Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
I agree with you. But of course, each company has the ego to think they're going to rake in the same money Netflix does. I expect them to ultimately flop, except for Disney. They'll likely succeed. But the rest, not so much.
Though, to be optimistic, at the price of $10-15 a month, you could sign up for several standalones and still pay less than what cable costs to get the same channels.
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That is changing.
Skinny live stream bundles are bringing the consumer price for "cable" channels more in line with what the cablecos pay the networks.
Sling was just the beginning. Their skinny bundles and special interest add-ons bring per channel costs to under $1 a month with total bills in the $20-30 range.
https://www.cnet.com/news/sling-tv-e...-need-to-know/
Philo is moving their $16 service beyond the browser into streaming apps:
https://www.cnet.com/news/philo-chea...74374991200794
And ATT just announced that they will supplement their DirecTV Now fat bundle which runs $35-50+ with a new $15 a month skinny bundle service called WATCH.
https://www.cnet.com/news/at-t-chief...vice-in-court/
The djinn is out of the bottle: streaming is here to stay and a mainstream option so everybody wants a chunk of the money the cablecos have been extorting. Providing access to content is no longer a big value add so owning the content is necessary for survival and content owners are disintermediating the distributors. Note that Hulu is co-owned by Fox, Disney, and NBC-Universal and Philo is backed by the networks they carry.
And while I don't think we'll be getting a pure ala carte service just yet, it is already possible to assemble a customized lineup of mostly channels you watch and save a few hundred dollars a year compared to cable or satellite.