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Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

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Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#131

Post by pdpi »

tertius wrote: post #120
dorfsmay wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make it easier than piracy, done! Today you cannot pay for a recent movie unless you go to a cinema (which I personally find an anachronism). To pay for older content, you need to find who is streaming it, pay a subscription with them, then find in what country they streaming it, pay for some fancy VPN service, setup the fancy VPN, restart your device and now watch it. Or, you can pirate it and watch it!

Piracy will always be easiest. Much like most unethical things.

Steam is a great counter-example. As is spotify.

Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#133

Post by libeclipse »

bunderbunder wrote: post #17

It seems to me like more of this fragmentation will make streaming less like cable. I don't care much for Disney content. Now that Disney's leaving, that frees up Netflix resources to (hopefully) get more of the content that I want. Realistically I'm not fond of Netflix's offerings of late, so I don't have high hopes. It's like basic cable these days; very shallow coverage of a lot of different things, so my interest…

Pfft, allow that.

I don't want to subscribe to 20 different streaming services because what I want is scattered across them.

This is why piracy is so rampant: god damned convenience.

Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#134

Post by sverige »

ghaff wrote: post #121
sverige wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ESPN accounts for a huge percentage of most monthly cable bill cost. I never watch live sports, nor do a pretty good percentage of cable subscribers. Just cutting ESPN could reduce cable bills by a third to a half in a lot of markets. This is why ESPN is suffering financially as cord cutting increases.

The cost for ESPN is something like $8-$9 per month so a lot but not the overwhelming cost of a cable TV bill. I also think you overestimate the number of people willing to totally give up being able to watch sports. I know I watch very little but I hesitate to totally cut the cord.

In some markets, ESPN and other sports channels accounts for as much as $20 per month of the standard cable bill, and those costs are rising. [1]

And I don't think I'm overestimating the number of people willing to give up paying for sports on cable. It's somewhere between 57% and 80% of cable subscribers. [2]

That's a giant subsidy for an entertainment industry based on watching adults play children's games. Of course, if you're a sportsman, you won't see it that way, but if you're not, it may create a different reaction.

[1] http://time.com/money/4590614/cable-bill-sports-cord-cutting...

[2] "This is the heart of the Sports Cable Bubble: Tens of millions of pay television viewers spending what Thompson estimates is at least $100 a year on sports programming they have no intention of ever watching, pumping billions into games enjoyed by others, enriching networks, leagues, teams and athletes all the while. (The exact number of non-sports fans is difficult to peg: A recent Harris Interactive poll found that 43 percent of Americans won't cancel cable and satellite television simply because of live sports, which also suggests that the majority of the country could be perfectly happy not paying for ESPN; industry analyst David Bank told Bloomberg Businessweek that 80 percent of basic-cable customers would decline to pay for sports if given a choice; Forbes writer Alan McGlade figures that no more than 10 million homes are regular ESPN viewers, about 10 percent of the total pay TV market.)" --from http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/53498716/

Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#135

Post by [deleted] »

whoiskevin wrote: post #116
smelendez wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real killer IMO is most young adults just don't watch much TV in any form. It's interesting, I'm 32 so on the upper end of millennial. We're supposed to be the multitasking, multiple screen generation. But I'll visit older relatives, say 55+, and they'll have the TV on constantly and just talk over it. I find it so distracting and honestly stressful, like when you're on a conference call, your boss is Slacking…

Humans can't multitask regardless of their generation

[deleted]

Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#136

Post by ghaff »

sverige wrote: post #134
ghaff wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost for ESPN is something like $8-$9 per month so a lot but not the overwhelming cost of a cable TV bill. I also think you overestimate the number of people willing to totally give up being able to watch sports. I know I watch very little but I hesitate to totally cut the cord.

In some markets, ESPN and other sports channels accounts for as much as $20 per month of the standard cable bill, and those costs are rising. [1] And I don't think I'm overestimating the number of people willing to give up paying for sports on cable. It's somewhere between 57% and 80% of cable subscribers. [2] That's a giant subsidy for an entertainment industry based on watching adults play children's games. Of cour…

Note though that ESPN != watching live sports. A lot of, especially local team, games are on regular network channels. And it's their local team games that most relatively casual sports watchers really care about.

I actually don't watch much sports at all. But I hesitate to give up all access to real-time television. (I can't get anything OTA.)

Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#137

Post by SubiculumCode »

emsy wrote: post #63
SubiculumCode wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The min price is about $10 because there isnt that much competition yet. I suspect if the author's fragmentation comes true, it will go down for single studi/channel offerings.

There won't be competition for exclusive content like Disney, AMC, HBO etc. except piracy which is still a lot easier for a lot of people, and if fragmentation continues, it will be Even more so.

No there would not be competition for the same disney movie. But there is a lot of competing content out there that will lower prices.

Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#138

Post by wodenokoto »

ebola1717 wrote: post #45
mabub24 wrote: post #13

So the author instead wants everything to go through Netflix and Spotify? Why would Disney care? Their product practically prints money for them. Unlike Netflix, Disney doesn't need to constantly make fresh content for new subscribers. It makes business sense to just park it into a service and let the money roll in. That's what they do with their "vault." The real question will be how much it costs for a subscription…

But people aren't gonna pay $10 or even $5 every month for a disney-only streaming subscription, if disney doesn't put out new content for it. It's way cheaper to just buy your favorite disney shows & movies. Disney is more established in producing fresh content for their subscribers - cause they're a studio - but that's a different question.

But Disney do produce a lot of content all the time. Enough that they have several TV-channels that arguably cost more than Netflix to get access to. And this is just for the cartoon kids stuff.

Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#139

Post by Retric »

bunderbunder wrote: post #125
Retric wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is there is going to be a minimum monthly fee of around 10$ to keep the lights on. So, fragmentation just increases prices without any net benefit for the consumer. The real killer IMO is most young adults just don't watch much TV in any form. If your watching ~10 hours a month then paying for more than one streaming service is just a waste. Don't forget it's the median viewer that's important not the ave…

As a consumer, I do feel I'm seeing a net benefit without any price increases - or at least a benefit commensurate with the price increase. I watch one alternative streaming service for a while, then, when another that interests me more comes along, I switch to that one and cancel the old one. So the amount of content available to me is "eventually better" at a price that's currently pretty stable. You're right, thou…

My theory is it's just a question of getting the financials right. A streaming service that's passes along ~80% of it's revenue based on what individual people watch and some weighting so more recent content gets a higher multiple seems like the long term winner.

The idea is if someone watches 2 hours a month then whatever they watch gets high value. But, if someone watches 200 hours a month then everyone gets far less. And the net benifit is both niche content for picky viewers and bulk content for people that want background noise are both viable.

Right now there are similar calculations, but it's very indirect which makes fragmentation seem like a better deal for content creators.

Re: Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable

#140

Post by ghaff »

bunderbunder wrote: post #125
Retric wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is there is going to be a minimum monthly fee of around 10$ to keep the lights on. So, fragmentation just increases prices without any net benefit for the consumer. The real killer IMO is most young adults just don't watch much TV in any form. If your watching ~10 hours a month then paying for more than one streaming service is just a waste. Don't forget it's the median viewer that's important not the ave…

As a consumer, I do feel I'm seeing a net benefit without any price increases - or at least a benefit commensurate with the price increase. I watch one alternative streaming service for a while, then, when another that interests me more comes along, I switch to that one and cancel the old one. So the amount of content available to me is "eventually better" at a price that's currently pretty stable. You're right, thou…

One likely future is more a la carte purchasing, whether to rent or own. We're well on the way to that with movies. No all-you-can-eat subscription service has even a mediocre selection. And, having effectively driven everyone else in the space out of business, Netflix' long tail DVD catalog is degrading as they apparently don't replace disks that are lost/damaged.

I agree with the broader point though. I don't watch a lot of TV which means there's a definite limit to how many subscription services I'll get. Maybe that means I don't watch a show here or there I might have been inclined to but that's OK.

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