When all the big cable players started making their own streaming services, most of us knew they weren’t going to let their gravy train go. We know they want us to use the ad-tiers because Iger flat out said so because it makes them more money, and I’m still expecting contracts to be their next big idea, sign up for 2 years, get 1-year half-price. Meet new cable, same as the old cable. It’s following a similar playbook too with no ads to some ads and ever-increasing prices.
This. I was fine with streaming when it started. It’s literally what most people were asking for - a la carte pricing for specific channels you want, rather than having to pay a bloated fee for a bundle that you want less than a tenth of.
I’ve enjoyed streaming over the last few years.
But over the pandemic and now beyond, they’ve decided to start conglomerating, bundling up a bunch of content I don’t want, and charging me extra for the privilege. Which was the complaint about cable.
Yeah to me the obvious end days was when the “half priced but with ads” plans came out. It’s going the route of cable. the patern is so predictable.
Year 1: Ad free - 5-10,
Year 2: Ad free 10-15
Year 3: ad free 10-15, low price ad tier 5-10
Year 4: ad free 20-30, ad tier 10-15
Year 5: ad tier 25-30, ad free 75
Year 6: Due to low demand, ad free tier is removed. ad tier 40-50.
That’s of course counting the shitification of their being 20 services, which are equally sharing shows of every genre so that no matter what type of shows you like, you’ll need to use 3-4 services to get the main shows you want.
I mean anyone who didn’t see this coming is naive as fuck.
No infrastructure overhead, server cost to be sure but the brunt of the delivery being born by the end consumer and the possibility of tracking and metrics in real time?
The only reason it’s taken this long is the suits are luddites.
When all the big cable players started making their own streaming services, most of us knew they weren’t going to let their gravy train go. We know they want us to use the ad-tiers because Iger flat out said so because it makes them more money, and I’m still expecting contracts to be their next big idea, sign up for 2 years, get 1-year half-price. Meet new cable, same as the old cable. It’s following a similar playbook too with no ads to some ads and ever-increasing prices.
This. I was fine with streaming when it started. It’s literally what most people were asking for - a la carte pricing for specific channels you want, rather than having to pay a bloated fee for a bundle that you want less than a tenth of.
I’ve enjoyed streaming over the last few years.
But over the pandemic and now beyond, they’ve decided to start conglomerating, bundling up a bunch of content I don’t want, and charging me extra for the privilege. Which was the complaint about cable.
Yeah to me the obvious end days was when the “half priced but with ads” plans came out. It’s going the route of cable. the patern is so predictable.
Year 1: Ad free - 5-10,
Year 2: Ad free 10-15
Year 3: ad free 10-15, low price ad tier 5-10
Year 4: ad free 20-30, ad tier 10-15
Year 5: ad tier 25-30, ad free 75
Year 6: Due to low demand, ad free tier is removed. ad tier 40-50.
That’s of course counting the shitification of their being 20 services, which are equally sharing shows of every genre so that no matter what type of shows you like, you’ll need to use 3-4 services to get the main shows you want.
I mean anyone who didn’t see this coming is naive as fuck.
No infrastructure overhead, server cost to be sure but the brunt of the delivery being born by the end consumer and the possibility of tracking and metrics in real time?
The only reason it’s taken this long is the suits are luddites.
Contracts will definitely come. What’s the equipment going to be though? Pay for an app? Maybe USB sticks for each service?
I feel dirty typing that.
6 months half price if you sign up for 2 years.