Netflix has become a cultural juggernaut with more than $5bn in revenue in 2014 and more than 63 million subscribers around the world (and about 40 million in the US alone). It’s adding them at a record pace too, signing up 4.9 million streaming subscribers anxious for House of Cards in the first quarter of 2015. The future of TV is clearly not on your TV set – and if it is, it’s probably coming through the internet, not the cable box. With so much money at stake, everyone is trying to get into the game.  The most recent announcement is AMC’s Shudder, a subscription service that allows horror fans to get their frights with hundreds of scary movies in its archive. Shudder costs $5.99 a month or $49.99 a year and is currently testing in beta with an undefined roll-out to mass market sometime in the near future. This is a partnership between AMC and Dramafever, a streaming service you have never heard of unless you’re a huge fan of Korean television. AMC and Dramafever also collaborated on SundanceNOW, where subscribers can watch several festivals worth of indie movies and documentaries whenever their hearts desire.  These new services, where networks bring their wares directly to customers online rather than through cable television, are called “over the top” or OTT and not because their offerings are that outrageous.  These days, everyone is down with OTT. There’s Netflix, of course, and Hulu, which is owned by NBC, ABC, and Fox. CBS has CBS All Access for its current and past shows. Since both CBS and Showtime are owned by Viacom, I figured the two channels would pair up, but Showtime just announced the clunkily named Showtime Anytime, its answer to the groundbreaking HBO Now. Both services offer the original programming and stores of movies from the subscription cable channels to those who have broadband internet but not a full cable package. Along with all of these, let’s not forget Amazon Prime, a growing hub for repeats and original programming; Apple TV, where viewers pay to download individual shows; and Dish’s Sling TV, where viewers can watch live television channels (including ESPN, which is key) and other on-demand content over the internet for only $20 a month.  Related: Cutting the cord: a look at the pros and cons of quitting cable  The field is getting crowded which means the inevitable is coming: one of these is going to fail. I know, that’s sort of like thinking about getting divorced while still sunning yourself on a Hawaiian honeymoon, but there is just too much competition for a limited number of households.  Nielsen’s Total Audience Report, which was issued in March, found that two out of five American households subscribe to a streaming service. Netflix is in 36% of homes, Amazon Prime in 13% (and some of those people might just want the free shipping for dog food and books), and Hulu Plus in 6.5%. Compare that to cable television, which is dwindling but was in 84% of homes at the end of 2014. That’s more than 100 million cable subscriptions.  What should be most frightening for these over the top providers is that people don’t seem to be doubling up yet. While one third of Americans have one subscription, only 10% have two, and a paltry 2.6% subscribe to three or more. This report was issued before the invention of half of these streaming services, but while the cord-cutting revolution is happening, a broadcaster’s worst nightmare of people cobbling together all of their shows with a suite of subscriptions just isn’t happening. Cord cutting is accelerating, but only 31,000 people got rid of their cable service in the first three months of the year. That’s still only a fraction. In fact, Nielsen found that those who have streaming services also watch more regular television as well.  There are so many streaming content providers that bidding wars are already starting for premium shows. Netflix paid a reported $100m to license all 236 episodes of Friends for four years, but passed on a similar offer for 160 episodes of Seinfeld. Instead Hulu snatched up the show about nothing for a record-setting $160m. That’s a whole lot of nothing.  This will only continue as competition gets more stiff and more services enter the fray. Eventually trying to acquire the streaming rights to Big Bang Theory or Law & Order will be like entering the Hunger Games. Most of these services are backed by huge corporations (AMC is by far the smallest) so it seems like losing a bit of money now for market share in the cord-cutting future would be a good bet. If failure is not an option, how do all of these content providers get their shows before eyeballs?  When show resources get scarce and the economics no longer make sense for smaller brands to strike out on their own, mergers and alliances should start to form. While someone like News Corp could bundle all of the Fox channels together (Fox, FX, Fox News, Nat Geo, etc.) and keep the rights to 20th Century Fox movies all to themselves, that would be a formidable package. And what if they make a deal with Viacom that owns CBS, Showtime, MTV, Comedy Central, and a score of other stations? That’s essentially your whole dial available on one service.  Related: 'Seismic' Apple TV service to stream 25 channels across all devices  Or what if Turner (TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, CNN) got into bed with NBCUniversal (NBC, USA, Bravo, SyFy, and the Universal movie catalog)? That’s a whole lot of bang for your buck too. What if someone like Apple or Google can forge an alliance between all of these disparate partners and take on Netflix and HBO for domination. We can call the platform One Ring, because it would rule them all.  Niche streaming services for underserved markets (Korean Americans, horror fans) make sense now, in the near future they probably won’t have the capital for the content arms race and will have to fold themselves in with a larger partner. All of this just sounds like the cable system we have now, but cutting out the middleman of Comcast, Time Warner, or Verizon (even though you’ll still be paying for them to provide broadband). The future is hectic and uncertain and will probably be moving quickly. Everyone is trying to grab their slice of the pie before it’s been eaten altogether. But now that everyone is rushing to stream rather than broadcast on linear cable, it seems like the system is too big to fail.
As AMC tests Shudder, its horror-only streaming service, Brian Moylan sees the future less in a proliferation of niche subscriptions than in mergers