The TV streaming apps broke their promises, and now they’re jacking up prices
The TV streaming apps broke their promises, and now they’re jacking up prices
Op-ed: Apps promised to free us from ad-supported subscription bundles. Oops!
For a moment, it seemed like the streaming apps were the things that could save us from the hegemony of cable TV—a system where you had to pay for a ton of stuff you didn't want to watch so you could see the handful of things you were actually interested in.
Archived version: https://archive.ph/K4EIh
Yeah, cable was and is really awful. The amount of ads makes it literally unwatchable. And the shitty thing is that when cable TV was first introduced, the whole idea was that there wouldn't be ads like broadcast because you were paying for it. And then they moved the goalposts. Something that Hulu in particular was very guilty of. In the beginning, only the free-tier had ads. And there was one paid tier with no ads. Then that started showing ads, and they created a higher paid tier with no ads.
To me, one of the best things about streaming was timeshifting. You didn't have to wait for Sunday at 9:00pm to watch a show, and maybe miss it, or have to DVR it, and maybe the recording didn't work. Or whatever. You didn't have to schedule your time around TV. You could watch what you wanted, when you wanted. And now that's gone too, with weekly releases of shows, or half a season now, and the other half a month later, and so on. They're bringing back scheduled TV and it's fucking bullshit.
Another promise was that we'd be able to basically have access to every tv show or film, and that evaporated very quickly when all the studios decided they wanted to gatekeep everything so they could charge even more for it, and then now we have them disappearing so many things that have been out there just because they don't want to pay royalties to anyone involved.
So much culture is being lost because of greedy fucking execs who want to use the things you enjoy as an extortion tool. Going back to cable isn't the answer. It's a failed model and needs to die. But we need a massive overhaul of the streaming scene to figure this out. Because right now, it's so much worse that what came before.
Going back to cable isn’t the answer. It’s a failed model and needs to die.
Defined narrowly enough, yes, that old model is dead.
But more broadly, as an economic matter there will always be a business model for having a basket of content, with some portion of historical content (classic movies and tv shows from decades past) on demand, some ongoing/current on-demand content (last week's episode of some scripted show), and live broadcast (sporting events happening right now). Build up enough of a catalog, charge a single price to subscribers for access to that content, and people will pay for the entire bundle. And because each subscriber is interested in a different portion of that bundle, the mass of subscribers essentially cross-subsidizes the fat tail of niche content: I don't mind paying for your niche if it means my niche gets to survive.
The technological and cultural changes have deemphasized the importance of cable's live delivery mechanism of 100+ "channels" each with programming on a specific schedule, but the core business model still will be there: subscribe to content and you can get some combination of live channels and a catalog of on-demand content.
The content owners, through either carriage fees with the cable/IPTV providers, or through the streaming services, or everything in between, are trying to jack up the price to see what the market will bear for those bundles. They might miscalculate to the point where the subscriber count drops so much that their overall revenue decreases even with a higher revenue per subscriber (and I actually think this is about to happen). And then instead of a market equilibrium where almost everyone pays a little bit to where there's a huge bundle of content available, the little niche interests just can't get a subscriber base and aren't made available, even if the content is already made.
I finally dropped YoutubeTV for the summer months because we are seldom watching tv over the summer, choosing to spend more time outside. I haven’t missed it at all. They’ll probably get me back next month when college football starts again but I’m leaning pretty hard towards dropping it again after the new year. The price increase, even though it hadn’t kicked in for me at the time was absolutely the catalyst.
In the end the people who ran the hegemony of cable TV just got their hands on the TV streaming services and turned it into the hegemony of TV streaming service.
Nothing have changed the goals people at the top had - they just needed time to adapt
The reality is that with inflating costs of necessities like food, house, and transport, more people will choose to opt out of streaming services when they jack the prices. Folks will either find alternate forms of content, or find ways of getting the content cheaper (Arrr!!)
We now just wait to see if the increased price is enough to make up for the subscribers they'll lose.
And if you need convenience, there are pirate streamers. You pay a monthly fee and get every program
pay
New members welcome at !Piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com! 🏴☠️🦜
Do what i did and stop watching TV completely. I have watched about 10 hours worth of TV in the past 12 years.
One option, if your use case supports it, is to hop around the streaming services. We generally subscribe to one or zero for a month at a time.
The reason I buy games is because pirating them is more trouble than just paying for them.
Now with video streaming, the value add was that I didn't even need to have to go search for something, it was just all there for a small fee.
Now for that fee, I still have to search for stuff (klwhich streaming service is it on in the first place), juggle subscriptions, and also, in some cases, have to watch ads. Why would I do that when the old ways of the sea are more convenient again?
It's very frustrating to feel like I'm back to where were were before the streaming revolution: paying HUGE amounts of money to get TONS of content I'm mostly not interested in.
The only saving grace is that I can get it all without ads still, so I'll take that win.
In the article, they talk about the bundling of services as a bad thing, but I feel like if I'm going to pay for everything anyways, I'll happily take that huge discount, TYVM.
For my household, the price will always be lower than local cable and there is always something to watch! For free live tv, we use a HDhomerun and tv antenna.
We have MythTV and a 4 channel HD Grabber card. Similar concept. Works great if you have good TV reception and a lot of channels. My wife still uses, but frankly me not so much now.
Lot of this is online now though say our local PBS TV station streaming platform. Other stuff I can get from Tubi, and Pluto. The free Roku channel has a lot of stuff too. We also still have Netflix, but frankly I do not use it much. Would cancel except my Wife likes it.
a system where you had to pay for a ton of stuff you didn’t want to watch so you could see the handful of things you were actually interested in.
I uh...have ya'll used streaming services? Cus this has always been how streaming services worked too.
Uh, no? Netflix used to have everything good. You could drop your $150/mo cable sub and get $10/mo Netflix and never look back.
Nah, Netflix used to have nearly everything, and then it got split into like a dozen different services.
Netflix used to have nearly everything
"a system where you had to pay for a ton of stuff"
It's like ya'll are directly agreeing with me in words but not really grasping the words you're saying. Streaming services have always had a lot of shows, some you want to watch, some you dont, but your subscription pays for all of them regardless. Exactly what ya'll are attempting to criticize cable TV for.
It's referring to cable packages. Oh you want to be able to watch FX shows? Then get the blue-tier package to add 30 random channels, 28 of which you don't want for another $30 on top of the base price! Oh you want AMC too? Then get the green tier for another $45 as well that also has 35 channels you don't want. Sorry, we don't have a package with both FX and AMC, you'll need to get the blue AND green packages on top of the $60 base subscription. Sorry, you can't just choose what channels you want.
Circa 2011 it'd just be like Netflix and/or Hulu were all you need to get most of the content since they had deals with the different studios. Now they're all segmenting off onto their own.
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Discovery's David Zaslav have also indicated that their services were initially priced "too low" in an effort to draw a huge and unendingly expanding subscriber base.
In the early-to-mid 2010s, a subscription to Netflix and Hulu and your friend’s borrowed HBO password could get you access to the vast majority of all the TV that was worth watching.
Netflix had a huge archive of older shows plus a slowly growing library of its buzzy releases like Orange Is the New Black, Jessica Jones, and Stranger Things.
Not content to let Netflix have what looked like a lucrative new market all to itself the companies that made and distributed TV decided one by one as the decade wore on that it was time to create their own apps and generate their own subscription revenue.
Tech companies also decided to jump in, with Amazon Prime Video pushing into expensive scripted dramas and Apple TV+ becoming relevant by dint of throwing untold gobs of money at all kinds of projects.
Netflix announced its first subscriber loss in a decade in early 2022, cratering its stock; despite some recovery, it's still only worth about two-thirds what it was at its peak in late 2021.
Heya @autotldr@lemmings.world , can you add some block-quoting to your summary like the below:
Click here to see the summary
Discovery's David Zaslav have also indicated that their services were initially priced "too low" in an effort to draw a huge and unendingly expanding subscriber base.
In the early-to-mid 2010s, a subscription to Netflix and Hulu and your friend’s borrowed HBO password could get you access to the vast majority of all the TV that was worth watching.
Netflix had a huge archive of older shows plus a slowly growing library of its buzzy releases like Orange Is the New Black, Jessica Jones, and Stranger Things.
Not content to let Netflix have what looked like a lucrative new market all to itself the companies that made and distributed TV decided one by one as the decade wore on that it was time to create their own apps and generate their own subscription revenue.
Tech companies also decided to jump in, with Amazon Prime Video pushing into expensive scripted dramas and Apple TV+ becoming relevant by dint of throwing untold gobs of money at all kinds of projects.
Netflix announced its first subscriber loss in a decade in early 2022, cratering its stock; despite some recovery, it's still only worth about two-thirds what it was at its peak in late 2021.
That should make it clearer that you're copying/quoting information from another source and not just a spoiler comment. Maybe add the page source at the end of the spoiler too, or at least site name.
I already created the summary. You can find it at https://lemmings.world/comment/1120768. (I tried to create the link for your instance but I failed miserably, for which I'm very sorry).
It's ok I cancelled my subscription anyway 🤷♂️ along with Spotify
All of these streamers wanted to be the next Netflix when they should have been the next HBO Max.
I think you mean "MAX: The one to watch for HBO"
No, I mean HBO "The New CEO made a" MAX "mistake in rebranding".