Welcome back to What I’m Hearing+, coming to you from Brooklyn once again. It was an honor to fill in for Matt Belloni last week; now it’s back to our regularly scheduled programming.

This week, a deep dive into the data showing which platforms are more vulnerable to the writer and actor strikes, and what it means for consumers. But first, some follow up to Matt’s Sunday night scoopage…

• Disney’s Prodigal Sons Return!: Hollywood is buzzing over the news that former Disney executives Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs have been hired as consultants to C.E.O. Bob Iger as he plots the company’s streaming strategy. Both, of course, were once favorites to succeed Iger. Years after they were passed over for the role, they co-founded the Blackstone-backed Candle Media, instead.

  Naturally, there has been chatter about whether Mayer or Staggs (or both?) might succeed Iger this time, given his lack of progress filling the position. Frankly, I’m not sure that either would want the job, which is considerably different and more challenging today than it was in February 2020. But I am curious about the potential for Disney to partner with Candle, or if any of the Candle assets might make sense for Disney.

  Candle currently has six companies under its umbrella—most notably Moonbug (which owns Cocomelon), Hello Sunshine (the Reese Witherspoon company behind Big Little Lies and Little Fires Everywhere), and Faraway Road (the Israeli producer of Fauda, a global hit on Netflix). Mayer and Staggs may have overpaid for some of those acquisitions, which is why it’s hard to imagine Disney buying Candle outright. Indeed, Blackstone would require a meaningful premium on its money, which was put to work near the top of the market for streaming, and Disney still has nearly $40 billion in net debt. But the data suggests that there are other opportunities here, if Iger is creative.

  Perhaps the most obvious opportunity is with Cocomelon (currently on Netflix), which routinely tops Nielsen’s list of the most watched acquired streaming programming, and was the third most streamed program overall in 2022, with 37.8 billion minutes streamed—just behind NCIS (38.1 billion) and Stranger Things (52 billion). Cocomelon is also the most viewed kids channel on YouTube, with more than 161 billion views.

  Disney has fallen behind on children’s programming, despite its incredible I.P., losing preschool viewing hours to YouTube Kids and Netflix. Cocomelon could be added to the parks and consumer products, and is perfectly aligned with Disney’s brand. Unlike many of the other content makers that Disney would acquire with a Candle Media deal and could use to license content and generate stronger revenue, Disney needs to own Cocomelon. Removing a top children’s title for Netflix once the contract is up and moving that audience over to Disney+, where series like Bluey are also waiting, would turn Disney+ into a preschool powerhouse once again. Sure, it isn’t as culturally redefining as Marvel or Star Wars, but it would strengthen Disney’s preschool-to-young-adult content pipeline. Iger has already suggested that he’ll rely on creative dealmaking to get Disney out of its current malaise.

Of course, some streamers are more vulnerable than others. The conventional wisdom holds that Netflix is more insulated thanks to its global content pipeline and ability to turn old licensed shows—like Suits—into new hits. Or that Max can stretch out the time between new HBO series with an endless supply of Discovery’s unscripted fare. But details matter, and so do the strategies. Netflix can lean on its volume and scale, but co-C.E.O. Ted Sarandos needs a new Stranger Things in 2024, too.

Below, for your edification, a data-driven ranking of the streamers that are best and worst positioned to withstand a lengthy strike, ranked from strongest to weakest. To be clear, I’m not assessing the financial vulnerability—obviously, Apple and Amazon would survive even if viewership on their video platforms went to zero. I’m interested in the relative durability of the streaming products themselves: the programming strategies, content libraries, and market positioning that will ultimately determine who’s up and who’s down. Let’s get into it.

Netflix still has the largest demand share for original content in the U.S. among top streamers, commanding 36.3 percent (the second closest is Prime Video with 8.6 percent). But this is a summary of all original series on Netflix, not just new titles. Think of it this way: Netflix spent tens of billions of dollars on original content building up its own library to try to reach a 50/50 ratio between originals and licensed series. It finally accomplished that goal in the U.S. earlier this year. One could argue that Netflix’s originals’ share should be much higher because of the dollars spent—but regardless, the good news is that Netflix dominates attention share each month compared to other streamers and isn’t reliant on a slew of new titles.

While new Netflix originals consistently top the charts, the steady heartbeat is series like Seinfeld, NCIS, Cocomelon, Grey’s Anatomy, and even the aforementioned Suits. Since Netflix has a deep collection of titles, the demand is more evenly split. Of the top 15 most streamed titles in 2022 across all services, 10 streamed exclusively on Netflix and two streamed non-exclusively (NCIS and Criminal Minds, which were also available on Paramount+). Of the 12 that streamed on Netflix, only three were original titles—Stranger Things, Wednesday, and Cobra Kai, which was acquired by Netflix after its second season on YouTube.

Of course, Netflix still needs fresh content. During the week beginning April 24, for example, nearly every title on Netflix’s Top 10 list was a new season of an original Netflix series or an entirely new show. But a growing percentage of these top performers, like South Korea’s Physical 100, have been coming from overseas, underscoring the fact that more U.S. consumers have embraced foreign language content. Critically, none of these productions should be affected by domestic strikes.

Max: The streamer formerly known as HBO Max has a similar audience demand share as Netflix for new series, at just over 5 percent. But while it can’t match Netflix’s global supply lines, it does enjoy a practically unlimited supply of unscripted content thanks to its merger with Discovery+. Incredibly, only 1.7 percent of demand for Discovery+ series in Q1 and Q2 came from new series. Anyone who’s ever watched those titles can tell you why: it’s a treasure trove of ten-season shows that were designed to be thrown on while you’re looking at your phone or folding laundry.

While House Hunters and Naked and Afraid (not to mention TLC chum like My 600 Pound Life) won’t replace the strong demand for prestige HBO content—something that even C.E.O. Casey Bloys suggested might be an issue come mid-2024, depending on the length of the strike—it does allow Warner Bros. Discovery to make the Max homepage feel refreshed. Even non-Discovery+ content like Friends and The Big Bang Theory or Game of Thrones—all among the most watched titles on Max each month—may become more impactful as the dual strikes continue.

Hulu and Disney+: Both Disney platforms boast strong catalogs that should hold consumer attention over the next few months. And, luckily for C.E.O. Bob Iger, who is set to merge them into one unified app, each platform’s strengths balance out the other’s weaknesses. In Q2, the audience demand share for the entire Disney+ film catalog was 1.5x times the demand for its TV series. This is also clear in Nielsen’s weekly reporting, where movies like Encanto and Moana consistently top the streaming films list, and new titles like Avatar: The Way of Water monopolize attention.

Amazon Prime Video: Prime Video is heavily investing in new series. Some of those titles, like Daisy Jones and the Six or The Summer I Turned Pretty (as well as new seasons of shows like The Wheel of Time or The Boys), are crucial to Prime Video. That’s representative in the titles that appear on Nielsen, and in Parrot’s demand-for-originals share ranking. As more talked-about series debut on Prime Video, the demand for new original titles per quarter increases. Data from both Parrot and Nielsen suggest that this has translated into increased time on platform, too.

That would be great news for Amazon under any other circumstances, but it’s not ideal in the middle of a prolonged dual strike! While Prime Video isn’t entirely reliant on new titles—Amazon also has a solid film and TV portfolio, thanks to licensing deals and the MGM library it acquired for $8.5 billion—its recent success leveraging originals to drive engagement also highlights why the platform is now vulnerable as the pipeline dries up.

Peacock and Paramount+: The streamers attached to NBCUniversal and Paramount Global face challenges of a similar magnitude, but with more severe impacts likely to be felt in the coming months.

Peacock, which has seen a steady increase in usage, according to Nielsen’s Gauge measurement tool, may feel a mighty burn from fewer original films from sister unit Universal. Close to 10 percent of all demand for movies on Peacock came from titles released within Q1 and Q2, according to Parrot, such as M3gan and Cocaine Bear. Peacock is slightly more insulated on the TV side, due in part to its deep library (Parks and Rec, Chicago P.D., etc.) live sports (like the NFL), and unscripted programming.

Paramount+ is less dependent on new films, but it does benefit from strong demand for new original titles in Q3 and Q4 (in part because of the fall season bringing attention to the platform), making that lack of new programming much more impactful. While Paramount and Netflix share many of the same titles (NCIS, S.W.A.T), Paramount+ also doesn’t have the scale or breadth of original series that Netflix does. Therefore, it’s more difficult to steal attention and consumption time away from Netflix in the U.S.

I expect to see both Paramount+ and Peacock lean more heavily on sports content over the next few months, including Par+’s strong soccer coverage. But it will also be interesting to see whether either streamer ramps up licensing to competitors like Netflix and Hulu if things start to get hairy and executives need to increase cash flow.

Apple TV+: New shows released on Apple TV+ have a demand share that is almost 6x higher than the average demand share for new shows in other main SVOD catalogs. Simply put, that’s bad news for Apple’s premium streaming product at a time when the content production pipeline has virtually come to a halt. Nearly 25 percent of demand for all TV content on Apple TV+ this year was released in 2023. In fact, this percentage has been increasing for Apple TV+ since last year. That would be a positive sign under normal circumstances, suggesting that more recent Apple shows are finding bigger audiences. Now, of course, Apple will need to lean on acquisitions and licensing to supplement a not-particularly-deep bench.

This doesn’t mean Apple TV+ is cooked. I asked a longtime Apple advisor what he thought of the streamer’s position and he answered, “Apple is Apple. It’s not a concern for shareholders.” (Yes, this is the benefit of being a streaming shingle on a $3 trillion company.) Anyway, the platform is still growing rapidly, topping 7 percent of total share of streaming subscriptions, according to Antenna, up from the 0.3 percent of subscriptions in 2019. The company also saw a 12 percent share of all net subscriber additions in 2022, according to the research firm. The streamer also hit a record high of 8.3 percent of all original programming demand share in the U.S. this past quarter, according to Parrot.

All of that indicates that Apple TV+ is finally finding its groove—just at a less-than-ideal time. In the end, the real test for Apple, like every other streamer, will be how much content it had banked before Hollywood shut down; how it pivots to maximize the value of that programming until the strike ends; and where it can find other opportunities to keep subscribers from canceling in the meantime. But, of course, this may just be a bump in the road for a company playing the long game.