I mean, the essential problem is the streaming video services don’t have close enough to “everything” that the streaming audio services have. So you essentially fragment your market. You basically become a specific niche (in a way) because you can’t appeal to “everyone” because you can’t afford to make a popular version of “any show”. This tied with people already wanted to shrink their cable bill so most people DO NOT WANT 10 streaming services. Even if they have the money to burn, they will feel (like you do) that they can’t possibly make use of 10 streaming services worth of content. So you start to be choosy about what shows you want to watch, and probably start to lose FOMO because it’s so fragmented there’s just not that many “everyone is watching the show and I want to talk about it with them” that used to make appointment TV. I.e. there’s less peer pressure to talk about any given Netflix (or Hulu, or P+ or D+ etc) show, so you might well think “hey, that’s something I might like, but it’s like not important enough for me to pay to see it or plan to see it.” And today, if you aren’t scheduling it - I’d say there’s a good chance it’ll be like that 500th book you got at the local book sale for $0.50 that “you definitely plan to read” that’s been sitting at #500 for the past 10 years.
What’s even worse is unlike in the 80s when cable took off is that there’s so much content and competition that people probably aren’t even watching as much “TV” as they used to. I already mentioned books, but there’s comics, graphic novels, forums like this, YouTube, Anime (a big portion of a whole other cultures collective TV series added in now mainstream), video games, 3 hour long podcasts, and just fricken getting off a device and going outside. Some of this always existed, but a lot is new, and competing. I’d argue that as a share of what you could do in your spare time, as a whole TV is down.
I don’t know if it would ever work, but I do wonder if we don’t start to see something like “personal syndication” return. I know the app stores used to sell an episode of a specific show for $4 or something, but that’s way too much. But I wonder if we start to see much lower per ep pricing where you literally pay for the show you want more directly. But again, we rapidly hit the microtransaction problem again. Maybe you just can’t pay for an episode at at time, you have to pay per season to make it work. Maybe $4 a season / no ads would work? IDK. I guess as soon as you want more than 4 shows on a given streamer it makes sense to buy it bulk.
I don’t think micropayments have entirely worked yet. There’s still intellectual resistance to paying for an article that you expect to be free, and I don’t know if you could change that by making them available for $.05. It hasn’t been normalized yet.
I also have not yet caught up on 80% of the shows I was enjoying last year, including multiple Treks, shows where people cook stuff or make clothes, or stupid sitcoms that I got eight episodes in before being distracted by jingling keys. Don’t even get me started on my Steam library - I bought a Deck just to try to work through my backlog of more unplayed than played games.
I liked it when Netflix had movies I wanted to watch and shows I had missed. I watched Lost, Heroes (S1), B5, and Battlestar for the first time on the service. There was a service, and it had a lot of content. Then the studios, which had ignored streaming, saw there was a market and jumped in while raising prices or withdrawing licensing.
People went to Netflix from Pirate Bay because, as Steve Jobs pointed out when he got music studios to remove DRM, people will pay for it if it’s easy and reliable. It has ceased being easy and reliable because of fragmentation and predatory pricing.
I hope Netflix’s strategy dies and they have to think of something better. I hope the same for twitter and reddit. But other than the occasional glance in the rear view mirror for an opportune “I told you so,” I really am not planning on paying attention beyond logging off.
I mean, the essential problem is the streaming video services don’t have close enough to “everything” that the streaming audio services have. So you essentially fragment your market. You basically become a specific niche (in a way) because you can’t appeal to “everyone” because you can’t afford to make a popular version of “any show”. This tied with people already wanted to shrink their cable bill so most people DO NOT WANT 10 streaming services. Even if they have the money to burn, they will feel (like you do) that they can’t possibly make use of 10 streaming services worth of content. So you start to be choosy about what shows you want to watch, and probably start to lose FOMO because it’s so fragmented there’s just not that many “everyone is watching the show and I want to talk about it with them” that used to make appointment TV. I.e. there’s less peer pressure to talk about any given Netflix (or Hulu, or P+ or D+ etc) show, so you might well think “hey, that’s something I might like, but it’s like not important enough for me to pay to see it or plan to see it.” And today, if you aren’t scheduling it - I’d say there’s a good chance it’ll be like that 500th book you got at the local book sale for $0.50 that “you definitely plan to read” that’s been sitting at #500 for the past 10 years.
What’s even worse is unlike in the 80s when cable took off is that there’s so much content and competition that people probably aren’t even watching as much “TV” as they used to. I already mentioned books, but there’s comics, graphic novels, forums like this, YouTube, Anime (a big portion of a whole other cultures collective TV series added in now mainstream), video games, 3 hour long podcasts, and just fricken getting off a device and going outside. Some of this always existed, but a lot is new, and competing. I’d argue that as a share of what you could do in your spare time, as a whole TV is down.
I don’t know if it would ever work, but I do wonder if we don’t start to see something like “personal syndication” return. I know the app stores used to sell an episode of a specific show for $4 or something, but that’s way too much. But I wonder if we start to see much lower per ep pricing where you literally pay for the show you want more directly. But again, we rapidly hit the microtransaction problem again. Maybe you just can’t pay for an episode at at time, you have to pay per season to make it work. Maybe $4 a season / no ads would work? IDK. I guess as soon as you want more than 4 shows on a given streamer it makes sense to buy it bulk.
I don’t think micropayments have entirely worked yet. There’s still intellectual resistance to paying for an article that you expect to be free, and I don’t know if you could change that by making them available for $.05. It hasn’t been normalized yet.
I also have not yet caught up on 80% of the shows I was enjoying last year, including multiple Treks, shows where people cook stuff or make clothes, or stupid sitcoms that I got eight episodes in before being distracted by jingling keys. Don’t even get me started on my Steam library - I bought a Deck just to try to work through my backlog of more unplayed than played games.
I liked it when Netflix had movies I wanted to watch and shows I had missed. I watched Lost, Heroes (S1), B5, and Battlestar for the first time on the service. There was a service, and it had a lot of content. Then the studios, which had ignored streaming, saw there was a market and jumped in while raising prices or withdrawing licensing.
People went to Netflix from Pirate Bay because, as Steve Jobs pointed out when he got music studios to remove DRM, people will pay for it if it’s easy and reliable. It has ceased being easy and reliable because of fragmentation and predatory pricing.
I hope Netflix’s strategy dies and they have to think of something better. I hope the same for twitter and reddit. But other than the occasional glance in the rear view mirror for an opportune “I told you so,” I really am not planning on paying attention beyond logging off.