The State of Media and Entertainment 2019

In 2018, we started to realize that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Just a few years previous, we loved having a few good streaming services to choose from. We loved the online originals that were better than anything on broadcast or cable, and we loved trimming or cutting our cable bill.But in 2018, those services and those original shows and movies just kept coming, and we found it impossible to keep up. Think about Lucy and Ethel and the chocolate conveyer belt (now, that was peak TV). That’s how it felt.At one time, we welcomed TV recommendations from friends. Now, we loathe them. Another must-watch show? Another “next Breaking Bad”? It’s all too much.The problems started immediately as 2018 began. In January, Ooyala published a report saying that 49% of those surveyed believed they had too many TV options, although, ironically, none of them quite satisfied. Maybe that’s why households felt they needed to add more and more services as new options appeared—so they could catch every streaming show before their friends did.The next problem was that people felt they had too many services. A report from Phenix, also from January, said 42% of U.S. adults refused to pay more than $20 per month for streaming services. With most broadband households currently having between two and three streaming services, that number has probably crept up.