Streaming: A Story of Oversaturation

By Claire Watson

Dark nights illuminated by bright screens. Catalogues of documentaries, films, musicals and TV shows, some new, some nearly lost to time, flicker before your eyes. Netflix’s familiar drum reverberates throughout your living room. Disney’s logo glitters across your TV. A notification sliding across the top of your phone indicates five new titles coming to Amazon Prime. Movie posters smear into colourful blurs as you scroll through their different libraries, until suddenly you hit the end, and there’s just a black screen and your reflection, decorated by a trademark. 

What feels like an age-old question, has become a dizzying nightmare. “What to watch on Netflix?” now diverges across different streaming platforms. The choice of what to watch feels unlimited. We are overwhelmed by variety and the immediacy at which we can access it. So, why do we spend our evenings like this; scrolling but not watching? 

According to CSO, in 2020 the total household expenditure on video streaming was €211 million. When it comes to digital services, video streaming takes up the highest percentage of expenditure. We funnel so much money into these services only to be sat staring into black screens, switching on films just to turn them off as quickly. Consuming media has never been easier, yet has it always been so desolate? 

In January 2007 Netflix launched its streaming service. The company had operated previously as a rental system. To compete with the American chain Blockbuster, the company began to offer videos on demand. Now there are over 200 platforms for consumers to choose from. What seemed to be a competition between Netflix, Hulu, and HBO has expanded massively. Disney Plus, NOW TV, and Paramount+, are just a few of the big names to enter the pool of streaming services. With all these platforms, our choice of what to watch should be unlimited. Yet with the cost of subscriptions and the constant shifting of films and TV series between platforms, it feels as though our decisions are less our own and more the market’s. 

Before Netflix turned digital, movie rentals were all the rage. Passing through small towns I still see remains of that bright yellow Xtra-vision sign, and the smells of popcorn and plastic box-sets come rushing back. Though the company ran into financial difficulties a decade before I was born, I still remember the excitement of popping into Xtra-vision. The shelves lined with movies and video games seemed endless, it was like a pocket-dimension had been crammed into this small Irish town. Despite Xtra-vision’s popularity, its rental service meant that after expansion the company struggled to maintain the cost of its growth. 

Renting movies was much cheaper than buying DVDs, and there was the ease of simply walking up to the section you wanted to peruse and having everything laid out before you. But it’s not this ease I miss, it’s the social aspect. Besides renting movies and games off of real human staff, I have fond memories of going to friends’ houses after school, dropping off our bags and then heading down to Xtra-vision. Reminiscing on the company, I’m flooded with memories of running around with my brother, likely fighting over what movie we were going to take home. It reminds me of sitting with my family, ordering takeaway pizza, and getting ready for that week’s movie. 

Now watching movies at home no longer has that appeal. It’s so easy to queue a movie on your phone or to throw something on in the background, not even looking at the screen. Digital streaming is so isolated. Services like Netflix, though not cheap, fade into the background. When watching films with friends, it’s hard to avoid the awkward silence that comes with scrolling through that catalogue, knowing what’s there and not wanting it. When we all have the same services, it’s harder to bond over watching something new for the first time. If you’re anything like me, you’re months behind the latest shows your friends have already watched twice over. 

Yet, I can’t say that streaming has completely eradicated the closeness of sitting down and watching a film or TV show with friends. Like most people during lockdown, myself and my friends turned to Netflix Party for comfort. If you’re lucky like me, you’ve a friend that’s made out a list of titles to watch and you’ve been skirting down the list without any time left for hemming and hawing. Maybe you’re sitting down to watch a series, giving your friend live-reactions as you finally catch up with them. There are ways around this silence.

I’ve never been great at watching movies. Instead, video essays are my go to. If you watch video essays, you’ve likely heard of CuriosityStream. Philosophy Tube is a favourite of mine, and when she was sponsored by CurisoityStream, I wanted to support her by using her link. The link gave me bonus access to Nebula, a streaming service dedicated to video essays and podcasts. It was, seemingly, perfect. No ads, exclusive content and incredibly affordable - how could I say no?

Maybe I’m too fussy, but it doesn’t take long to reach the end of CuriosityStream and Nebula’s supply of content. The documentaries are mostly American produced, which is fine, but it’s a specific perspective that even when being objective, is difficult to shake. On Nebula, as the majority of content creators are also YouTubers, I had already seen a lot of the content I had signed up for. I didn’t feel cheated, but I felt I should have researched the content I was signing up to before subscribing. I felt it had been mismarketed. 

This is the issue with streaming services. It’s not the content itself, but how it's given to us. Ultimately, it's a market. Our decisions are influenced by what is relevant, by what will make people sign up. The recent migration of Marvel Shows to Disney Plus illustrates the economy of streaming. Suddenly the viewer’s power to control what they watch, is taken. Companies like Amazon and Disney are neck-deep in controversies, and makes me wonder if by signing up for their services, I fund their misdeeds. Subscribing becomes political, the content provided is affected by its platform. 

Digital streaming is not a total dystopia. Going beyond the movies and TV, platforms like Twitch and Youtube have allowed creators to make careers out of their passions. Streaming has given artists control over their content. For years I had been an avid watcher of College Humor, so when the company initially collapsed, I was somewhat heartbroken. But by turning themselves into a streaming service that allowed their creators full artistic control over what they produced, their company became stronger than ever. Dimension 20, Um Actually, and Game Changer are just a few examples of Dropout’s incredible shows that would not have been possible without the ability to stream and subscribe. 

Metaphorically speaking, the immediacy of the internet has rewired our brains to want content on demand. TV Providers have been progressing towards this for years, and I don’t think that this innovation is a terrible thing. But it’s costly. We spend money to sit and decide, and when something is bad we turn it off or zone out. The library model fails when it becomes oversaturated, and yet this oversaturation is exactly why we sign up.

Perhaps, the issue with immediacy is our fears of wasting time. Seeing a subpar film in the cinema is annoying, sure, but it’s the experience that keeps you going back. The cinema isn’t the solution to streaming. For many people, it lacks the accessibility that draws people to home-viewing. I don’t propose that we recreate these cinema experiences at home, but if we’re subscribing we should get our money’s worth, and not fear wasting time. As movies and TV shows are produced by streaming services, the incentive to visit the cinema is disappearing. 

Staring at the end of a catalogue, trying to think of what you want to watch is anti-experience. We envision an evening spent watching a life-changing film, but we’re too scared to jump into the deep end and risk watching something bad. But consuming bad media is an experience, and experience is all we have. There’s hundreds of things to watch out there, all you have to do is hit play.