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New platforms recover their productions and challenge Netflix

2019-11-01T21:22:45.534Z


As of November, a new digital transmission revolution will be launched with the emergence of new content platforms for everyone. This is a series of reports from the…


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(CNN) - Perhaps it has happened to him: he is in front of his television with the control in his hand. In front of you, an extensive menu. Movies, series, documentaries, comedian shows… minutes pass and nothing; choosing between so many options seems almost impossible

I am sure that a name for this condition will appear very soon. It will certainly be curious; something like Netflixic Anxiety. I imagine a definition already approved by his majesty the Royal Academy of the language: Netflixic Anxiety: It is said of the emotional state produced by the difficulty to decide before a varied offer of audiovisual entertainment. It is characterized by being independent of the size of the screen in use.

While RAE approval arrives, prepare. In November and next year, that anxiety can be seriously aggravated. Tempting audiovisual offers are coming that evoke eternal childhoods, the world of Disney or hard dramas like those produced by HBO, among others. In a very short time, and if your pocket allows it, you will have the reach of your index finger, if that is what you use to press the buttons of your remote control, an audiovisual menu never seen before.

This raises several issues. The first, for these platforms: is there a market for all these offers? And the second, for users: do we really have enough free time to consume the most pomegranate of this offer?

Let's start at the beginning, how do we get here?

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How it all started?

Let's not fool ourselves, the streaming war is one of those that have been registered in the audiovisual industry over the last decades. In the 50s, the most common way to watch free audiovisual content at home was through television, that device connected to an antenna that received the hertzian waves emitted by the stations. In many Latin American countries they were owned by the Government, although in the US They were private. In the latter country, and during the 60s and 70s, cable television began to expand in the great metropolises. 1970 the first paid channel appeared: Home Box Office, better known as HBO.

This payment granted access to higher quality content, sports shows, series and movies. The proposal caused a change in the television landscape. There was no limit to the channels and many companies that are now streaming, so they packed their content to sell to specialized channels through distributors such as Comcast or Direct TV. But, at the beginning of the 90s, the public began to have access to the internet and a decade later the transmission speed already allowed a decent reproduction… that of watching television that arrived on the internet was going to change the landscape once again.

Netflix

This all started in 1997 with a Los Gatos company in California that took up the old idea of ​​sending products by mail. This time they were DVDs. This also allowed physical stores and personnel to be dispensed with to attend them. It is also true that this tradition of going to the video club was lost early on Fridays to be able to catch the premieres of the week, or ask for advice from the experts in the dark blue shirt. But that's another story.

Years later, when the internet speed increased considerably, they began to distribute the movies by streaming or streaming via the internet. And there came the boom, which made us change the way we consume movies and series, change our home entertainment habits.

And he did it in two ways. The first: we brought the product home, we no longer had to go to the famous video store. In fact, his first victim was the large BlockBuster video rental chain that was unable to see the potential of streaming and ended up bankrupt in 2010. In addition, it also offered you a catalog attractive enough to compete with conventional movie theaters . In these times, many spectators reserve their movie trips to event films; You know, all those great special effects like Brad Pitt's last adventure on Saturn.

And the offer was not only limited to the United States, but opened to a multitude of markets. European, Arab, Turkish and Indian productions arrived. The viewers began to enjoy the stories and talent of countries until then oblivious to American screens. In the case of the United States, a whole world was opened for Latin talent. Series like "The paper house" and "The house of flowers" triumphed in a market so far reluctant to open its doors to everything that was not spoken in English.

Netflix is ​​no longer alone

That great idea of ​​Netflix, which triumphs in more than 190 countries with 150 million subscribers, has been copied by other large companies. We are in the first of change in a battle for the supremacy of audiovisual content on small and large devices, from the 60-inch super screen to the small one of the new IPhone 11.

For the audiovisual content expert Angel Zambrano, the product that is consumed has also changed: “For example, the amount of series seen on Netflix has increased television production 2 or 3 times what was previously produced. The traditional comedies that were filmed have disappeared and now there are series that go more towards the drama, thought about the type of consumption of the audiences, they are products that end and immediately activate the next available content ”.

Zambrano says that he is betting more to produce television series than movies because for “the consumption of a movie, people are sitting an hour, an hour and a half, and for these platforms the time that one spends in front, consuming, is very important, that is why the product that has eight or ten hours has a lot of value for its business conception ”.

All these platforms are betting a lot of money on content. According to the Hollywood publication, Variety, Netflix could have invested in original content up to US $ 15,000 million this 2019. There are many millions and many hours of entertainment.

The benefit of all this is for the consumer, says Zambrano, but also for the content producers ... producers who will now have more options when selling their productions.

The contents are the key

The secret of these new platforms, at least in its first years of launch, is its content fund.

The Disney platform has a large film library of famous films and television series from its own studios. In addition, he has been acquiring other coveted funds later by buying studios such as Marvel's, with his "The Avengers" saga; Pixar, owner of "The Incredibles" or "Toy Story" or those of Lucasfilm LTD., Owner of the rights to "Star Wars." HBO Max also has the funds of the Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema studios in addition to the successful HBO series from "Game of Thrones" and "The Sopranos" to the most recent such as "Big Little Lies" or "Sucession".

The challenge will be greater for platforms that do not have these treasures and that depend on the license of series and movies, so everyone knows that owning the content is the only way to survive.

Apple TV Plus does not have a large library of its own, so it has begun to create series like the one starring Resse Whiterspoon, Steve Carrell and Jennifer Aniston, "The Morning Show"; with the latest production of the creator of "Peaky Blenders" called "See", with Jason Momoa and with the series "Dickinson".

For its part, Amazon Prime Video plans to make a series about "The Lord of the Rings" and another in Spain about the famous medieval character "El Cid Campeador".

Spain, pioneer in Spanish content

In fact, Spain is one of the countries with more audiovisual production in Spanish in the world, the rights of series produced in principle for some of its television channels such as "La casa de papel" or "Paquita Salas" have been acquired later by Netflix and others have been produced directly by the Californian company as "The Girls of the Cable."

Recently, the Atresmedia conglomerate, owner of several television channels in Spain such as Antena 3 and La Sexta, in addition to a film producer, has reached an agreement of intentions with the telemarketer Telefónica to join forces and create fiction content in Spanish.

The idea is to produce audiovisual content in the form of movies or television series to distribute on their own channels or sell them to third parties.

Antena 3 is the creator of hits such as "Time between seams", "Velvet" and "Vis a Vis". For its part, Telefónica, through its Movistar + platform, has created series such as “Arde Madrid”, by Paco León; “La Peste”, by Alberto Rodríguez and Rafa Cobos and has just released “While the war lasts”, the most recent film by Alejandro Aménabar. It is a Spanish-Argentine co-production that was submitted to the contest at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

only for your eyes

So, Netflix has lost the hegemony of global content production to distribute online on digital platforms. Now, the potential spectator market has no borders or limits. However, subscriber pockets do. Finally, they will end up making a selection based on the content and, above all, on the price. Perhaps several of these platforms do not survive this sieve, basically because it is so much the material that each platform offers that there is already a feeling of saturation, which will now be multiplied without remedy.

Now, if you feel overwhelmed or overwhelmed by so many options, there is always the possibility to turn everything off and read a book, but make it paper.

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Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2019-11-01

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