Video Streaming Services Are Winning American Families’ Trust and Support

COMMENTARY

As we peer over the American landscape, the hunger for new technologies and options is unprecedented. And that hunger is being met in amazing new ways by innovative video streaming services.

According to a new poll released by the Streaming Innovation Alliance, seven in 10 U.S. voters from across the political spectrum feel favorably about video streaming services. And those numbers are even higher with Gen-Z, Millennials, Black Americans and Hispanic Americans. 

In an era of extreme political polarization and division, the runaway popularity of video streaming is stunning.  

The Streaming Innovation Alliance is a new coalition of video streaming services, ranging from longtime household names to independent upstarts organized to tell streaming’s story and advocate for smart, forward-looking policies that build on streaming’s current success.

Our members offer diverse programming that not only entertain and inform general interest viewers, they directly reach communities of color, LGBTQ audiences and niche sports fans through a variety of business models and innovative technologies.

Additional findings from the poll are equally striking. By almost three to one, voters reject the idea that more regulations are needed for streaming and two-thirds fear regulations would threaten diverse and independent services the most.

While privacy concerns abound in today’s data-driven world, 93% of polled U.S. voters affirmatively value the way streamers protect and use their personal data, and voters are twice as likely to trust streamers with their data as social media services.

Similarly, 89% of parents say they look to video streaming services as a reliable source of appropriate entertainment for their kids and 82% value the presence of parental controls to manage their kids’ experience on these services.

Given the exceptional level of confidence voters expressed in streaming services, the Streaming Innovation Alliance plans to fight for these voters and consumers and the services and options they value.

Video streaming services are a new way to find and watch great shows, with options, flexibility and choice consumers have grown to cherish. Streaming heralds a new era for diversity in programming, information and high-quality creative sector jobs, making sure more viewers, audiences and communities are served and creating new pathways for historically overlooked voices our nation needs to hear from and support.

The current and future benefits of streaming services are undeniable. Given the value of this incredible asset, we will oppose short-sighted proposals that smother innovation and consumer choice with backwards-looking rules designed for last century’s technologies and media market.

We plan to educate policymakers about the dynamic and evolving streaming ecosystem, especially the benefits it delivers to consumers, creators, innovators and the economy. And we will urge policymakers at all levels to resist the urge to micromanage streaming services.

In hypercompetitive streaming markets with dozens of active competitors and virtually no obstacles to entering the business, unwarranted regulations or fees could drive up consumer prices and frustration, lock in the position of today’s biggest incumbents by making it harder for new players to break through, and bring some of the risks that plague social media networks to streaming.

Encouragingly, voters see this all quite clearly. Seventy-six precent of those polled worry that complying with regulations designed expressly for entrenched technologies could force streamers to unnecessarily collect more data, and 69% worry that new rules could limit program diversity and steer streamers to “self-censor” and avoid sensitive and controversial programming.

And, nearly 70% of voters — with even higher numbers for Millennials and communities of color — believe smaller and independent streamers would be harmed the most.

As video streaming services continue to innovate and grow, we understand policymakers will want to look thoughtfully at ways to protect consumers and ensure competition remains free, fair and robust. But any proposals that intervene in healthy, thriving markets that nearly three-quarters of American voters already value and enjoy should rightly face an incredibly high bar. 

Fred Upton is a 36-year veteran of Congress, who served as chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Upton can be reached on X.

Mignon Clyburn is a former commissioner and acting chair of the Federal Communications Commission. Clyburn can be reached on X.

They currently serve as senior advisors to the Streaming Innovation Alliance.