The Streaming Wars Have Entered Their Chaos Era

time.com

2 points·Digit-Al··2 comments

The studios got greedy, thinking "we should be making all the profit from our shows rather than sharing it with Netflix", so started their own streaming services. But, it seems to me that that the resulting fragmentation, coupled with the chaotic decisions made, has been to the detriment of the entire industry - and to users.

I'm definitely against monopolies, but it seems like having one place where you can see everything rather than a dozen different services competing for your money is a lot cheaper and easier for everyone.

But isn't that what we've had with Cable TV all these years?

I mean, the remarkable thing about cable, satellite, and many IPTV providers is that it is always the same thing at about the same price. $6 a month gets tacked on to your bill a month for ESPN whether or not you watch sports. You can't get the Discovery channel (say) unless you get crap CNN, Fox, CNBC, MSBNC, etc.

There is no market discipline for the channels to be good, no market discipline to keep the price of the bundle down, so the business plan of that industry for 30 years was "increase the price next year".

You'd think streaming would be good for Disney in that Disney has a strong brand, yet it is expensive for Disney to realize that brand promise. (Look at what Walt spent on his first animated films and to develop Disneyland and Disneyworld.) Disney would rather get their cut of your $80 a month cable bill month after month without a fight rather than have to outspend Netflix, Paramount and everybody else to get a $10 subscription which you could easily stop and switch to another provider. It's like the situation where everybody is standing on their tiptoes to look over the people in front of them.

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