walled garden

services. The next step, it would appear, is a return to licensing content, with even returning Disney CEO Bob Iger saying the company will resume selling shows to third parties.

“It’s out with the old, in with the new, back with the old,” says Matt Creasey, executive VP of sales, acquisitions and coproductions at Banijay Rights.

The LA-based exec says the trend of studios warehousing all their content is likely over, but it will still apply to certain pieces of IP. “The walled garden era is definitely over, but it’s slightly more nuanced than that,” he explains. “There’s still going to be a lot of vertical integration amongst these companies that want to keep their content in-house, but there’s also now going to be content that’s sold elsewhere.”

The collapse of the walled gardens has also meant that SVoD services are offering much smaller libraries than perhaps was envisaged a few years ago.

Erick Opeka, president and chief strategy officer at LAheadquartered streaming company Cinedigm, says one of the less talked about aspects of the current streaming landscape is “shrink-flation” – where SVoD services are rapidly reducing their libraries at the same time as increasing the prices. “The net result is that you have these massive streaming services that are pulling content off to feed FAST and licensing to other AVoD services to recapture revenue while goosing their prices,” he says.

This is the new normal, Opeka believes, as the industry enters a new phase that prioritises profitability above all else. “There will still be original programming, and lots of it, but it’s going to be much more thoughtful in terms of the profit and loss,” he says. “There will be more of a focus on taking things out theatrically, selling transactionally, renting, licensing, putting content on TV channels, and making sure things are going to AVoD in a much faster cycle than we’ve seen previously.”

Opeka also says he expects to see a return to “very rigid windowing” as the studio groups “try to re-establish revenue streams,” adding that it will become “more extreme as time goes on.” define themselves if everyone has similar or the same programming that you can find in many places?” she asks.

Amid the chaos, studios seem more willing than ever to experiment with windowing and licensing.

During a February earnings call, Zaslav suggested WBD will be open to new windowing strategies to attract and retain viewers. “We can take things like the first or second season of Succession and put that down on our AVoD service and then, if you loved it, you can come up and pay for ad-lite or subscription,” he said at the time.

The model of placing content on multiple platforms and removing paywalls is somewhat reminiscent of the children’s content model.

Emily Horgan, a former Disney exec and Irelandbased kids’ content consultant, says Netflix used to adopt something of a walled garden approach to kids’ content. However, the realities of competing with YouTube – the dominant platform in terms of kids’ content viewership – has meant that most streamers and studios now take a cross-platform approach to franchise building.

“I definitely observed the walled garden of Netflix, with regard to YouTube, being in place up until 2018 or 2019. And then there was a flip, and that needed to happen because there were certain shows that I think had a lot of potential that were on Netflix that seemed to be handcuffed from going on YouTube,” she says.

In 2019, the streaming giant acquired children’s media brand StoryBots and rebranded its YouTube Channel as Netflix Junior. Soon after, Netflix started putting full episodes on the YouTube channel and marketing it heavily. “That was a real walled garden tumbling moment for me as I observe kids and streaming,” says Horgan, who notes that the non-exclusive strategy has paid off in the long term.

The arrival of advertising in the streaming space is also having an impact on the deal-making and how content migrates across SVoD, AVoD and FAST.

The studios are increasingly talking about FAST as an interesting avenue –both as a revenue source in itself, and as an ad-supported environment with which to promote new and returning shows.

To ensure they are able to stand out in an increasingly crowded market, Banijay Rights’ Creasey says AVoD players are beginning to pursue more exclusive deals.

Banijay Rights has already partnered with Tubi, Pluto and Roku extensively in recent years on a non-exclusive basis, with the distributor now having between 8,000 and 9,000 hours of content on each AVoD platform, he says.

Now that the AVoDs have built a “war chest of content,” Creasey says discussions are turning to exclusivity. He cites a recent deal with Fox-backed Tubi, which acquired the unscripted film Dead Hot, a passion project from US actress and singer Vanessa Hudgens, for a sizeable licensing fee.

“ Because of the Wild West landscape with AVoD and FAST, content owners are possibly afraid to put all their eggs in one basket, so they’re doing a lot of non-exclusive deals. But how are these services going to define themselves if everyone has similar or the same programming?

Paramount Global is already heavily involved in the FAST space with Pluto TV, while WBD is planning to unveil its FAST plans in April. Even Netflix is eyeing a move into the space, with co-CEO Ted Sarandos saying in January that the company was “keeping an eye on that segment.” Disney, to date, has not talked publicly about exploring FAST.

Jennifer Liang, Topic

Creasey calls the deal a “major step forward in the world of AVoD for us,” and says Banijay Rights is in discussions about several other exclusive deals with ad-supported streaming players. “The world of non-exclusive revenue sharing is going to continue, but there’s going to be another component that wasn’t there before and we’re seeing that grow.”

After an enormously turbulent year, the 2023 LA Screenings will likely give a good indication of the appetite of US studio groups to sell their content to third parties.

At last year’s LA Screenings, many in attendance commented on the lack of new shows that were available to license, due primarily to the fact the studios were withholding the buzziest titles for their own streamers.

The 2023 event will take place in a much-altered context – one in which studios must generate revenue in as many ways as possible and demonstrate to Wall Street that they can balance the books. Against that backdrop, the licensing cheques might be too tempting to turn down.

However, the rise of non-exclusive deal-making and placing content across multiple platforms and tiers has its limitations. While the walled gardens might be coming down in a broad sense, Jennifer Liang, VP of programming strategy, acquisitions and sales at US SVoD service Topic, says they will remain firmly in place for top-tier IP that the streamers and studios believe present the greatest potential for monetisation.

“Right now, because of the Wild West landscape with AVoD and FAST, content owners are possibly afraid to put all their eggs in one basket, so they’re doing a lot of non-exclusive deals. But how are these services going to

The next 10 years will be drastically different to the previous decade, according to Cinedigm’s Opeka. “The future is going to be less big tentpole programming, more lower-cost reality and doc-style programming, linear channels having no original programming or very little, and a return to very rigid windowing.”

The content boom of the past decade, and the freespending arms race to build D2C scale, is a chapter in TV history that is likely over now, he says. “For the last decade, we’ve all enjoyed this bevy of amazing shows, and the billions of dollars spent, but I think we’re going to find that was a wrinkle in time.”