The Future for Streaming Services and Closed Captioning

Anybody old enough to remember life before Netflix existed will recall the elation they felt at discovering what was an unfathomably low-cost, binge-worthy smorgasbord of entertainment – the streaming service. The low cost, convenience, content variety, and lack of advertisements on streaming services always did seem like an offering that was too good to be true… AND IT WAS!

Decades later, (and indeed, countless streaming channels later), with the recent introduction of advertising and the slow decline of content quality, the golden age of enjoying the guilt-free spoils of VOD seem to be coming to an end.

Streaming services are changing fast. Here’s how, why, and what the future may mean for closed captioning.

Streaming Services Competition

What first amazed viewers about streaming services was the sheer scale and variety of content. Documentaries, comedies, movies, dramas, thrillers, kids shows… the list is almost endless. Noticeably, the more popular streaming services have become, the more genres and channels have entered into the market.

With so many channels now providing services, content constantly pings from one channel to another (due to expiring and renewing licenses). To get the most out of content variety, people tend to be subscribed to numerous different streaming channels, often cancelling subscriptions and then renewing them when something new gets added. This has created a barrier to streaming channels raising their prices too much per month because there are so many other alternatives to their channel and for many, there are no tie-in contracts, so customers can come and go as they please, sometimes for as little as a month at a time.

Streaming and VOD Content Variety

With competition so fierce and viewers so fickle, the approach to retaining customer bases has been through creating more and more original content. By creating original shows, companies like Netflix, Prime and Disney have brought in viewers by the bucket load. This was especially apparent during 2020 and 2021, where most people were sitting at home all day, worrying about germs. New content keeps customers, but churning out new shows month on month like some kind of entertainment factory does come with its downsides. In addition to decreases in the quality of new shows, many streaming channels have spent such high amounts of money generating original content, that debts are now piling up.

Over recent years, the quality of series on streaming channels has significantly declined. Viewers may be drawn in by the release of a new show, but quality keeps them watching it, series after series. Movies and series take a lot of money to produce and without providers being able to increase their bottom lines through increasing subscription prices, many are falling onto huge debts. Where streaming services could and perhaps have, tried to ‘outdo the competition’ in a bid to justify price increases to viewers, with short contractual obligations, customers are too easy to lose, and competition is too great and too fierce.

Streaming Services and Future Revenue

Let’s be honest, it’s more than likely that over time, contracts are likely to be extended far beyond one month at a time. For the moment, however, advertising revenue seem to be the go-to money spinner.

In the current climate, streaming services are taking a win-win approach to advertising revenue. They charge clients money to advertise on their streaming service, whilst also charging customers extra if they want to avoid watching those adverts. With Prime recently adding adverts to their content and with them, an option to pay to switch them off, there are whispers of viewer boycotts and refusal to pay to remove ads. Either way, the streaming service wins. If viewers pay to remove ads, that means extra subscription revenue. If viewers refuse to pay to remove ads, that means more viewers watching ads, meaning more advertising revenue.

Advertising on Streaming Services

Remember those years of flicking the channels or muting the television, just to avoid having eardrum splittingly loud commercials blasting out at you, spoiling the flow of your favourite series? Well, they’re back! But now, you can’t turn the channel because if you do, that smart TV of yours will show it true colours as not only completely un-smart, but also infuriatingly glitchy. Even consider trying to outsmart ads by skipping past them, and you will usually be punished with having to watch them all over again. Adverts are coming back with a vengeance.

Streaming Channel Packages and Contracts

One of the major pulling factors for streaming services when competing with cable and satellite TV packages was price. At their inception, streaming services started at as little as £3 per month and even today, few will pay more than £15 for a streaming service, even with additional family member accounts and HD packages. In contrast, cable packages would only even start at £20 plus per month and with sports and movies added, could easily wind up at costing more like £70.

With the prices of streaming services slowly creeping up, it’s highly likely that package models will start to come back into play, with channels working together under a higher fee for bundles but with multiple streaming services offered.

Streaming Services Accessibility

Changes that we see in closed captioning as streaming services change will likely be reflected in terms of other accessibility, including BSL and audio description.

We are seeing more and more content with audio description and BSL available to viewers and with potential amalgamations of streaming services, access to these is likely to increase, which is definitely a good thing.

Streaming Services Closed Captioning

The relatively recent changes creeping in on streaming services are likely to have a significant impact on closed captioning.

Whilst there are many downsides to the introduction of advertising, increasing prices and potential introductions of longer term contracts, when it comes to accessibility services, bundling streaming services together may not necessarily be a bad thing.

Closed captioning is a requirement for broadcast and video-on-demand content, but there can be wide differences between the specifications for these captions, with most streaming services working with entirely different caption formats to broadcast. Many times, closed captions will need to be altered for distribution in different geographical regions. It’s very typical to amend time codes and captioning requirements for content created in the UK but streaming to the US is a different matter. In addition, caption formats, styles and specifications differ between platforms such as Netflix, Prime, Paramount Plus, Disney Plus, iPlayer and other channels. Whilst this can mean big business for a captioning company, it can mean there are differences between captioning quality, depending on which channel you watch on.

Different Formats for different platforms

For instance, while iPlayer favours colour changes to indicate different speakers, Netflix and Prime typically work with more traditional positional changes in caption text. It would be interesting to see whether a future integration of channels as ‘bundle packages’ would mean getting together for a more consistent captioning style.

Here at Capital Captions we love working with captions of all types, whether they are simple SRT subtitle files or more complex STL or Broadcast captions. If you have a feature film or video that you are looking to get captioned then why not click the button below to get your free quote today.