Streaming Media
Yahoo Screen
Yahoo Screen was Yahoo's bid to be a premium YouTube, a video hub that revived the cancelled sitcom Community and streamed the first live NFL regular-season game. But it couldn't sell the ads to pay for that content, took a $42 million write-off, and Yahoo quietly shut it down in January 2016.
Narrative
The story
The ambition
Yahoo Screen was meant to prove Yahoo could still make premium video destinations. Launched in 2013 as a hub for original and licensed content, positioned as a more curated alternative to YouTube, it became the centerpiece of Marissa Mayer-era Yahoo's push into original programming. The ambition was to draw a big audience with marquee content and turn Yahoo's still-large web traffic into a real media business.
The rise
Yahoo spent to make a statement. In 2015 it revived the beloved sitcom Community for a sixth season after NBC cancelled it, hosted Saturday Night Live clips and other comedy, and struck a landmark deal with the NFL to carry the first-ever global livestream of a regular-season game, the Bills and Jaguars, played in London in October 2015. For a while, Yahoo Screen looked like a serious original-video contender.
The cracks
The numbers underneath told a harder story. The NFL stream drew about 15.2 million total viewers, a headline Yahoo touted, but averaged only about 2.36 million viewers per minute, a fraction of the 10-20 million a TV broadcast pulls, and some viewers complained about stream quality. More fundamentally, Yahoo Screen's audience had barely moved, hovering around 25 million users from early 2014 to late 2015 while Netflix and others surged. Yahoo was paying premium prices for content it could not monetize.
The collapse
The reckoning came in the numbers. In the third quarter of 2015 Yahoo took a $42 million write-off on original video content it concluded it could not make money from. A few months later, in early January 2016, it quietly shut Yahoo Screen down, pulling the apps from Apple's App Store and Google Play and folding the surviving videos into its topic-based "digital magazines."
The aftermath
The shutdown was read as an early, telling casualty of Yahoo's broader retrenchment under Mayer, a retreat from an expensive bet that never paid, as the company tried to refocus on more profitable areas before its 2017 sale to Verizon. Yahoo Screen became a standard example of a big incumbent buying prestige content it had no way to monetize.
The lessons
Prestige content is only a business if you can sell against it. Yahoo Screen won headlines, a revived cult sitcom, the first live NFL stream, but headlines are not revenue, and Yahoo never built the audience or the ad sales to cover what marquee programming costs. Reviving Community and streaming the NFL raised awareness without moving the core numbers, and a $42 million write-off followed. Buying attention is easy; converting it into a monetizable audience is the actual job, and Yahoo skipped straight to the spending.
Causal timeline
Failure Anatomy
- 2013
Yahoo's premium video hub
Launched in 2013 as a curated alternative to YouTube, Yahoo Screen was the centerpiece of Yahoo's push into original and licensed programming under Marissa Mayer. [1]
- 2015
Marquee content bets
In 2015 Yahoo revived the cancelled sitcom Community for a sixth season, hosted SNL clips and comedy, and struck an NFL deal to livestream the first global regular-season game. [2]
- 2015-10
The NFL livestream reality
The October 2015 Bills-Jaguars stream drew ~15.2M total viewers but averaged only ~2.36M per minute (versus TV's 10-20M), with some quality complaints. [3]
Stronger competitor - 2015
- 2016-01
Shutdown
In early January 2016 Yahoo shut down Yahoo Screen, pulled its apps, and folded surviving videos into its topic-based digital magazines. [7]
Unsustainable economics
Structured analysis
What Went Wrong
Root causes
Content it couldn't monetize. Yahoo paid premium prices for original and licensed video but could not sell the advertising to cover it, leading to a $42M write-off. [5] [6]
Audience that never grew. Yahoo Screen's user base stayed around 25 million from early 2014 to late 2015 while rivals like Netflix surged, so its expensive content never built a competitive audience. [4]
Contributing factors
Outmatched by TV and streamers. The NFL livestream averaged far fewer viewers per minute than TV, and streaming rivals were pulling audiences Yahoo could not match. [3]
Immediate trigger
$42M write-off, then shutdown. After a Q3 2015 $42M write-off on unmonetizable video content, Yahoo shut Yahoo Screen down in early January 2016. [5] [7]
Visible symptoms
Marquee bets that didn't pay. Reviving Community and streaming the NFL generated attention but not the revenue to justify their cost. [2] [3]
Warning signs
Flat audience against surging rivals. Yahoo Screen's roughly 25M users barely grew from 2014 to 2015 even as Netflix and other services expanded rapidly. [4]
Affected groups
Evidence
Claims & sources
Every numbered marker in the analysis links to the claim it rests on, and each claim to its sources.
- [1]
Yahoo Screen was Yahoo's video hub, launched in 2013 as a curated alternative to YouTube and the centerpiece of the company's push into original and licensed programming.
- [2]
In 2015 Yahoo Screen revived the cancelled sitcom Community for a sixth season, hosted SNL clips and other content, and struck an NFL deal to livestream the first global regular-season game.
- [3]
Yahoo's October 2015 NFL livestream (Bills-Jaguars) drew about 15.2 million total viewers but averaged only about 2.36 million per minute, far below TV's 10-20 million, with some reported stream-quality issues.
- [4]
Yahoo Screen's audience stayed around 25 million users from early 2014 to late 2015 while rivals such as Netflix grew rapidly.
- [5]
In the third quarter of 2015 Yahoo took a $42 million write-off on original video content it concluded it could not monetize.
- [6]
Yahoo paid premium prices for original and licensed video but could not sell enough advertising to cover the cost, undermining Yahoo Screen's economics.
- [7]
Yahoo shut down Yahoo Screen in early January 2016, pulling its apps and folding surviving videos into its topic-based digital magazines.
Sources
Yahoo Shuts Down Yahoo Screen, Its Home For Original Content Like "Community"
TechCrunch · 2016-01-04
Yahoo shuts down its Screen video streaming hub
Engadget · 2016-01-04
Yahoo's live NFL stream was popular, but no match for TV
Engadget · 2015-10-26