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There Are Way Too Many Streaming Services
Cord-cutting promised us that we won't have to pay the ludicrously large cable bills. But it turns out, as long as you do not just want to watch a very limited set of movies and TV shows, you will have to subscribe to any number of these services: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Go, Hulu, and Disney+ (and more.) For some living outside the US, the situation has become even more dire as they browse through as many as three dozen services. This, in addition to making watching TV expensive, is also creating a number of other confusions. No wonder piracy is on rise again.
This is what unbundled, a-la-carte, service looks like. You actually get a choice as to what you want and you don't have to take a bunch of crap with it. Quit complaining. You could, you know, just watch less TV.
Itâ(TM)s the content segregation. There is no clearing house of content. Instead the ball is still in the court of the content producers. If you want to watch X, you have to subscribe to A. If you want to watch Z, you must subscribe to B. The ideal way is to pay a central clearing house to get all the content. Think a paid version of BitTorrent.
Why cant one just cancel the subscription A when not finding enough stuff to watch there and only then paying for subscription B? Unlike with broadcast TV, one can actually have the whole library available at any time, and so I cannot really understand the point of having to have all of the services subscribed all of the time.
Subscribe to one of them. Watch everything that interests you. Cancel . Subscribe to another.
The problem is not too many streaming services. Competition is good for consumers. The problem is too many exclusives. Game of Thrones only on HBO Go, Star Wars only on Disney+, Star Trek only on CBS-All-Access. All of them are charging as if they were a full cable replacement instead of a single cable channel.
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It's not unbundled, it's just bundled differently. Every streaming service has nearly the same batch of old movies and TV shows, to which they each add a few exclusive, internally produced titles. To get the good stuff, you've got to re-buy a ton of stuff you already have on the other streaming services.
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Digital OTA TV is still free. Still getting 56 channels in my area. Access to all the major networks, news, sports, etc. I can live without most of the other worthless cruft.
To get the content from Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO - all for one low monthly fee.
This was obvious from the very first time someone was clamoring for a la carte cable. This was never going to be as cheap as standard cable. There was no way that the media companies were going to come away making less money. Despite the protestations, we've actually gotten what people wanted. They just didn't consider the ramifications. At least not in real world context.
I see a lot of talk comparing the sum cost of streaming services being higher than the price of cable, and they are absolutely right. If you subscribe to everything it is. But, here's the catch: most subscription based streaming services operate with No Commercials during the stream. You get to binge watch an entire series without seeing a single commercial. Cable TV is heavily subsidized by advertisements.
The second thing I see a lot of people doing is including the cost of internet service with the cost of subscription streaming services and saying that it's much higher than the cost of cable, and it is. But, what they ignore is the fact that most people are buying internet service regardless of whether or not they have cable TV service. Now, you might opt for more bandwidth/larger caps/unlimited when you "cut the cord", but that's not necessarily something people wouldn't do anyway.
The third thing: streaming services are for the most part not directly comparable to cable. When it comes to cable you watch what they broadcast when they broadcast it (or you DVR it and watch it shortly there after). Some stations will let you stream episodes from their websites shortly after broadcast, but access still tends to be restricted (and I'd bet those streams are laden with commercials just like the on air broadcast). Streaming services are more analogous to a library. You get to browse the content and pick and choose what you want to watch, when you want to watch it, no matter how much of it you want to watch.
Now, are multiple streaming services anti-consumer? It certainly feels like it when previously Disney licensed it's library to Netflix and now they're pulling it all off and demanding you pay them more money if you want to watch any of it. But, you also have to admit that by doing that Disney is going to put it's money where it's mouth is and produce more content for it's service to keep people engaged than they would have if they just continued licensing their library to Netflix. So, there's pluses and minuses to the change. Ultimately, it's a decision that you the consumer have to make with your wallet. If their service flounders then they'll probably go back to licensing to the other services. If it takes off, then they'll end up producing more content.
Except it's not really a la carte. We effectively have the same channel bundles, just all tied together in streaming services instead of random collections of channels determined by your cable company.
I can't really come up with a good example because I don't watch enough TV, but basically you can't pick and choose certain exclusives from the various streaming providers and only choose them. It's all-or-nothing: you either subscribe to ALL of Amazon Prime, or NONE of it. You get ALL of NetFlix, or NONE of it. If you want to watch Game of Thrones, you have to get ALL of HBO, including shows you have no plans of watching.
It's not "a la carte cable" - it's the same old "pick your channel bundles" that we've always had, just separated from a single cable company.
You people expected bundle/meal deal/combo pricing per item on a la carte product.
Except you have it backwards. People are expecting a la carte products on a system that only allows bundle/meal-deal pricing.
It's like if you wanted a steak with a coke and a slice of apple pie, and the only way to get it was to first buy the steak meal, which has soup, a roll, steak with a baked potato and peas, and a blueberry muffin; and then you have to buy the coca-cola bundle, which consists of a 24-can case of coke, and then you have to buy the Early dinner special, which is salad, chicken-pot pie, a glass of milk, cole slaw, and an apple pie. To get what you actually want, you need to buy three different bundles, and throw out most of it.
Most of what you get with the bundle is stuff you don't want.
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For your comparison, you should probably also include at least part of the cost of internet access. Cable TV doesn't require it; streaming does.
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