Hacker News Reader

Comment by leoedin | Hacker News Reader

Why don't the finances work?

As an example: I'm paying for Netflix and Amazon prime. I'm not going to pay for more services because I don't value watching TV more than that.

We buy or rent a specific movie maybe once a quarter at most.

So total expenditure on TV services is around $20/mo.

Almost everyone I know is in a similar situation. Some swap one of those services for something else, many are sharing subscriptions with other households.

So right now most people are paying a fairly fixed amount for access to a portion of TV and film. The total money flowing in seems to be enough to support the entire industry.

If a service that cost $20/month for access to everything came out, I'd definitely switch. I imagine most of my friends would as well.

Then the total money flowing into the industry would be the same, but everyone would have access to all the media.

View on HN

I suspect a lot of people buy or rent more than you and your friends.

For example, many people have either a cable TV or online streaming subscription that's another $50-100/month. HBO would be another $15 or so. And so forth.

There is an argument that, at some point, there are only so many hours in the day and a Spotify for video (i.e. most content for one monthly fee) makes sense but that's probably a $100-200/month fee in the US (assuming you could get most players to cooperate). YouTube TV alone is $65/month these days.

Are normal working people really willing to pay hundreds of dollars a month for some TV? Nobody watches that much TV surely? And how many have that kind of spare cash?

I feel like outside of the rich, $10-15 is about all you can reasonably ask people to afford for a pure luxury like this.

lol

"According to a Nielsen report, United States adults are watching five hours and four minutes of television per day on average (35.5 h/week, slightly more than 77 days per year)."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption

I.e. a good chunk of people has the TV running in the background all the time. Another chunk is just watching whatever during the day. How much do you think those demographics value that financially?

My intuition is that the 90s provided a good high-water mark for pre-internet entertainment spend. The average price of a cable subscription which in 1995 was $22.35/month [1] (inflation adjusted to $38 [2])

So $40/month. I'd add to that whatever the average blockbuster price was $5 * 4-weeks (quick googling didn't give me a great answer, but I found 2.18 GPB for 1995, so probably $3-5 with conversion and inflation).

That makes roughly $60/month for the average American at-home tv/movie spend in the 90s. I suspect that still is the rough tolerance.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/cable-tv-prices-inflation-ch... [2] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

I would guess that the distribution today is at least somewhat bimodal based on whether someone pays for a live TV package whether cable, satellite, or streaming. Any of those probably cost at least $60/month (in no small part because of sports).

I expect that typical other streaming spend (Netflix, a la carte rentals, maybe a premium Print add-on or HBO, etc.) probably don't add up to more than $30-40 a month or so.

Many people did and do pay $100 for a satellite or cable TV subscription and add on premium channels (movies/sports) to that. And many of those same people go out the movies (during normal times) a couple times a month and possibly rent/buy DVDs as well (though less than in the past). And while most of those people are presumably not poor, I'm sure many of them are not rich.

And, as I said in another comment with respect to streaming, YouTube TV alone is $65/month.

So, yes, many normal working people do pay on the order of a couple hundred dollars a month for video entertainment.

That’s why Disney’s Crown Jewels are not its studios but ESPN

That may be true in the US, but I doubt many Europeans would be able and willing to pay that much.

Sky TV UK charge £59/mo ($77) for the package with sports and movies. The "everything" package with UHD and a second set top box costs £97/mo ($127). Nearly half of UK households have satellite or cable TV.

Normal working people watch ridiculous amounts of tv.

I suppose for developers you flip it right.

"Normal SV developers spend 4 to 5 hours a night coding on personal projects"

The normal people watching their TV would think those devs spend a ridiculous amount of time coding.

If you spend 4-5 hours a night coding on personal projects you probably have both a pretty strong self image of yourself as a developer and probably people who know you see you that way as well. Same goes for if you read for 4-5 hours a night, gamed, worked out, cooked, swam, whatever. Reader, gamer, bodybuilder, amateur chef, swimmer, etc. If you consistently do something for 4-5 hours a night it's generally a big part of who you are.

TV stands alone where people do it 4-5 hours a night and its not considered being super in to that thing. People in the tv watching category don't see it as choosing to do a thing. It's just part of what you do. Sleep, work, then tv. Repeat. They don't identify as a tv watcher any more than they do as a sleeper.

What'd the people who just turn their mind off _do_ before TV.

Form mobs and look for people to hang.

Sit around and shoot the shit with friends and family.

You'd be surprised. In our household we pay for a sports streaming service and watch the occasional movie over Xbox video, but otherwise we don't use any other streaming service.

Our friends have recommended over 200 hours worth of TV since the pandemic hit, and everyone is quite horrified of how big our things to watch list has grown. It's months worth of spare time where we simply wouldn't do anything else.

It's not enough to support the entire industry, that's the point of the article. $20 a month has never been enough, bearing in mind it's effectively replacing (in north America) cable which used to cost much more than that and those channels used to run ads as well!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com