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We have not yet approached the pre-streaming willingness to pay (WTP). People used to pay $150 to $200 plus onDemand for the whole package with their cable pr

We have not yet approached the pre-streaming willingness to pay (WTP). People used to pay $150 to $200 plus onDemand for the whole package with their cable provider. Today you can have YouTubeTV, HBO, Netflix, Prime, AppleTV+, Disney+, and Spotify for less than that. So perhaps the average will hover around $100 with many paying closer to $200 a month. We are creeping back up to those numbers because people will pay.

llampx 5y ago
I have a hard time believing that that was the average monthly cost of a cable subscription. Mine was never more than $30-40 when I needed cable for the internet.
- jandrese 5y ago
  When I had cable the $30 plan was the "just the stuff you can get OTA plus some shopping channels" plan. If you wanted actual cable channels you had the choice of: 1. "Basic" bundle, $60 + $20 in fees + $8-15 per set to rent the box. Got you ESPN, Food Network, SciFi, Cartoon Network, USA 2. "Complete" bundle, $100 + $20 in fees + $8-15 per set to rent the box. Got you BBC, a bunch of foreign language channels, Starz, and a few more. You could also add HBO to either plan for $15 a month. I think they may have had a few other premium channel options as well, but I never paid that close of attention. We cut the cable because the price had crept up from about $50/month total to almost $100/month over the course of a few years. It was just unsustainable. Now we pay about $40/month for streaming services, and the streaming services don't have ads.
  - jonny_eh 5y ago
    > You could also add HBO to either plan for $15 a month Please note that that was only a channel (or two). You still had to tune to watch the movie/show you wanted! For the same price today (not even adjusted for inflation), you can watch any of this content on demand, on any device, but it has waaay more content available.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > and the streaming services don't have ads. Yet. IIRC, when cable started, it didn't have ads either. It was its selling point. Advertising is a cancer on society that infects and poisons every communication medium available. It has already metastasized to streaming platforms, though it's not conspicuous yet. You don't have to watch interstitial ads between episodes of your favorite show on Netflix, but if that show is a modern production, it's likely overflowing with product placement ads. When that and other means of making easy money get used up, you can be sure that overt ads will follow. "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again." And that's a salient argument in favor of torching the whole advertising industry to the ground.
    - vel0city 5y ago
      When cable started, it had ads. Cable was just a bunch of broadcast stations pushed over a coax wire to your house so you could get stations that were pretty much impossible with an antenna from your location in pretty much perfect signal quality for the time. There weren't even "only cable" kind of channels when people started paying for their television to come over wires to their homes.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I saved about $120/month starting late last year when I dropped cable TV and landline from my cable package. (This is in NE US.)
- somethingwitty1 5y ago
  My current monthly cable subscription is $135 (plus "fees"). And when people say, "cable", they generally mean TV service. For many, that may mean a pricey satellite TV service (very expensive back in the day). Basic cable is likely what you are getting, but many people want to watch sports or movies, which requires premium subscriptions and it adds up quickly.
  - IncRnd 5y ago
    That's an insane price, and hopefully you can shop around or change packages.
    - lovegoblin 5y ago
      > hopefully you can shop around i.e., if you're lucky enough to have more than one alternative (if any).
      - IncRnd 5y ago
        There may be places that have only one provider with only one option in that provider, but are those places really $135/month with all the TV channels? The issue might be paying for things that are already free over the Internet.
        burntwater 5y ago
        In the U.S. the vast majority of places have only only provider, there is no shopping around. $135/month sounds about right for the complete package. If you're lucky that includes a "special" on including HBO. Virtually all places have "specials" on the first year of service, wherein the price will increase 50% or even 100% after the first year, which will almost always put you well into the $100+ range.
        IncRnd 5y ago
        I understand. For myself, I chose to solve that by not purchasing any TV, cable phone, or any other package and only getting Internet. Internet is the only useful thing for me from all of that, anyway. If the prices get too high I call them up and cancel. At that time, they try to keep me as a subscriber by giving me lower rates. If they don't have any available I ask when their new packages are coming out and call back a day after that time.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  The price for essentially just 120Mbps (sold as 200) down and 6 up is over 100 for internet + 15 for the box if you don't get your own. With TV and a few premium channels it would easily be $200. They are also have only one competitor of note in the downtown of a city of 50K people, a DSL provider offering a service slow enough that its not technically considered broadband anymore by present standards.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  I heard Comcast (Xfinity) business model is forget about the threat of Cordcutters, and just keep raising prices, hoping the consumer doesn't notice the costs. I head this from a Xfinity employee. My mom showed me her bill and it was $240 month, for basics channels, internet, hbo, and one other lousy feature she doesn't use. I trying to get it down, but their contracts have early termination fees in the contract. They offer reasonable packed rates only to new customers. They know most people won't take back their equipment, and go a few days without service, in order to save $100 plus a month. I don't know how they legally get away with their business practices. She has bern a faithful customer since 1972. She is in Marin County, USA. If anyone knows of a different company please give me some advice. (I looked into AT&T, but they have almost the same business model as Comcast.)
thegagne 5y ago
Sure maybe some are willing to pay, but finding what you want to watch across 10x different services is obnoxious. Signing up for a particular monthly service just to watch a single show is also not ideal.
bcrosby95 5y ago
I've never paid more than around $150/month for internet+tv. I switched back to cable TV a few years ago. It's just cheaper for me now. The price of streaming has risen, and the price of cable has fallen.
gentleman11 5y ago
Instead of having cable, I used to rent or buy movies. It’s no fun to rent now and the terms and duration suck and it’s hard to get a physical copy now so you’re tied to some service for life if you “buy”
- cronix 5y ago
  Netflix still offers their original service that got them started and helped them wipe out Blockbuster and other competition: DVD's in the mail. https://dvd.netflix.com/ https://dvd.netflix.com/
  - gentleman11 5y ago
    Interesting; I didn’t know that
  - hollerith 5y ago
    Did we just have a poor DVD player or are scratched disks a problem for everyone using this service?
- dudul 5y ago
  You can still buy physical copies. BR are actually super cheap now that nobody buys them. I'd rather pay to truly own my movies.
syshum 5y ago
I know a few people that pay $200+ for cable, PLUS all of the streaming services...
watwatinthewat 5y ago
That's a good point, though I think the time/generational factor may cause it to trend downward. My parents unhappily paid cable prices their whole life. I've never once paid for cable TV and never will be willing to pay that much for subscription entertainment, but I'm willing to pay for one streaming service and have considered a second at times. Anecdotally reading places like here, I don't think I'm an uncommon case. Again to your point, even though there's fuss every time a streaming provider raises the cost (especially Netflix being one of the larger players and who has been around long enough to have increased prices more than once), it seems each service is viewed as cheap and well under what people are willing to pay.
- rocqua 5y ago
  Isn't it an issue if "willingness to pay" drops too much? In the end, content costs money to make. If money coming in goes down, then there might not be enough money to make all that content.
  - throwaway3699 5y ago
    Big budget content is usually the worst. There were many pieces of indie media that had heart and shoestring budgets, that have been pushed out the market.
  - ska 5y ago
    > If money coming in goes down, then there might not be enough money to make all that content. Content will be made, it just won't be the same content. Production budgets expand to consume available resources, but there is a very non-obvious relationship with quality.
  - bakuninsbart 5y ago
    Distribution costs have decreased greatly, while markets have grown remarkably. Looking at inflation adjusted cost of blockbuster movies today, film company revenue or indie scenes across the globe, I find it hard to argue that the last 20 years have been bad for the industry. Disruptive, for sure, but this creates winners and losers.
ksec 5y ago
>We have not yet approached the pre-streaming willingness to pay Even if that is true, I am pretty sure it is specific to US only. I dont believe any other place in the world are paying that much for monthly TV content, where Free ( paid by Tax or not ) OTA TV are the norm, and paid are mostly for Live Sports Content. In US it seems you need "Cable" for everything.
- seniorivn 5y ago
  Russia and China are paying almost as much(adjusted to income)
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
Fragmentation across streaming services may do more to increase piracy than overly-expensive cable packages. Even if the total monthly cost is lower with six streaming services, there is a higher likelihood to look at each of the $10/mo services and say “not worth it” than a single $100/mo cable subscription. The music streaming industry was smart enough to avoid primarily competing on catalogue exclusives. When all services have near-identical catalogs, they are forced to compete on price & UX. Amazon did not take over online shopping because it had the lowest prices at any cost. It grew dominant because it was the everything store and any higher prices they charged were not higher enough to make it worth the time to comparison-shop or look for specialty retailers.

llampx 5y ago

I have a hard time believing that that was the average monthly cost of a cable subscription. Mine was never more than $30-40 when I needed cable for the internet.

jandrese 5y ago
When I had cable the $30 plan was the "just the stuff you can get OTA plus some shopping channels" plan. If you wanted actual cable channels you had the choice of: 1. "Basic" bundle, $60 + $20 in fees + $8-15 per set to rent the box. Got you ESPN, Food Network, SciFi, Cartoon Network, USA 2. "Complete" bundle, $100 + $20 in fees + $8-15 per set to rent the box. Got you BBC, a bunch of foreign language channels, Starz, and a few more. You could also add HBO to either plan for $15 a month. I think they may have had a few other premium channel options as well, but I never paid that close of attention. We cut the cable because the price had crept up from about $50/month total to almost $100/month over the course of a few years. It was just unsustainable. Now we pay about $40/month for streaming services, and the streaming services don't have ads.
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  > You could also add HBO to either plan for $15 a month Please note that that was only a channel (or two). You still had to tune to watch the movie/show you wanted! For the same price today (not even adjusted for inflation), you can watch any of this content on demand, on any device, but it has waaay more content available.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > and the streaming services don't have ads. Yet. IIRC, when cable started, it didn't have ads either. It was its selling point. Advertising is a cancer on society that infects and poisons every communication medium available. It has already metastasized to streaming platforms, though it's not conspicuous yet. You don't have to watch interstitial ads between episodes of your favorite show on Netflix, but if that show is a modern production, it's likely overflowing with product placement ads. When that and other means of making easy money get used up, you can be sure that overt ads will follow. "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again." And that's a salient argument in favor of torching the whole advertising industry to the ground.
  - vel0city 5y ago
    When cable started, it had ads. Cable was just a bunch of broadcast stations pushed over a coax wire to your house so you could get stations that were pretty much impossible with an antenna from your location in pretty much perfect signal quality for the time. There weren't even "only cable" kind of channels when people started paying for their television to come over wires to their homes.
ghaff 5y ago
I saved about $120/month starting late last year when I dropped cable TV and landline from my cable package. (This is in NE US.)
somethingwitty1 5y ago
My current monthly cable subscription is $135 (plus "fees"). And when people say, "cable", they generally mean TV service. For many, that may mean a pricey satellite TV service (very expensive back in the day). Basic cable is likely what you are getting, but many people want to watch sports or movies, which requires premium subscriptions and it adds up quickly.
- IncRnd 5y ago
  That's an insane price, and hopefully you can shop around or change packages.
  - lovegoblin 5y ago
    > hopefully you can shop around i.e., if you're lucky enough to have more than one alternative (if any).
    - IncRnd 5y ago
      There may be places that have only one provider with only one option in that provider, but are those places really $135/month with all the TV channels? The issue might be paying for things that are already free over the Internet.
      - burntwater 5y ago
        In the U.S. the vast majority of places have only only provider, there is no shopping around. $135/month sounds about right for the complete package. If you're lucky that includes a "special" on including HBO. Virtually all places have "specials" on the first year of service, wherein the price will increase 50% or even 100% after the first year, which will almost always put you well into the $100+ range.
        IncRnd 5y ago
        I understand. For myself, I chose to solve that by not purchasing any TV, cable phone, or any other package and only getting Internet. Internet is the only useful thing for me from all of that, anyway. If the prices get too high I call them up and cancel. At that time, they try to keep me as a subscriber by giving me lower rates. If they don't have any available I ask when their new packages are coming out and call back a day after that time.
michaelmrose 5y ago
The price for essentially just 120Mbps (sold as 200) down and 6 up is over 100 for internet + 15 for the box if you don't get your own. With TV and a few premium channels it would easily be $200. They are also have only one competitor of note in the downtown of a city of 50K people, a DSL provider offering a service slow enough that its not technically considered broadband anymore by present standards.
hellbannedguy 5y ago
I heard Comcast (Xfinity) business model is forget about the threat of Cordcutters, and just keep raising prices, hoping the consumer doesn't notice the costs. I head this from a Xfinity employee. My mom showed me her bill and it was $240 month, for basics channels, internet, hbo, and one other lousy feature she doesn't use. I trying to get it down, but their contracts have early termination fees in the contract. They offer reasonable packed rates only to new customers. They know most people won't take back their equipment, and go a few days without service, in order to save $100 plus a month. I don't know how they legally get away with their business practices. She has bern a faithful customer since 1972. She is in Marin County, USA. If anyone knows of a different company please give me some advice. (I looked into AT&T, but they have almost the same business model as Comcast.)

thegagne 5y ago

Sure maybe some are willing to pay, but finding what you want to watch across 10x different services is obnoxious. Signing up for a particular monthly service just to watch a single show is also not ideal.

bcrosby95 5y ago

I've never paid more than around $150/month for internet+tv. I switched back to cable TV a few years ago. It's just cheaper for me now. The price of streaming has risen, and the price of cable has fallen.

gentleman11 5y ago

Instead of having cable, I used to rent or buy movies. It’s no fun to rent now and the terms and duration suck and it’s hard to get a physical copy now so you’re tied to some service for life if you “buy”

cronix 5y ago
Netflix still offers their original service that got them started and helped them wipe out Blockbuster and other competition: DVD's in the mail. https://dvd.netflix.com/ https://dvd.netflix.com/
- gentleman11 5y ago
  Interesting; I didn’t know that
- hollerith 5y ago
  Did we just have a poor DVD player or are scratched disks a problem for everyone using this service?
dudul 5y ago
You can still buy physical copies. BR are actually super cheap now that nobody buys them. I'd rather pay to truly own my movies.

syshum 5y ago

I know a few people that pay $200+ for cable, PLUS all of the streaming services...

watwatinthewat 5y ago

That's a good point, though I think the time/generational factor may cause it to trend downward. My parents unhappily paid cable prices their whole life. I've never once paid for cable TV and never will be willing to pay that much for subscription entertainment, but I'm willing to pay for one streaming service and have considered a second at times. Anecdotally reading places like here, I don't think I'm an uncommon case. Again to your point, even though there's fuss every time a streaming provider raises the cost (especially Netflix being one of the larger players and who has been around long enough to have increased prices more than once), it seems each service is viewed as cheap and well under what people are willing to pay.

rocqua 5y ago
Isn't it an issue if "willingness to pay" drops too much? In the end, content costs money to make. If money coming in goes down, then there might not be enough money to make all that content.
- throwaway3699 5y ago
  Big budget content is usually the worst. There were many pieces of indie media that had heart and shoestring budgets, that have been pushed out the market.
- ska 5y ago
  > If money coming in goes down, then there might not be enough money to make all that content. Content will be made, it just won't be the same content. Production budgets expand to consume available resources, but there is a very non-obvious relationship with quality.
- bakuninsbart 5y ago
  Distribution costs have decreased greatly, while markets have grown remarkably. Looking at inflation adjusted cost of blockbuster movies today, film company revenue or indie scenes across the globe, I find it hard to argue that the last 20 years have been bad for the industry. Disruptive, for sure, but this creates winners and losers.

ksec 5y ago

>We have not yet approached the pre-streaming willingness to pay Even if that is true, I am pretty sure it is specific to US only. I dont believe any other place in the world are paying that much for monthly TV content, where Free ( paid by Tax or not ) OTA TV are the norm, and paid are mostly for Live Sports Content. In US it seems you need "Cable" for everything.

seniorivn 5y ago
Russia and China are paying almost as much(adjusted to income)

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

Fragmentation across streaming services may do more to increase piracy than overly-expensive cable packages. Even if the total monthly cost is lower with six streaming services, there is a higher likelihood to look at each of the $10/mo services and say “not worth it” than a single $100/mo cable subscription. The music streaming industry was smart enough to avoid primarily competing on catalogue exclusives. When all services have near-identical catalogs, they are forced to compete on price & UX. Amazon did not take over online shopping because it had the lowest prices at any cost. It grew dominant because it was the everything store and any higher prices they charged were not higher enough to make it worth the time to comparison-shop or look for specialty retailers.