What’s new in SVOD? Most of its content

For a very young industry, streaming has transformed the TV landscape in a very short time span. Yet despite becoming largely ubiquitous with audiences over the past 15 years, subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services still have quite a bit of growing ahead of them.

For audiences, the on-demand nature of quality TV content has been universally welcomed. Connected TV (CTV)¹ adoption and streaming engagement continue to climb, and global streaming content now accounts for 87% of the programs available² to global audiences across linear and streaming channels. Despite this wealth of variety, however, the composition of these catalogs highlights just how young the streaming industry is.

In fact, a recent analysis of the content offered by global SVOD services³ (Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, Netflix and Paramount+) found that only 11.6% was produced before 1990. And what’s more, more than 80% has been produced since 2000. The relative newness of SVOD content is particularly evident with TV shows, which account for almost 90%² of the content distributed by these five providers.

The allure of high-profile original content notwithstanding, the importance of deep content libraries has never been higher for SVOD services. In 2023, for example, U.S. audiences only spent one-quarter⁴ of their streaming time watching original programming. And even in 2022, which many regard as the apex of original content on streaming services, audiences still spent 20% more time with the most-watched licensed titles than they did with the top originals.

This is where TV viewing trends come in, and how SVOD catalogs can continue attracting—and maintaining—audiences. With proportionately less pre-1990 TV programming available, library-fortifying strategies could benefit from incorporating more programming that aligns with older demographics—people who spend significantly more time watching TV than younger generations.

Despite the extensive amount of time that Baby Boomer and Greatest Generation viewers spend with TV, their time streaming is notably less. Viewership from 2023, for example, shows that 18-34 year-olds spent 66% more time watching streaming content than people 65 and older. They also spent 23% more time streaming than viewers 50-64.

In looking at the content these audiences do stream, there are clear indications that they would likely shift more of their time with traditional TV if SVOD catalogs had more of what they spend more time watching: classic TV.

Daunting as it is to imagine what more than 550k video titles⁵ might look like—or how to navigate it as a viewer—the reality of today’s SVOD libraries is much more compact. That’s because many titles exist in more than one catalog. And in the case of TV shows, so might individual episodes.

In reality, the amount of unique content is relatively small. When we only count movies and TV show titles (and not individual episodes), regardless of how many catalogs distribute them, the total volume across these five services drops to just over 84k.

In thinking about the full history of the TV and film industries, today’s SVOD catalogs offer a very small sliver of the content that’s been produced. While it’s unlikely that incorporating a full century’s worth of content is the right strategy, catalog depth—and connecting viewers with the right content—will be the keys to sustained business vitality for SVOD operators as platforms compete for audiences and viewers become more selective with the subscriptions they pay for.

For additional streaming distribution insights, download our 2024 State of Play report.

Sources

1. CTV refers to any television that is connected to the internet. The most common use case is to stream video content.
2. Gracenote Global Video Data
3. For this analysis, global SVOD services refers to five U.S.-based services that launched before 2020 and have scaled to distribute video globally and are tracked in at least nine countries within Gracenote’s video database: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, Netflix and Paramount+.
4. Nielsen National TV Panel
5. The five global providers offer audiences a total of more than 550,000 individual programs, episodes and movies to choose from