4 ms·

Netflix being the only game in town is also cable because that's a monopoly. We called them cable monopolies. You're describing competition, and that's good. Ju

Netflix being the only game in town is also cable because that's a monopoly. We called them cable monopolies. You're describing competition, and that's good. Just look at how Netflix has been raising prices and blocking account sharing. They would raise prices even more if you couldn't go "I'll cancel and go to Disney+ instead".

Retric 3y ago
Cable monopolies didn’t actually produce content, they had a distribution monopoly but different cable companies all had HBO etc. The biggest issue most people had with cable was the bundling, they would have a few channels you might like alongside dozens you didn’t but needed to pay for them collectively. And with streaming nothing changed, D+ has 1 or 2 shows I might be interested in, so does Netflix, and Hulu, and etc etc. Net result spend 100+$ per month to have a decent chance of finding something interesting, rotate subscriptions, or even better just skip them all as crap. I don’t know why streaming services have so consistently failed to produce good content rather than simply being mildly interesting, but I suspect it relates to how captive their audience is. Shows need to be actively bad before you swap to something else else because it’s all asynchronous. The threshold for success drops from actively engaging to mildly interesting.
- ghaff 3y ago
  I have more streaming subscriptions than are probably justified by the amount I watch, can't be bothered to manage rotating, and buy some a la carte and I still pay probably half of what a cable TV only subscription would cost me. I give up live TV but that was something I rarely watched. And it's not like cable TV carried everything, including movies, I wanted to watch anyway.
  - Retric 3y ago
    To be fair I include the cost of internet when comparing them as cable TV included the physical connection. Anyway, it’s clear Cable had issues, my point is more streaming doesn’t seem to be a real improvement once you start looking for new content.

Retric 3y ago

Cable monopolies didn’t actually produce content, they had a distribution monopoly but different cable companies all had HBO etc. The biggest issue most people had with cable was the bundling, they would have a few channels you might like alongside dozens you didn’t but needed to pay for them collectively. And with streaming nothing changed, D+ has 1 or 2 shows I might be interested in, so does Netflix, and Hulu, and etc etc. Net result spend 100+$ per month to have a decent chance of finding something interesting, rotate subscriptions, or even better just skip them all as crap. I don’t know why streaming services have so consistently failed to produce good content rather than simply being mildly interesting, but I suspect it relates to how captive their audience is. Shows need to be actively bad before you swap to something else else because it’s all asynchronous. The threshold for success drops from actively engaging to mildly interesting.

ghaff 3y ago
I have more streaming subscriptions than are probably justified by the amount I watch, can't be bothered to manage rotating, and buy some a la carte and I still pay probably half of what a cable TV only subscription would cost me. I give up live TV but that was something I rarely watched. And it's not like cable TV carried everything, including movies, I wanted to watch anyway.
- Retric 3y ago
  To be fair I include the cost of internet when comparing them as cable TV included the physical connection. Anyway, it’s clear Cable had issues, my point is more streaming doesn’t seem to be a real improvement once you start looking for new content.