The 10 Most Important Convergent TV Moments of 2021

This past year was another transformative one for entertainment and media as the industry continued adjusting to Covid-19's effects, competition intensified and some industry old habits—and institutions—felt the ground shift under their feet. As part of Adweek’s Year in Review coverage, we took a look back at 10 of convergent TV's most important moments in 2021, reflecting on the decisions, debuts and developments that have reshaped the industry. Discovery+’s debut Many major streaming services rolled out in 2020, including WarnerMedia’s HBO Max and NBCUniversal’s Peacock, but Discovery Inc. waited until the very beginning of 2021, Jan. 4., to debut its own unscripted streaming service. The platform has since blossomed, and Discovery most recently reported 18 million total direct-to-consumer subscribers. Perhaps more importantly, though, the service has paved the way for the company’s streaming advertising business, which the company has prioritized heavily in upfront sales as it has seen higher-than-expected demand. And the streamer will play a major role in a certain upcoming megamerger that we'll be writing more about later in this article. Roku signs up for Quibi The connected TV device-maker and streaming platform Roku made a big push into original programming this year, releasing an original holiday movie based on canceled NBCUniversal sitcom Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist and laying out big plans for new original programming in 2022. You can trace the beginning of it all to Jan. 8, when the company scooped up the global rights to programming from the shut-down streaming service Quibi. That acquisition—which brought to Roku more than 75 scripted originals, alternative reality series and short documentaries, plus more than a dozen shows and movies that never got the chance to premiere—finally gave Roku the chance to find out that exclusive programming was valuable enough to invest in. The 10 Best TV Shows of 2021 The shift from demos to total viewers begins As media companies and measurement firms continue to move toward new ways of measuring audiences, A+E Networks made a major shift in February, when it announced that it no longer wanted to transact on the key age demos of adults 18-49 and 25-54 during this year’s upfront. Instead, the company said then, it would move to transact on a total audience currency counting all adults 18 and up. That shift, which came in response to eroding annual ratings, was designed to help better account for older TV viewers, who make up a fast-growing demographic that aren’t included in the traditional demos of old. And A+E wasn't alone: Discovery and ViacomCBS were among the other media companies that transacted more widely across total audiences in the upfront. Farewell, CBS All Access. Welcome, Paramount+ Joining Discovery+ as a new streamer on the block this year was Paramount+, the streaming service from ViacomCBS that officially rolled out on March 4. The service, a rebranded and dramatically expanded version of CBS All Access, marks ViacomCBS’ official new entrance into the streaming wars that is powered by lessons that ViacomCBS streaming head Tom Ryan gleaned from his time running free ad-supported streaming platform Pluto TV. Since March, the service has grown considerably; as of last quarter, ViacomCBS counted nearly 47 million total direct-to-consumer subscribers. The NFL's $100 billion TV rights deal After years of anticipation, on March 18 the NFL struck huge new decade-long deals with the major broadcasters and networks, including CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN, ABC (which will return to the Super Bowl rotation after a 20-year absence)—as well as Amazon’s Prime Video. The streaming service, which has been simulcasting Thursday Night Football games since 2017, will have the exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football beginning in 2022, marking the first time that a streaming service has been in primary position for an NFL rights deal. As part of the other deals, streaming is increasingly becoming a factor, too; Paramount+, ESPN+, Tubi and Peacock all have some ability to stream or simulcast certain games. But the games are still essential for the continued vitality of old-fashioned linear TV—which might be why the agreement is worth an estimated $10 billion annually, or $100 billion over the course of the deal. Discovery and WarnerMedia's surprise mega-merger After a few years’ lull, media consolidation began anew on May 17 when WarnerMedia and Discovery made the shocking announcement that they would merge. The combined company, which will be called Warner Bros. Discovery, will upon its expected mid-2022 close create a streaming-centric media behemoth, led by Discovery CEO David Zaslav, that will house heavy-hitting entertainment brands like HBO, news brands like CNN and unscripted brands like HGTV and TLC. Safe to say that deal will transform the media landscape by making the stakes in the increasingly competitive, and increasingly global, streaming wars even higher—but many of the details about the combined company have yet to be worked out, including how Discovery+ and HBO Max may be combined for subscribers. Peacock’s Olympic moment The 2020 Tokyo Olympics this summer wasn’t just a chance for international athletes to finally have their moment on the world Summer Olympics stage following a year-long pandemic postponement—it was also an opportunity for NBCUniversal-owned Peacock to try to make its mark with consumers eager to tune into the competition. Executives planned considerable coverage available on its streaming service, including live coverage of men’s and women’s gymnastics and several major track-and-field events, highlights channels and a handful of original series, but saved much of the live coverage for linear viewers (with added perks for Comcast cable subscribers). Did it stick the landing, though? The company faced some blowback for Peacock's less-than-frictionless user experience during the Games; NBCUniversal has since been mum on the number of sign-ups to the service throughout the two-week Olympics—an indication, perhaps, that they didn’t exactly win gold. Nielsen’s accreditation axed Nielsen, long the reining royalty of measurement, lost its crown in September when the Media Rating Council declared that Nielsen’s national TV service, plus Nielsen’s Local People Meter and Nielsen’s Set Meter Markets services, would be stripped of their third-party accreditation. The stunning decision was attributed to various issues in the company’s methodology, which had been the subject of months of criticism by the Video Advertising Bureau, which represents the major networks and broadcasters. Nielsen is racing to find fixes, but the lapse in accreditation means other companies—from rival measurement firms to the networks themselves—are looking to fill the gap. Netflix’s Squid Game windfall If you needed any more proof of international programming's power on streaming services, look no further than Squid Game, the bloody South Korean drama on Netflix that became a global sensation nearly overnight in October. The show, which was released in mid-September, was watched by a record 142 million subscribers in its first four weeks, and viewers spent a total of 625 million hours watching the series in the same time frame, Netflix told investors in October. According to internal metrics reported by Bloomberg, the show generated nearly $900 million in estimated value for the company—not bad considering the show only cost under $22 million to produce. Hollywood strike averted Following a surge in streaming viewership and an intensified investment in direct-to-consumer programming, Hollywood production was running nearly round-the-clock this year to churn out new shows and movies for audiences as it made up for last year's pandemic shutdowns. But that was put in jeopardy this fall when the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents 60,000 behind-the-scenes production workers, threatened to strike and bring production to a near-complete halt. Finally, on Oct. 16, the union reached a tentative agreement, and one month later, the union members narrowly ratified two contracts that set new terms for wages, turnaround times and better working conditions for streaming-specific productions, keeping production up and running.

Year in Review

The 10 Most Important Convergent TV Moments of 2021

The streaming debuts, mega-mergers and de-accreditations that reshaped the industry

Discovery+’s debut

Kelsey Sutton

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Discovery+’s debut

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Kelsey Sutton