NBC’s Aquarius Streaming Free on NBC.com

Who needs Netflix when you can just stream your own content yourself, right?

NBC.com took out all the middlemen and released Aquarius for free on the web. The first season is available in its entirety, with each episode having its own ad breaks, likely supporting their ability to do this.

A few quick thoughts regarding what this probably means:

• NBC is likely just dipping their toes in the water on this one, but it’s a really interesting sign that they would just plop one of their own shows out there under an ad-supported model as opposed to selling the streaming rights to a third party like Netflix.
• Instead of releasing the show strictly to Hulu (where it is also available), NBC can keep the ad revenue from the show strictly to themselves.
• The value of ad revenue on SVOD services is likely increasing (there are even rumors circulating that Netflix is in talks to supplement their revenues with an ad model). In other words, more marketers are starting to see streaming ads as a viable alternative for their antiquated television budgets.
• The streaming world is going to continue to fragment further and further apart. I fully stand by my prediction that we’re all going to end up with logins to a dozen streaming services before this whole streaming industry cleans up anytime soon.
• It’s going to be harder and harder for third party streaming services to get access to various shows to stream if the networks are doing it themselves.

Exciting times in the streaming industry when a mainstay like NBC is making moves like this.