With Paramount, Disney, Amazon and Netflix all producing original TV shows on a regular basis and Disney taking the bold move of outsourcing their own DVD and Blu Ray production to Sony, it’s clear that the industry is trying as hard as possible to encourage consumers to move away from home video to streaming. Broadcast television has been changing rapidly over the last decade and an increasing number of the population globally rely on streaming services to watch shows, but as well as the long-term decline of mainstream television, could we also be looking at losing DVD and Blu Ray as an option for our favourite shows, including Transformers?
While we can still buy (for now) most Transformers shows on DVD, finding them is getting increasingly difficult. With a growing number of stores moving away from stocking physical media, we’re left with relying on online retailers as our only option for buying physical copies of TV shows or movies. And with that brings problems.
For companies like Hasbro, the primary purpose of any Transformers show has always been a marketing tool to sell toys. No matter how much we might enjoy watching G1, Beast Wars, Transformers Prime etc, the truth is that each episode has been a glorified 25 minute toy advertisement. Each time a new character has been introduced to a show, it’s simply been done to sell a new toy that’s been released. Just like movies, in reality apart from the die hard fans that gives Transformers TV shows a limited shelf-life as a home video release. A lot of kids the shows are aimed at won’t want box sets of them.
It’s clear that Hasbro have started to realise that and in a bold move they’ve been making greater use of streaming services to push all of their older shows. Making use of the official Transformers YouTube channel, they’ve made all of G1, Beast Wars, Transformers Prime, Transformers Animated and other shows available to watch completely free of charge. Financially, this may seem like a strange move, especially as there is clearly interest from fans in watching these, but there is logic behind it financially.
With episodes receiving millions of views it’s clear that this is a license to print money. According to the social media analysis website Socialblade, the official Transformers YouTube channel is generating anywhere up to $393,000 per year in revenue for Hasbro. While this is a pre-tax figure, this is potentially far more appealing to them than selling DVDs in the long term. And that’s before taking into consideration the income generated by the much smaller Hasbro Pulse channel.
Now that’s just using their own YouTube channel and doesn’t include licensing our Transformers content for streaming on other platforms. For years they’ve allowed shows to be streamed on the likes of Amazon, Netflix, Paramount+ and so on. All of these generate additional income and I’d take an educated guess and say that these have created a substantially larger income than home video sales on DVD and Blu Ray.
But why would Hasbro consider a shift to streaming in the long run over home video distribution? The obvious one is cost. There would be no production costs involved in terms of mastering the content ready for release, no need for localisation, artwork or physical manufacturing of multiple formats and region conversion. And once the final products are made, they wouldn’t have to worry about marketing and distribution and hoping that they reach the intended audience. If a season is split into multiple discs it would have a better chance of offsetting some of this cost as none of us would want to buy part of a series, but for the casual consumer how many of them would be willing to pay out larger amounts for a complete box set? From Hasbro’s perspective they can’t win no matter what they release.
Opting for a streaming first model doesn’t always work and truthfully and new show will still end up on a TV network such as Nickelodeon first to get the largest possible mainstream audience. Most shows aimed purely at the streaming market struggle to gain a foothold and are at the mercy of the platform for their longevity. But when Hasbro move their older Transformers shows to YouTube and they prove to be steady earners, it’s clear that DVD releases could soon be too costly for them to consider.
As fans we might not like this future but YouTube may be a happy compromise rather than being locked behind a paywall on other services. While physical media is always preferred as collectors, there’s only so much shelf space you can have dedicated to boxsets. And with over 40 years worth of shows the space we need is growing all the time, even more so if we collect shows from other franchises.
Personally, there are shows I’ve never been able to complete on DVD and their YouTube channel is finally giving me the chance to catch up on them and if this is the way forward – and with episodes hopefully staying on their channel permanently – I for one am excited about where this is heading.
Photo by Matias Mango
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