Poll of the Day > Why do people keep thinking streaming will become cable 2.0?

(+) Yeah! (+)

i can never imagine a day where you are forced to sign a Faustian contract to watch anything streaming that forces you to buy dozens of services you dont want just for the ones you do and then makes you pay an obscene every month for years in an agreement you cannon break

thats just too unrealistic to me

No one is saying that it's exactly the same thing as cable. But now that more and more companies want a piece of the streaming pie, you'll want to have a few different services if you want a good amount of variety in the selection, which adds up. And a major part of the comparison is ads. Streaming used to be ad free, but now you have a pay a premium for no ads, which again drives up the cost.

The last time I had cable was about 15 years ago and it was over $100 a month for the bad package that included 5 channels I watched and 120 I didnt. I was in the mid tier package for $150 (promotional price that every time it ended you would have to call and ask for the rate to be lowered to again.) a month in order to get access to the channels I actually wanted.

I just checked my two local cable companies. They still have contracts, and basically just include streaming service bundles instead of the cable I was familiar with growing up. So why use them when I can just get one or two services at a time and rotate them around for $30 a month?

Because cable is dying, while streaming is struggling to become a viable medium in its own right outside of a few rare power players. So it feels like the most likely future model is consolidation, then enshittification.

Disney's already trailblazing that route. And multiple existing cable services already offer packages that include subscriptions to streaming services like Pluto or Peacock. It's not an inevitable future, but it is a likely one.



NightMareBunny posted...

i can never imagine a day where you are forced to sign a Faustian contract

and then makes you pay an obscene every month for years in an agreement you cannon break

thats just too unrealistic to me

People have been doing it for years. Most people still do it when it comes to cell phone service. It's not really that far fetched at all.

If anything, the foot in door will be to sell it as convenience. Why pay for and manage a half-dozen different streaming services with a dozen different launchers yourself when you can consolidate them all into a single platform? Now you can watch every show or movie you could ever possibly want to see, all in one place, all for one fee! And if you order now, you'll get a discount that means you're getting all of those services for cheaper than you'd pay if you got them all separately! It's a bargain! (And all you have to do is commit to a 2-3 year contract, where the discount only applies to the first year. But that's okay, because once you subscribe to this deal you'll never want to leave anyway!)

The trick is to get people in the door. Because we've seen ample evidence from both cable and streaming (and MMOs!) that once someone is on the hook they become far less likely to cancel (especially if they're using automated online bill payments, where they may not even pay attention to what they're paying for every month - that's the main profit strategy of the subscription model in general).

The thing with these services is you pick what you want theres no requirement to have all of them

Nobody needs all of them you pick what you want

I dont have to pay for tinfoil hat news casters accusing Ice cream of being evil if I wanna watch what I like

NightMareBunny posted...

The thing with these services is you pick what you want theres no requirement to have all of them

Nobody needs all of them you pick what you want

The thing with these services is that most people don't do that. They wind up paying for multiple services and then wind up complaining anyway when a show they want to watch is on a service they don't have.

That being said, it's not as if a cable-based scenario would have to be all-or-nothing anyway. Even now you can subscribe to different tiers, different channels, different premium packages. So you could easily have a set-up where someone subscribes to the overall cable , then gets to pick 2-3-4 different streaming options rather than having to pay for them all simultaneously.

This is basically halfway to what my one friend has now. His cable service gives him Pluto TV as part of the deal (which doesn't mean much, because it's free anyway) and Peacock. Then he also pays for Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime on his own. If that was all consolidated into a single launcher he'd almost certainly be happy with the deal.



NightMareBunny posted...

I dont have to pay for tinfoil hat news casters accusing Ice cream of being evil if I wanna watch what I like

You don't have to watch that regardless of what service you're using.

There's a metric shit-ton of festering assholes on YouTube posting sociocultural or ideological videos I find utterly repugnant. People who I believe make the entire universe a worse place simply by existing in it. But I also don't have to watch their videos in order to see a Let's Play or discussion about wrestling or some film critique or some music videos.

Arguably you aren't paying for everything when you subscribe to cable as much as you're functionally paying for what you watch. Your payment is effectively counterbalanced by the payment of other people who don't watch the things you do, but do watch the things you hate (especially if the ratings are good for the things you hate).

Also, while that might matter to you, it doesn't matter to the vast majority of people who don't give a shit. Most people don't care if they're technically paying for both MSNBC and Fox News if they're just watching one and ignoring the other. My cable service used to have channels devoted to Jewish, Christian, and Muslim content, and it didn't start a holy war where people were pissed that they were technically paying for what they considered to be theologically wrong (and atheists weren't boycotting the whole thing in outrage).

Meanwhile, people can think shows like Adolescence are deeply flawed ideological propaganda pieces or films like Cuties are repulsive pedophilia-baiting, yet still be willing to pay for Netflix in order to watch Stranger Things. It's not as if cable is unique to the idea that you're theoretically paying for things you refuse to watch or endorse.