Full Description
Streaming Europe explores how global streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video have reshaped the audiovisual landscape across Europe.
Since Netflix's arrival in 2012, the European media environment has undergone a rapid transformation, affecting every level of the industry—from production and distribution to policy and audience engagement. This book offers the first comprehensive, empirical, and comparative examination of these changes across different European markets. Written by a team of leading media scholars, it balances accessible analysis with evidence-based insights to examine how streamers have altered production practices and business models, shifted established power dynamics, and challenged long-standing broadcasting legacies. The book examines global streamers' market-entry strategies, the use of diversity and inclusion as competitive positioning, and the tensions between producers over rights retention and local authenticity. It analyses how public and commercial broadcasters across large and small European markets have both emulated Netflix and sought to differentiate themselves from US streamers, and how governments have responded with a patchwork of policy tools such as prominence regulation, quotas, and investment obligations, raising questions about their long-term effectiveness. Finally, it explores how different genres—including teen drama, documentary, European film, scripted television, and web series—both shape and are shaped by global streamers' evolving strategies.
With its strong foundation in research and pan-European scope, Streaming Europe goes beyond single-country perspectives to present a timely and nuanced understanding of how the streaming revolution is shaping Europe's cultural industries. It will be highly relevant to researchers in the field of Media industries, media economics, audiovisual industries, and media policy.
Contents
Preface
Foreword, by Ramon Lobato
Part I. Setting the scene: Streaming and the European audiovisual market
1. Streaming in Europe: The editors' introduction
Catalina Iordache and Tim Raats
2. Key differentiators and commonalities in global streaming services
Annelien Smets and Heritiana Ranaivoson
3. Global streamers' market access strategies and economic positioning in Europe
Marlen Komorowski, Nino Domazetovikj and Tim Raats
Part II. Market and production
4. Working with global streamers: Navigating revenue, reach and autonomy in European television production
Axelle Asmar, Gabriela Orestes and Tim Raats
5. Investments in original fiction series by foreign streamers and the boundaries of localisation
Catalina Iordache, Adelaida Afilipoaie, Tim Raats and Ruyin Li
6. European original film production for global VOD services: National continuities and genre revivals
Eduard Cuelenaere and Chris Meir
7. Diversity-on-demand: Branding difference(s) in European streaming
Axelle Asmar
8. The streamification of sports broadcasting
Tom Evens and Paul Smith
9. Reshaping European film distribution: The influence of streaming services on release windows
Paul Hammoud, Heritiana Ranaivoson and Onur Karahan
Part III. Content and catalogue
10. Catalogues in context: Unpacking transnational strategies on streaming services in European markets
Catalina Iordache and Maria Trinidad García Leiva
11. Localisation at scale: Dubbing and subtitling in the age of streaming
Pedro Gallo and Catalina Iordache
12. The documentary: From niche genre to streaming darling
Catalina Iordache and Eline Livémont
13. Streaming teen television in Europe: A transnational renaissance?
Axelle Asmar, Leo Van Audenhove and Tim Raats
14. Short series of Europe: A subcultural circuit of popular and critically acclaimed filmmaking
Guy Healy
Part IV. Responses from industry and policy
15. Strategic responses by public service media to global video streamers: Practices and key trends in Europe
Pieter Van der Elst, Catalina Iordache and Tim Raats
16. The search for reach and revenue: Responses of commercial European broadcasters to streamers
Tim Raats and Catalina Iordache
17. Capturing a fast-moving target: Regulatory responses to global streamers in Europe
Tim Raats and Catalina Iordache
18. Streaming in the 'Land of Bad TV': The consolidation of the video-on-demand market in Central and Eastern Europe
Petr Szczepanik
19. How audiences respond to streaming services in Europe
Jeroen Peeters, Noëmie Forest and Wendy van Den Broeck
20. Conclusion
Tim Raats and Catalina Iordache
List of acronyms and abbreviations
Index
