TBI Tech & Analysis: How US streamers compared for hours & titles in Q3 2023

The Bear S2 (Source: Hulu)

US-based streamers have been adjusting their catalogues over the past year, resulting in some notable shifts in the amount of content carried by key players. Omdia’s Tim Westcott dissects the data to pull out the key findings.

Streamers in the US found it tough going last year as strikes, rising production costs and a focus on profits rather than subscribers impacted decision-making when it came to content.

However, while original programming plans in 2023 might have been hit by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the ability to increase the amount of content available to viewers was apparent in the offerings of many streamers.

Omdia analysis of on-demand catalogues in the US and seven other territories reveals that the US-owned services generally offer the largest volume of titles on both an SVOD and an AVOD basis.

Hulu leads but Peacock puts on a show

Hulu, now wholly owned by Walt Disney, had the largest SVOD offering (in terms of hours) in the US during Q3 of 2023, but Comcast’s Peacock platform more than doubled its SVOD hours compared with the same period in 2022.

Poker Face

In the US, on-demand offerings in 3Q23 were not showing any obvious signs of being affected by the writers’ strike, suggesting the shortfall of scripted content will show more in 2024. Peacock’s offering of scripted drama titles, such as Poker Face, was three times larger than in 3Q22.

The next biggest year-on-year increases in titles were for anime platform Crunchyroll, now owned by Sony, and Hulu.

Both Amazon Prime and Netflix had a higher volume of titles than Hulu, Peacock and Paramount+, due to a larger number of ‘non-series’ titles.

Warner Bros. Discovery platforms Discovery+ and Max offered a similar number of hours to the SVOD market leaders, while Disney+ has a much smaller offering, despite a 15% increase compared to 3Q22.

Tubi takes top AVOD prize

Despite the rise of FAST channels, advertising-supported on demand is still a big thing in the US, with Tubi setting out its stall as the leading volume player, offering more titles and hours than any other platform.

Roku came in second place having increased its runtime by around a third while Amazon’s Freevee service was up by almost 20%.

Plex had more titles than Roku but considerably less runtime, while VIX, the major Spanish-language service, expanded its AVOD offering by 45% over the year.

The excerpt above was written by Tim Westcott, senior principal analyst for digital content & channels at Omdia. It is taken from SVOD & AVOD TV & Movie Content Tracker – 3Q23 Commentary, available here (subscription req’d). Omdia and TBI are both part of Informa Tech.