This. Unless Disney buys up everything.
I for one don’t want to pay forever for one or two shows. I get Netflix and Acorn, and I might dump Acorn. What I would really want is to be able to buy a certain number of hours a week, to be distributed across a bunch of streaming services.
I might watch the new Picard show, but I’m not going to enroll the CBS service for it. Ditto for a ton of other things. I have too much to watch already.
Who will win the streaming wars?
That’d be me.
I’m getting so sick of every media conglomerate wanting you to pay for their streaming services, that I’ve cancelled cable and most others, and have started… going outside, reading (online and literal for real books), drawing, woodworking… and of course spending too much time here (but y’all are more entertaining, and certainly quirkier, than most TV series).
Thanks for the articles but as the Vox article says, the percentage of Netflix’s content that comes from those studios is only measured on the basis of hours. The big question is where the stuff people actually watch comes from. I don’t know but I’m sure Netflix knows quite precisely. And that’s the reason they spent $100 million to extend the Friends streaming agreement. A few years ago, Netflix had a deal to license all of Starz’ content for only $25 million a year. That was of course before everyone figured out the true value of content.
What about audio?
I stream mostly music. More than visual. Fortunately, there still is a lot of free music streaming. From NPR, college stations, etc.
The comment I was referring to initially was whether Netflix had enough content to compete. That’s an hours question, and Netflix’s greatest strength - something for everyone. If you have a family, everyone is watching a few things different from everyone else.
Losing Friends (to Peacock?) and The Office (to Warner’s HBO Max) will hurt, but it’s not Disney that’s really going to be taking from Netflix. It’s the broadcast networks taking sitcoms people just constantly rewatch.
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I’d be really surprised if Apple bought Netflix.
As would I, but they could do it with the spare change in Tim Cook’s waiting room chair cushions.
They have a ridiculous pile of gold coins in their Scrooge McDuck vault.
I was just using $0.25/episode as an example. My point was that they might be able to essentially discount their service for price-sensitive customers if they offered an a-la-carte price that didn’t involve a subscription model.
For example, I’d like to see “The Mandalorian” on Disney+, but I’m not interested in paying $84(or $69 if I do it today) for the privilege of watching eight 30-40 minute episodes. Nor am I really interested in paying $16 for four hours of content, when I already have a Hulu and Netflix account.
That’s my point- they could come up with some kind of pricing structure that I might be interested in, but as it stands, they’re just losing a customer (and presumably plenty of others).
But why would they do that? Disney+ is using “The Mandalorian” as a hook to get people onto their service. For those it doesn’t grab, there are many others it does - if only for a month or two. People subscribe to Netflix for a couple months for Stranger Things. People subscribe to Prime Video for a month for Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Those services are hoping that the month you are on there, you find something else you like and that subscription either gets extended or you start subbing during the seasons of the series you found. Selling by the episode would likely reduce how much money they would make.
Taco Bell.
Oh, wait, those were the franchise wars…
I for one am dubious of a future where I now have to pay each channel directly and separately. How long before they’re charging a premium for certain shows?
The thing that makes streaming so attractive is that everything already produced is available, and there are no longterm contracts.
I subscribe to Prime (mainly for the shipping) and Netflix (because of its vast library) all year long, but my third service rotates. One month it’s Hulu, then CBS All Access, etc… This month, for example, I have AppleTV+ as my third streaming channel.
One month is plenty long enough to catch up on the service’s original shows I care about, then I cancel and re-sub once those originals release new seasons.
From my perspective, I don’t really care if it ends up being a dozen different streaming providers I want to keep up with. I can easily do that for the cost of three services. More than 12 and I have to up that to the cost of four services, but big whoop.
In terms of content libraries, I haven’t seen any streamer with anywhere remotely close to the library of original content I want to watch on Prime and Netflix. The AppleTV+ library is laughably sparse, and the Disney originals are meh at best, at least for me. Hulu probably has the most outside of Prime and Netflix, but I burned through all of Handmaid’s Tale, Castle Rock and Casual in about three weeks.
Netflix. Not even close. Followed by PrimeVideo.
Disney+ by eschewing a world wide release has really set itself up to fail. It’s almost as if they want piracy to comeback.