Insights and Trends
What’s Actually in Howdy’s Box: Inside the Catalog of Roku’s Ad-Free SVOD
Roku’s Howdy is having a moment. CEO Anthony Wood told analysts on Roku’s Q1 2026 earnings call that the $2.99-a-month ad-free service is “doing extremely well,” and Antenna estimates Howdy has accounted for 23% of all Roku Channel subscription signups since its August 2025 launch. The Hollywood Reporter and Ars Technica have both reported that…
Read MoreFrom Music Royalty Tracking to Editorial Discovery: How Reelgood Customers Are Putting Streaming Data to Work
Next in our series on the Reelgood team’s 2026 Streaming Industry Predictions. Key Takeaways The most impactful customer use cases for Reelgood’s metadata and availability data span far beyond consumer discovery: a sync licensing company uses it to calculate and reclaim owed music royalties, while a major editorial publisher uses it to power embedded “where…
Read MoreThe Distribution Arc: How Long Does It Take a Hit Film to Go Free?
Reelgood analyzed 1.93 million availability windows across 240 platforms (US market) to quantify the streaming industry’s best-kept open secret: the windowing clock is accelerating, and the data tells a different story than most licensing teams assume. Key Takeaways The median time from a popular movie’s first paid availability to its first free/AVOD appearance is 9.4…
Read MoreHow Many Movies and TV Shows Do You Get Per Dollar? The 2026 Streaming Value Scorecard
Key Takeaways Four major ad-free streaming services now charge between $18.49 and $19.99 per month. The price gap between Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, and HBO Max has narrowed to just $1.50. But the content you get for that near-identical price varies by more than 3x. Netflix leads among traditional streamers at 251 movies and 186 TV…
Read More81 HBO Max Movies Are Missing from Prime Video’s Channel. Subscribers Don’t Know.
Key Takeaways Reelgood’s tracking of 2,149 HBO Max movies found 81 confirmed titles available on the standalone HBO Max service but absent from the HBO Max add-on channel on Prime Video. The gap represents roughly 4% of the full HBO Max movie catalog, and it includes high-demand titles with Reelgood scores above 80: Dune: Part…
Read MoreThe House of Cards Problem: What Cable TV Taught Me About Streaming Data Quality
A 15-year cable analytics veteran on why streaming data quality failures stay invisible until they aren’t — and what it costs when the model breaks. Key Takeaways Data quality failures in streaming entertainment analytics rarely announce themselves at the point of entry. The errors surface downstream, when forecasts don’t hold up and decisions have already…
Read MoreThe Measurement Gap: What Most Streaming Services Are Still Missing
Next in our series on the Reelgood team’s 2026 Streaming Industry Predictions. Key Takeaways Most streaming services lack real-time visibility into competitors’ and partners’ catalogs, creating dangerous blind spots in acquisition, renewal, and licensing compliance decisions. Per-title content ROI remains one of streaming’s hardest unsolved measurement problems. Assigning meaningful monetary value to content on a…
Read MoreBy the Numbers: What a Combined Paramount-WBD Content Library Actually Looks Like
Key Takeaways A combined HBO Max + Paramount+ catalog would deliver ~53,000 content hours, 12% more than Netflix’s ~47,500, before a single new title is produced. TV libraries are the difference maker. The two services together carry ~48,600 hours of TV content vs. Netflix’s ~40,100, a 21% edge driven by decades of output from HBO,…
Read MoreHow AI and Machine Learning Will Reshape Streaming in 2026
Next in our series on our team’s 2026 Streaming Industry Predictions. Key Takeaways AI-powered discovery is moving beyond basic genre recommendations toward hyper-personalized interfaces that match content to individual mood, taste, and viewing history in real time. Behind the scenes, ML is becoming just as critical for monetization, powering more sophisticated ad-tech targeting as ad-supported…
Read MoreMost Streaming Catalogs Are Shallow. These Three Platforms Are the Exception
Key Takeaways Most streaming catalogs are shallow. Across almost all major platforms, 72% to 89% of TV shows ran for only one or two seasons. Prime Video, Netflix, and Apple TV skew heaviest toward short-run content. Paramount+, Peacock, and HBO Max have the deepest benches. These three platforms lead in multi-season series, with 14% to…
Read More