DirecTV, Comcast, and Netflix are all losing customers. Are there winners in this space or are people finding other things to do with their time?
There was no way content was going to let third parties basically take the place of Cable at a fraction of the cost. What will be interesting is if we end up with bundlers to combine billing because of subscription burnout and whether it will just be the Cable companies.
Honestly, I wonder if this is somewhere device manufacturers could get an edge. They already have to build the integrations for their individual platforms, so they could wire them together into an interface which says "I just want to watch Black Lagoon, not worry about whose catalog it's in this week."
I wonder if the money people would pay for "the slickest smart TV experience on the market" exceeds the kickback for putting the hard-coded Netflix and Amazon remote buttons, which only serve to reinforce the silos.
100% of nothing is < a 50/50 split of millions of dollars. Lots of these apps are going to realize that.
There are lots of companies that are vying for your attention, and back when the choice was Cable or Cable plus Netflix, it was an easier bet to have Netflix. Now, you have Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, CBS All Access, AMC and FX (I think?) have their own streaming, HBO, SHO, and soon the Mouse is going to have a must have service. And that's not even considering the amount of time people spend on "alternative" forms of entertainment, such as video games.
It's all just too much, so I think there will be a lot of churn with Netflix. Instead of getting 12 months of service from Netflix, I think we'll see people hopping around more between 2-3 different services each month.
Now you also have all these services having exclusives to get lock in. But to get all this top exclusive content, you need to pay for 12 services which is basically back to cable.
We really need a new model. Customers would prefer micro-transactions and providers and producers want recurring locked in revenue. Something has to give.
A return to the "cable model", but with refined content choice may win out. Already an average sized household subscribing to several services rivals a cheaper cable bill.
Yes, content-owner owned streaming services, and note that both DirecTV and Comcast are (or are owned by) content owners which have or are imminently launching streaming services focussed on first-party content.
so when the vestigial bill changes price, it's enough to call people into action.