Age of the Geek

A new challenger appears
     Some time ago I told you all about the unexpected revival of DC's "Young Justice," the short lived but much beloved animated series about a team of sidekicks. The show ran for two seasons on Cartoon Network between 2011 and 2013 and its fan base has spent the better part of the years since pestering series creator Greg Weisman for a continuation.
     Last February, after years of ducking questions about the long canceled show, Weisman hinted that there was a possibility of revival after all, suggesting that fans marathon the show on Netflix. The assumption was that if enough interest was shown, Netflix may decide to produce the long request third season.
     It wouldn't be the first time something like that has happened. After "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" was canceled on Cartoon Network, Netflix became the host for the final set of episodes to wrap up the series.
     In the case of "Young Justice," the rallying cry of the fans paid off. Last November Warner Bros. announced that the show will be making a return after all.
     However, where one would watch the show was left a mystery until last week when Warner Bros. revealed that the third season of "Young Justice" will not be airing on either Cartoon Network or Netflix, but will be exclusive to a yet-to-be-named digital streaming service dedicated to DC-branded properties.
     I guess that's one more subscription to add to the list.
     I've seen this coming for a while, but things are really starting to get out of hand. It seems every other month a new streaming service pops up, often with one or two high profile shows to tempt consumers to join them on the other side of the pay wall.
     There's little doubt that Warner Bros. will use "Young Justice" to entice fans to sign up for yet another monthly subscription. CBS did the same thing for CBS All-Access, their own streaming service that will be the home for "Star Trek: Discovery" (if that show ever actually gets finished).
     More and more it seems like all the best shows are getting divvied up between an increasing number of individual services. "American Gods," which premiered this week, has me considering picking up STARZ for at least a couple months until the show is fully out. I'll almost certainly do that later this year with HBO Now for "Game of Thrones."
     Elsewhere, Hulu has gone subscriber only for those that want to keep up with the latest in network television and Cartoon Network's Boomerang offers a library of classic cartoons for anybody that wants to binge on "The Flintstones" or "Scooby-Doo."
     Even YouTube is trying to carve out a piece of the pie, holding original content behind their YouTube Red subscription service.
     And, of course, there's Netflix.
     Once upon a time, Netflix is where all of the previously mentioned shows would inevitably turn up. Today though, the streaming service's catalog is less than half the size it was in 2012. Fortunately for them, Netflix realized quickly that they wouldn't be the only game in town forever and transitioned from content distributor to content producer. Now they depend largely on original content, exclusive to their service, to draw people in and keep them paying their monthly subscription.
     On one hand, competition in the streaming marketplace is a good thing. It keeps the service providers hungry and forces them to continually invest in and improve their own products to stay ahead. We might still be watching Netflix on laptop screens at $17 a month if it wasn't for other services nipping at their heels.
     On the other hand, saturation in the marketplace may price consumers out all-together. If every show you want to watch is on a different service, you might decide that no individual service is offering enough content to justify the cost of a subscription. Moreover, even if the consumers decide the content is worth the cost, the headache of keeping track of a half dozen different services may encourage them to look for other ways to spend their entertainment dollar.
     Less money going into a heavily saturated marketplace can start a negative feedback loop. New content becomes prohibitively expensive to produce, which gives people less reason to subscribe, which means even less revenue to produce new content.
     Neither extreme is good for the consumer so hopefully a balance will be found before the pendulum swings too far.
     Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and is suddenly starting to see the appeal of cable packages.