Is cord-cutting losing its appeal as streaming becomes more expensive than cable?

[midian182]

In brief: Like everything else in these economically challenging times, streaming is becoming more expensive. With so many companies raising their prices, subscribing to the premium services will cost $87 this fall, while the average cable TV package costs $83 per month. It begs the question: is the era of cheap streaming services and cord-cutting over?

Disney announced last week that it will be introducing price increases across all of its ad-free services and packages, including a 27% hike for Disney+ and a 20% jump for Hulu. It marks the second time in 12 months that Disney has confirmed price rises. It also means that the service now costs double the $6.99 it started with in 2019.

The Financial Times writes that as of fall, the $87 per month price to subscribe to the top US streaming services is $14 more than it was one year earlier ($73).

Back in 2020 when the streaming industry was one of those areas being boosted by the pandemic, it was estimated that 31.2 million households would "cut the cord" by the end of the year, and that by the end of 2024, fewer than half of US households will subscribe to a traditional pay TV service. But that may no longer be the case.

One of the main factors prompting cord-cutters was the high prices, especially when compared to the then-much-cheaper streaming options. But the FT notes that the average cable TV package is now $4 cheaper than subscribing to all the premium streamers. It's led to the publication's declaration that the era of cheap streaming is now over.

Another reason people used to cut the cord in favor of streaming was commercials. But companies such as Netflix and Disney now offer ad-supported tiers for lower prices. Disney's version has 3.3 million subscribers, and about 40% of its new subs opt for this plan.

Password sharing, once a big benefit of streaming, is also being killed off. Netflix already charges those who share their login credentials extra, while Disney said it will be doing the same, likely starting next year.

One thing that streaming still has over traditional TV is that customers can pick and choose which services they prefer and easily pause their subscriptions – many people cancel and then resubscribe when flagship shows like Stranger Things or The Mandalorian return.

It'll be interesting to see if customers start abandoning streaming services as prices continue to rise. Disney CEO Bob Iger claimed the number of people who canceled their subs last time prices went up was insignificant, but Disney could lose a lot more people once its plans become more expensive on October 12.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/99770-cord-cutting-loses-edge-streaming-becomes-more-expensive.html

 

[yRaz]

People will just go back to pirating. People are willing to pay what they're willing(and able) to pay. I canceled Netflix when they went woke, I'll never pay for cable again and the only things I'm really interested in are hockey games and American football. And to watch my favorite sports ball games I can either walk around the corner to the bar or go over my friends house. Very little about watching the game is about watching the game anyway. Frankly, most of the fun of watching sports ball is the crowd experience and you can't buy that from the cable company at any price.

 

[Uncle Al]

Absolutely correct ..... streaming companies have taken advantage with over inflated prices and constant repeat's on channels so there is very little, if any value. Now days it's better to stick with the free stuff and get your local shows over the airways .....

 

[UdyrL]

The Financial Times writes

A link to an article that needs a subscription while talking about how expensive it is to subscribe to streaming services.

Why would anyone in their right mind subscribe to all services at once? It doesn't make sense if you're not watching TV 24/7. Get whatever service(s) with the show you want to watch, then cut it out when you're not interested in anything else. Many did that with HBO when Game of Thrones was a thing.

 

[3volv3d]

This Is how companies get you suckered in. They low ball. Create a user base. Sting the loyal /lazy customers with price hikes until they bail, then offer them a deal.
Cable did it.
Stream companies will too.
But it will just force people to look for cheaper alternatives, p2p, or give up entirely.
Most movies are old and seen before or remakes and reboots and disappointing.
TV is hit and miss, and of it hits milked until its tired.
The ideal thing would to have a price that gets everyone in, but for some reason they don't want that.
Look at CoD dlc, gun art costing £8 to £25 per pack. I'm sure they would make more money at a lower price, before they make the update that sinks their user base.
I don't see the logic.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

I pay for Netflix and Discovery+ and I've been teetering on the wall for a while about dropping Netflix. Not much comes up on Netflix that I find entertaining to watch, my wife and son watch it from time to time and that's about it. Anything else I connect to is shared between family and even then I don't watch those streaming channels very often.

Sure, you can juggle streaming subs if you like doing that.....but I'm not one to spend my time trying to find out what shows are showing up on what streaming service I may want to see so I can juggle subscriptions - I've got better things to do with my time.

 

[Dimitriid]

Key differences is that they know people won't go back to cable:

1) There's no easy way for cable to deliver on-demand content. People often forget that not being able to choose what to watch and having to do stuff like follow schedules, being stuck with certain shows depending on other obligations, having foresight to program recording devices, etc. Were all terrible compared to on-demand content.

2) Related to the previous point, there's nothing forcing you to pay for all streaming services meaning that most people will only pay for a couple at best. More over there's nothing they can do about cross-service sharing I.e. On my household I pay for prime and hbo, other family members pick up the check for Netflix and they might add something else in the future. There's no password sharing since it's the same household but there's nothing HBO can do to make the house buy 2 separate HBO accounts just because there's 2 people using it and so on. The alternative is to pay for cable which always packages channels together and can't get rid of some of the stuff at least.

3) This is a bit more long term but it is a reasonable assumption that the reason why cable cutting is popular is because it's increasingly popular among milennials and maybe Gen Xers but as even these people grow older still even the compromise that was a service like Netflix already will seem outdated: the future isn't going to look like 'Oh I need Netflix to watch my favorite shows on demand!' It will be 'I like X and Y shows. What do you mean which paid streaming service? It's just on youtube or apple tv or whatever, its everywhere.'

Meaning that the services will be contested by not necessarily just user generated content exclusively but shows that find a way to monetize and finance themselves outside of being carefully curated or ordered into existence by a platform like Netflix or Amazon, which is basically almost the same as the old networks in that regard.

 

[Nobina]

TV has nothing interesting on most of the time and I'm not subscribing to watch a movie twice a year so I just resort to piracy.

 

[Trapped Nowhere]

What are people using to track movie releases/shows lmao. RBG was my goto. Not sure what else is organized. IMDB seems trash at sorting

 

[ScottSoapbox]

It’s the choice that matters. Low switching costs for consumers mean the services have to actually compete.

You can charge higher prices IF you offer more value (rather than it’s a Tuesday and we say so like the old cable monopoly power way).

 

[SirDigby]

Very grateful I work for telecoms companies. Used to work for BT so got real cheap internet and TV, so didn't mind paying for streaming services. Now I work for Sky (Comcast owned), so again, cheap internet, real cheap TV (much better quality than BT's offering), half price Netflix, includes Paramount, Peacock & Discovery (same for all sky customers), Disney+ free as promo offers for Samsung phones, so the only ones we actually pay for is Amazon (included in prime which we'd have anyway as my wife has 0 patience) and Apple+ (which I need to make a bit more use of).

Can absolutely understand why people are so pissed off by streaming services, the fragmentation in the UK is a bit behind in the US as Paramount, Discovery, Peacock, HBO etc haven't *really* made it into the UK but they're starting to come in as they've decoupled the channels from TV packages and introduced them as free extra streaming services. I can see in a year or two introducing them as paid extras. Our Disney+ is also all the Disney & Fox stuff where I understand in USA it's Disney stuff and then Fox is on Hulu?

While it's all pretty expensive, it's not going to suck too much until they lock you into fixed term contracts, while they're still 1 month rolling you have the option to cut and chose which streaming services you want that month if you don't mind the micro management.

 

[RGRem]

You can spend a lot or not depending on what you need. Most people don't need broadcast TV now. You can use an antenna and those who can't can get all the programming the next day or a few days later by going to each channel's website. Then you look up what you want to watch by using a website. I use Metacritic TV Premier dates and Zap2it.

So basically you see what you want to watch in advance and decide how you want to watch it and only sign up for those services one or a few at a time for only that length of time. I use a base of Netflix because even though it is a pain to find stuff among all the stuff, I can always find something I want to watch.

Make a list, check the list for new stuff, and add and drop.

 

[wiyosaya]

Why would anyone in their right mind subscribe to all services at once? It doesn't make sense if you're not watching TV 24/7. Get whatever service(s) with the show you want to watch, then cut it out when you're not interested in anything else. Many did that with HBO when Game of Thrones was a thing.

My thoughts exactly. I'm on a Disney+/Hulu+ special for $4.99/mo. When that is up, I'm cancelling my subscription.

IMO, anyone who would subscribe to all the services at once is not in their right mind. There is too much stuff out there and not all of it appeals to everyone. It's why I dropped Dishnetwork - because there were only 5-channels I watched out of what, 500+? We do subscribe to Netflix and will maintain only that subscription because Netflix has material that we regularly watch.

What do you mean which paid streaming service? It's just on youtube or apple tv or whatever, its everywhere.'

For me, its OTA and recorded on Media Portal. I'm not paying for things I can get for free OTA.

This Is how companies get you suckered in. They low ball. Create a user base. Sting the loyal /lazy customers with price hikes until they bail, then offer them a deal.
Cable did it.
Stream companies will too.
But it will just force people to look for cheaper alternatives, p2p, or give up entirely.
Most movies are old and seen before or remakes and reboots and disappointing.
TV is hit and miss, and of it hits milked until its tired.
The ideal thing would to have a price that gets everyone in, but for some reason they don't want that.
Look at CoD dlc, gun art costing £8 to £25 per pack. I'm sure they would make more money at a lower price, before they make the update that sinks their user base.
I don't see the logic.

Personally, I think most people will catch on to the game and just drop their subscriptions. It's the streaming services that started this crap by sequestering their content to their streaming service - and content providers like Disney+ have found that they are not making the windfall profits off of the streaming fad like they expected - so they raise their prices and introduce advertising. CNN's attempt at a streaming service was an EPIC FAIL. It lasted a whole month. And Hulu's advertising is so poorly executed that its a joke, IMO. Sometimes, there is no volume for the commercial and they disable the app's mute button, but I guess they forgot that there's many more "mute" avenues down the line from their app. Not that I would buy anything advertised there nor will I succumb to the fear-mongering drug advertisements.

IMO, I highly doubt that streaming services will see the revenue from their endeavors as cable/satellite once did. As I see it, those days are gone forever.

 

[viperfl]

It's because streaming services like Disney and Paramount made a few of their shows and movies exclusive to their own streaming service. Because Netflix is so evil. For example, you can watch NCIS on Netflix up to a certain point. The rest of the seasons you need to get Paramount. You use to be able to watch Star Trek on Netflix but Paramount pulled it and made it exclusive to their own streaming service. You won't be able to watch Star Wars on any other streaming service other than Disney+.

So by the time you get all the paid streaming services, yeah it will cost just as much as cable.

 

[polord]

And newsgroups, vpn prices are (almost) still same price for a long time….

 

[loki1944]

I still watch VHS and dvd movies; I abandoned amazon prime video years ago and never looked back.

 

[axiomatic13]

Oh yeah, I am certainly not going back to coax cable TV. The quality is atrocious. Arrrr Matey! It's back to the sea!

 

[toooooot]

This Is how companies get you suckered in. They low ball. Create a user base. Sting the loyal /lazy customers with price hikes until they bail, then offer them a deal.
Cable did it.
Stream companies will too.
But it will just force people to look for cheaper alternatives, p2p, or give up entirely.
Most movies are old and seen before or remakes and reboots and disappointing.
TV is hit and miss, and of it hits milked until its tired.
The ideal thing would to have a price that gets everyone in, but for some reason they don't want that.
Look at CoD dlc, gun art costing £8 to £25 per pack. I'm sure they would make more money at a lower price, before they make the update that sinks their user base.
I don't see the logic.

As someone who playd cod, it is a mental thing. That feeling of a new game, it is enough to buy a new game. And despite all of its problems, cod is one of the if not the most popular competitive game. No matter how many games will flop, there will always be a market for people who want to competitively kill each other online.

 

[p51d007]

I just have basic cable because since the stupid FCC mandated digital broadcast (so they could sell the analog frequencies and make $$$) the over the air doesn't pick up where I am.
If it wasn't for the stuff I've already recorded movie wise, and channels like Grit, MeTv, AntennaTV, Cozi I wouldn't watch tv. Most of the stuff today is crap woke nonsense.

 

[Scodd]

I canceled Netflix when they went woke.

I subscribed for that very reason.

 

[toooooot]

I remember when my friends said it is easier to get Netflix than to pirate.
That was the Netflix that leased all the best shows from other companies and was dirty cheap.
The process is in reverse now. With so many utterly horrible shows and movies, it is easier to pirate few movies and shows.
All heil piracy.
P.S. I find their attempt to end piracy laughable.
You are not hurting pirates, you are liberating them from
your content.

 

[PEnnn]

People subscribe to 4-5 streaming services (which they'll never have enough time to watch in 24 hours - despite the DVR! ) then whine their bill is $200 per month!

I know a couple next door who watch nothing by ONE channel 99% of the time, and whine the whole time their 400+ channels are costing them $175.... MAGA brains at work!

Drop the stuff you'll never / rarely watch and stop complaining that each of your streaming services went by by 2 bucks!!

 

[RandomWAN]

Between the fragmentation, the move to charge more money to avoid ads, and the drive to make more provider grown shows over carrying what people already want to watch is going to drive overall subscriptions down as people either move back to pirating or just away in general. Some will go back to cable, but online streaming services became what they are in people's drive to leave that model behind and then the streaming services tried to reproduce something akin to that model in chasing profits.

I've eliminated all streaming services outside of Amazon and I only have that because of the other features of Amazon I use. I rarely use their streaming service as it is, since they have a pretty poor selection once you've been on the platform long enough and often misrepresent movie genres in an attempt to make it look like they have more titles than they do. Most of their titles are just cheap garbage that they got licensing to stream for pennies.

 

[Dimitrios]

It's because streaming services like Disney and Paramount made a few of their shows and movies exclusive to their own streaming service. Because Netflix is so evil. For example, you can watch NCIS on Netflix up to a certain point. The rest of the seasons you need to get Paramount. You use to be able to watch Star Trek on Netflix but Paramount pulled it and made it exclusive to their own streaming service. You won't be able to watch Star Wars on any other streaming service other than Disney+.

So by the time you get all the paid streaming services, yeah it will cost just as much as cable.

Wow that's shady.

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

Networks have followed the crowd. Cable was once king, then streaming came along to offer better and now the networks have ruined it. Nothing like a vpn, a computer, and HDMI cable at times.