Everyone in the media world has now realized that it will be exciting this autumn. The streaming wars are announcing themselves. Silicon Valley took the initiative and became a great new customer for Hollywood. But when Netflix and Amazon came up with their own originals, love quickly cooled off. As usual, the American studios were slow to come up with a new answer, but Disney led the way. Disney +, ESPN +, Hulu, Peacock (from NBCU), HBO Max, and so much more: the number of new streaming services is skyrocketing. Big Tech is also launching through Apple TV + and consumers can no longer see the forest for the trees….

In the midst of all this American violence, broadcasters, who almost all serve a local market, have to find a new answer. For many, that means setting up their own streaming service. Broadcasters have to transform themselves from business-to-business to business-to-consumer companies and that is a completely different game. Painful reforms are the result, whereby these companies have to cut their own flesh and set up entirely new business activities at the same time. Without a doubt a complex operation.

The big question is of course how relatively small local players can hold out against the big Americans. Not only Big Tech is coming in, Hollywood is also pushing at the gate. This was clear to a number of Dutch visionaries years ago: especially Bert Habets and Henk Hagoort immediately understood that they had to join forces to fight Big Tech and Big Hollywood together. But they did it in a polder, without harming their own interests, and did not step over their own shadow. NLZIET was born, but it is a half-hearted product in which the individual organizations mainly continue to promote their own services (Videoland, NPO Start, Kijk).

How different things are now in neighboring countries. Britbox will be launched in Great Britain this autumn. After several years of practice in the United States, this new service is being launched on a grand scale. Not a portal that facilitates the individual, national SVOD platforms: an entirely new company is being created that brings the best of British television directly to the consumer. The majority of the local players have now changed tack and are participating in this admirable initiative. After all, they know: only by making substantial change can they face Big Tech and Big Hollywood!

Things are going a bit slower at our Eastern neighbors, mainly because the legislator forbade cooperation between P7S1 and RTL for a long time. But P7S1 also jumped over its own shadow and started the new platform Joyn together with Discovery this summer. ZDF also joins this consortium with its content, which proves once again that commercial and public organizations can work well together when it really gets tough. The superlative: in France, TF1, M6 (the local RTL channel group) and the public broadcaster start the joint streaming platform Salto. For a long time, the legislator was an obstacle, but in the end understood that local players will not survive without such partnerships. In the fight against Big Tech and Big Hollywood, the French government discarded earlier principles and gave this initiative the green light.

It is all the stranger that in the puny Netherlands the three broadcasters self-interest prevail over the common. NLZIET is in danger of becoming a stillborn child because the three players would rather compete with each other than arm themselves against Big Tech and Big Hollywood. Maybe the parties will change their mind, but now it looks like a missed opportunity. That must be possible in the Netherlands with its strong creative industry.

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