roast, earlier this month; it also recently streamed a live stand-up special from comedian Katt Williams and aired a live talk-show style variety show from John Mulaney called Everybody’s in LA.

Hulu, meanwhile, is making its own push into comedy. Its new brand, called Hulu’s Laughing Now, will debut in November and is expected to feature 12 comedy specials each year, starting with one from Jim Gaffigan. The platform will also add a collection of licensed stand-up specials, it announced.

If this all sounds eerily familiar, well, you’re not alone.

“Now, finally our users can turn on their TV and get all the channels in one package for one price all supported by ads,” Jimmy Kimmel quipped onstage at the Disney upfront Tuesday. “We call it ‘basic cable’ and it’s gonna blow your mind. We’re consolidating. We are building one enormous ad-supported streaming pile of shit.”