I think what makes people frustrated is that cable channels were _themed_. I was frustrated that I was paying for TLC and Bravo because I didn't watch reality tv. I was paying for Discovery even though I didn't watch nature shows. I was paying for Lifetime even though I didn't watch cheap shows for women. I was paying for ESPN even though I didn't watch sports.
I wanted to pay for the comedy, the scifi/syfy, the cartoons, and the kids programming. That was, like, five or six channels.
Which streaming service do I go to now for the science fiction? Which streaming service do I go to now for the horror or the feel-good sitcoms?
Streaming arose during the collapse of genre channels. There are now three genres of programming: prestige, drek, and children's.
When it comes to that business sense, we probably have the closest thing to perfection today. Streaming services are forced to compete against each other, with the only real constraints being the cost/restrictions of licensing content and the cost of distribution (i.e. not controlling infrastructure to the home). It is very easy and relatively inexpensive to pick and choose, provided that you are willing to defer your viewing. You also have the choice between large streaming services that offer a broad range of genres and smaller ones that offer more specialized programming.
Yes, that closest thing to perfection is far from perfect. On the other hand, I very much doubt that we are going to get anything closer unless we are willing to pay the price.
Themed packages did and do exist, though most channels for cable were normally available mainly through stacked tiers. But alongside the main generic tiers, language-specific (especially spanish language) and some other (sports, often) themed packages were available from many cable providers, and premium channels were often available in themed groups as well as individually.
This is something I've been feeling for awhile but haven't managed to articulate this clearly. All new programming is either a mega-budget tentpole or it's something to fill out the menus.
Some of it is genuinely a failure. Funding an entertainment project is always a pig in a poke. Even promising things sometimes just flop. But streaming makes it possible to lower the opportunity costs of those flops, so they can take bigger chances.
In the sense that an F-22 is used for CAS / bombing in The Tomorrow War (which I'd assume was one of Amazon's better funded efforts).
A lot of them just feel like "Oh, you just gave some money to people, removed the usual checks and balances that exist in filming, and told them to deliver a movie ASAP."
It'd be one thing if they were making niche or more interesting content, but it feels like they're mostly just making more action movies and baking shows... faster and at lower quality.
Describes Red Notice by Netflix
How does one even write lines like:
"We need to work together!" "I won't give up on you!"
It's like an AI bot wrote the dialog.
The thing is so ripe it would have been easy to take the next step and make it a sly comedy.
Yes, sometimes you just want to watch a specific show and you want to watch it now, and the streaming services are great for that.
But sometimes you just want to turn on the TV and watch something, anything, without really making a choice. I still have cable because it's included in the rent, and sometimes it's nice to just switch the channel to FXX or something and get maybe an old episode of the Simpsons, or a new episode, or maybe some Family guy, or maybe an old episode of some other comedy series, or maybe something completely new.
And that's nice and has value, but streaming services absolutely suck at that, because you always have to make a choice yourself with them.
It was relaxing to me, post- many cable channels (81?), pre- guide/DVR, to just click through.
"Oh, Armageddon is on again. Hercules. (flip, flip, flip)" and then settle on something random, pulled from what's currently playing.
It used to be: survey and then choose from a very limited but rotating subset of all content.
Now it's: choose from all content ever and then find where the content lives and then figure out how much of it you want to watch.
For movies, the new way seems superior. For TV, it feels like a lot has been lost. And overall, I feel like the new system definitely leads to winner-take-all.
It's why I still subscribe to satellite radio.
(and yes, I've thought about subscribing to video service from Spectrum, but I'm not a huge TV watcher)
https://about.netflix.com/en/news/play-something-netflix-doe...
It can pick either something you're already watching (TV series or unfinished movie), or guess something based on what it has learned about you. Of course it's just the Netflix catalog, but that's pretty extensive.
It sounds godawful to me, so I've never used it. But it sounds like almost precisely what you just asked for.
Today, I have about 700 movied ripped from DVDs (and the DVDs still in boxes somewhere), and 500 movies purchased on iTunes. I don't subscribe to Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, or any other streaming service because, again, 99% of it is dreck I can't stand. So instead I have a collection of 1200 movies that I like and specifically chose and purchased. Some are better than others, but they're all ones I like.
iTunes sells licenses, not movies. Providers can pull content from iTunes and you lose access to whatever you paid for.
There have been cases where users thought they lost a purchase, but it ended up being an issue where they changed storefronts to one where the purchase wasn’t available. The movie reappeared when they went back to the original storefront (and I believe even that behavior was a bug that’s been fixed).
I keep an eye on this because I’ve also purchased a lot of movies from iTunes.
But we don't. It's worse than ever now. Shows are fragmented into way too many different subcriptions (netflix, etc) each with their monthly fee and a bunch of stuff I won't be watching.
True a la carte would mean eliminating all those exlusive distributions so I could get any show from any streaming vendor for a one-off price (say, 25 cents for a show, $2 for a movie, or whatever) without having to subcribe to any recurring service.
I've given up, I'm not going to subscribe to half a dozen things, that's way too inconvenient and expensive.
Exactly. Every company has segmented their content by company, not by type. Sure, I can buy a subscription to Boomerang and get a lot of cartoons, but it's just the cartoons owned by Warner. But not all of them, because they've moved some of them--like Dexter's Laboratory--off to be HBO Max exclusives.
There's no way to say "I want a science fiction themed service" that includes Paramount and HBO and the old PTEN and the like, because no company would stand for another service mixing their IP like that.
I remember most people, including myself, would get the full DirectTV/Cable subscription, hook up TiVo, and just record/watch on demand whatever you want. Those days seem impossible now. It certainly feels like things have regressed.
To replicate that today I'd need to subscribe to many different services all with separate monthly fees and way less conveniece (a single unified interface through MythTV was magical).
So I don't watch any TV anymore, oh well. More time to code.
Plex shares or even Pseudo TV Live partially could replicate this. But it’s a grey area obviously.
I canceled my cable TV as I increasingly realized I simply was watching either live or recorded on my TiVo stuff once in a blue moon.
I could get DSL, but it's shit here and anyway only ~$25 cheaper than the cable (which is 5x faster...).
For $15, I could get cable tv, apparently diverting what I currently pay for internet away from profit and over towards channel fees.
I've never fully digested them, but Michigan seems to have shitty franchise laws written in service of the large cable companies.
> you can bounce between streaming services at will, and they're all still far easier to cancel than cable.
Add to that cheaper, since you don't have to deal with connection fees. If you know that you're not going to have the time to use the service for a couple of months because you're too busy with work, you don't have to pay for it. If you have decided that you are going to spend most of your summer pursuing outdoor recreational activities, you don't have to pay for it. If you're going on the road for a few weeks (vacation or business), you don't have to pay for it. If you decide that you want to watch programming on two different streaming services, you can simply rotate through the services on a monthly basis and only pay for one service at a time.
Why do I bring all of this up when it's not directly related to the article: it's because these articles reek of entitlement. Yes, there are times when licensing causes shows or movies to fall through the cracks. On the other hand, the situation is also far better than it used to be when using the same metrics. Not only that, but it can be a heck of a lot less expensive even when factoring in the cost of an Internet connection.