Without embarrassing anyone in particular – many people called for unbundling of cable fees in favor of a la carte channels. We haven’t researched – but we likely have pushed for it as well in past blog posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Regardless – consumers are acting with alarm that prices on streaming are rising so quickly. Hulu with live TV just increased its price by $10 per month in fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here is why unbundling may have been bad for consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was pushed for the wrong reasons – people saw cablecos as big, greedy companies and wanted to weaken them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was, of course, reinforced when the cable companies had a dispute with content companies over fees and forced the content off the air for some period of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
People were sick of paying for the egregious ESPN charges – not just people, everyone, it seems, hated the control Disney had on the TV market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fast forward – we now have access to numerous streaming options and new ones like Apple’s recent entry mean more choice than ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have lost something important, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cable companies like all organizations pushed to make more profit every year. In doing so, they acted as a check to runaway streaming cost increases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Streaming networks now are free to invest in their content – with seemingly unlimited resources as consumers will have to pay to get access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This, by the way. is the exact same situation as student loan debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Politicians in their infinite wisdom wanted to help poor people get into college so they offered loans for any degree – by taking them over from banks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This caused universities to spend ever-more money on their professors, in order to rank higher – knowing the government would help defray increased admissions costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bottom line – the lowest income people are on the hook for even more debt – often coupled with degrees that are unlikely to get them high-paying jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The free market acted as a check against student loans for degrees which would not generate commensurate levels of income.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Likewise, cable companies acted as a check on runaway content costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The subset of people who just want a few streaming services will be winners but for many others, the costs for their streaming consumption will soon outgrow their cable costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is an upside – we no longer will flip 100 channels with nothing to watch – the quality of content is improving with so much investment going into it. But it will cost you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Without embarrassing anyone in particular – many people called for unbundling of cable fees in favor of a la carte channels. We haven’t researched – but we likely have pushed for it as well in past blog posts. Regardless – consumers are acting with alarm that prices on streaming are rising so quickly. Hulu with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":15461,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[2549,249,2550,745],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15460"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15460"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15463,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15460\/revisions\/15463"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}