Alcun Atirutan BBS

It’s still weird to see people complain about new streaming services popping up everywhere and rates going up, saying that it’s getting to be as expensive as traditional cable/satellite services (if not more).

It seemed obvious to me that this would be the result? With just Netflix, there was hope that this would be where *everything* would go. But then Hulu showed up, and when other media companies started talking about getting a piece, I knew we were screwed.

Cable services were designed to spread the money you spent on the channel you wanted to the channels that you didn’t want, in hopes that it would provide money to all of the channels involved and keep them all on the air.

And not in a altruistic way, mind you. The more channels, the greater the striating of packages with content you weren’t watching. But it *did* mean that channels very few people watched would manage to stay on the air for their entertainment.

But if you consider how many more media companies there are in the world outside of TV channels, we could be in for dozens and dozens of streaming services, each asking for $5, and ultimately costing us more than what cable charged.

I’m still not advocating getting back on the cable teat. But I think we’re going to be in for a tougher time when trying to choose entertainment.

At least English-subbed anime tends to be on very few services, making it cheaper to watch a lot of new stuff.

@beej I think this is one of the honest reasons I find it easier to keep up on Anime than *any* live action stuff. I know where to find most of it.

The long game on this is people only able to choose a few services, which eventually leads to smaller companies either folding entirely, merging with other small companies to create a new platform, or getting acquired by the bigs.

And the big services will get bigger. And in order to PAY for all of that content, the bigs will get more expensive.

And smaller niche content may very well end up crowded out. We’ll be left with only what a single system wants to create. No room for indie darlings.

BTW, LoadingReadyRun doesn’t play in this field. I don’t think there are many production companies that could release everything they make for free and then rely on crowdfunding +ad revenue to keep the business going.

So is there something we can do? Not really.

1) Go back to cable and satellite? Yuck. We like watching individual shows on our own schedule. Broadcast TV isn’t as compelling these days.

2) Watch smaller indie shows/movies/content? You can’t always get those shows everywhere. Plus, any indie with particular talent will inevitably end up making content for the bigs. And it’ll probably be exclusive to that platform.

3) Friends and family share each other’s accounts? I’m not even sure how legal that is, but it’s a solution lots of people are doing.

4) Just pay for the bigs and stfu? Uggggh...

I suppose if more people chose NOT to pay for the bigs and only paid for the indies, it would spread more money around to more people.

This is the tip of a not-great situation. It’s going to be worse and we’re going to see more price hikes. Hell, we might even see companies like Disney realize they have *too much* stuff in Disney+ and end up making a second service, just to “bring prices down”. But they’ll end up splitting the content in such a way that you’ll have to have BOTH in order to continue to watch the stuff you were already watching.

Maybe the solution is:

5) Watch less.

Good fucking luck. I mean, I like video games, and I could stand to get started on the Culture series of books, but that’s just me. I don’t think that translates to Western civilization at-large.

Maybe it can. Let’s have hope.

@beej

@beej
Secret option 6) Yarr harr fiddle dee dee

@beej FWIW, Disney has three streaming services already. Disney+, ESPN+, and Hulu.

@kazriko This is workable, but fiddly. Currently, the vast majority of people won’t want to do this because it takes too much effort.

And I’m talking “worldwide-vast”, across all demographics. Eventually, maybe over 30-40 years, we’ll approach this state. Or else media consolidation will reduce our choices.

@beej what happened to competition driving prices down

@DialMforMara I guess that only helps when you have products that are similar enough to do so, like laundry detergent or garbage bags, etc.

If you want to watch Game of Thrones, then watching the nearest equivalent on a cheaper service doesn’t really cut it.