CBS has just announced a new streaming option at $5.99/month:
But it’s not going to offer football and the shows come with all the ads–so the discussion I have seen generally feel it’s not going to be particularly successful.
What is worth watching on CBS?
$5.99 for ads? And content from CBS? They’re overcharging by about $6.
Dunno these days, there are a lot of old shows that would be nice to watch.
But… if CBS and NBC and ABC get into the streaming business themselves, it seems likely they would pull the plug on supplying them to Netflix, where a lot of them are now.
So, if every body does this, yes, that could certainly kill Netflix.
I see Netflix partnering up with content providers in order to bundle their products.
Like Pixar alone wouldn’t be able to charge for their own content via a streaming service because nobody would want to pay $7.99 a month for their content only.
But if Pixar teamed up with Dreamworks and Metro Animation and sold them all as one package, they might make a tidy profit. And Netflix (or hell Hulu) could deliver that bundle for them.
I even see Netflix changing their pricing model for this very reason. You can have the basic service which is what it is now or pay a premium for various bundles that they have to offer.
Yeah, that sounds terrible. If I want to watch CBS with ads, I have a thing called a “TV” that does it for free.
They already do that. The issue is that those partnerships are becoming more expensive for them, and that those companies now have more options to make money which reduces Netflix’s bargaining power. Netflix used to be essentially the only game in town. Now they have to compete with companies like Amazon and Google who have much larger pockets.
I think they think they draw will be streaming older shows they have rights to like Star Trek, Beverly Hills 90210, and Taxi.
I was certain that I saw HBO shows on my netflix? And as far as HBO goes, I watch it on their site…they dont have the same stuff as netflix does.
I can only think of a very few HBO things I’ve ever seen on Netflix. None of their series, maybe a couple of movies that they owned a piece of. IIRC, I think I did see the Tuskeegee Airmen miniseries on NetFlix some years back, but that’s about it. But that may not have been am HBO production.
Netflix is, as I see it, the first real internet based ‘premium’ ‘cable’ channel for cord cutters.
Now if they F this up, even with many devices offering a Netflix button on their remote, well there is still HBO and others.
One problem that HBO has is that, unless I’m mistaken, it’s tied to cable and satellite TV provider bundles that force you to pay a great deal for stuff you don’t want. A lot of people would love to have HBO by itself but prefer not to pay for the bundle of crap that the pay TV providers make you buy along with HBO access.
Until that changes I don’t think Netflix has much to worry about.
Soon to change:
I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek but it does raise a point. I’m not going to spend $6 a month to watch Taxi and $6 more to watch Seinfeld and $6 more to watch… I dunno… Step By Step? If I can’t keep it down to one, or at the most two, services that hit 90% of my needs then I’m going to just do without or rent the DVDs from Netflix. Right now we do well with Xfinity’s On Demand service coupled with Netflix’s streaming. But if you splinter those into five different independent services who refuse to license their stuff to a service like Netflix then I’m not going to chase down five different subscriptions.
That’s why the question more or less. I use Netflix, Amazon and Hulu as well as being a Dish customer. I only have Dish for two reasons, my internet service used to be unreliable and well laziness.
Is Netflix’s doom imminent? Probably not. But hey, our entertainment options change so quickly, that its doom is probably inevitable.
Blockbuster didn’t exist when I graduated from college. It became a huge corporation AND collapsed in the blink of an eye.
The way entertainment changes, who’s crazy enough to make predictions? Netflix has survived thus far by being more farsighted than the competition. But how long will that last? Who knows?
On the other hand, if you change with the times, you can survive - CBS and NBC are only a dozen years or so from their centennial anniversary.
But then if I’m a major fan of say Star Trek, I’ll just own all the dvd’s.