The most valuable asset for you as a media producing organization and publisher, is your viewership and your app install-base. You should protect that at all costs, as this is what you invest into and what you can never get back easily without a major loss.
However, if financially push-comes-to-shove, before you terminate your apps from app-stores (which is always a major loss and a viewed as a permanent action by both viewers and app-stores), you can reduce costs for a while by throttling back your viewership’s activities. Here are some ideas what you can do:
1. Stop uploading new content for a while.
2. If you stream linear streams (24/7): stop the linear streams and only keep on-demand contents in your apps for a while.
3. If you stream live-events: stop scheduling new live-events for a while.
4. Deactivate select videos in each Channel / Category.
These are no ideal measures in any case, if you want to retain, or grow, your viewership, but could be a last-resort action if you really need to keep costs down for a while.
For NPOs, NGOs and Charities: if the volume of needed storage space, and your viewership’s lowest possible bandwidth consumption allows, and you are a verifiable not-for-profit organization or charity, you may be able to inquire with Lightcast.com on a temporary downgrade of one level below your current Service Package. With one, or several of the suggested “last-resort” measures above, you may be able to try a downgrade for a while in order to reduce your streaming costs further. Please note that downgrades are only possible with the end of your current contract cycle. However, for select hard cases among not-for-profits and charities, Lightcast may grant a courtesy early downgrade on a case-by-case basis, provided proof of financial insolvency can be provided.
Business Consultancy: that said, as a long-term perspective it would be far better to look at your overall business strategy, maybe seek consultancy by a professional and experienced business consultant, review and restructure your business plan, look for additional and alternative revenue opportunities and leverage all of the revenue opportunities the exposure through your media distribution across websites, mobile apps and TV Apps provide you with (including all monetization tools Lightcast can provide you with), and to leverage your viewership for marketing purposes, product sales, traffic to websites and online stores, for your own sponsors and advertisers, in addition to testing different subscription and standard advertising setups.
Long-term revenue growth is always the more sustainable business strategy than temporary cost-cutting, and your app install-base and viewership is a potential customer-base, donor-base, subscriber-base and inventory generator of ad-impressions, which you can, and should leverage to build new revenue streams. You just have to set up your business strategy, marketing and conversion accordingly. After all, the costs for streaming and exposure to serve and grow your viewership should not be a cost-factor for you. You should be making money from it!