I'm much better off. I can take my subscriptions with me, wherever I go. I can subscribe for a month at a time. I can cancel online. I can share subscriptions.

Give it a few more years.

Give it a few more years, and we will be even better off.

I see the trend, but I'm still way better off now than I was when I had a regular cable or satellite plan. When I add up all the streaming services I pay for, it's still lower than what I was paying for DirecTV, and there's much better content now.

I also regularly rotate services. For example, Amazon Prime is how I'm getting my HBO. I'm ready to remove that channel for a few months until the shows I watch return. I've done that with Acorn (UK programming) and with Showtime.

Looking at the proliferation of silos (Peacock, AppleTV+, Disney, Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, etc.), it's going to get harder to have a decent all-in-one place to go for content. But this is what a lot of cord cutters insisted that they wanted ("Why do I have to pay for ESPN if I don't watch it?"). Turns out it might not be cheaper after all? That is unless you're willing to put a little effort into rotating active services.

One key is whether you're willing to give up live TV. If you have to pay >$50/month for essentially a streaming cable bundle, you've cut way into your savings by cutting the cord especially if you had some sort of internet/cable or internet/cable/phone bundle.

I dropped phone and cable a while back and it saves me quite a bit of money overall but I do lose some things because of it.

I don't watch sports, which I suppose is part of the reason, but I have 0 desire for live tv. I'd much rather watch what I want when I want.

Except we have fewer advertisements interrupting shows.

Smart TVs can pause live TV so you just buffer up 5 minutes and skip the ads.

You can still sign up for Netflix, Hulu, HBO and Disney+ for a fraction of the cost of a cable subscription, without commercials.

I don't think that is true. Sadly, sports is the one big thing that still prevents most people from cutting cord for real, but I prefer the current "multi streaming service" world a lot more than the old cable world.

As I said in another comment, you can just keep one subscription active at a time. It is way cheaper than cable and you can still rotate pretty quickly.

If something really good comes, you can subscribe to both for a short period, but most of the time you can do pretty well with just keeping one active.

I wish a Netflix-for-sports existed already, though. I always had to keep the basic cable just to watch my team's football (soccer) games because you can't get those in any other way.

Unlike with cable, we don't have natural monopolies keeping competition away. So now we have competition: if you don't want Netflix, you have a choice in YouTube TV, Hulu, HBO, Disney, CBS All Access, Amazon Prime Video, and more.

>> if you don't want Netflix, you have a choice in YouTube TV, Hulu, HBO, Disney, CBS All Access, Amazon Prime Video, and more

Then what does cable TV have a monopoly on?

the monopoly is on the content, now

Content isn't a monopoly. Content competes with other content. The same way content creators have been competing forever.

I didn't realize I could watch every show on every streaming platform. That is welcome news.

You can as much as you can buy every car from every car manufacturer. That’s not how a monopoly is defined.

YouTube TV isn’t available where I am. But it must be awfully expensive when it does. YouTube without commercials is ~$20 USD a month here.

How does increasing rates further create a walled garden?