Streaming Subscription Fees Have Been Rising While Content Quality is Dropping (arstechnica.com) 82
An anonymous reader shares a report: Subscription fees for video streaming services have been on a steady incline. But despite subscribers paying more, surveys suggest they're becoming less satisfied with what's available to watch.
At the start of 2024, the industry began declaring the end of Peak TV, a term coined by FX Networks Chairman John Landgraf that refers to an era of rampant content spending that gave us shows like The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones. For streaming services, the Peak TV era meant trying to lure subscribers with original content that was often buoyed by critical acclaim and/or top-tier actors, writers, and/or directors. However, as streaming services struggle to reach or maintain profitability, 2024 saw a drop in the number of new scripted shows for the first time in at least 10 years, FX Research found.
Meanwhile, overall satisfaction with the quality of content available on streaming services seems to have declined for the past couple of years. Most surveys suggest a generally small decline in perceived quality, but that's still perturbing considering how frequently streaming services increase subscription fees. There was a time when a streaming subscription represented an exclusive ticket to viewing some of the best new TV shows and movies. But we've reached a point where the most streamed TV show last year was Suits -- an original from the USA Network cable channel that ended in 2019.
At the start of 2024, the industry began declaring the end of Peak TV, a term coined by FX Networks Chairman John Landgraf that refers to an era of rampant content spending that gave us shows like The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones. For streaming services, the Peak TV era meant trying to lure subscribers with original content that was often buoyed by critical acclaim and/or top-tier actors, writers, and/or directors. However, as streaming services struggle to reach or maintain profitability, 2024 saw a drop in the number of new scripted shows for the first time in at least 10 years, FX Research found.
Meanwhile, overall satisfaction with the quality of content available on streaming services seems to have declined for the past couple of years. Most surveys suggest a generally small decline in perceived quality, but that's still perturbing considering how frequently streaming services increase subscription fees. There was a time when a streaming subscription represented an exclusive ticket to viewing some of the best new TV shows and movies. But we've reached a point where the most streamed TV show last year was Suits -- an original from the USA Network cable channel that ended in 2019.
Streaming is the new cable (Score:5, Interesting)
Just different providers. And more bills.
Re:Streaming is the new cable (Score:5, Insightful)
Good news! (Score:2, Informative)
Your local library has plenty of DVDs that you can borrow. And if they don't have the one you want, they will have it mailed in from their library network. This includes entire seasons of popular shows, too.
It's not free of course. You pay for it in your taxes. Of course, you pay for it whether you use it or not, so, may as well get some value for your money.
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You shouldn't be surprised, this is the way for all products and services. Start out strong out of the gate, reach your peak, then slowly degrade. Get bought by some parasites with "equity" or "capital" in their name so your corpse gets looted.
Re:Streaming is the new cable (Score:4, Interesting)
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yes!
Re:Streaming is the new cable (Score:5, Insightful)
The way things are removed from the available library of stuff to watch absolutely frustrates me. Once it's made it can't cost them more than a few pennies a year to keep it available.
Then, of course, there's the tendency to just cancel shows after a couple of seasons with no satisfactory ending to them, which makes me reluctant to even start watching in the first place because I've grown really tired of never getting the ending to the stories they claim to want to tell me.
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It's a real deterrent to start watching the shiny new show. I'd rather look for a series I know culminates in some kind of finale that ties up loose ends.
I do think this is the biggest part of the model that Netflix is missing.
Cable can't always finish a show because they have limited timeslots, it's either a full final-season order or it's just gone.
But streaming has no such constraint. Unless the show is a major flop there's a decent number of viewers who want to see it go on. Give them a half-season budget to wrap it up and throw it on the servers. The audience will appreciate at least having that.
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The big hit in this regard was with Starz refusing to relicense their content. This forced Netflix into a bind since that was a very large fraction of their available content, and is caused Netflix to become their own content creator. The thing is, the customers usually blamed Netflix for sucking, rather than blaming Starz for fracturing the streaming market with exclusivity.
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I am surprised how far backwards it has gone in the last 5 years it so. At one point you could pay a modest subscription to Netflix and watch almost whatever you wanted. We are nowhere near that now. At this point I would choose to go back to Netflix DVD by mail program if I could.
And we all - including Netflix - knew that this was not sustainable. That's why Netflix started producing their own content. At the time, streaming was just a small additional way of earning extra money on already produced content. These days, streaming is a large chunk of the revenue and needs to pay for the production of the content - either fully, or in part (if it is monetized on tradionational TV and cinemas first). The traditional ways of earning money brings less revenue, and production costs are up.
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Consider how much has changed in that time. Remember that before Netflix, the content owners were fighting tooth and nail to restrict access to their content and get their pound of flesh. Using DVDs by mail, Netflix was able to perform an end-around on their copyright control. This opened the door to Netflix negotiating a limited license to start streaming a small quantity of titles. To sweeten the deal, they offered to share viewership data with the content owner. Since Netflix didn't own the content,
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Of course, this quickly came to a head, as the content owners wanted a bigger and bigger slice of the pie with each new licensing deal. Which, of course, forced Netflix to start producing their own content, and for the content owners to start rolling out their own streaming services. This is the miracle of copyright, writ large. Since the content owners can hold their content hostage for their pound of flesh, they are forever pushing the envelope on how much blood they can squeeze from that stone.
And now, Netflix and approximately all of their competitors are pushing people towards ad-supported TV, because after all, what everyone wants in a streaming service is the sort of broadcast TV hell that they escaped by switching to streaming TV in the first place.
At some point, I'm just going to shut it all off and say "I'm done."
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You used to pay for existing library, plus a handful of new shows that were tailored to existing fan base.
Now you're paying for an army of DEI hires all doing their dream shows about some random far left retelling of an old story to no audience, featuring a lot of highly paid and diverse actors with questionable talent at best.
It's expensive. Someone has to pay the difference. And ESG investment money has dried up.
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Instead of connecting to one provider now I have to jump between half a dozen of them and struggle to remember which shows are on which.
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Instead of subscribing to one provider, I now subscribe to nothing at all and just watch youtube occasionally. Should not be too surprising that I did not turn insane or developer a debilitating disease because I have not been watching all the popular shows.
Re: Streaming is the new cable (Score:2)
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The next step is 'Plan 9 from Outer Space - The Series'.
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quelle surprise, mais non?
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Pas de surprise du tout. cela ne changera jamais. Ça ne fait qu'empirer. Eh?
"Streaming pile of shit" (Score:2)
nuf sed
This here is what we used to call a "na doy." (Score:4, Insightful)
First off, there's an argument to be made that Game of Thrones didn't survive the "peak TV" era. Granted, that was mostly about the egos of the show runners, and not about cost cutting. In fact, you can't really blame cost cutting for most of the shit-shows we're getting now. Isn't Scamazon's Rings of Power the most expensive TV production ever? Yet they couldn't bother with pretty elves. I don't even mind the diversification, even if it blatantly flies in the face of the original material that pretty much saw various groups as monocultures. Who cares about that shit. But those of us into fantasy watch it because the characters have understandable motivations, and they are fighting against understandable foes. In Rings of Power we get cardboard cut-out characters, fighting. . . um, ah, polite Orcs that just wanna raise a family and be left in peace? WTF?
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I don't understand the Rings of Power orcs. This is Tolkien. Not World of Warcraft. This is alien to a lot of people who believe in everything is gray and there is good in everyone, but in the Tolkien universe, orcs are just plain evil, and you don't have any sympathy for them. Instead you run them through before you end up in their stewpot. Simple as that.
Now, if this were not Tolkien, having "good" orcs is perfectly okay. Something like the Enemy Mine story is a good one. However, one has to be tru
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I haven't seen it, but also the elves are supposedly the good guys in Tolkien and some people were upset at their shenanigans. EXCEPT that the Simarillion shows many elves are being very awful in very shocking ways. I haven't fully read that book, it's turgid to the point where you want to read Ulysses to clear your mind, so I don't know how it treats the orcs. There is also the occasional grumble here and there that the Silmarillion wasn't published during JRR's lifetime and was patched together later by
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Well, Game of Thrones was a real tragedy. They had an excellent cast, a good story, enough money and then they messed it up. These showrunners should be unemployable as a result.
As to the rest, I have stopped caring. It is probably decisiones by "executives" that go for parameters like "amount of money put into special effects" and have no clue that entertainment is about engaging the audience, not doing a tech-demo. Might well be a facet of the "MBA plague", where people that do not understand what makes a
Re:This here is what we used to call a "na doy." (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, Game of Thrones was a real tragedy. They had an excellent cast, a good story, enough money and then they messed it up. These showrunners should be unemployable as a result.
As to the rest, I have stopped caring. It is probably decisiones by "executives" that go for parameters like "amount of money put into special effects" and have no clue that entertainment is about engaging the audience, not doing a tech-demo. Might well be a facet of the "MBA plague", where people that do not understand what makes a business tick make the big decisions. Also refer to Boeing, Intel, and a few others.
I sort of studied the GoT thing as it was happening due to genuine curiosity how such an engaging show at the beginning could turn into such a disaster at the end. There were public statements by the Ds (as they came to be called on the Westeros forums) about how they knew they were better storytellers than George. There were also a lot of statements that the entire reason they were doing the show was for the Red Wedding, and that once that happened they just wanted it to be over with so they could move on to their next big idea. The agreed upon 13 seasons of 10 full episodes shrank after the Red Wedding happened. The story became more rushed. The characters became less engaging. Any questions raised, even by the actors apparently, about motivations were met with, "JUST READ THE FUCKIN' LINES THE WAY WE WROTE THEM!" The older actors were pissed. The younger actors were confused. The on-set folks were baffled. The showrunners acted like God's gift to fiction. And the end-result of the final season, after all the build-up, was a big snore.
And then all the other networks went, "Hey! WE CAN DO THAT TOO!"
I never got curious enough to dig into the other shows. I figured after my exploration of the underbelly of GoT I wasted enough time trying to sort out why everything good in fiction has to be tainted now.
I believe those same idiots made a movie about a civil war in America that anyone who has tried to sit through says is even worse trash. Who knew they could lower the bar further?
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So the "D's" are essentially incompetents at story-writing with oversized egos, no honor and everything is about them? No surprise this turned out to be such a disaster at the end. I did not even watch the last season, the reviews were so bad. "Better at storytelling than George?" Seriously? After they made that claim, they should have been fired.
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So the "D's" are essentially incompetents at story-writing with oversized egos, no honor and everything is about them? No surprise this turned out to be such a disaster at the end. I did not even watch the last season, the reviews were so bad. "Better at storytelling than George?" Seriously? After they made that claim, they should have been fired.
I was so fascinated after they said that that it made me dive into the underbelly. Apparently they had some degree or some bullshit that made them think they were more qualified to tell George's story than he was. I find hubris amusing sometimes. Especially when it becomes that inflated. And that statement wasn't made until AFTER the fan-named Terminator Run of Araya, after which she was dumped into a city waterway with a cut-opened gut. And then immediately recovered.
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Well, I used to be like that. These times I am just annoyed when some people with no actual understanding of their own skills and skill-levels mess something up I actually care about. As a bonus, people with egos like that never actually learn. After all they are already great at everything. Of course, the real fault lies with the people that hired these cretins.
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Well, I used to be like that. These times I am just annoyed when some people with no actual understanding of their own skills and skill-levels mess something up I actually care about. As a bonus, people with egos like that never actually learn. After all they are already great at everything. Of course, the real fault lies with the people that hired these cretins.
HR Departments and their worship of the degree and certification over actual knowledge don't help these assclowns face reality. They reinforce the unearned ego. I used to have a manager that believed if you didn't have a degree, regardless of skill or experience, you didn't have a leg to stand on in any argument. He was also in marketing, which added another level to the ego.
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It really depends on the degree and what you did to get it. Some degrees are very valuable, while others are more of an indication of a lack of skill.
The problem with HR is that they are more often "lack of skill" all over, so they go for easy to identify indicators and then attribute values to them that often do not have.
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It really depends on the degree and what you did to get it. Some degrees are very valuable, while others are more of an indication of a lack of skill.
The problem with HR is that they are more often "lack of skill" all over, so they go for easy to identify indicators and then attribute values to them that often do not have.
My experience would indicate that when you have a list of viable candidates that you get along with, but one person with a certificate or "better" degree pops up that makes the entire rest of the team cringe, HR will be adamant that the cert or degree means more than the experience, or the integration into the rest of the team. Granted, I've worked with some, let's say less than cooperative HR departments. I'm sure someone has an example of a "good" HR department, but I've yet to meet that person.
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Well, my personal experience with HR to date is one (!) exit interview. I never had to deal with them before for anything but documentation and things like that. But I know a few people that work or worked in HR (not examples of stellar insight to be polite) and I have heard stories from people that I respect as competent.
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And "the Ds" also ran out of material to adapt. They were not good story tellers... they were very good at adapting existing written material to a visual media.
I could tell the instant they ran out of Martin's material, the show started to become repetitive and cliched. And they literally thwarted all the regular customers of the fans by "subverting" all the clues Martin had laid down.
And, the way they (clumsily) handled Dany going bonkers was a perfect example. They knew she had to go crazy from Martin
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And "the Ds" also ran out of material to adapt. They were not good story tellers... they were very good at adapting existing written material to a visual media.
I could tell the instant they ran out of Martin's material, the show started to become repetitive and cliched. And they literally thwarted all the regular customers of the fans by "subverting" all the clues Martin had laid down.
And, the way they (clumsily) handled Dany going bonkers was a perfect example. They knew she had to go crazy from Martin's notes, but they did a terrible job since they had to write it instead of adapt it. Martin would have given hints to the readers that Dany was headed that way instead of such a blunt heel faced turn.
Well, the worst part was that they also got lost in fantasyland building fanfic. They literally said that they spent a lot of time trying to cook up ways to get characters together that George himself said would never actually meet. Some of it was amusing, but some of it was so hamfisted that it was just cringe city.
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I sort of studied the GoT thing as it was happening due to genuine curiosity how such an engaging show at the beginning could turn into such a disaster at the end. There were public statements by the Ds (as they came to be called on the Westeros forums) about how they knew they were better storytellers than George. There were also a lot of statements that the entire reason they were doing the show was for the Red Wedding, and that once that happened they just wanted it to be over with so they could move on to their next big idea. The agreed upon 13 seasons of 10 full episodes shrank after the Red Wedding happened. The story became more rushed. The characters became less engaging. Any questions raised, even by the actors apparently, about motivations were met with, "JUST READ THE FUCKIN' LINES THE WAY WE WROTE THEM!" The older actors were pissed. The younger actors were confused. The on-set folks were baffled. The showrunners acted like God's gift to fiction. And the end-result of the final season, after all the build-up, was a big snore.
And then all the other networks went, "Hey! WE CAN DO THAT TOO!"
I never got curious enough to dig into the other shows. I figured after my exploration of the underbelly of GoT I wasted enough time trying to sort out why everything good in fiction has to be tainted now.
I believe those same idiots made a movie about a civil war in America that anyone who has tried to sit through says is even worse trash. Who knew they could lower the bar further?
I never followed the forums, but that's not the narrative I came away with.
Basically, after the first few seasons there was major GoT hype and "the Ds" were basically TV gods working on the Mount Olympus of TV (HBO). And that of course is basically the perfect time to jump to a new project. For instance, remember the guy who made the last big fantasy TV show [wikipedia.org]? That's a pretty decent career.
The problem was that the Ds were tied to an existing project, GoT, and HBO wouldn't let them start a new show while they
Focusing on DEI means losing the plot (Score:2, Informative)
It is probably decisiones by "executives" that go for parameters like "amount of money put into special effects" and have no clue that entertainment is about engaging the audience, not doing a tech-demo. Might well be a facet of the "MBA plague", where people that do not understand what makes a business tick make the big decisions.
Over-reliance on special effects is one aspect that can detract from the overall story. However, the larger problem is that studios are more focused on checking racial and 2SLGBTQIAA++ quotas rather than focusing on the story and making the best show overall. You can see that in cast selection where a show today can't move forward unless it has at least one black person, one Asian person, one gay person, one trans person, etc regardless of whether their inclusion makes sense. So now, we see black folks in W
Re:This here is what we used to call a "na doy." (Score:4)
I must have missed the polite Orcs episode. Which one was it?
It's just brief flashes here or there, but there have been moments where the Orcs discuss what they'll do after the war, like they're looking forward to settling down. It's utterly baffling for Tolkien fans.
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The books make it out like they have no perspective. Their only purpose, from their creation, is bloodlust and mayhem.
Shagrat and Gorbag (Score:2)
There's just this snippet of two orcs talking about how they'd rather live their lives in book IV (second half of The Two Towers):
Note that they talk about access to loot, as though
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I refer to it as name-ganked fanfic, by 'fans' that never read the original, only the summaries on the book sleeves.
An analogy (Score:5, Interesting)
When 24-hour news networks were created on cable TV, the quality of news declined to the point that news organizations created or mutated stories to attract viewers. Now, news networks parrot each other, filling time with garbage. It's a sad indictment when more people trust the Weather Channel than CNN. [yougov.com]
Now we have lots of pay streaming services that create content to keep viewers from dropping them. I mean how many times can you "re-imagine" J.R.R. Tolkien? or Destroy the Star Wars franchise?
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"Now, news networks parrot each other,"
That's a different problem, and would afflict them if the news networks were only OTA broadcast. Looks the same, on the surface, yes,
enshitification (Score:2)
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Same here. The process can go slower or faster, but it seems to happen to most large and larger enterprises. At some point they forget what got them where they are and fall to greed, arrogance and stupidity.
If there are profits to be made (Score:2)
,,,and they are potentially huge, the eventual outcome will always be enshittification. Management, under pressure from shareholders will always twiddle things to extract more value for themselves. Over time this ruins the value proposition for customers and suppliers.
I've been cancelling them (Score:5, Interesting)
2-3 years ago I subscribed to uh way too many of them but I got to see almost everything and it was only like 60-70 a month.
As the lesser services proved pointless (such as 1883 ending), I dropped them. Then Disney. Apple. Then 1-2 others I can't remember. Don't miss any of them.
Now It's Amazon with fucking ads but we only have it because our prime shopping pays for itself, Netflix, max and Hulu. The next time any of them raise prices, they're gone. Quality down, prices up, and ever more things moved to rent/pay only.
What really pisses me off is when they put some old 70s show under rent/pay-only which I watched as a kid for free on TBS. Total shit only a kid (or nostalgic adult with bad tv taste) would want to see today. Greedy bastards putting my childhood tv nostalgia behind a pay wall. I'll bet I am literally the only person who would even watch one of those things much less pay for them.
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I have found that keeping 3 streaming services at a time still comes in under the old cable bill, even with the Internet pipe factored in.
I am guessing that within 10 years, this will no longer be the case. We will be back up to full cable bill level with one streaming service provider.
Hopefully, it remains as easy to cancel and churn as it currently is.
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who cares??
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All that pedantry yet you still can't say quality is rising
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Never claimed it was or wasn't. There you go again. :)
Color me surprised... (Score:2)
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It's funny, I have been coming to the same conclusion. I love '70s shows and it's fun to re-watch them as an adult.
Wife and I have been watching Love Boat on Paramount+ and it's just great.
We recently got through all the Columbo episodes and, man, that show holds up. It's quality television!
Not so exclusive (Score:3)
Streaming content is starting to leak into broadcast TV*. And customers are much more willing to wait to watch the free** version than have to pay cold, hard cash to watch something _ right_now_.
* Where possible due to FCC regs and and ratings. I doubt we'll ever see GOT over the air.
** People don't percieve having to watch a few station breaks and ads the same way they do the streaming/cable bills.
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** People don't percieve having to watch a few station breaks and ads the same way they do the streaming/cable bills.
Poor people, maybe
I will NEVER watch ads. I gladly pay to avoid them. If the stuff gets too expensive, I'll stop watching it
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I will NEVER watch ads.
So, you've never seen Demolition Man [wikipedia.org]? Never been to a sportsball exhibition at a brand-named colosseum? Always closed your eyes when manufacturers pay to place autos, appliances or computers in a TV series or movie?
You've watched ads. You just don't realize it.
Live sports is the only reason to stay (Score:1)
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You blame your anal warts on Biden/Harris
TV is dying. Hollywood is dying. DEIsaster! (Score:2, Insightful)
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Shuddup, you 50's-loving Archie Bunkers are boring anyhow. Sit on it, Potsy!
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Nonsense, DEI is just a bugbear hiding under the beds of good loyal conservatives. The world would just be perfect if women and minorities knew their place and all the incels could get girlfriends who didn't mind their awful personalities. Or that's what it feels like from outside the fear dome.
You gullible schmucks (Score:2)
You thought it would be different this time, but the same people that gave you crap for the past 50 years are still pulling the same scheme you big dumb idiots.
(no, *you're* bitter you spent $100+ per month for television you rarely watch for over twenty years)
Maybe RedBox should be re-started? (Score:1)
Might be a great time to buy the company.
Just basic economics? (Score:1)
As streaming services proliferate, each individual service gets less viewers. Less viewership means less money, which mean lower quality.
No TV (Score:2)
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Football is drama!
Haven't had a streaming channel since February 24. (Score:1)
Not even to Binge. I use prime (which I use for low cost shipping), pluto, tubi, roku, and youtube.
I will probably sign up to Netflix to binge in January 2025 for 2 months.F
It doesn't help that most the shows put out today are dystopic and/or misandrist. I.e. "They aren't made for me."
not shocking really (Score:2)
we all knew that streamers were basically giving the service away and spending A on of money to buy viewers. Operating at a serious loss is something that could not go on forever. Plus we all know now that part of this was the streamers taking advantage of vague working in actor contracts around digital distribution to save money by not paying them
Demanding vendor lock-in (Score:2)
Let's see: Actor's and writer's strikes because networks wanted to create derivative works for free. Cancelled shows, disappearing shows, years between sequel seasons, free shows moved behind a pay-wall, increasing subscription costs, increasing advert quantity and lastly, decreasing production values as a show ages and loses popularity: Yeah, it's a surprise to streaming services that dissatisfaction is growing.
More walled gardens and more competition means less profit means less risk. With a phone,
Musical Streaming Services (Score:2)