“It appears you’ve won the streaming wars!” shrieks an animated character on South Park. Like most of us, he thinks there’s a zero-sum battle between Netflix, Disney+, and others. Except streamers aren’t mutually exclusive. You can subscribe to as many as you want. In fact, the average U.S. household already subscribes to an extraordinary 5.2 video streamers, a stunning 400% jump from just a few years ago.
Fake wars are somewhat of a tradition in Hollywood. Decades ago, the “TV Wars” pitted the first three TV networks against each other. Not only did they all survive, but they also thrived and multiplied into a whopping explosion of over 200 TV channels. Today, with a surge of more than 100 hundred streamer Apps and counting, streamers are following their TV network ancestors’ trajectory. It’s not a streaming war: It's a streaming tsunami–and the tidal wave is colossal.
