News Club Interview: Stan's Dan Taylor on building a streaming service

Across this season of The Call Sheet, we’ve been chatting to the creatives… the people writing, directing, and producing the stories we love. But there’s a whole other side to the screen industry - the platforms actually bringing those stories to us, the audience. So, I sat down with Dan Taylor, the guy in charge of Aussie-owned streaming service Stan, to talk business...

The strategy behind the stream…

Fun fact about me: I’ve been talking about streaming services for as long as streaming services have existed. I’ve been reviewing TV and movies on radio for decades now, and so I’ve been following the industry all the way from Netflix launching House of Cards to today, when there are so many streamers in the market, and more films and shows on those platforms than any one person could reasonably expect to watch.

So I’m fascinated by how it all works and how it’s evolved. What’s the strategy behind which shows get the green light and which ones get the boot? How much do these platforms know about our streaming habits? And how does an Aussie-owned streamer find - and keep - an audience with some of the biggest entertainment companies in the biz - Amazon, Apple and Disney - muscling in on the industry?

To find out, we spoke to Dan Taylor - he’s in charge of Stan, Australia’s only locally owned streaming service. You probably know them for shows like Bump and Scrublands. They’re the only major Aussie-owned player in a highly competitive industry. 

Given that, I really wanted to know about their strategy for success in this world of huge international companies like Apple, Disney and Netflix. What’s changed in the time they’ve been in business? How will they keep standing out in the future? And do they know how long it takes some of us to pick something to watch?

You can listen to the conversation here or tune in on YouTube - and hit subscribe while you’re at it. And scroll on for my highlights of our conversation.

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Interview Highlights

Highlight 1: On what the data shows about local content

Dan Taylor: One of the great things about being a digital business is that we have access to a lot of great data. So we can see, for any given show, how many people came in to watch that show specifically, how many people overall have watched that show, how much of that show they've watched, when they watched it, when they dropped off, if they didn't like it.

It helps us with our commissioning decisions... But what that data also tells us is there absolutely is a great market for Australian content out there. And, you know, we've publicly released results over the last couple of years that show that, of our top 10 shows in the financial year 2024 and financial year 2023, more than half of them have been our original productions.

Highlight 2: On the importance of old shows

Dan: Different titles kind of do different jobs for us as well. The new titles - the shiny new stuff - coming out as a first release is great at bringing new subscribers through the door. The older stuff is really great at keeping subscribers there.

And it's fascinating to watch some of the user data. A lot of people consume The Office between the hours of 11:00 PM and 1:00 AM, which I think is probably people turning it on when they go to bed and kind of leaving it on until they fall asleep. People like that sort of comfort element and the familiarity in certain shows.

Highlight 3: On launching ads in sport

Dan: We haven't launched ads on sport yet, but it's coming very soon. Certainly, we do think that it's a natural place where ads are easy to insert. Every other broadcaster that's doing sport has got advertising in it... There's not a great level of disruption in the programming - there are natural breaks where you can insert an ad, and people don't feel like it's impacting on their viewing experience too much.

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