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Comment by citizenkeen | Hacker News Reader

On the one hand, we got what we asked for: _a la carte_.

I think what makes people frustrated is that cable channels were _themed_. I was frustrated that I was paying for TLC and Bravo because I didn't watch reality tv. I was paying for Discovery even though I didn't watch nature shows. I was paying for Lifetime even though I didn't watch cheap shows for women. I was paying for ESPN even though I didn't watch sports.

I wanted to pay for the comedy, the scifi/syfy, the cartoons, and the kids programming. That was, like, five or six channels.

Which streaming service do I go to now for the science fiction? Which streaming service do I go to now for the horror or the feel-good sitcoms?

Streaming arose during the collapse of genre channels. There are now three genres of programming: prestige, drek, and children's.

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Cable channels were themed, but cable packages were not. There was not a realistic chance of that changing. The technology was not good enough for that. If I recall correctly, analog cable depended upon bandpass filters that were rarely perfect so it was best to group channels in blocks. When digital cable entered the fray, the other motivation entered the forefront: it simply didn't make business sense to sell individual channels.

When it comes to that business sense, we probably have the closest thing to perfection today. Streaming services are forced to compete against each other, with the only real constraints being the cost/restrictions of licensing content and the cost of distribution (i.e. not controlling infrastructure to the home). It is very easy and relatively inexpensive to pick and choose, provided that you are willing to defer your viewing. You also have the choice between large streaming services that offer a broad range of genres and smaller ones that offer more specialized programming.

Yes, that closest thing to perfection is far from perfect. On the other hand, I very much doubt that we are going to get anything closer unless we are willing to pay the price.

> Cable channels were themed, but cable packages were not.

Themed packages did and do exist, though most channels for cable were normally available mainly through stacked tiers. But alongside the main generic tiers, language-specific (especially spanish language) and some other (sports, often) themed packages were available from many cable providers, and premium channels were often available in themed groups as well as individually.

> There are now three genres of programming: prestige, drek, and children's.

This is something I've been feeling for awhile but haven't managed to articulate this clearly. All new programming is either a mega-budget tentpole or it's something to fill out the menus.

I think of that as "Look at all the new shows Netflix has" -> "95% of new Netflix shows wouldn't have been funded under the old model, because they're bad"

Most of them aren't so much "bad" as "of narrow taste". They certainly look awful to me, but Netflix isn't just throwing money away. They've got a ton of data on what people want to watch. Somebody is watching this dreck.

Some of it is genuinely a failure. Funding an entertainment project is always a pig in a poke. Even promising things sometimes just flop. But streaming makes it possible to lower the opportunity costs of those flops, so they can take bigger chances.

I say "bad" in the sense that Transformers is bad.

In the sense that an F-22 is used for CAS / bombing in The Tomorrow War (which I'd assume was one of Amazon's better funded efforts).

A lot of them just feel like "Oh, you just gave some money to people, removed the usual checks and balances that exist in filming, and told them to deliver a movie ASAP."

It'd be one thing if they were making niche or more interesting content, but it feels like they're mostly just making more action movies and baking shows... faster and at lower quality.

> A lot of them just feel like "Oh, you just gave some money to people, removed the usual checks and balances that exist in filming, and told them to deliver a movie ASAP."

Describes Red Notice by Netflix

I've been sort of watching "La Brea" thinking this show is pretty bad. Then I'll watch some sci fi made-for-TV movie from long ago, and that'll be far worse.

How does one even write lines like:

"We need to work together!" "I won't give up on you!"

It's like an AI bot wrote the dialog.

tunes up his banjo To the laaaaand of the Lost (lost, lost, lost)...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6c9GdOJbi_c

Are you subjecting yourself to this sort of punishment for more than a few minutes at a time? b^)

I have a sort of morbid fascination to see just how bad it is going to get.

The thing is so ripe it would have been easy to take the next step and make it a sly comedy.

There was a time when Netflix shows seemed to be almost made by algorithm or big data- as if someone said like 32-37 year olds love detective shows with angry but smart main characters. My sense is its gotten better with more quality and less quantity lately though.

One thing I actually miss from themed channels is that they selected content for you, which is actually nice sometimes.

Yes, sometimes you just want to watch a specific show and you want to watch it now, and the streaming services are great for that.

But sometimes you just want to turn on the TV and watch something, anything, without really making a choice. I still have cable because it's included in the rent, and sometimes it's nice to just switch the channel to FXX or something and get maybe an old episode of the Simpsons, or a new episode, or maybe some Family guy, or maybe an old episode of some other comedy series, or maybe something completely new.

And that's nice and has value, but streaming services absolutely suck at that, because you always have to make a choice yourself with them.

I realized exactly this recently: people don't channel surf anymore, and I kind of miss it.

It was relaxing to me, post- many cable channels (81?), pre- guide/DVR, to just click through.

"Oh, Armageddon is on again. Hercules. (flip, flip, flip)" and then settle on something random, pulled from what's currently playing.

It used to be: survey and then choose from a very limited but rotating subset of all content.

Now it's: choose from all content ever and then find where the content lives and then figure out how much of it you want to watch.

For movies, the new way seems superior. For TV, it feels like a lot has been lost. And overall, I feel like the new system definitely leads to winner-take-all.

I miss just being able to "watch what's on"

It's why I still subscribe to satellite radio.

(and yes, I've thought about subscribing to video service from Spectrum, but I'm not a huge TV watcher)

Try Pluto TV, their content isn’t as good as the paid offerings but I love the mindless channel surfing experience.

Ooh, thanks for the recommendation. Game of Death was on, and 80% of the way to the end. I feel back in the 90s already.

Netflix has a "Play Something" button for precisely that situation.

https://about.netflix.com/en/news/play-something-netflix-doe...

It can pick either something you're already watching (TV series or unfinished movie), or guess something based on what it has learned about you. Of course it's just the Netflix catalog, but that's pretty extensive.

It sounds godawful to me, so I've never used it. But it sounds like almost precisely what you just asked for.

Its funny, but I never watched broadcast TV or Cable primarily becuase "just watching whats on" meant a 99% chance of sitting through dreck that I can't stand, so I never did it. In 1995, I had a collection of over 200 VHS tapes of movies I loved (all purchased, not copied.) In 2005 I had a collection of 500 DVDs that I had purchased.

Today, I have about 700 movied ripped from DVDs (and the DVDs still in boxes somewhere), and 500 movies purchased on iTunes. I don't subscribe to Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, or any other streaming service because, again, 99% of it is dreck I can't stand. So instead I have a collection of 1200 movies that I like and specifically chose and purchased. Some are better than others, but they're all ones I like.

> 500 movies purchased on iTunes

iTunes sells licenses, not movies. Providers can pull content from iTunes and you lose access to whatever you paid for.

I don’t believe this is true, and I can’t find any confirmed examples of it happening.

There have been cases where users thought they lost a purchase, but it ended up being an issue where they changed storefronts to one where the purchase wasn’t available. The movie reappeared when they went back to the original storefront (and I believe even that behavior was a bug that’s been fixed).

I keep an eye on this because I’ve also purchased a lot of movies from iTunes.

The licensing part is most likely true. Can you download purchases for offline play in a random (non-Apple) video player? Or do you need iTunes to exist in order to watch "your" purchases?

> On the one hand, we got what we asked for: _a la carte_.

But we don't. It's worse than ever now. Shows are fragmented into way too many different subcriptions (netflix, etc) each with their monthly fee and a bunch of stuff I won't be watching.

True a la carte would mean eliminating all those exlusive distributions so I could get any show from any streaming vendor for a one-off price (say, 25 cents for a show, $2 for a movie, or whatever) without having to subcribe to any recurring service.

I've given up, I'm not going to subscribe to half a dozen things, that's way too inconvenient and expensive.

I agree with the point but I will say that that's not how bundle pricing works. If you have 100 channels and you want to pay for two of them, the price doesn't go from $100 to $2, it goes from $100 to $90 (arbitrary high number here) because you have people who are willing to pay $45 even though you only want to pay $1. At that point, most people say just give me the other 98 channels

https://coda.io/@shishir/four-myths-of-bundling

> Which streaming service do I go to now for the science fiction?

Exactly. Every company has segmented their content by company, not by type. Sure, I can buy a subscription to Boomerang and get a lot of cartoons, but it's just the cartoons owned by Warner. But not all of them, because they've moved some of them--like Dexter's Laboratory--off to be HBO Max exclusives.

There's no way to say "I want a science fiction themed service" that includes Paramount and HBO and the old PTEN and the like, because no company would stand for another service mixing their IP like that.

Peacock has Battlestar Galactica but the Caprica prequel is on NBC only for cable customers. Disney+ can’t put the Spider-Man movies next to the other Marvel movies. When Doctor Who first came to HBO Max, you couldn’t watch it on a Roku TV because it wasn’t HBO Now or HBO Go. The industry is littered with exclusive regional contracts that continually expire and don’t make sense to the customers.

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