Media Analysis: What's To Come Of The Streaming Wars
A new episode of the podcast The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood features an interview with Matthew Ball, the CEO of the Epyllion, and the former Global Head of Strategy for Amazon Studios, as well as the author of The Metaverse and How It Will Revolutionize Everything and The Streaming Book. Epyllion is a diversified holding company that makes investments, provides advisory services, and produces television, films, and video games. Ball is also a contributor to The Economist, holds bylines at Bloomberg, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, and once wrote the August 8, 2022, cover story for Time magazine. The podcast interview is hosted by The Bulwark’s culture editor Sonny Bunch.
“Streaming video itself, the technology began to be deployed in 92, 93, 94, to 96. You'd be shocked at how mature it was. This was when we had the first live-streaming concerts, the first live-to-air streaming webcams on ABC, but also the mass rollout of technical standards that enabled anyone to live broadcast.”
After introducing Ball, Bunch begins the interview by asking Ball to talk about his book The Streaming Book. Specifically, Bunch asks Ball about the “streaming wars” and how they got started. Ball notes that the question is what the thesis of his book is based on. He claims there are three to four different delineations that can be argued to be the start of the “streaming wars.” The first is the period from the end of 2019 to early 2021 where nearly every laggard in the so-called streaming wars came to market. Streaming services like HBO Max and Paramount+ launched, and several parties which once claimed would never offer original content entered the fray such as Tubi and Roku.
Another potential point is from 2007 to 2011. During this time, Apple TV and Roku entered the market, and the streaming giants of today (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video) launched their services. These were early disruptors in the market. For the last point, Ball discusses the possible start of streaming services. According to Ball, streaming itself and its technology began to be deployed in the early to mid-1990s. This was when the first live-streaming concerts occurred along with the first live-to-air streaming webcams on networks like ABC. The mass rollout of technical standards enabled anyone to live broadcast.
Shifting gears, Ball wishes to discuss the early 2000s on the topic of “streaming wars.” He points out that it was during this period that MLB TV came to market. It was the first direct-to-consumer streaming service with a live broadcast viewed by thousands and ultimately millions of subscribers which released tens of thousands of streaming videos every year. MLB TV’s model, in Ball’s opinion, inspired Netflix to start making technical developments. Netflix had scuttled several plans, delaying their streaming release by a few years to outpace the technological change and displacement of streaming.
“If you understand the scope of streaming as [beginning] much longer, you recognize that we're in a battle right now, not the end of the war, and that indeed, we may not even know all of the participants or business models that might come to define it.”
Ball reiterates the misconception that the streaming wars began recently and that they might end or mature soon. In truth, Ball sees the waves of streaming development began in 1948, 2002 being when it passed broadcast. wasn't until 2010 that it peaked, and it wasn't until 2012 that it started to decline. He argues that it wasn’t until a quarter century into video streaming that the streaming wars begin, and yet Ball feels there is less than one-third of all videos streamed in the United States, one-tenth globally. If people understand the scope of streaming as tracing back much longer, they can recognize that we're still battling. We may not even know all the participants or business models that might come to define it.
Continuing the talk discussion about The Streaming Book, Bunch brings up how he read about Ball’s three stages of competition. Bunch lists them as access-based competition, content-based competition, and platform-based competition. He asks Ball what they mean. Ball explains how one of the ways that he defines the very long period of technological change and disruption is to understand how the basis of competition changes. Regarding distribution or content, both are imperative because they matter in different ways at different times, and neither is solely sufficient for success. Ball highlights in his book that when we have a new medium come into the market, what matters differs, the opportunities differ, and the timing differs.
Ball begins to talk about access, which is to say that every now and then there is new delivery technology that emerges which disrupts the old access modality and enables new entrants to quickly gain share by integrating the old model. This was cable to broadcast, DVD to VHS, it was streaming to pay TV. Ball reasons that the access-era growth came primarily from educating people as to the benefits of the new modality. There are bountiful growth opportunities for those few players who participate, and competitive intensity is lowered. Ball references how Reed Hastings, founder of Netflix, often talked about the idea that it was more important to convince people that streaming was better than linear TV rather than beating Amazon.
“In 2023, it's fair to say that some apps are much better than others and they're not all the same, but it's easy. And one of the reasons why it's easy is we have gone from dozens of engineers at the forefront of streaming video to thousands with that experience. It's the commodification of access innovations and business model insights that leads to the influx of new competitors. That's why in 2023 we all talk about how many streaming services there are rather than in 2008.”
Continuing the discussion of competition in streaming, Ball explains that when there were two or more, competition shifts from being a pioneer in an access technology to the purpose of access in the first place, which is to watch content. As a result, we see a huge focus on what content some distributors have over their competitors. It is the main reason why there is a surge in greenlighting original series. Each player starts taking back their content, building up franchises that allow them to say they’re the home of “X” and their competitors have content, but they don't have “X” which is what the market is starting to encounter now. It has been on a multi-year path to an access-saturated, content-based competition that is starting to mature or become oversaturated. Ball states that “Having a 270th original doesn't give you the lift that your 14th would be a service that says we have a signature series may get you one subscriber for one month, but it's not building defensible over the long term.”
All streaming services are, in his opinion, cutting back on their libraries because they're recognizing that they're not sufficient for competition or profit. He continues, claiming how over the past century in gaming, audio, video, broadband, and video distribution, the last stop is the platform. This poses several questions. What more can be done with the customers we have? How do we monetize them beyond the sole product we have? It’s for these reasons that Netflix is shifting into gaming, HBO Max shifting into podcasting, Disney+ adding a shop tab, and there’s far more to come.
Jumping on the topic of platform-based competition, Bunch becomes interested and claims the topic melds well with the sense he got from The Metaverse. Bunch sees the situation as having sites that are increasing in size and scope and experimenting with ways to capture attention for longer periods of time. Bunch even envisions a future in which he can buy tickets to Disney World on the Disney+ app. He asks Ball how far it is from being a reality. Ball feels like it's still a long way off to convince consumers that this is how they should access everything within a specific company's “walled garden.” There are things that should be recognized, like how we've been here before. Ball proposes an example by talking about what happened to pay TV, distributors, Xfinity, and Spectrum, which is they used to be in the business of access. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, content-based competition emerged, and the differentiation came from what was distributed, not that the video was distributed.
“We saw a massive shift of profitability outside of those who distributed video and to those who created content that was concomitant with the rise of Direct TV and Dish, which meant that Xfinity used to have zero or one competitor in their footprint. And, all of a sudden, they had three or four shifting margins to the content owner by around 2012. Margins for video distribution were sub-10 % and often zero. Comcast wasn't making a dollar on a video subscription. It was all going to NBC Universal or Fox. And so, they shifted to their own platform.”
A massive shift in profitability began to emerge between those who distributed video and those who created content that was concurrent with the rise of companies like Direct TV and Dish Network. This meant that services like Comcast and Xfinity, which used to have few or zero competitors, weren’t making a profit on video subscriptions. Most profits were heading to big-name networks like NBC Universal, CBS, or Fox. This forced a change in which Ball reasons that instead of making money on video, companies like Comcast and Xfinity made it on separate, unrelated services like a home phone, smart home, or broadband. Most importantly, they would often sell at a loss video services “A” or “B” to get those other revenue sources. This was no different than how Amazon Prime started.
Ball explains how Amazon Prime started around the idea that video is a platform for the rest of its business, but more importantly, e-commerce as it fits within a larger business. This becomes a fundamental question of where we are going with these video services that have already started. When looking at Disney in November 2022, it rolled out a shop tab. It circulated through targeted ads that subscribers see on the platform based on the content that they’re watching with the argument that they can better tailor their other services. Essentially, if you're watching a lot of Star Wars, they know you're likely to buy a Star Wars product.
Focusing on ads, Bunch explains to Ball how they are one of the more distressing elements he read within Ball’s book. Bunch reasons that the streaming wars, in general, all turn to ads that all streamers are making. He believes this has caused an increased reliance on ads, with the desire to monetize the data they're getting to target viewers. While Bunch admits to hating ads, he sees that they are too valuable to give up on entirely. Ball agrees, adding that it depends on the individual. Some may be willing to spend $25 for Disney+ without ads as opposed to the $13 that they offer with ads.
“For the average person, the price that they are willing to pay to avoid ads is less than the revenue that they would generate by watching them. This is a generally observed fact and the fact of the matter is, it's also a bit of a catch-22 which is to say, the more individuals who opt for the ad-free experience, the greater the scarcity of video ads that are available for advertisers, increasing their CPM. And in doing so, increasing the business case to convert Sunny into an ad-supported viewer, means that the delta between the two tiers goes up.”
However, Bill argues that the price an average person is willing to pay to avoid ads is less than the revenue that they would generate by watching them. It has almost become an established fact that the more individuals who opt for the ad-free experience, the greater the scarcity of video ads that are available for advertisers, increasing their clicks-per-minute (CPM). Hulu, for example, has increased its ad-free price while maintaining its ad-supported price. Disney+, instead, didn't do the Netflix model of introducing a cheaper tier for its ad service. They kept the current ad-free option and the new ad-supported price while raising the price for the ad-free tier. Ball believes people will continue to see Disney increase the ad-free price while maintaining the ad-supported price so that they can convince more people to enter that lower tier. There are exceptions, but this is typically how it works.
There is also another mini catch-22 behind the ads: the users with the most ability to buy out ad inventory are higher-income viewers. Higher-income viewers are naturally more valuable to advertisers and, therefore, force the price up even more. It's a real problem and Bill expressed his dissatisfaction for the likely continuation of this scenario. He believes the underlying point of this is unlocking shareholder value. He references the production company Lionsgate to make his point. Lionsgate decided that it could generate more shareholder value by selling its original series to companies Peacock and still put it on its own streaming service, Starz. The same applies to Sony in how it decided to become the biggest arms dealer in gaming rather than pour money into the PlayStation-based network or other projects.
Upon realizing this trend, Bunch asks Ball if we are going to see something change in the short and medium term. Are we seeing something like a reversion to the norm when it comes to library rights as opposed to original programming? Ball explains that what Bunch just described is part of the content-to-platform competition. When you understand how you thrive in the content era, you make your best content and make it exclusive to you. In the case of Starz, they were finding out that they could not out-monetize their competitors, even when their best-selling content was vertically integrated into Lionsgate with their own originals coming in-house. Ball clarifies he didn’t mean Starz customers. He meant customers of the John Wick franchise that forced them into a platform model of building an audience in the theater, sending it to third-party services through the John Wick franchise and Continental. This reflects the maturation of the space we're seeing the same thing with companies like Warner Bros.
“When you understand how you thrive in the content era, you make your best content and make it exclusive to you.”
Posing a hypothetical, Ball states Warner Bros. has fans of Batman, but there is a limit to how much they can monetize it on HBO Max. Their solution? Take a back catalog of The Dark Knight and sell it to Netflix. The Dark Knight is a great movie from 2008, but it's 16 years old now. At the same time, Ball believes companies must differentiate between types of licensing decisions that are happening in 2023. Some are happening because of debt and Warner Media has few options other than to license its content for every dollar in equity. Bunch addresses the irony of increasing shareholder value since the truth of the matter, he believes, is detestable. Bunch states that companies like Discovery do not work for shareholders, they work for bondholders. He references how most of the companies are owned by debtors and that's driving a lot of licensing decisions in the case of Starz.
Ball agrees, claiming that when companies don't vertically integrate, one would normally both content and distribution are more valuable. Ball explains there are an additional two categories of licensing decisions that are occurring. One is about those for whom they have significant extra capacity that they cannot economically fulfill. The Walt Disney Company, for example, used to make 25 films per year, but Robert Eger took it down to 12 under his franchise strategy. They then acquired Fox and became able to make another 25 movies per year, but they continued to only make 15. So now there is a studio that can make 50 films per year, has a back catalog, infrastructure, and differentiated capabilities for 50 films per year, but only makes 20. Disney is sitting on the excess capacity that their streaming service can't absorb because they believe it can be monetized by specifically making content that does not fit their model, and then selling to their competitors. However, that's separate from whether it’s strategically good. This model may empower companies like Netflix more than the revenues they get.
Then there's the one-fourth strategy which is when these services recognize that much of the library they own is just off-pieces of what 20th Century Fox has. Ball believes around 40% of all Oscar-nominated best pictures are just Hitchcock—those are not a great fit for Disney+. Disney+ may get viewership, but it's hard to argue that its customers are going to pay more to Disney+ to have celebrated 1960s films from the Fox catalog. As a result, Disney is making the decision to sit on something with value which they cannot get value from what customers would like. Disney’s talent partners would also like to see generating revenue, so they're licensing those. These are four very different situations. The first two, Ball reasons, come from literal financial stress or sub-optimal performance. The latter two are more about incremental revenues and so that's relevant as well.
“The thing that destroys all services is the charm. It's very challenging to have the same customer across four different services when they have to evaluate each of them independently might constantly cycle in and out of them and struggle to understand their core relationship. That's not to say that jumbling them all together into a singular offering is suddenly crisp and clear and valuable. But there's an understanding, or rather an observation that it is easier for the consumer and likely financially advantageous.”
Shifting topics, Bunch brings up one of the things Ball talks about in his book: the move to platform-based competition. Basically, the process of consolidating these apps into one. The way Bunch sees the streaming wars as having more options but experiencing a “you'll be able to get this but not this” situation. Maybe the cost will go down, but Bunch doesn’t see it happening. That is seen in the Disney+ bundle where Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ are offered separately or all together for a discount. However, Bunch feels Disney isn’t doing the same around the world. Disney has one app for all that in other parts of the world. It appears to Bunch that this is what Disney is trying to get away from in the U.S. The same can be said for HBO Max, Discovery, etc.
Bunch asks Ball if this is creating more brand confusion and if that is what these companies want. Ball explains how at the end of the day, this situation is primarily driven by the fact that all services are being destroyed by a lack of charm. It’s challenging to have the same customer across multiple different services. Doing so forces companies to evaluate independently and might constantly cycle in and out to understand their core relationship with their customers. To give an example, Ball says it’s right for Bunch to say that Disney seems to be collapsing its services internationally and increasingly inclined domestically. However, he reminds Bunch that Disney+ is probably four different streaming services in the United States, comprised of Disney Kids, Disney Preteen, Disney General Entertainment, and Nat-Geo. Those could all be separate services and there are many homes in the United States which would pay for another five or 10 services.
Disney’s decision to sell all its brands for $13 is therefore harming the monetization of probably a family like Bunch’s, but it leads to more subscribers overall and more importantly, significantly less CHM and that's how the map tends to run out when looking internationally. It's five or six services international because they're also blending in Hulu and ESPN+, but not in a pay-one-get-three service in the same app. It is an immensely difficult topic for these companies. Bunch agrees and references the recent Warner Bros. Discovery shareholder meeting, saying how the information there revealed as much as 50% of churn is based on people's credit cards expiring and then not signing back up. From the perspective of a strategist, Bunch asks Ball how much churn is incidental versus strategic based on the customer saying, “We don't want this anymore.” Ball agrees that it is different from his understanding. In The Streaming Book, Ball published how all the churn that he is doing is called “active churn.” It’s a decision rather than credit card expirations. Many strategies have emerged to proactively address that, and it's partly a question of the streaming services themselves.
“One of the reasons why you're asked for your credit card expiration is it reduces fraud, which is to say the more points of information that a vendor asks from you, the better job they can do in ensuring that the transaction is legitimate but in particular, they ask for your expiration so that they can say: ‘Sonny, in three months, your credit card is going to expire.’”
Continuing upon Bunch’s reference, Ball claims one of the reasons why customers are asked for credit card expiration is to ensure that the transaction is legitimate and give you a fair warning. While he admits that several services had customers for years without asking, Ball claims they never prompted credit card expiration dates to be added. Losing a customer because they didn’t know their credit was expiring is a rare occurrence. Ball backs up this claim by referring to how in 2019, it was discovered that the average tenure for a customer to shift streaming services has gone from 33 months to 17 months. This means that the time and money spent to monetize that customer has effectively halved the number of customers who have canceled three plus services in the last 24 months. It has gone from less than six to more than one in four customers, and it goes up in perpetuity.
Ball says the answer to Bunch’s question is not simply old credit cards. Bunch appreciates Ball clarifying his misconception and realizes what Ball described has occurred to people he knows. Even he does the same, doing Netflix for a month or two and then switching to HBO Max. Continuing the interview, Bunch inquires about Ball’s view of standalone, mid-level studios. He wants to know if there is a future for a company like Lionsgate without a streaming service or a company like Columbia Sony Pictures backing it. Is there a future for small studios to exist or will those all get wrapped up into the dominant platform-based victors?
Ball considers if that is the right question. There is a future if the studio can make outstanding content and franchises of its own. That can be a great business in perpetuity. Sony, for example, has a fleet of different Spiderman series that are now set up at Amazon. They all have PlayStation properties that are being built, they're making Into the Spider-Verse a theatrical film that businesses can continue. There will always be a debate on whether the markup might go from “X” to “0.5x” or if the greater scarcity might mean that they'll increase what they're charging third-party streaming services over time. There's a variety of different theses for that line of thinking. When looking at a company like Lionsgate, they've announced that they're making a Twilight television series as well as producing more Hunger Games adaptations. The more apt questions then become: “Is it a growth business,” “What can the company better utilize through acquisition,” and, “Do we eventually see one of these parties buy the studio because they can do a better job internally?”
“There’s no evidence to suggest that you can't be a thriving independent media company. It just forces you a little bit more towards [asking] how effective have your last two or three years of development been.”
Moving things along, Bunch mentions an interesting data point in The Streaming Book about how and what people watch. Bunch asks Ball about what it means for Netflix and everybody else that signs in. He reasons that initial viewings mostly happen on laptops and phones and then shift decisively toward TV viewing after six months. Bunch wonders if this changes the sort of content they create, or if it’s just an outlier. To answer, Ball explains there are two different insights to the question that need to be separated. It’s natural that most customers are on a mobile device rather than a television. As someone who has tried to log in or pay for something on his television, Ball understands how cumbersome the experience is. When using the Apple TV remote, Ball feels it’s easier to hit the subscribe option on an iPhone. As a result, most sign-ups happen on a mobile device, but most consumption does not happen on a mobile device.
In addition, customer tenure is strongly correlated with the percentage of viewing that happens on television. Ball claims that in the first month of a streaming subscription, people will spend more of their watch time on mobile devices than in month six. By month 12, viewing becomes more concentrated on the television screen. There are a few reasons for that. First, Ball has consistently found in his studies that the best content is watched on television. Naturally, viewers become more engaged with more series. They might have started a series on their iPad in bed, but over time they begin to desire to watch the finale of the next season on the screen where they’re going to enjoy it the most.
The second reason is not causal—it's correlated. If the big screen is the best screen to watch, then naturally the customers who churn are more likely to be watching on a mobile device because they're not as engaged in the content. Ball often sees a mixture of changing habits and selection bias-centricity around the big screen. Another thing Ball states that needs to be recognized is that shows make a difference in leading a customer to decide on whether to keep their subscription. These shows tend to be sci-fi epics. Some shows can be scaled down to a smaller, hand-held screen, but epics tend not to. It makes sense that they're concentrated on the big-screen TV.
“It's notable that most of the major gaming companies actually have larger and far more profitable monthly subscription services than all of the big Hollywood companies today. And whereas we debate the future profitability of video and whether it could ever match the past, no one debates that the future of gaming isn't going to be bigger and more profitable.”
The last big area that Bunch wishes to discuss is gaming. He goes back to how Ball mentioned the significant push Netflix is making into the gaming industry. Bunch recalls reading how Ball mentioned wanting to play the game Hogwarts Legacy on the new Max app at some point in the future. He asks Ball, in the context of the streaming wars, about what the future of gaming looks like. One of the points Ball tries to make when using gaming as an example is that the streaming wars have been going on longer than most people think. People underestimate who might be the next big name in the field.
Ball claims Microsoft was one of the first entrants to the streaming wars. In 2012, the computer company established Xbox Entertainment Studios and hired the president of CBS. Since then, many of their brands led to shows like Halo on Paramount+ and Humans on AMC which started within Xbox Studios. In fact, years before any other streaming service did live broadcasts, Xbox was doing live broadcasts of Miss Teen USA. However, 2014 was a year they struggled with business early on while Xbox and Microsoft were weaker at the time than they are today. Now, Microsoft is the second most valuable company on Earth. The company might even reenter the streaming competition, and there's a good argument as to why it can. Currently, Microsoft has over 55 million Xbox owners, 125 million members of the Xbox Live subscription service, and they have their own content bundle. It is spending more on original content than most streamers through its portfolio, and Microsoft now owns many of the biggest franchises globally.
Even Apple rebooted their video strategy four times and Amazon Prime Video has gone through its own growing pains. Ball emphasizes the point he is trying to make is that should Microsoft choose to return, it could be through a Roku acquisition or a Netflix acquisition. He also states that Sony has been an “arms dealer” for decades with early aspirations of entering the streaming wars. Like Microsoft, Sony now has over 100 million consumer streaming devices with one of the most valuable catalogs globally. In fact, Ball reveals how there are efforts in Eastern Europe to add video streaming to the region’s PlayStation subscription.
These players have largely skipped the nastiest parts of the streaming wars while the battlefield resulted in their competitors loaded up on debt. As a result, these tech and gaming companies scooped up Lionsgate and a merger/cooperation among both Paramount+ and Netflix. What they have done, and they could do with a scale of hundreds of millions 100 million tells us this is a broader battle than we thought. When it comes to this broader question of gaming, we can see the short-term elements. This is IP resonating. These days, major gaming companies have larger and far more profitable monthly subscription services than all of Hollywood today. No one debates whether the future of gaming seems bright.
“The more important point and this is where I think a lot of analysis is flawed, is everyone says streaming was supposed to be better than pay TV. How come it's more separated and more expensive? And this is to conflate two very different things. We have disrupted business models. We have disrupted delivery and we have disrupted the hegemony of, you know, Viacom and NBC Universal, and Disney in 2010.”
Having asked all his prepped questions, Bunch wishes to close the interview by asking Ball if there's anything he should have asked or if Ball thinks there's anything fans of the podcast should know about the streaming war. In response, Ball poses a question to Bunch. He asks Bunch about the thing he is least certain about when we look at the state of the streaming wars in 2030. To this, Bunch claims his biggest uncertainty of how consolidation would work for the consumer. He sets up a situation where he is going to get a package that includes Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max. Bunch figures the combined service will cost him around $60 a month to get him back to what he was already watching beforehand.
Bunch explains how he tends to look at all of this from the consumer side of things and what makes their life, and by extension his life, easier. Ball believes this to be an easy inquiry to address. He thinks questions of consolidation delineate between three different types of consolidation. One is service level consolidation. Going back in time with Warner Media, AT&T acquired it along with prepping numerous streaming services like Cinemax, HBO, Max TNT, and TBS. Films were struck from the Warner Bros. archive to slowly consolidate them. Ball goes back to how he previously mentioned how we have versions of Disney+ such as a kid’s version, a preteen version, general entertainment, and a Nat-Geo service.
The industry is already seeing many networks collapsing like Peacock, NBC+, USA Network, etc. within the last decade.
The second element of consolidation is corporate mergers. Fox and Disney are now together, and Discovery and HBO are together. As a result, we have reformulation at the corporate layer plus the sister brand layer. The third element of consolidation is happening at the aggregator layer. Amazon and Apple have tried before to replicate the old HBO-Showtime-Starz bundle by offering a discount to rival services to package together. Ball doesn’t doubt it will eventually happen, but he thinks that even if it doesn't financially, they are still experientially lumped together. It is possible to see three different line items on your streaming bill, but you will get them from a single app. These three elements are returning to the cable that everyone grew up with and often hated in 2010.
“We're complaining about the cost of television even though no one's making money from it. And so if you have that dynamic, we should not expect the consolidation is going to alleviate our wallet and that's what's important.”
In Ball’s opinion, the most important point is how flawed many analyses are when discussing whether streaming was supposed to be better than pay TV. Streaming has become more separated and more expensive to conflate two very different things. Ball believes we have disrupted business models, delivery, and the hegemony of industry giants like Viacom, NBC, Universal, and Disney in 2010. However, we have not disrupted the cost of production. According to Ball, companies spend far more making content on an episode-by-episode basis than ever before and make more of it. There is no way for television to be cheaper if the cost side hasn’t been severely affected. Instead, Ball has seen it worsen.
Talk about whether cutbacks and more financial controls at Disney or Warner Bros Discovery will surface frequently, but it's notable to remember that back in 2010, these companies were making 40% profit margins. Now they're losing tens of percent. While we're complaining about the cost of television, no one's making money from it. With that dynamic, we should not expect that the consolidation is going to alleviate our wallet—that's what's important. Incidentally, this is why Ball feels that everyone is excited about growing UGC and AI. Generative virtual production is where many are finally starting to see a way to not just change which pipe and app come from a company brand name, but also to push videos through. This was how we made video in the first place.
Bunch ends the interview by thanking Ball for appearing on the podcast and mentions how he is going to link Ball’s book, The Streaming Book, in the description.