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Competition is good, but each of the competitors are creating their own shows. This potentially requires you to buy multiple services to view all the content yo
by _-david-_ 6y ago
Competition is good, but each of the competitors are creating their own shows. This potentially requires you to buy multiple services to view all the content you want.
I would prefer the competition to not be content but on UI, speed, downtime, viewing suggestions, etc.
The best part of cable was that you could get any channel regardless of your provider. You could have Spectrum, AT&T, Direct TV or whoever and get any channel you wanted.
The problem was that you usually could not do al la carte and when you could it would not be cheap enough to justify losing all the other channels.
Imagine if you had to pay for Time Warner cable to get CNN, AT&T to get HBO, and Comcast to get NBC.
- scarface74 6y agoIt’s just the opposite now. You use to have to pay for cable to get HBO, CNN and NBC (if you didn’t live in a good coverage area.) and you were stuck paying sports fees, broadcast fees, franchise fees, etc. Now you can get HBO a la carte, NBC prime time either for free on their website or with no commercials or with Hulu for $12. Really there is little on network TV that I care to watch anymore. Between Netflix ($5 with Tmobile), Hulu w/ no commercials, Amazon Prime, AppleTV+ (free for now), and Disney+ (Mostly for the kids), I have plenty to watch. I sign up for other services (Starz, CBS, DCUniverse) occasionally to binge and then cancel.
- _-david-_ 6y agoI didn't mean to suggest that you couldn't currently pay for whatever you want a la carte. It is of course better that you don't have to pay for cable but worse that you have to pay multiple content providers (Netflix, Hulu, CBS, HBO) to get the shows you want. When you pay for Spectrum you get TBS, CW, Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, etc. When you pay for AT&T you get the same channels. It doesn't matter your cable provider, you would have access to pretty much any channel you wanted. With Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, etc you have to pay for all of the services to get the content you want. This is beneficial for people who only want shows on a few streaming services but bad for people who now have to pay 10 different companies. Ideally all the content creators would work together and make their content available to all of the streaming companies at a reasonable price even if they had their own streaming product. Paying for Netflix would provide the same shows as paying for Hulu. Each of the streaming companies would then allow you to pay a set price for all the content like a traditional cable company (and their current business model) or allow you to pay for the shows you want. If you only want 5 shows you shouldn't have to subscribe to Netflix, Hulu and Disney+. You could pay Netflix and get all 5 shows instead of paying 3 different companies. Since you don't care about the other shows you shouldn't have to pay for the streaming company to obtain / keep the rights of those shows or to pay for them to create content you don't care about. This is a pipe dream and will likely never happen.