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Did anyone honestly think we were going to get out of the old cable world paying less for a better service? This is America, this is capitalism. We're going to
by mixdup 3y ago
Did anyone honestly think we were going to get out of the old cable world paying less for a better service? This is America, this is capitalism. We're going to drive it right off the cliff (yes, I know there are streaming services based elsewhere, but the big ones are all American)
This is following the exact trajectory that early cable TV did. No ads at first, relatively cheap. Then they figured out we can ratchet up the price, then they figured out not only can we charge to the full extent that the market will bear, we can put ads on it too--just like cable TV did
Growth of subscribers isn't going to get people buying Disney or Warner stock. These aren't all tech companies, and they have to have some way to make money. The idea the ecosystem would generate tons more content on less revenue was always a silly one
- droopyEyelids 3y ago> This is America, this is capitalism. We're going to drive it right off the cliff A wise man once said, "I'm gonna ride this horse till I can't no more"
- add-sub-mul-div 3y agoWe're in a worse net position than we were with cable. Cable commercials can still be trivially skipped. Streaming can give us unskippable ads, whereas a DVR gives us full control of seeking on the video stream.
- mixdup 3y agoOh for sure we're in a worse situation. Even the aggregation of content from multiple vendors into a single menu....we don't have that anymore. It's such a pain to try to find what you want to watch across a half dozen apps
- add-sub-mul-div 3y agoYeah exactly. I don't want a bunch of different apps/accounts/bills. Cable was a convenience that many people didn't realize. Of course content costs as much to make as it does and needs to profit a certain amount. There was never any inefficiency that was going to go away and long term pass on benefits to customers. Now we have the extra inefficiency of every media company building out its own infrastructure.
- mixdup 3y agoWell, each media company building out a streaming infrastructure in theory should be pretty efficient--it is going to take the same amount of compute and bandwidth from AWS if a hundred million streams are served from one company or six. You do have the overhead of a dev team at each media company, but then we're taking out the theoretical middleman who was taking his cut in the cable company Although, the cable company is there taking a cut in the form of a broadband bill