Why TV needs a Spotify of streaming

Growing up we had four TV channels. That was it.

My first job in design was working on a pitch for a new channel, Channel 5 – the biggest innovation since forever and the hottest brand to work on. Everyone wanted to say that they did the logo.

Three years later when I left Wolff Olins to help start another agency, our first client was a satellite dish retailer working out of Portacabins in Osterley while trying to convince people to pay for TV; an alien concept and one that would take over a decade to become mainstream.

We waved our magic brand wand at them, turning them from ugly frog to handsome prince and declaring they were no longer in the business of flogging dishes, no. They were now the ‘nation’s number one entertainment company’, and it worked.

Today, Sky is the global benchmark for pay-TV, with almost 24 million customers. It dragged us kicking and screaming into the 21st century, leaving behind the comfort of our four sacred channels to lead us towards the endless possibility of hundreds. It was choice like we’ve never had; entire channels dedicated to God, shopping, police chases and Jerry Springer blasting out of our 90” plasma TVs. Everything was gravy.

I spend more time figuring out what platform the show I want to watch is on than I do watching the show itself.

But there is one problem with pay-TV. It’s expensive. If you love sport, it’s eye-watering. For us older people who bought the giant TVs and stay home pretty much all the time, we love it, but for the next generation, the maths simply don’t work.

Enter Netflix. For a few pounds a month you get wall-to-wall binge-streaming-awesomeness direct to your smartphone. No ugly satellite dish, no huge monthly bill. No advertising. No brainer.

Well. Yeah, kind of. Today, I spend more time figuring out what platform the show I want to watch is on than I do watching the show itself. These ‘few pounds a month’ streaming platforms are becoming more of a slow and painful death by a thousand paper cuts, practically adding up to the cost of Sky (which I still have) and a cause of huge anxiety. Which one or ones to get? What am I missing out on? It’s all got a bit over the top.

Each platform spends billions creating beautifully branded ecosystems, each with its own bespoke UI and AI recommendations algorithm, designed to keep you glued to their platform for as long as possible, but content is king.

As much as we love Netflix, it’s the shows that drive subscriptions and it’s the shows that keep us up till two in the morning. The landscape we now find ourselves in is utterly frustrating, and it’s only going to get worse with more services on the horizon and more platforms pulling their content away from their competitors.

The storm before the calm

No matter how many we subscribe to, the thing we really want to watch will always be on the one we don’t have.

Put another way, it feels like we’re in CD age of streaming. And it sucks. It has neither the romance of records nor the convenience of Spotify, but it’s also an opportunity.

Without question, there’s a valuable space for some Silicon Valley/Scandinavian tech genius to build us the platform of our dreams where we can watch everything, and anything, for a fair monthly price. Kind of like Spotify. For streaming.

If the music industry can change, then surely Hollywood can.

Platforms will have to swallow their egos (and their brands) and studios will need to change their draconian distribution models. It seems impossible, but then so did the iPod.

We’re in the storm before the calm. There is a Wild West land grab of endless media brands trying to buy our attention going on – but how many subscriptions will we have to buy before enough is enough? There will come a breaking point. And with this will come true innovation.

Picture it: a single-entry streaming service that has everything you want to watch, and lots you don’t sure sounds like the future. It also kind of sounds a lot like Sky, pre-Netflix. Either way, I hope we get to pitch on the brand.

• Stu Watson is co-founder of branding agency Nomad