Thanksgiving Weekend Is Stuffed With Streaming — but Fatigue May Not Be Far Behind

If you’re reading this, the turkey’s got you stuffed, you’ve had your fill of the stuffing, and you’ve had your fill of the relatives. Maybe you’ve had your fill of parades, dog shows and football on TV, too.

You’re probably also taking a break — okay, maybe just a breather — from the loads of streaming content that seems to be flooding your screen lately. And you may not be alone. In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, and well into the days after, the Hulus, the Netflixes, et al. are bringing lineups that promise to sate consumers’ seemingly insatiable appetite for content of all stripes.

And the competition between traditional media — that would be the movie theater, naturally — and the subscription services (also jockeying with one another) has crystallized this Thanksgiving weekend.

We’re not here to give a TV Guide of sorts, but we’ll give the nod to at least a few signal events. You may be gearing up this very day to see, on Disney+, how The Beatles really broke up. Or maybe your tastes run a bit more toward, well, the seamier side of life, and you want to gawk at the second season of “Tiger King” on Netflix. Or the advent of Christmas movies, which seem to start dropping, in earnest, this month.

The bet is, of course, that you’ll shell out $8.99 a month or more to be able to get these and other goodies on-demand, when and where you want them, via big-screen TV, laptop or cell phone.

There are also the studio-only releases, such as the latest “Ghostbusters” installment (Who you gonna call? Scriptwriters!) And then the Bond juggernaut, “No Time to Die,” has become the highest-grossing movie of the year, but has seen at-home and theater options.

Ready to Stream

The list could go on, but if there is one overarching theme, it’s this: The average U.S. consumer is primed and ready to stream — and perhaps to churn.

After all, PYMNTS data shows that 80% of consumers have at least one streaming account, up from 72% a year ago. Drill down a bit, and more than 67% of people have streaming media in place, up from a bit more than 65% when the pandemic first hit. The fact that the 18 months of living under the shadow of COVID-19 did not do all that much to move the needle may indicate that the audience for streaming media is, for lack of a better term, saturated.

Read more: Data Brief: 80% of US Consumers Have at Least One Subscription

That means streaming firms must compete on content, but also primarily on price, given the fact that at some point, no matter the service, you’ll likely find something to watch.

And the theaters are banking in part on the novelty of reopenings. Cinemark, for example, said at the end of last month that October was the best month of box-office traffic since May of 2021 (and, in fact, doubled that month’s levels). Much depends on the progress of the pandemic — and, perhaps, Spiderman (Disney’s latest Marvel Cinematic Universe offering will be in theaters on Dec. 17). In-person movie attendance may get a bump through the next several months.

There’s a long way to go before hitting 2019 levels — where, for instance, U.S. box-office levels are still more than 60% below 2019’s traffic. We’ll see how the tug of war between streaming and the traditional box office continues to play out, as potential blockbusters (and bombs) parade across screens large and small.