Pay TV Just Lost One Million Subscribers in Biggest Quarterly Loss Ever
exstreamist.com
exstreamist.com
When there are too many separate streaming services (that there are too many $10 monthlies from each service coming to the house) they will be bundled together and sold as "TV," most likely by Cox or Comcast.
This will all be surrounded by a huge amount of marketing, but the bill will be identical: around $60/mo for the basic package and $120/mo for the deluxe package. And everything that was old will be new again.
And watch too, as ads find there way in somewhere in the process. They are already in the form of aggressive product placement, and some paid streaming services (Hulu) are rolling them out.
You are right, though, that Cox, Comcast, etc will likely bundle together Netflix, Hulu, Facebook Video, YouTube, etc and try to "sell" it, while aggressively throttling data usage. The fact that distribution of content is now worthless, and distribution is the primary value proposition of their business model won't stop them from making money so long as the government is on their side.
No, it doesn't.
> Streaming services are typically $10/mo or so.
Streaming multichannel video distribution platform (MVDP) services that are most comparable to a cable subscription, with live TV channels (YouTubeTV, SlingTV, PlaystationTV, DirecTV Now, Hulu with Live TV) have some variation in pricing, but the bottom is way above $10/mo. ~$40/mo seems to be typical base fee, comparable with basic cable plans (U-Verse Basic is $19.99/mo + $10/mo for HD.)
$10-15/mo. streaming services are typically more comparable in what they offer to a single premium cable channels, but without live programming and sometimes with little better on-demand catalog. Some of them are exactly equivalent to such a channel (e.g., HBO Now).
In addition, streaming services count against your broadband services data cap, which may necessitate additional charges for uncapped service (and require sufficient broadband bandwidth, which may also force a higher tiers of service than you otherwise would use—cable/satellite mostly subsumes all of that.)
> The fact that distribution of content is now worthless, and distribution is the primary value proposition of their business model
Essentislly all the cable companies are both (owned by, or own) major content owners and major broadband (often both fixed and mobile) ISPs, they often also own or co-own one or more streaming services (sometimes both MVDP and “single channel” style services). They are making money no matter what route you choose to the content.
That article is actually quite odd; the then-existing cable-only channels it mentions were mostly also commercially supported from day one, the ones they report on considering commercial models are channels preparing to go online, not then-operational ad-free channels. While they point to a public expectation of ad-free cable, they don't point to any actual history outside of premium channels (that generally remain ad-free), and other than public access channels, few non-premium cable channels were ever ad-free (except PBS broadcast channels carried by cable operators, when PBS had public funding that allowed it to operate ad free, but that had nothing to do with cable.)