The Impact of Streaming Services on Fandom

Category:Fan Activities
Today, streaming media services are everywhere and many of them, particularly TV streaming services, are not doing as well as they expected to be doingViewers defecting, writers striking … is streaming’s House of Cards about to fall? - The Guardian but, it didn’t start that way.
Around 2006-2007 was when a few of the streaming services we recognise now began to emerge in their earliest renditions: Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Viaplay, Hulu, Crunchyroll, and Youku to name a few. For music, platforms like Soundcloud, and Spotify were also started around this time.
The Writer’s Strike of 2007-20082007–08 Writers Guild of America strike - Wikipedia. was too early for the unions to fully envision what streaming would do to change the landscape of television. They were still reckoning with companies over DVD residuals in 2007/8. So, while streaming residuals were a part of the discussions (under discussions around new media residuals), there was no way they could have predicted the impact streaming would have on their careers. Or the careers of actors.
There are at least 27 streaming platforms with more than 10M subscribers as of November 2023List of streaming media services - Wikipedia. Music now has over 616 million paying streaming subscribers globally - Music Business Worldwide. However, as people struggle with the rising cost-of-living in many countries, an increasing number are giving up their streaming services, leaving the platforms to scramble and pivot to new ways of working to make a profit.
Streaming services, and the way they expect and contract writers and actors to work and be paid, played a large role in the 2023 WGA and SGA-AFTRA strike How Streaming Caused the Writers Strike - Vox, YouTube. Fandoms that had initially been optimistic about on-demand streaming for their shows have also become increasingly critical of the services, following mass cancellations of shows and growing tiers of ad-supported options on streaming servicesWhy Streaming Services Are Pushing Subscribers to Ad Tiers - The Hollywood Reporter.. Many fans also feel strongly that streaming services changed the way fans engaged with fandoms.
===The Impact of the Binge-watching Model===
Before streaming took off, fans of TV shows tended to sit down and watch each episode of a show at the same time or, if they were recording it, shortly after it aired. Afterwards, people would typically either discuss the show in-person the next day, or take to mailing lists, forums, or other online spaces to discuss the episode or theorise about what would happen next. This way of fandom had already changed over the decades as people got access to new technology, the format of media changed, and with the growing accessibility of the internet. Streaming just added a new twist. The Fanfic Maverick and Talkin' Fanfic in their co-hosted fandom history episodes have guest stars discussing what fandom interactions after episodes aired looked like for the guests over the yearsFanfiction History with The Fanfic Maverick Podcast!! PART ONE - Podbean. Fanfiction History with Talkin' Fanfic PART TWO - The Fanfic Maverick. 
When streaming launched and entire series were available on demand, having the entire show available to access whenever suited was a great model for people whose schedules, health, capacity, and availability meant the weekly airing model was inaccessible to them. Then, with streaming soon came the binge model. Entire series went live on platforms at once and people were encouraged via marketing and metrics to sit down and watch the entire show in a few days. This created a very different environment for fandom discussions to take place after.
Having the option of relaxing at the end of the week and spend Friday through the weekend binge-watching a show they loved was an idea that appealed to many people. Other people have said that binging suits the way they want to engage with shows better and they prefer having the entire season available at once to watch. Others have said that they often struggled to remember what was happening week on week, and so being able to sit and watch all the episodes over a few days worked for their access preferences and needs as well.
However, some fans have spoken about not having the time to sit and watch an entire season in one or two days, but, if they don’t, they leave themselves open to being spoilered. With the growing expectation in fandom spaces that people will binge-watch shows as soon as they drop, people have observed there is a reduced consideration about spoilers in some fandom spaces. This meant that people who watched a couple of episodes each week would have to stay out of all of the fandom spaces until they caught up or risk having spoilers ruin their viewing experience. This, of course, would also have happened to some people in the week-by-week approach, but with the entire season being available at once, it wasn't single episode spoilers that were causing as much problem as the entire season spoilers. 
People have also discussed how it has removed a lot of theorising and discussions about “what if”, apart from in small, close-knit groups who were all watching along together in places like Discord channels. People who had previously gone to fandom spaces for those discussions found themselves no longer able to for many shows.
Finally, with binging shows all the way through and not taking time to discuss them afterwards, many people found that they had very poor recollection of exactly what had happened as episodes began to blur together.
Amidst the pros and cons, some shows and the fandoms around them have done very well with the bingeing model on streaming services. Stranger Things generated a huge amount of interest and a large fandom around it, possibly in part due to many of the what-ifs of the show not just being between episodes, but between seasons as well.
However, not all streaming platforms have stuck to the binge model and a few have arguably done better by returning to the weekly release schedule, with the entire season available to watch from the library afterwards as well. Yellowjackets is one recent example which has benefited greatly from this as the show’s engagement is heavily fueled by theories, “what ifs”, and reacting to the chaos that unfolded during the most recent episode. If every episode of Yellowjackets had been aired at once, while that may not have impacted its success, it likely wouldn't have had as much engagement online as it did week-on-week. Some fans of Our Flag Means Death also felt that the week-by-week release of season two of the show was a positive thing for the fandomAn abbreviated list of the many, many reasons I love that the season 2 OFMD episodes are being released more closely to a regular television schedule than a single huge binge drop - Trifles & Parsnips.
===Fandom Churn: fandom migrations seem to happen quicker===
There has always been fandom migration (see also: Migratory Slash Fandom and The Femslash Herd), as fans of particular dynamics seek out characters that satisfy their fannish preferences. Some people have discussed how, with the way streaming services have altered viewing habits, this migration and the churn of fandom seems to be happening quicker than ever.
Part of this may be due to the sheer amount of media available at any moment, and part of it may be the seemingly growing rapid cancellations of shows after just one or two seasons and the opaque nature of what constitutes a successful streaming show. As people have tried to unpick the specifics of what viewing numbers count most towards renewals, the time-frame for what engagement matters seems to have gotten shorter and shorter. With that, so too do the fandom migrations seem to be picking up speed.
If the expectation is to binge watch a show to try and push the numbers for success in the fandom's favour, people jump on new fandoms, watch all the episodes in a matter of days, engage with the fandom for a short amount of time and then move onto the next show they want to be renewed. Shows with canonical queer characters seem particularly susceptible to this kind of fandom migration, no doubt because there seems to be a greater likelihood that they will be cancelled. (See also: Sapphic Show Cancellation Pattern of the 2020s).
The shorter term nature of fandoms means that some shows never really build up even a modest sized fandom. Large amounts of discussion end up focused on how to get the show renewed (or, when the show is cancelled, how to save the show).
===Cancellations and How to Avoid Them Became Main Topics===
No-one knows what the metrics for shows on streaming services are or what individual services consider "good" or "bad. Even shows that seem to be rated highly by both critics and fans, and which have good viewing numbers can be cancelled without reason. Unsurprisingly, this has had an impact on how fans choose to engage with the shows and fandoms.
There can be a sense of anxiety now anytime a show airs, with people encouraging one another to binge-watch as they try to guess which time-frame matters the most. And what seems to matter keeps changing. Initially people thought it was views in six weeks, but recent claims are that the first two weeks matter the post. Others suggest it is the numbers of re-watches or how many people watch the entire series to completionsCompletion Rates are the Key to Renewals or Cancelations for Netflix - Reddit Post discussing metrics for renewals at Netflix. Most recently, people have added the numbers of new subscribers who join to specifically watch that show into the mix. Show runners and creators aren’t exempt from this uncertainty and fueling of watching habits either, no matter how well-established they are in the industry. Even Neil Gaiman, for The Sandman, was replying to fans on social media with what he had been told mattered most to get a season 2 renewals for the showNeil Gaiman Explains Why Netflix Hasn't Renewed The Sandman for Season 2 Yet - Comicbook TV, August 21, 2022.. 
With the growing pressure in fandom spaces to figure out what will get their shows the continuation they want, many fans found they could no longer enjoy a show and discuss the episodes when they have the worry of it being cancelled (likely on a cliff-hanger) and this fandom-wide encouragement to keep streaming the show in the background in the pursuit of the golden renewal‘1899’ Cancellation Reiterates Why It’s Hard To Bother Investing In Netflix Shows - Forbes, January 3, 2023.
While streaming did not start the era of cancellations and there isn’t even much evidence to suggest that the cancellations are happening anymore frequentlyIt Only Seems Like Everything on Streaming Gets Canceled Now - The New York Times. September 8, 2023., the relationship to control may have changed. With some successful reversals of cancellation decisions in Wynonna Earp, Lucifer, and others backing them, fans felt that there was some hope of swaying decisions. And with all of that being communicated widely, even from people involved in the industry, there was a sense of being able to prevent cancellations that likely was not felt as strongly when the entire industry was far more distant from the fans.
Unease around whether shows will be cancelled and whether the fandom has any really control over the outcome also leads to some fans simply not engaging with TV shows until they know if they’re being cancelled or not. 
Finally, there is a fairly small but growing trend of cancelled shows being yanked from streaming services entirely — sometimes shortly after airing — and becoming inaccessible without pirating the media. The Nevers on HBO probably never stood a chance between the impact of the pandemic, and the impact of the entertainment world learning about the abuse perpetrated by Joss Whedon. That said, it was still a shock to fans in 2022 when they learnt that while the final six episodes were airing in 2023, the show was being pulled from HBO’s library and scheduled to appear in its entirety across three days on two occasions and then no more on a freeview channel few people had heard of.
In 2023, in under two months, Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies aired on Paramount Plus, was cancelled, and was removed from the streaming service. Willow and Motherland: Fort Salem were also pulled from Disney+, leaving fans unable to watch them anywhere online legally. While the fandom of Motherland: Fort Salem had at least had an ending due to the production team being told in advance that the season would be the last, the situation with Willow is still very much unknown though it is officially on hiatus.
There was also growing sentiment that some shows were being sacrificed as quickly as possible and cut from streaming to avoid paying residuals, a topic which would come up frequently during the WGA/SGA-AFTRA strikes. And, it didn’t take fans long to point out that many of these shows were female-led, racially diverse, and featured LGBT — particularly sapphic — characters.
The combination of these factors meant that fandoms simply didn't or couldn’t form to any great degree around some shows, even if they were well received. 
===Introducing New Fans to Older Fandoms===
While some newer fandoms may be dying off quicker or not forming in the first place as a result of streaming services, older fandoms have seen revivals due to streaming services making older media more accessible. Shows which were previously only available by buying multiple DVD (or even VHS) box sets, developed new audiences when their back catalogues were put on streaming services. This ultimately led to revivals or revitalisations of older fandoms.
With new fans came new fan works and perspectives, as well as increasing the discussions in spaces like Tumblr and Twitter. However, depending on how many new fans the revival brought into the fandom, this often brought in unwanted drama or toxicity that hadn't previously existed in those spaces, much to the despair of the small fanbase already present.
===Streaming and fandom data===
It wasn’t that writers, TV execs, and others were oblivious to the value of fandom, but with streaming rising at the same time as many social media platforms and more people going online, along with that came more data. After all, people were sharing all kinds of metrics and usable information online. TV services have always tried to crack into fandoms to find out how they can make more money out of them; but since streaming grew alongside the boom in algorithmic driven social media and internet generally, this has ramped up.
There is arguably a reason Wednesday was so successful for Netflix when other shows weren’t and it didn’t really come down to whether it was a good show or not, it was because Netflix put the data analysis, time, marketing, and effort into making sure it became a trending sensation in fandom spaces like TikTokUncovering the Key Elements of Netflix's Viral 'Wednesday' Marketing Campaign - Brand Vision, July 11, 2023.. The entire dance scene seemed designed to go viral on TikTok. They paid for animatronic to get videos and trend on all social media platforms. Parts of the dialogue, the scene presentation, the entire structure of the show were designed around making sure it was a show TikTok and other forms of social media loved. 
This invariably causes conflict, because fans of other shows that are cancelled can see that the shows streaming services wanted to succeed get a full-blown advertisement campaign, and shows that they cancel after one season have no marketing budget at all. While the ire in these situations should be aimed at the streaming services, they frequently end up with inter-fandom conflicts.
Platforms like the wiki host, Fandom, have been reporting on the state of streaming for a few years, making use of the vast amount of data they get from fans contributing to the wikis on their hosting service to explain how fans and fandom can be used or marketed to specifically to ensure ongoing financial incomeFandom Uncovers Three "Rules of Retention" for Streaming Services in its 2022 State of Streaming Study - Fandom. April 19, 2022. for streaming services. The data and findings from research like this often appears in business advice for streaming servicesSuper fans, franchises and unique content could be the answer to reducing streaming churn - TechCrunch. 
With streaming services struggling, and with both the WGA and SGA/AFTRA strike seemingly being resolved with protections and better contracts for writers and actors, there is likely to be greater incentives to using fandom data like this for an edge over competitors. 
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