3 ms·

A friend of mine just does one service at a time, and it's low-key fairly brilliant. There's a bit of headache with installing / uninstalling apps on television

A friend of mine just does one service at a time, and it's low-key fairly brilliant. There's a bit of headache with installing / uninstalling apps on televisions and having to log into things once a month or quarter or however long it takes him, but the kernel of the idea is that there are generally only a few new, good shows worth watching for any given network, but all the good shows are roughly equally distributed between networks. So instead of paying $10 a month to Disney for Mandalorian, Wandavision, Loki, an additional $10 for Peacock for Mrs. Davis, Bel Air, and Poker Face, plus however much else for HBOMax, Netflix, Hulu, etc., he could just pay one network $10 a month, binge the couple of good shows that they had, and then instead of waiting months for the next thing to come out, unsubscribe and switch to another network. Lather, rinse, repeat. He isn't as current, and sometimes it's hard to chat about whatever the current new thing is, but society has effectively already given up on the concept of the whole nation tuning in to any one thing and it being the topic of watercooler conversations for a myriad of reasons. Note: He has children, and I have no idea how he handles this other than to note that he also has a digital antenna, so some shows are "always available" (or at least as much as is allowed for)

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
This is why all the streaming services are constantly trying to hype up their one "must watch" show. If you aren't watching it now, you're left out of the conversation, and nobody will want to talk about it in three months.
- bmelton 3y ago
  Are they though? Netflix in particular is famously bad at actually promoting their hot new stuff. I suppose they may do it more on-platform and just assume it's enough, but it seems like (and this is just from my memory, which is maybe wrong) that the ads for streaming services generally fall into the "look at all this stuff we have and maybe I won't even tell you what show I'm giving you a clip of right now" kinds of commercials. I practically never see an ad for a particular new show -- tho in addition to memory faults there is also of course selection bias here.
  - r00fus 3y ago
    I suspect what Amazon did with wheel of time and rings of power to be a less brutal method: weekly episode release. Disney does this too. If they have enough “must-watch” shows that are staggered then you lose out unless you’re paying constantly. It’s what they want: gets them som earned media/socialmedia hype, and prevents the binge+drop discount watching approach.
    - bigger_cheese 3y ago
      I think the release cadence can be a double edged sword for viewer retention. Certainly with Wheel of Time I felt that there was a few weak\boring episodes in a row and I hit the point where I dropped it, for me wasn't worth waiting a full week to see if quality of subsequent episodes improved. If there had of been a buffer of episodes available I could probably power through the bad episodes until the show picked up again but with weekly release cadence it just caused me to give up on it.
philsnow 3y ago
I wonder whether some of the media streaming companies are going to try to use the sports streaming playbook, where you get penalized for canceling and then resubcribing within <12 months. Those penalties could be "we just won't let you sign up" or "oh you don't get the promotional rate then, your rate for Netflix will be $44.95/mo for the next 11 months".

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago

This is why all the streaming services are constantly trying to hype up their one "must watch" show. If you aren't watching it now, you're left out of the conversation, and nobody will want to talk about it in three months.

bmelton 3y ago
Are they though? Netflix in particular is famously bad at actually promoting their hot new stuff. I suppose they may do it more on-platform and just assume it's enough, but it seems like (and this is just from my memory, which is maybe wrong) that the ads for streaming services generally fall into the "look at all this stuff we have and maybe I won't even tell you what show I'm giving you a clip of right now" kinds of commercials. I practically never see an ad for a particular new show -- tho in addition to memory faults there is also of course selection bias here.
- r00fus 3y ago
  I suspect what Amazon did with wheel of time and rings of power to be a less brutal method: weekly episode release. Disney does this too. If they have enough “must-watch” shows that are staggered then you lose out unless you’re paying constantly. It’s what they want: gets them som earned media/socialmedia hype, and prevents the binge+drop discount watching approach.
  - bigger_cheese 3y ago
    I think the release cadence can be a double edged sword for viewer retention. Certainly with Wheel of Time I felt that there was a few weak\boring episodes in a row and I hit the point where I dropped it, for me wasn't worth waiting a full week to see if quality of subsequent episodes improved. If there had of been a buffer of episodes available I could probably power through the bad episodes until the show picked up again but with weekly release cadence it just caused me to give up on it.

philsnow 3y ago

I wonder whether some of the media streaming companies are going to try to use the sports streaming playbook, where you get penalized for canceling and then resubcribing within <12 months. Those penalties could be "we just won't let you sign up" or "oh you don't get the promotional rate then, your rate for Netflix will be $44.95/mo for the next 11 months".