In conjunction with my group presentation a few weeks ago, where we speculated on the future of major streamers like Netflix with reference to Succession’s proposed business model of ‘The Hundred’ (an aggregated news, lifestyle, media site that tried to combine Masterclass, Substack, and the New Yorker all in one), I thought the idea of microcasting was an interesting direction that major streamers might take. If Netflix were to acquire YouTube, for example, this could be a way to bring huge audience numbers to the platform, say, if certain creators were only available on Netflix.
Obviously, the content on a streamer would have to be moderated at a higher and more specific level, perhaps more so than even on YouTube itself, but this seems like a viable direction for the company, especially as a way to increase ad revenue for sponsors (which is currently not a part of Netflix’s subscriber based business model).
It’s sort of reminiscent of Spotify’s acquisition of the Joe Rogan podcast, which was initially controversial but now seems to have been a gamble that paid off. I remember that it seemed almost unthinkable that a podcast that relied on its video (Joe Rogan interviewing guests in a studio) could find its sole home on a platform that is still primarily a music streaming site, and that makes the idea of transferring short-form videos from Youtube onto a conventional streaming site seem like a rather conservative choice.
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