The Streaming Wars 2020 Recap

This post serves as my perspective on how the major streaming services fared in 2020, and this article by Julia Alexander inspired me to assign letter grades to each one. My grading is based on each streamer’s execution of its intended strategy, not necessarily how they compare with each other.

Netflix

The big dog of streaming is still the big dog despite the massive increase in competition. Even before COVID started raging and forced us all indoors, Tiger King became the talk of the water cooler. Netflix had a long backlog of unreleased content, so it weathered the shutdown of filming just fine and was able to debut a number of movies that didn’t have to chance to make it to the theaters before they were all forced to close.

Personally I don’t really find much of Netflix’s original content to be all that compelling. The two biggest exceptions are Stranger Things and Sex Education, neither of which were able to get their most recent seasons out this year. However Emily and I have been thoroughly enjoying Schitt’s Creek.

Grade: B+

Hulu

Hulu’s original purpose was to provide a place to watch network shows after they aired, however it has been pulling away from that strategy. Still Emily and I are regular Saturday Night Live watchers so I appreciate that Hulu is still its home.

Hulu has many great originals thanks to the pipeline that its owner Disney created to it from FX. Also it landed Palm Springs (in the US) which was one of my favorite lockdown movies.

Grade: A-

Disney+

It’s hard to see Disney+ as anything other than a massive win for the House of Mouse, hitting 87 million subscribers in a little over a year since its launch. The Mandalorian is the closest thing we have to a replacement for Game of Thrones in terms of being the show you need to watch immediately or risk having social media spoil it for you.

With theaters closed and production shut down, Disney brought many movies to its young service including Hamilton which wasn’t even supposed to be released this year. If you haven’t seen Soul yet you should, it’s fantastic.

The only complaint I have is that the new Marvel shows were pushed into 2021, but I’ll give them a pass given the fact that the pandemic forced them to. And don’t worry, there are many, many new Marvel and Star Wars series in the offing.

Grade: A

HBO Max

After a splashy launch with a massive catalog of content, HBO Max failed to capture any significant growth, racking up less than 13 million subscribers even though almost 30 million can use it for free. The problem is one of branding and marketing because even six months later I still hear people voicing their confusion as to what the service actually is.

For me personally I love HBO Max because it is the new streaming home of HBO’s prestige content, which has always been among my favorite.

Now, with Wonder Woman 1984 and Warner Bros’ entire 2021 film slate debuting on the service, hopefully WarnerMedia will begin to see the growth it was hoping for in its unfortunately named service.

Grade: B+

Amazon Prime Video

I’m not really sure how to judge Prime Video right now. Season 2 of The Boys premiered which was pretty good, but that was the only original I remember watching or hearing about on the service this year. I’m looking forward to the return of Fleabag and The Marvelous Mrs Maisel next year.

Other than that I did finally finish The Americans and Mr Robot on Prime. Also The Expanse is at the top of my “shows I should watch” list and the new Lord of the Rings series that Amazon paid the Tolkien estate $250 million for should finally bow in 2021.

Grade: B

Apple TV+

Apple’s goal for TV+ seems to take up the mission of HBO to produce fewer shows than its competitors, but to focus on making sure that these shows are all high quality. For that they need at least one or two shows to really be seen as truly exceptional. After TV+’s launch last year, none of their series really lived up to this goal, but 2020 brought us Ted Lasso, which in my opinion is an unqualified success and is finally giving Apple the buzz it was looking for.

I also really enjoyed Mythic Quest and Emily joined me in watching Ewan McGregor ride an electric motorcycle all the way up South America in Long Way Up.

Grade: B+

CBS All Access

CBS All Access has always felt like an also-ran in the streaming wars even though it is one of the earliest entrants. I‘m a fan of Star Trek: Discovery which is a modern take on one of my favorite franchises, though it can be uneven at times. In 2020 we got Picard as well which was an excellent show overall and gave a worthy send off to one of the franchise’s best characters that 2003’s Nemesis failed to do.

Other than that there’s nothing on All Access that appeals to me, however I did subscribe to it on the Apple TV app which combines it with Showtime. In 2021 CBS All Access will be rebranded as Paramount+ (plus is so hot right now) though I’m not sure if this will come with a change in content strategy. I would suggest combining the service with Showtime to compete more directly with HBO Max and Netflix.

Grade: C+

Peacock

Peacock is the one service I haven’t yet subscribed to for any amount of time. I watched a couple of SNL clips the day it launched (available in the free tier with ads) and haven’t used it since. I don’t know anyone else who has used it either.

However my daughter has been marathoning The Office because she heard that it will be removed from Netflix at the end of the year, so perhaps the service will have some appeal in 2021 Comcast has a deal to keep NBC content on Hulu for the next two or three years after which I’m assuming I will need a Peacock subscription to watch SNL.

Also whenever Sam Esmail’s version of Battlestar Galactica sees the light of day on Peacock, I’m in.

Grade: D

Quibi

Quibi doesn’t really belong on this list, but I’m including it just because I want to give out a failing grade to someone. The pitch for Quibi was to provide Hollywood quality content in small doses and the executives blame its failure on the pandemic. Well given the fact that all of the other Hollywood-fed services saw increased subscriber numbers and that TikTok became one of the dominant social media platforms in 2020, I think blaming COVID-19 for Quibi’s failure is bullshit. The service was a bad idea in any year.

Grade: F