TV is approaching a day of reckoning.
As Slate notes, “after a decade of audience erosion, including double-digit declines for the vast majority of shows this season, networks have finally accepted reality: People aren’t watching TV the way they used to, and selling commercials isn’t enough to pay the bills (and make a big profit).”
In 2016, counting both broadcast and cable, ad spending on television fell behind digital platforms for the first time ever, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report released last month.
How do you make money these days off television? Well, the path to profitability now comes through a combination of revenue streams. Instead of waiting years to put reruns of shows on cable networks, networks now cut deals with Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon to stream full seasons of shows immediately after the first season airs.