A deeper look into the top entertainment streaming services: Are we on the verge of a decline in TV show and movie viewership?

By: Casey Truong, Paige Lee (Team Entertainment)

8 min readDec 16, 2021

(Source: https://www.gq.com/story/which-streaming-service-is-right-for-you)

Introduction

Can anyone remember what the default fun night-in activity was like before watching Netflix became popular? When present-day college students like ourselves were growing up in the early 2000s, watching live television or movies on DVDs used to be the go-to option for easy entertainment. Then the 2010s arrived, and we started streaming our favorite TV shows and movies on demand. We could watch the shows we wanted when we wanted thanks to recording technology, and we didn’t need to collect a physical DVD disk for every movie that we wanted to see. The emergence of streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video was groundbreaking and much more convenient for everyday consumers. Over the past decade, these streaming services have grown significantly in the content they offer, as entertainment streaming has become a cultural phenomenon. However, our analysis of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video data suggests that by the end of the 2010s, a new era in the entertainment industry may finally be upon us.

The Changes in Genres Over Year

Over the past decade, the three most common genres of shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video were drama, comedy, and action and adventure. The frequencies of these genres all similarly increased from 2010 to 2017, reached a peak in 2017 and decreased from 2017 to 2020. Documentary, horror, and crime were not as common genres on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. The numbers of shows belonging to these genres tended to increase a bit from 2010 to 2014, plateaued from 2014 to 2018, and decreased a bit from 2018 to 2021. The least common genres on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video were romance and anime, as the frequencies of these two genres remained consistently low throughout the years. The breakdown of TV show genres on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video from 2010 to 2021 remained similar each year. Drama, comedy, and action and adventure consistently made up the top three largest proportions of genres on these platforms, followed by documentary, crime, romance, and anime. If Netflix and Amazon add and remove shows based on popularity, then analyzing their genre breakdowns over time suggests that viewers still currently prefer most of the same genres as we did 11 years ago.

How Genres are Ranked over Year by IMDb Score?

Let’s be honest, one of the first things we — as audiences do before picking a movie to watch is to look at the score of that movie. IMDb score is a scale of measurement to assure the movie we pick is qualified, worth spending time and money on.

As we already analyzed above, the top three largest proportions of genres are: Action, Comedy, and Drama. So, does the IMDb score reflect their popularity? Looking at the box plot, the median IMDb score of the Action genre is a little higher than 5, the maximum score is above 8 and somewhere near 9, while the minimum score is very low at 2 with some outliers below it. Next, we have the Comedy and Drama genre with a slightly higher median score than the Action genre with higher than 5 and near to 6, while the maximum and minimum score is very similar to the score of the Action genre. It is surprising to see that the top three largest proportions of genres are not among the top three ranking genres. In fact, the Anime genre's IMDb score is pretty stable when their median, maximum and minimum scores are very close to each other, with scores between 6 and 7, which is considered a decent ranking score.

How The Number of Movies and TV Shows Changes Over Year?

In general, the total number of TV shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video increased from 2010 to 2017, as more shows were produced and added. From 2018 to 2020, however, the total number of shows on these platforms decreased. A possible explanation for why shows started disappearing from these sites is that Netflix and Amazon decided not to renew their rights for certain shows, so they were unable to keep these shows anymore. The drop in the total number of shows between 2017 and 2018 and between 2018 and 2019 were relatively small and consistent in size because Netflix and Amazon likely added newly produced shows after removing certain older shows. However, the drop in the total number of shows between 2019 and 2020 is very large. This can likely be explained by the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in early 2020 and consequently disrupted TV show filming and production for that year. There weren’t many new shows being produced during the pandemic that Netflix and Amazon could add in order to balance out the group of shows that they had to remove from their platforms between 2019 and 2020. As COVID-19 restrictions began to lift, more TV shows were able to resume filming, so we would expect an increase in the total number of shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video from 2020 onward.

We also investigated how the numbers of movies versus TV shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have changed over the past decade. From 2010 to 2018, the total number of movies and TV shows on these platforms increased quickly, as entertainment viewing on streaming sites became more popular than watching live television and DVDs. In 2019 and 2020, the total number of movies and TV shows on these platforms decreased a bit, but not by a lot. Perhaps in these two years, there were more shows that were removed than there were added.

It may be even more interesting to analyze how the breakdown of the numbers of movies and TV shows on Netflix and Amazon has changed over time. From 2010 to 2020, there have always been more movies than TV shows on these platforms; however, the proportion of TV shows has been increasing, and the proportion of movies has been decreasing. Further, in 2021, although there were far fewer total movies and TV shows on these platforms, the proportion of TV shows finally surpassed the proportion of movies. This trend suggests that TV shows have been becoming increasingly popular over the past decade. Although movies have always been more numerous on these streaming sites, their popularity compared to TV shows may be decreasing.

An important aspect to consider is that all of the episodes combined from a single TV show far surpass the duration, content, and production costs of a single movie. Thus, it may not be fair to compare the number of movies to the number of TV shows, as we would expect the number of movies to always be greater than the number of TV shows anyways since movies are smaller-scale productions. However, it is still interesting to analyze the breakdown in the number of movies versus TV shows over time, as it reflects that TV shows may be increasing in popularity, and movies may be decreasing in popularity.

Our findings from Netflix and Amazon Prime Video data suggest that streaming TV shows and movies were a growing trend during the early to mid/late 2010s; however, this cultural phenomenon has started declining in the most recent few years. From 2010 to 2018, there were large increases in the number of TV shows and movies added to streaming services. From 2019 onward, the number of TV shows and movies available on these platforms has been decreasing, which is likely attributed to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on production. Another possible explanation for a decrease in available streaming content is if the number of paid subscribers decreases, causing the platforms to receive less money to support adding new shows. Thus, we may interpret the number of TV shows and movies available on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video as a measure of viewership and engagement at a given time. Based on our analysis, it seems like recently people haven’t been streaming TV shows or movies as much as we were earlier in this decade.

The Declining in the Number of Shows on Popular Streaming Platforms

It is surprising to see a big decline in the number of shows on the most popular platform, including Netflix, Prime, Hulu, and Disney+. As COVID-19 hit on, we thought it would be a good time for these platforms to grow tremendously. We combined all the datasets that include all popular streaming platforms to output line graphs as a way to see if there is an increase in the number of shows for the past decades. Looking at these graphs, we can see a huge increase of shows from the end of 2015 to 2019, and then from 2019 up till now, the line has started to go down.

Perhaps one of the main reasons to explain this trend is the change in preference of Gen Z audiences. Today, college students and teenagers are not avid consumers of Hollywood’s output compared to millennials. They are not a big fan of lengthy movies or TV shows with many seasons anymore.

Conclusion

While a decline in TV show and movie viewership would be a loss for streaming services, other platforms may begin to benefit from a possible shift in the entertainment industry. Perhaps more people will start to prefer watching shorter videos on free platforms such as YouTube and TikTok over watching longer show episodes or films on paid-subscription-based platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Who knows? In ten years from now, maybe instead of movie nights, we will start hosting YouTube binge parties or TikTok marathons. Regardless of the outcome, consumers will likely adapt quickly to new trends, allowing for new generations of content creators to pave the way in influencing our society and culture.