I don't want one company that owns everything, I want several companies that are able to license whatever content they want. And ideally the customer can choose between a subscription that includes everything, and paying for content a la carte, or maybe subscriptions that focus on specific kinds of content (scifi/fantasy, stuff for kids, old movies, international, sports, etc.) regardless of what company made it.
Streaming is infinitely better.
On-demand cable content existed and was significant at the tail end of the period when cable was still dominant, so it is probably lost of most people's baseline (at least, those that didn't either abandon it early or never had it at all) in comparing to cable.
Cable in its heyday was expensive, even for a low tier package with CNN, TNT, MTV, Nickelodeon and other non-premium channels. Most people did not have premium channels like HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Starz, etc. Even Disney was a paid add-on in the early 90s. Adding or removing those channels at the minimum meant calling customer service and in certain eras of cable technology could even mean waiting on a tech visit to provision physical descrambling equipment. And obviously TV was linear, not on-demand.
If you watch a series or movie here and there, and aren't a big TV viewer, the streaming era is much, much cheaper with greater choice. You can often even access what you want to watch through a free trial, a single-month subscription, or a free service like Tubi or Pluto. Movie rental options are much better, more convenient, and cheaper (often even before adjusting for inflation) than Blockbuster, and you have access to much better information before you pull the trigger on renting a movie you haven't heard of before.
Now these are all solved problems, so there is no benefit in trying to compete on making a better platform / service. The only thing left is competing on content.
> I want several companies that are able to license whatever content they want. And ideally the customer can choose between a subscription that includes everything, and paying for content a la carte, or maybe subscriptions that focus on specific kinds of content
This seems like splitting hairs, it's almost exactly what we do have. You can still buy and rent individual shows & movies from Apple and Amazon and other providers. Or you can subscribe to services. The only difference is there is no one big "subscription that includes everything", you need 10 different $15 subscriptions to get everything. Again, kind of splitting hairs though. The one big subscription would probably be the same price as everything combined anyway.
Let's say I like Show A and Show B. Show A is available on Provider 1 and Provider 2, Show B is available at Provider 2 and Provider 3. Thanks to overlapping content, I can subscribe to Provider 2 and I can watch both of my favorite shows.
But there was a long period even after cable came in for more channels and potentially better reception when TV was largely on a set schedule.
The things you want arn't going to happen under the current operating procedures of the United States of America.
I hope that's clear.
But watching specific stuff you want is hell. The cognitive load of searching a bunch of services, or finding a site that tells you where to watch, then it’s not in that same service in your country, you might have to pay extra, or sign up for another streaming service or… Holy cow, it’s a terrible experience.
I’m not saying I have a better idea, or that it couldn’t be worse. But it’s terrible.
Right now, you can pretty much rent any movie you want through Amazon Prime with not late fee or rewind penalty, but you have to pay a couple of (extra!) dollars to do it. This is, undebatably, a massive improvement over the way it used to be in every way, but it still bothers me even though I can't put my finger on exactly why.
Exactly the correct solution.
We did something similar with movie theaters and film studios for decades, up until a couple years ago. Same sort of problem, same solution should work.
Go to the Prime Video website, or check your settings in Prime Video on your device.
I have lived a video ad free life for decades. I am convinced video ads do bad things to our brains. In aggregate, beyond any individual impact they may or may not have.
Ad blockers, ad free YouTube, Kagi, … whatever it takes.
Sad that we can't have nice things, but capitalism must be fed and I guess good, targeted recommendation algorithms are anti-capital.
Netflix also hides a ton of their content and aggressively pushes whatever is new because it makes it easier for them to get immediate metrics on how popular something is.
Right now, you're pretty much stuck watching whatever is being "streamed in that moment" as it is. For example, netflix added the austin powers movies in October, but by Dec 1 they were removed. You had a window of just 2 months to watch and if you missed them you're stuck waiting for them to "rerun" just like regular TV. I expect that trend to continue with shorter and shorter windows as Netflix pushes people to watch shows when they want you to watch them.
It's wild to long for the day of 'caring', 'sane', Reagan era corporate 'governance'.
Then they all copied Netflix, because the stockmarket was rewarding it, and had to start dealing with billing, customer retention, technology platforms, advertising platforms. And they all lost a ton of money a doing it.
One could go to the favorite department store and get movies from all studios right next to each other, sorted by genre or title or similar.
Maybe not the broke 20 year old per another comment. (Who doesn't have a lot of money anyway.) But a lot of people are happy and able to pay for a subscription that doesn't involve screwing around with a lot of dodgy stuff.
If I could pay for individual TV shows and actually own them I'd definitely prefer that over the disaster we have today. Buying a blue-ray and ripping it is not very practical and it's by design.
To have an ads/no ads option with cable, you need 2 distinct channels with different programming, as you need something fill what would be the ad breaks. With an on-demand platform, there is no fixed schedule, so you can insert ads at will without having to account for that.
So even if the market for no ads is small, it doesn't cost them much to provide that option, and they just have to price it above how much they get from ads to make a profit. Even the seldom used YouTube Premium is actually quite profitable for Google. Streaming platforms won't miss that opportunity.
Advertising was with us for centuries, but it took until last few decades for it to evolve into a social cancer it is today.
It's probably got something to do with copyright. Like the way it interacts with markets makes this sort of arrangement net-harmful pretty much any time you see it.
Wouldn't be so bad if the player didn't suck. You'd think video streaming chrome would be a solved problem by now, but it's not, and somehow we're regressing on this front.
To say that "we have solved ranking" because Netflix decided to measure shallow metrics and addiction is... specious at best. Instead the tech industry (in all media domains, not just streaming video) replaced improving platforms and services in meaningful ways with surveillance and revenue extraction.
(So the price increases are about finding the revenue maximizing price for the ad free tiers, not about overall profit)
Regan's politics are completely orthogonal to IP content today.
(Actually, I can afford it but I'm ... frugal.)
In my city people literally put boxes of DVDs on the street and I can get several months of movies to watch by just taking a casual stroll in my neighborhood.
I would say it is monopoly.
If you are a luxury brand you may sell your pen in a brand store only and limit access and will have some business.
But other companies will produce comparable pens and then your only moat is the brand identity but in all objective criteria the other pens are equal.
With intellectual work you got the monopoly. If I want the Taylor Swift song I don't want Lady Gaga, even though both may be good. If I want a Batman movie, I don't want Iron Man. These products aren't comparable in the same way. And another vendor (studio) can't produce an equal product in the same way as with the pen example.
It's sports that really have driven me away. I like collegiate wrestling. This is by no means a mainstream sport. But to watch what I want, I need to subscribe to flowrestling, ESPN, B1G, and BTN. The last two are really mind blowing, because the big 10 seems to think I need two subscriptions to watch a single season for a niche sport.
It's just too much for me to bear -- not financially, but morally. I won't reward such behavior, so I just don't watch.
Then there are all the games that are on broadcast and could normally watch them for free, but unless you have an antenna, you need to subscribe to get your local channel.
Now these leagues need to contend with my family and all the others like it where the kids won't have the nostalgia for that game that was on every Sunday. We don't watch the games, so we don't go to the games, so they'll never grow into being fans themselves.
The NHL does seem to try putting their games in front of their fans as the lone exception.
I suspect they just push what they want you to watch, like their own content. Seems that way to me at least, based on their quite shitty "recommendations"
You're right, but the switching cost is super easy, and _most_ of the time, these networks aren't putting out new content that I care that much about, so I've found it easiest to just swap services, keeping one subscription active at a time, and then switching again when I've finished watching everything interesting on the next.
https://medium.com/@danial.a/how-netflix-used-data-to-create...
I don't know. Music streaming services do pretty much follow this separation of content and service. At least unless you really care about exactly which music you can access which I think most people don't.
(That's probably partly why music streaming services don't compete on content; most people don't care exactly which funky music they're listening to as long as it is funky, and had most of the popular stuff. But they definitely care if they want to watch Stranger Things and they can't watch Stranger Things but maybe you're interested in these other crap knock-offs?)
Anyway the point is music streaming services still find ways to compete. I guess they would prefer it if they could compete on content though.
Analog cable channels were on a wider range of frequencies than regular TV (radio broadcast) channels. So the VCR's tuner had to be "cable ready".
Some cable channels, especially premium channels, were "scrambled", which meant you needed a cable box to tune them. So the VCR, by itself, could only record the basic channels that came with all cable packages. To record something from a movie channel (HBO, Showtime, etc.), you needed the cable box to tune it in and provide an unscrambled signal to your VCR.
And that meant the cable box needed to be set to the correct channel at the time the VCR woke up and started recording. The simple method was to leave it on the correct channel, but that was tedious and error prone. As I recall, there were also VCRs that could send a command to the cable box to turn it on (emulating the cable box remote) and set the channel, but you had to set that up.
Later, when digital cable came along, you needed the cable box involved for every recording because the channels were no longer coming over the wire in a format that the VCR could tune in.
So yeah, you could do it, but it was a pain.
Some recommendations and playlists I guess. Most of us (outside of Spotify) get them because of a bundle with other offerings from a vendor. Spotify definitely has a following but I don't really care much and have an Apple bundle anyway.
Exactly how do you pass a law in 2025 that no one is allowed to create their own content and publish it on the internet?
Cable TV started out as a means to broadcast network TV in areas where they couldn’t get it over the air. Those stations always had ads.
Then came nationwide rebroadcast of local “SuperStations” in Atlanta (TBS) and Chicago (WGN) with ads.
There has never been a time where basic cable didn’t have ads
That could be a way to make videos available for free but inconvenient enough that people would pay for a more convenient way, just as they do with books.
I'd guess they push you to their content for the same reason they make that content in the first place: they believe you'll like it and keep watching it.
Ad placement is one wrinkle that would incentivize promoting their own content, but I don't get the impression that's big enough to make the difference at the margins.
Idk. I can imagine an alternate universe where Taylor Swift's new album was exclusive to Spotify. All the Swifties using Apple Music probably aren't interested in "Taylor Swift knockoffs".
It's not entirely obvious to me why this hasn't happened.
> The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.
https://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-service-...
If they successfully steer you towards Netflix produced content, you're less sensitive to what happens to the licensed content.
I wouldn't tbh, though I'll admit I'm speculating solely on public information. During the 2023 strikes, SAG-AFTRA and the WGA negotiated additional residuals based upon whether 20% of the streaming services subscriber base viewed the content within 90 days of release.[1] So, streaming platforms are evidently willing to share subscriber viewership data with 3rd parties if it's a contractual requirement.
I would be surprised if content licensors haven't negotiated an as good or better deal for themselves.
[1] https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/sag-aftra-streaming-bonus-...
Having worked close to the recsys folks at Netflix, I can tell you that this statement couldn't be further from the truth.
Vertical integration was the key problem back then. Major studios owned major cinema chains. They made it hard for independent cinemas to show the films people wanted, and they made it very hard for independent filmmakers to get their films shown anywhere. It was highly anti-competitive.
I wouldn't expect the U.S. government to step in this time around though. It's very clear that competition and benefiting consumers are no longer priorities.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
How does that work?
The thing to understand is that the benefits of competition isn't price. It's innovation. Sometimes that innovation is how to make a component cheaper but other times it's new components. The iPhone was not the cheapest phone when it was released.
After that came ads for what was going to shown on other channels as well, but again they'd never interrupt the programs you were watching and there zero ads for things like cars or laundry detergent.
Then slowly, a few channels started adding them in various formats until eventually there was little difference between ads shown on cable and ads on broadcast TV
Here's an article from the 80s talking about ads slowly but surely encroaching on what was essentially an ad free space: https://web.archive.org/web/20180120172105/https://www.nytim...
some choice quotes:
> When cable first came on the scene, one of the most important points it made was that it was a non-commercial alternative to television,'' she says. ''Now advertisers are saying, 'Here's another place to think of on a costper-thousand basis.' ''
> A much-cited - and widely disputed - study by the Benton & Bowles advertising agency found that the public would accept advertising if it meant a reduction or a holding-of-the-line on subscription fees
> The bottom-line assessment of cable advertising is that it is too good to turn down. ''Who wants advertising on cable?'' Mr. Dann asks rhetorically. ''Anyone who wants to make money.''
MTV was also an early cable station and it launched in 1981 - with ads. USA, CNN, ESPN and Nick also came around in 1979-1980 - with ads from day one.
This is an article from 1981 in the NYT.
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...
BTW, I’m 51.
If retransmitted broadcast TVs had ads - the first content on cable - and the superstations, and the first pure cable channels, how could there have been a time without ads? There were never national basic cable stations that weren’t trying to sell ads from day one.
The article said people thought there wouldn’t be ads as cable got more popular - ie as cable channels popped up and cable became more than just a way to rebroadcast OTA TV.
This argument comes up all of the time on HN
At your age, if you never saw ad free cable you were either a late adopter or you just had a terrible local cable provider.
That said, my interpretation is that bands don’t really make a lot of money from streaming, it’s more of a promotional platform for them so it makes sense to just be everywhere to be seen. This is not true for tv/films.
Basic cable delivered in order
- broadcast TV stations - with ads
- “Superstations” - with ads and your neighbors couldn’t get TBS unless they lived in metro Atlanta
- MTV, Nickelodeon, ESPN, USA, CNN etc - with ads and informercials
Everything I find was that HBO was first. But not basic cable in 1972. CSPAN in 1979 (well admittedly that didn’t have commercials). Then TBS
By 1983, I remember I had about 20 channels - two each of NBC, CBS, ABC - CNN, MTV, TBS, Nickelodeon, USA, some medical precursor to Lifetime, CBN, WGN, the weather channel, are the ones I can remember
This sounds fine in theory, but how would it work if the content were continuously changing? For example, the final straw that made my cut the cord of cable-tv was getting locked into a 3yr plan for cable TV only to get the Disney channel for the kids -- only to learn that Verizon/Disney had a fight and I lost the channel. https://deadline.com/2018/12/disney-warns-verizon-fios-custo...
Now, i'm still locked into the 3yr plan with Verizon but dont have the content I wanted. I know people complain about paying $10 or $15 for a streaming service, but imagine paying $100 for cable TV and being locked into a 3yr contract. I'd much, much rather have a la carte services I can pick and choose and cancel as desired.
However, if you're talking about the Amazon Prime TV model, then I'd totally agree with you. I think that is the ideal model -- Prime is a nominal cost (for now) and you can add/remove channels as you wish.
Then on top of that, similar to YouTube, half of that content are things I have already watched. HBO and Amazon are even worse in this aspect but it just drives me crazy, feels like seeing the same 100 movie options over and over for months. Has the catalog shrinked that much over the years?
I started keeping a separate list of films to watch on IMDB, but 6/10 times they are not available on any service except for rent in AppleTV.
The sales pitch was that cable channels didn't have ads because your fees paid for those channels instead, but obviously broadcast TV would still include ads because the ads were just part of the broadcast. Cable programing was very limited, but the promise was it would get better and it was still ad free and looked better than TV over rabbit ears and you got access to broadcast TV in that same quality. It was a pretty easy sell! I doubt many people would have paid for cable if it only offered broadcast TV which most people were already getting for free. I mean, the quality jump was nice, but it's not like most of us hadn't been putting up with it just fine. For people who couldn't get a decent signal I could see it though.
At some point the number of channels expanded to include national channels. Which national channels you got and when depended on your cable provider and whatever agreements they reached for those feeds. Then all you had were national channels. You might even remember ads on some of those channels asking you to call your cable provider and demand certain other national channels that weren't yet avilable in your area.
Eventually cable TV sort of homogenized and everyone pretty much everyone had access to the same set of channels no matter where they were even as some channels changed or went away entirely. Channels were split between premium and basic, then split again to basic, expanded basic, and premium and then split again to multiple package tiers etc. That's how I remember it anyway.
Do Porsche dealerships have a monopoly on Porsches because only they sell Porsches, and you want a Porsche from somewhere else?
If your song is streamed 10 million times chances are a festival will call your manager. The money is in concerts not albums.
What we see now is that old system reforming around streaming.
A large profit margin is not something that a business is owed.
Live TV? Ads. Shows available as part of streaming packages for channels included in live TV? Ads. Random other stuff "due to streaming rights"? Ads.
At this point I pretty much assume any non-Disney programming that isn't a Hulu original will have ads, and access it by other means, partly as a minor act of civil disobedience, but mostly because I'm impatient (i.e., never in my life have I actually watched television advertising, even when forced to sit through it).
If Porsche were to do that, a lot of customers would probably switch to BMW or Audi instead. But with Movies and TV, competing products are less fungible.