Content as a Product: The Future of Consuming Television in a Streaming World Part II
An insider's analysis of television's siloed development process—and a new business model for measuring the ROI of content.
In the first part of this article series, I explored the evolving landscape of streaming content. Now I'll examine specific strategies streaming platforms can employ to foster emotional connections, preserving the art of content creation while ensuring stories maintain their cultural relevance for decades to come.
When Toy Story revolutionized animated cinema in 1995, it sparked a cultural phenomenon that I experienced firsthand. Within years, I found myself dressing as Woody for Halloween, proudly carrying a Buzz Lightyear lunch box to school, and eagerly persuading my parents to take me to the Buzz Lightyear ride at Disneyland. Remarkably, nearly three decades later, today's children can still have virtually the same experience, a testament to Disney's mastery of leveraging intellectual property through a comprehensive flywheel strategy.
In the streaming era, platforms face a critical challenge: while conventional wisdom prioritizes watch time and engagement metrics, I previously argued that prestige content isn't always compatible with this approach. The true value lies not in hours watched but in emotional connection—something Disney understood long before streaming existed. Media companies must now optimize their digital presence across owned, shared, and earned channels to monetize audiences effectively.
From Content Libraries to Experience Ecosystems
The future of streaming requires investment in world-building that increases customer lifetime value. Rather than necessarily building physical parks (though imagine a White Lotus hotel experience or a chaotic Tony Soprano Cadillac ride), platforms should leverage digital ecosystems to create immersive experiences. Stranger Things has already demonstrated this potential by expanding into gaming and themed playlists. By reverse-engineering the viewer experience and designing content as part of an experience economy, creators can transform shows into living ecosystems that remain culturally relevant for decades.
Consider how Patreon enables creators to monetize audiences through tiered membership models and exclusive content—their entire model focuses on monetizing fandom around creators, not the content itself. Similarly, Spotify now provides artists with ecosystem tools like direct Ticketmaster integration and merchandise links, transforming passive listeners into engaged, long-term fans. There's proof that nostalgia sells - today, you can buy a Grateful Dead Panther t-shirt on Ebay for $2400.
The ROI of "Emotional Connection"
For media companies, the true value of their most invaluable content lies in the engagement and fandom surrounding it. SpongeBob SquarePants exemplifies this approach, generating over $13 billion since 1999 and becoming Paramount's most profitable property in their Consumer Products division since 2007. This beloved character has transcended television to become a cultural touchstone through theme parks, video games, merchandise, and even Broadway.
Disney's Q1 2025 financials support this approach, showing Experiences revenue up 3% year-over-year while maintaining strong profitability, alongside streaming services achieving profitability with substantial subscriber growth. Netflix is now following suit with Mastercard partnerships for live immersive experiences that transform viewers into participants, such as "Bridgerton" balls and "Squid Game" competitions.
A New Framework for Streaming
The streaming industry stands at a crossroads where traditional success metrics no longer capture true content value. Media companies can transform single shows into thriving ecosystems through three interconnected strategic shifts:
Redefining success beyond hours watched - Moving from engagement metrics to measuring emotional connection and long-term value
Developing stories with universal foundations - Creating content with timeless themes that can resonate across generations
Aligning production with platform infrastructure - Designing content with its entire ecosystem in mind from inception
This holistic approach recognizes that a series' journey from discovery through nostalgia creates compounding value over decades, not just quarters. The future belongs to platforms that understand content isn't just what viewers watch—it's what they inhabit, share, emote and revisit throughout their lives.
The Content is the Product: A New Business Model for Television in the Streaming Era
While linear TV networks maximized viewership with advertising subsidizing inevitable churn, the subscription-driven streaming world demands a different approach.
To optimize returns on emotional connection, we must view content as a complete product offering. In restaurant terms, the show is the signature dish drawing customers in, but the profit engine is the ecosystem around it. Just as restaurants earn their highest margins on drinks and appetizers—not main courses—streaming platforms should create high-margin "complementary offerings" surrounding their core content.
Supplemental content like official podcasts, merchandise, and virtual events aren't just enhancements—they're financial assets that subsidize production costs and drive profitability long after a show concludes. This transforms series from cost centers into discrete business units with dedicated P&Ls.
Rather than solely chasing watch time, platforms should develop integrated experiences monetizable throughout the customer lifecycle. By optimizing journeys across paid, owned, and earned channels, platforms can simultaneously reduce churn, increase average revenue per user, and build sustainable business models.
The Streaming Content Flywheel for TV Series
I've created a flywheel model to visualize how we should view every customer experience when they consume television. This flywheel comprises four key components beyond the core viewing experience:
Discovery: The initial touchpoint ecosystem that converts cultural awareness into viewer intent. This includes repurposed content snippets, memes, viral trends, and merchandise that create multiple low-comprehension yet intriguing impressions. Consider the "mob wife" aesthetic trend that swept across TikTok, introducing many to The Sopranos without them watching a single episode.
Active Engagement: The real-time participation layer where passive consumption transforms into active contribution. This is where viewing becomes a social experience rather than a solitary activity, with audience theories and interpretations becoming part of the entertainment value itself—like a subreddit about the series or trending discussions on social platforms.
Deep Investment: The emotional and financial commitment phase where viewers transition from passive observers to fans or super-fans. This represents the monetization of deeper engagement through supplemental content, from film location tours to brand collaborations, where significant revenue opportunities emerge beyond subscription fees.
Long-term Value: The nostalgia engine that transforms completed content into living cultural artifacts. This is where content transcends its original medium to become a reference point in viewers' personal timelines and shared cultural language, creating sustained value long after a series concludes.
Historically, television shows evolved into franchises only after demonstrating critical success through two or more seasons. However, media companies should now consider franchise potential during the initial development process, designing content ecosystems that anticipate and nurture passionate fan engagement from the outset.
Case Study: The Enduring Value of The Sopranos
Today's reality reveals a significant oversight: streaming platforms neglect hundreds of thousands of fans who engage with their original content outside the streaming apps themselves. From character analyses to episode recaps, we see an increasing number of viewers having meaningful experiences with long-form content either to extend engagement beyond the platform or to remain connected to cultural touch points without committing to watching the actual shows.
The Sopranos provides a compelling example of this phenomenon. Twenty-six years after its premiere, the show maintains remarkable cultural relevance and fan engagement:
YouTube channels featuring Sopranos season recaps attract ongoing viewership
Merchandise sales continue to continue to sell decades after the show's conclusion
Podcast discussions of individual episodes attract hundreds of thousands of listeners
Reddit communities maintain active daily discussions about character motivations and plot interpretations
TikTok clips featuring memorable scenes regularly go viral among younger audiences who never watched the original broadcast
The missed opportunity lies in media companies' inability to capture this recurring fan engagement and incorporate it into the customer journey. When viewers develop emotional connections with content, they inevitably seek additional touch-points outside the streaming platform itself—on YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, and other platforms. Media companies could easily direct these fans to official owned channels with minimal investment.
For example, if a Sopranos fan wants to watch an in-depth analysis about Dr. Melfi's therapeutic approach, they should be able to find this content on an official Sopranos YouTube channel, with revenue flowing back to the content creators and HBO.
From Passive Viewers to Revenue Generators: Monetize the Existing Micro Audience
Media companies focus too heavily on total subscriber numbers rather than maximizing return from engaged fans. Research supports the value of engaged audiences: the 90-9-1 rule suggests 10% of viewers engage beyond passive watching, while Harvard Business Review reports well-managed communities have the potential to achieve 50% lurkers, 23% contributors, and 27% creators.
By monetizing fan-created content around original IP, streamers can transform passive viewers into engaged fans who generate higher average revenue and offset acquisition costs for broader audiences.
From a product management perspective, losing our most engaged fans to external platforms signals the need for a fundamental strategy shift. We must move beyond traditional success metrics and reimagine content production from the ground up. While streaming platforms shouldn't necessarily become social networks, designing sustainable experiences and leveraging external ecosystems around television properties from inception can develop revenue streams that persist for decades rather than seasons, improving both platform recurring revenue and creating new opportunities for the cast and crew.
Reinventing the Writers' Room: TV Development for the Digital Age
In Q4 of 2024, Warner Bros. Discovery restructured to separate their linear networks from production studios, reflecting a broader industry shift as prestigious events like the Oscars migrate from traditional broadcast to streaming platforms. This transition marks a critical inflection point for television production.
A Vox video essay examined how the economic foundation of television has transformed. In the pre-streaming era, TV writers enjoyed stability through 40-week network seasons and substantial rerun residuals. Streaming disrupted this model by introducing shorter seasons (typically 6-8 episodes), extended production hiatuses, and minimal one-time payments. While initially offering creative freedom, this shift has ultimately created economic instability, transforming writing from a reliable middle-class profession into precarious gig work—a key factor driving the historic 2023 writers' strike.
If streaming platforms begin viewing television series as holistic products that appreciate in value through supplemental experiences, the development process could evolve in beneficial ways. Involving production teams in creating content around shows—from consulting on merchandise to developing additional material—extends employment timelines and provides more consistent income for cast and crew members.
Beyond Star Power: The Perils of Celebrity-Driven Development
This approach creates space for emerging talent rather than solely focusing on established stars. Current media executives often prioritize celebrities with substantial social media followings to drive brand awareness, considering loyal audiences among a show's most valuable assets. However, this strategy proves counterproductive when a show centers on celebrity without substantive storytelling or character development.
The Idol exemplifies this pitfall, though it paradoxically demonstrates how even flawed content can generate short-term business value. Despite backing from the creators of Euphoria, the show was primarily developed by Abel Tesfaye (The Weeknd). High staff turnover and inconsistent creative direction signaled deeper issues, but the fundamental weakness was insufficient story foundation.
The underlying logic seemed plausible—perhaps executives identified an overlap between The Weeknd's fanbase and Euphoria viewers. Yet while Euphoria explores intense themes through a distinctive visual style, its success stems from character-driven storytelling performed by a cast perfectly suited to embody complex character arcs. Euphoria fostered opportunities for unknown actors who achieved fame after the show, not before. The series was designed to elevate its performers into household names rather than relying on pre-existing celebrities.
Nevertheless, The Idol's notoriety generated significant social media engagement, with individual posts accumulating over a million views. While public relations teams might have struggled to manage brand perception, such controversy creates opportunities to humanize streaming platforms through supplemental content on external channels. There remains untapped potential to monetize audience engagement with this additional content—viewers aware of cultural phenomena without committing to full series viewing. For example, streaming services could derive business value from trends like the "rat-tail hype" by converting casual cultural participants into subscribers.
Beyond Viewership: The True Valuation of TV Series
With this new approach, streaming platforms must shift focus from short-term metrics to holistic business value throughout the entire customer lifecycle. Different content serves different purposes within this ecosystem—shows like The Idol generate cultural buzz and brand awareness at the top of the funnel, while iconic series like The Sopranos should be optimized across all facets of the customer experience to maximize long-term return on investment.
As an exercise, I've begun developing a framework to properly calculate the true ROI of content like The Sopranos as standalone business entities.
While implementation challenges exist, particularly with the "Frankenstein" systems resulting from industry mergers and acquisitions, the fundamental truth remains: targeted micro-audiences represent significant untapped potential for long-tail profitability. The mathematics of this approach is compelling, as supported by MIT Sloan Management Review research.
At its core, television series should be treated as products with unique customer experiences. The ultimate value of IP isn't just the content itself—it's the engaged audience that comes with it and the emotional connections that endure long after viewing.
Looking Ahead: From Content to Experience
My upcoming article will explore 'The Content as a Product Business Model' — a comprehensive framework offering tactical and technical strategies for optimizing the TV series customer lifecycle. Through data-driven analysis and theoretical modeling, I'll demonstrate how streaming platforms can strategically leverage supplemental content beyond their native environments to create sustainable engagement ecosystems and accelerate growth.
As we move forward, the most successful streaming companies won't just be those with the largest content libraries, but those that most effectively transform passive viewers into passionate fans and create new customer journeys to consume content that was originally not meant for binging. The future of streaming isn't measured in hours watched—it's measured in lives touched, memories created, and cultural landscapes shaped.