Was he? I see that it looks like Ted-Lasso-for-a-buck is what started the tangent, but I don’t see that he was making that distinction. But ok.
edit-
Something else to consider is that a lot currently running shows, if you buy the whole season, the per episode price comes down from $2-3 to a lot less than 99 cents.
It’s also not $1/episode, the going rate seems to be $2.99/episode and I really don’t think that a season worth of something is worth $40-$75
I hate this new model. Pretty much every service has at least one thing I want to watch - but I want to watch them based on my mood and I usually don’t want to binge most shows. I also don’t want to have to remember to sign up for a month, then cancel, then sign up for a new service next month, then cancel, repeat over and over. For me, and the way I want to watch TV this is worse (and more expensive) than cable.
I have no idea of the logistics, I’m just saying that there’s bound to be a breaking point at which broadband-only subscriptions though cable or phone lines could become so expensive that someone else finds a way to do it cheaper.
Two options I can think of are municipalities deciding that high speed internet is becoming a necessity and the ISPs are over charging so they roll out city/county/statewide wifi for a nominal/fair price. The other thought is cell phone providers, who already have millions of antennas all over the country, own their own poles, have their own easements already in place, have the necessary connections with the government and have plenty of brand recognition could offer data-only plans. All you’d need is a modem that can convert the cell signal to ethernet/wifi. And, yes, I do know there would be issues with the speed being much slower than broadband and the existing equipment not being able to handle the load. But that can be grown.
Plus, if either of these ideas or any new ones to come start gaining any real traction, I imagine current ISPs might begin to realize they have to back off on the price hikes or, in addition to losing their cable (or landline) customers/cordcutters, they’re going to lose them as broadband customers as well.
Remember, there was a time when telcos told us the copper wires couldn’t physically transmit information faster than 56k and internet through your cable provider was unheard of. There’s always going to be innovation and the cell phone network is still very young, it’s not going to stop at 5G, it’s going to keep getting faster and more reliable. And who knows, maybe Elon Musk (or Mark Zuckerberg) will find a way to get us cheap gigabyte+ speeds through a reasonably priced, at least to the end user, satellite network.
I might be off on the details, but I recall, years and years (or decades ago) AT&T or maybe just Ma Bell in general was supposed to be, according to the FCC, leasing out their infrastructure to competitors, but decided it was cheaper to pay the fines than to allow competitors into their territory. I think the idea was that cities didn’t want every new telco to string up their own lines and tried to force AT&T to let them use theirs. But, like I said, I may be off on the details. I feel like this was an article I read 20 years ago and I’m not seeing any mention of it after some quick googling.
ETA: just to reiterate, I’m just tossing out ideas here. I’m not saying they’ll work or even that they’re plausible or feasible. My main point here is that broadband still has a lot of evolving to do and I’m guessing that sooner or later you’ll have more options than just cable or DSL. The more they push the price up, the more they’re welcoming competition.
You can buy the entire season all at once for considerably cheaper.
We have a Discovery+ account, because we watch a lot of HGTV and Food Network. And now they have the Magnolia Network as well. For us, it’s an amazing value just to not watch commercials.
But I will absolutely agree all of the Discovery channel stuff is complete garbage.
See, for me, the only such content that I would like would be Good Eats (from Food Network), and those episodes at least were on YouTube. I find it interesting that so many Dopers seem to like HGTV, as I found it boring. The only shows I ever saw were either showing off properties I couldn’t afford, or having some rich people decide which rich house they’d buy. And the latter wore out its interest for me even before I found out they actually already owned the house they were “choosing.”
If you like most of that content, then I totally see why Discovery+ would be nice. The price makes sense for the type of content they provide.