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Comment by mixdup | Hacker News Reader

>We are back to cable pricing

People expecting that the content companies were going to just accept lower revenue forever and not eventually get back to cable pricing were fooling themselves

In fact, the content companies are planning on making more money than they did under cable because since they're selling direct to the consumer, there's no DirecTV/Comcast/Charter middleman taking a slice anymore

Of course they'll sell through those intermediaries and take a cut but it will be much less than the cable companies were getting before, and will just go into the marketing cost bucket

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Then they're just eventually going to lose out to things like short-form content and services like live streaming that younger generations are moving towards.

I wouldn't be surprised if they end up basically exactly like cable, where the only people who hang around end up being the older generations in the decade to come.

especially as shows keep tending towards up-market

All the major streaming providers are also adding live content. Once they have the infrastructure built out and the customers, it’s relatively easy to add the live content.

Relatively easy is doing some heavy lifting. There's plenty of reports about the streamer's live content having piss poor performance. Getting VOD streaming to work correctly is totally different than live coverage streaming correctly. The only thing they have in common is the viewer using the same app to view it.

Years later, Netflix is still having issues. Maybe it's not as easy as you claim.

You’re right. They’ll never be able to use their existing large revenue stream to fix it.

They’re going to lose out to a choose your own adventure-esque experience that locally generated AI content will produce. Why pay a subscription for terrible content when you can make your own personal terrible content?

as addicting as short form content may be its really lacking when compared to fully fleshed out stories. I think big picture there's no way it wins. it'd be like mcdonalds replacing sit down restaurants.

I agree, I'm just talking about the trend. I don't like consuming too much of it.

> People expecting that the content companies were going to just accept lower revenue forever and not eventually get back to cable pricing were fooling themselves

Well that sort of happened for the music industry. I think people thought the video industry would follow a similar path where a few providers offer very large catalogs and then pay the media owners per play.

Instead these media owners got greedy and every media producing company decided it also needed to be a streaming company. But further, they licensed the media out exclusively to single streaming companies.

I'm also certain nobody expected that bought digital media would simply evaporate due to licensing.

Don't get me wrong, if the music industry could get away with the same move they would. But there's simply a lot more music and the ecosystem is too well established.

The consumer isn't the side that got screwed in the music industry, the screws got put to the artists in that industry instead

They even often make extra money for each movie. Eg some movies on Amazon are offered only dubbed for "free", if you want to listen to the original soundtrack you have to buy it.

There was precedent, in the form of music. Music did get wildly better than "buy a CD", and the norm for music purchasing is zero DRM and files you own forever. So it wasn't an unreasonable expectation to hope the same would happen for video.

I think it was, because that serves as the cautionary tale that tv/movies are determined not to repeat (illustrated early by their refusal to get into bed with Apple as much as the music labels did)

Spot on. They discounted to encourage the transition away from cable and DVR (remember TiVo?) to streaming and then they raise prices to the magical “fraction of monthly budget for entertainment” level that everyone (cable, too) works up to. Every company is going to try to get you to give them all of what you’re willing to pay. When cancellations are greater than new subs, they’ll stop and wait for inflation and rising wages to catch up again. That’s the game. That’s always going to be the game.

I don't know about expect companies to accept lower revenue, but I certainly expect value for the money paid and I am personally seeing less and less of it. Surely, it is a dance of what the customer is willing to swallow. At this point, wife's habits are the only thing keeping our household from becoming disney-free. It is a shame, because as a platform, Disney+ did have a decent selection after it acquired hulu.

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