Michael Whalen: Will Streaming Kill Big Media?

August 13, 2025 | In this issue of The Institutional Risk Analyst, we check in on media commentator, two time Emmy® Award winning composer and internationally known recording artist Michael Whalen. He has been a professor at four colleges, he founded Artist Expansion in 2016 and works as a coach for upcoming artists. Michael brings a ground level view of the brave world of new media and narrates the slow-motion consolidation of streaming as a business model for large public media companies. Our readers will recall that Michael predicted this very outcome eight years ago -- before COVID in 2017 (“The Economics of Content: Michael Whalen”). It’s nice to be right. 

Michael Whalen

The IRA: Michael, a lot has happened in the worlds of new and old media since we last spoke. Social media became the primary source of news in 2025, particularly overtaking traditional television. Local news is having a modest renaissance, but the aggregators of content seem like endangered species. As you predicted back in 2017, the owners of legacy TV content have been forced to consolidate down to Amazon (AMZN), Disney (DIS), Netflix (NFLX), Apple (AAPL) TV+ and Paramount Skydance (PARA).  What’s next for the big media conglomerates? 

Michael Whalen: The so-called “streaming revolution” was never going to end with a dozen or more big platforms all fighting for a place on your monthly bill. The math never worked for a dozen platforms. The audience attention spans didn’t match the supply, and the economics of producing this much content hit a wall. Up until very recently, Hollywood has been trying to make the old mathematics of cable TV and the loss of home video sales work for the current world of streaming. We have always been heading toward consolidation. This explains the quiet desperation that many of the smaller streamers have felt from the beginning. And now, in 2025, it’s playing out exactly the way we discussed in 2017. We have fewer brands, content bundling, strategic mergers, and sports and live events as the glue that keeps the whole thing from coming apart. That said, Netflix is still very much in the lead but the positioning for second and third place is very much up in the air.

The IRA: So DIS, AMZN, PARA and NFLX are the winners of the ecosystem wars? AAPL is a follower?

Michael Whalen: For now. I should mention that the merger and now spin off with Warner Brothers (WBD)/Discovery is a consolidation that has gone badly. This was a bad idea at the beginning and it is still a bad idea despite the popularity of their reality TV shows or their Emmy winning prestige HBO shows. They are too small to battle Netflix and Disney and too big to be scooped-up by the likes of Google, Amazon or Apple. This odd marriage is OK in the short term but I predict more changes in their corner of the business. 

The IRA: We are in a slow process of cord cutting at home. I turned off HBO and took our bandwidth back down to 300mp/s on Verizon (VZN) FiOS and nobody noticed. Cut the bill in half. We literally care about six channels in the FiOS bundle. How does this type of consumer behavior affect the survivors of “old media”?

Michael Whalen: Let’s start by discussing what Disney is doing. At long last, Disney is folding Hulu into Disney+. This isn’t just a design choice—it’s the desperate reaction to end years of running two separate services that, frankly, should have been one a long time ago. The cannibalization has been extreme. The old model—two apps, two logins, two bills, two sets of recommendations—was a headache for consumers and a churn machine for Disney. Now, you get one login, one universal search, one set of parental controls, and you can go from The Mandalorian to The Bear without switching apps. For Disney+, it’s a way to keep people from cancelling when there’s a lull in Marvel or Star Wars content. For you, it’s one less reason to hop between services. And yes, like Netflix, they’re steering a lot of people toward “basic” ad-supported plans. In the new economics of streaming, your subscription fee is only half the story—the other half is the ad inventory they can sell. So, we will see a hybrid between commercial television and paid subscriptions. YouTube has pioneered the business model and now the rest of the industry is catching-up. 

The IRA: We notice the increase in ads. Google’s YouTube is killing everyone with ads, but you can pay them to go “ad free” if you want. All of these models make you hate the content provider to one degree or another. The legacy “free” TV model was a different relationship, less friction. Now we have to hold the TV control to skip whatever the ad from YouTube. We deliberately record content so that we can skip over the ads. Whether it is sports or American Idol, recording is better. 

Michael Whalen: Sports is really the glue holding keeping many consumers to legacy providers for now, but things are moving very quickly. Disney’s deal with the NFL changes the whole ESPN equation. The NFL is giving ESPN control over NFL Media—NFL Network, RedZone—in exchange for about a 10% equity stake in ESPN itself. That’s not just a rights agreement, that’s a partnership. And when ESPN’s full direct-to-consumer product finally launches, it’s going to feel like the complete package: Monday Night Football, NFL Network’s year-round programming, RedZone’s frantic whip-around coverage, and seven extra regular-season games. Sports is the last truly unskippable advertising vehicle, the last appointment viewing. This is the kind of vertical integration you need to make sports streaming not just possible, but essential. Netflix is finding with WWE that not all sports work in a streaming universe. Apple has struggled with their soccer (futbol) partnership just as they have been flexing their muscles with a huge slate of prestige television offerings. 

The IRA: We still have a Netflix subscription, but the content creation machine seems to have slowed as you predicted. The NFLX inventory is stale. I think Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification," where networks make a lot of promises to attract users and advertisers, then start squeezing both groups with ads and fees as the content quality degrades. What about the Paramount Skydance combo? 

Michael Whalen: Paramount’s merger with Skydance is another move I’ve been expecting. Viacom/CBS/Paramount couldn’t keep going as a scattershot content company with a clunky app and too many half-measures in streaming. Skydance brings focus, discipline, and modern infrastructure. David Ellison is now CEO, Jeff Shell is president, and they’ve carved the company into Studios, Direct-to-Consumer, and TV Media. The payoff for viewers should be a faster, more reliable Paramount+ with a clearer sense of what it’s for, rather than trying to be “everything for everyone.” And by tightening the relationship between Paramount+ and Pluto TV, they can use free, ad-supported programming as a gateway to paid subscriptions—and vice versa. I’ve been predicting that kind of synergy for years. Ellison has already become THE most successful television (and film) producer in Hollywood. Paramount will build on the success that Tyler Sheridan has brought to them. “Mob Land” from Guy Ritchie is a personal favorite. The old CBS/Viacom/Paramount never would have greenlighted these shows. 

The IRA: So sounds like you are bullish on the PARA merger. Are they a LT winner in the content wars?  How do you view PARA vs category leader Netflix?

Michael Whalen: The changes at PARA and DIS are happening with Netflix still as the benchmark for global scale and engagement. Netflix is still the biggest in terms of viewership share, and its crackdown on password sharing actually accelerated revenue and user growth. Its one-brand simplicity works internationally, but domestically it now competes with Disney’s three-headed bundle: Disney+ for family and franchises, Hulu for general entertainment, and ESPN for sports. Hulu doesn’t exist abroad, so Disney+ has to carry more weight internationally, but in the U.S., that bundle is getting harder to beat. But the #1 streaming platform in terms of hours watched is YouTube -- by a lot. Their combination of user generated content and reformatted major media content is very hard to beat right now. 

The IRA: So you predicted the early skirmishes very nicely, but where so we go from here?  Are there more mega mergers in prospect?

Michael Whalen: We’re entering a new phase of the battle. The land-grab days are over. This is about ecosystems now—owning multiple parts of your viewing life in one login. The US streamers are putting major time and energy into expanding into foreign markets. In places like Brazil, India and Malaysia, the time for consolidation has come and there is a rush to supply the hundreds of millions who now have the ability to watch content. Another huge developing market is the continent of Africa but that is 5 to 10 years away from content consolidation I am talking about. Amazingly, Central Africa has one of the fastest and newest cell systems in the world and it is transforming their lives. 

The IRA: Cellular networks in Africa and other "emerging" markets are used for everything, payments, banking, trade and also content.

Michael Whalen: Over the next couple of years in the US, bundles will be the default, not the exception. The first company to make the ability to bundle these services in a easy-to-use turnkey way (are you listening Apple?) will get an advantage in the short term. In the meantime, free services like Pluto will work hand-in-hand with paid services instead of competing with them. Sports and live events will be the deciding factor in many homes, with Disney+ clearly ahead here. And the price hikes won’t be as obvious—they’ll come as restrictions on features that quietly nudge you into higher tiers. Consumers are already wary of the costs and how quickly it is changing. This is why ad supported content will be a crucial part of economics of how all of this will work. 

The IRA: Well, the bundle is definitely not working in our household. We shot the HBO Max bundle without any fuss. VZN FiOS forces us to take Cinemax with the expanded TV channels, but we may just shut off the VZN TV entirely and get a static IP. As you said, we can subscribe to Disney+ for ESPN sports and get Hulu for the local channels. CNBC and Bloomberg we can stream. All I need to do is teach the family how to record on the home NAS and we are ready to cut the cord. How does the content market look in five years?

Michael Whalen: We are seeing the maturation of streaming as a predictable and profitable business. One of its big frustrations to Wall Street is the lack of predictability in this sector. After this consolidation and emphasizing ads, these analysts will be able to track things easier and some of the stress should reduce. Second, the companies that survive won’t be the ones that spend the most on content—they’ll be the ones that give you the fewest reasons to cancel. By 2026, I think we’ll see just four or five dominant streaming ecosystems in the U.S., each a mix of scripted entertainment, sports, and free tiers, each powered by cross-platform tech. The fight won’t be over which show you watch on which night—it’ll be over which service you open first without even thinking about it. It appears that the survivors will be YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, Paramount and Apple TV+. I have written and said many times that Apple TV+ is running as a loss leader as a way of keeping people inside of their hardware and software ecosystem. The extent of that loss is finally being revealed by Apple who said this year that they are losing “a billion dollars a year” on Apple TV+. 

The IRA: Exactly. In our family, grabbing the VZN control was learned behavior. But now everyone knows that they can get Netflix or Disney or YouTube by simply turning on the TV. 

Michael Whalen: Even in a modern tech-fueled business like streaming, the importance of creating value for the consumer is the most important. In this conversation, value for the consumer is a combination of reasonable price, choice and feeling like the content you are being offered is part of the conversation of popular culture. “Winning” was never about creating the most content - Netflix has certainly learned that lesson. It is a balance of making great programs that are affordable. That is what this new era of streaming is about and it will be exciting how things begin to shake out in 2026, 27 and beyond… 

The IRA: Thank you for your time Michael. 

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