People don't turn down free stuff. It's just that they no longer value the content provided via TV channels at the price they are asking. The fundamental problem is content that used to be delivered via TV is no longer worth what it once was.
Personally, I don’t want to pay anything for content. Look at cable tv. It got so bad there is a cord cutting movement. The same will happen again in another form.
All the stuff you wrote about people paying, or wanting free stuff, is patently false. It was proven false by Cable TV. The promise there, when it was introduced, was that by paying a subscription for your TV, you wouldn't have any ads. So people bought into it, and pretty soon, they just added the ads back in, so now they were making money both from advertisers and the viewers at the same time. And this didn't cause them to be "spanked by users" by them canceling their cable TV subscriptions. It's been decades now, and cable TV is still here, and only now is it waning, but only because of online services like Netflix, not because people were fed up with ads.
If viewers would actually pay for content they like, this wouldn't be an issue. The problems are that tech companies are 1. dumping product well under cost while 2. training customers not to pay anything.
At some point, people need to realize what constantly wanting things for free is costing them and the people they watch.
Maybe no free alternative, but I avoid it like the plague. I watch good TV programming after-the-fact by buying DVDs.
Edit: Also, the value of a service like TV is something determined by the individual end-user. I don't think TV is more valuable than Twitter for everyone.
It's possible less content for less money is OK with people. The current pricing scheme of TV never got a chance to test that hypothesis. It's certainly true for me.
The parent comment lists a specific reason why they'd turn directly the 'free' stuff. It requires more effort to then access the content they want to get to when they have to navigate around the cruft.
Whether that factors much into your personal value assessment or not, that is a valid downside to having a bunch of extra channels you don't intend to watch.
Because people were dumb enough to believe that television companies were going to provide an endless library for $10 a month?
Like for years I'd point this out and people were absolutely unwilling to recognize that giving away all their content near free was not a thing that would be around long term.
People are spending just as much time watching TV as they ever did. If they've always paid $70/month for it, why would the entertainment companies settle for people paying less now?
People want high quality content that takes risks, but don’t want to pay for it.
I find it a lot cheaper to just pay the $2 to $20 to rent/buy the media from the various vendors since I consume so little of it.
The situation is vastly improved from my childhood when you had to deal with one company having control of delivering all the media into your home, and it was on a schedule you couldn’t control and with ads.
The issue is there is very little good content out there. Cable before video games and the internet could charge a huge premium, but spread things out and you end up with a ‘History’ channel showing cheap ‘Ancient Aliens’ crap.
Similarly, break modern content among 5+ services and the content will be worse and simply not worth paying for. Just look a Hulu which has been free on PC and they still can’t compete with Netflix.
In the end my retired 70+ year old mother has Netflix, Amazon prime, and a premium Cable subscription, yet mostly just watches YouTube videos. For people with less free time and less disposable income their not going to maintain a subscription unless their watching something every month.
When everything was bundled together, we complained about paying for things we didn't use. Unbundling was initially cheaper because it was just extra profit on the side.
Now, it's becoming the primary business model and has to stand on its own.
It turns out economy of scale is real, and we've lost it. Other people were paying for our content before, but not watching it. How does real public educational content get funded in this new world? Most of us probably agree that there should be quality, unbiased content.
Cashflow consistency has a value as well, so subscribing and unsubscribing creates a cost that needs to get covered by someone. Currently, the loyal subscribers.
I'm not saying things can't improve, just that many unrealistic, entitled attitudes exist. Content is better now than before as providers have to compete more to get subscribers, so the value is greater.
I remember hearing "who the hell is dumb enough to pay for television?" when I was young.
..somewhere along the line, someone (smartly) decided that PAID television might just work. That people were tired of what was broadcast over the air for free and all of the attendant issues that "free" brought to the table.
How big a market is paid TV now?
I guess it speaks to the erosion of values and the disappearance of "words have meaning" to call app.net an altruistic project. I mean, really. They are offering to take money in exchange for providing a service.. so that the core values of the business arrangement remain focused on the people using (and building) the service. If a quid-pro-quo arrangement like that is the new version of altruistic heroism, no wonder things in the US are so #^&*ed up.
Why would I pay $35 a month to stream broadcast channels that are freely available in HD over the air in my area?
It's one thing if they provided something like Netflix. But it's absolutely bonkers that they're selling what is already a free resource. What's the value-add?
Both are a problem. I believe people would be happy to pay a fair price for good service. Currently, the legitimate channels provide terrible service at a price point that's too high. Given the alternative (free via torrents), why would most people pay too high a price for terrible service?
There's two sides of this coin. On one hand, consumers have gotten a horrendous deal in the past with cable. Expensive price, plus tons of commercials; they literally don't even broadcast a good portion of the day. Even current Netflix, with their shitty lineup, beats the deal I was getting on cable.
On the other had, consumers have now grown accustomed to really favorable deals on content. All media must be free. Everything must be rolled into one low, low price. We used to happily buy 1-4 CD(s) a week. I'm pretty sure I've spent more on CD(s) in a single transaction than on an entire year of spotify... and that was as a kid with no money.
We used to buy DVD(s) all the time. You'd spend $200-500 a year on several streaming services. I feel like I spent that just on DVD(s) as gifts for christmas every year. People don't want to pay a cent for news or subscription media. This used to be a major expenditure.
It used to be that a good chunk of your money was spent on media. You have to have entertainment to make your life better, so you pay whatever you have to. In the past there was far less competition, and consumers were getting some really bad deals. Now I think consumers are often out of wack with their expectations.
Why on earth should the government implement price fixing to limit what people make on intellectual property? Why do you think $10-20/mo is the fair price for ALL THE CONTENT IN THE WORLD, vs. the $50-100 you'd have to pay (and a cable package would be like $100-300)... In the 90s we'd pay over $100/mo for like 5 CD(s), and cable prices were insane.
This stuff isn't cheap, easy, or risk free to produce either. I've been as critical of producers as anyone, but people often lose sight of this.
One of the Blendle founders described this as cyclical in nature. People get bored with paying for a lot of content they don't need, so they switch to a pay-per-item service. Then they get bored of the nickel-and-dime experience (and perhaps pay more than they anticipated), so they get interested in an all-you-can-eat model again. He pointed at cable TV as an example, continually bundling and unbundling popular content to either persuade people to pay for a bundle or to pay for pay-per-view.
I'm waiting for a smart content provider that has a 'never pay more' model. Stream a movie for 6 bucks, but since the all-you-can-eat bundle price point is 30 bucks, once you watch 5 movies, the rest are free for the remainder of the month.
Honest question: why do big organizations do this?
I mean, I get it: you're making people pay for stuff they don't need. You can charge a higher price despite users not actually watching everything they buy. Clearly, this tactic must work at some level, or else they wouldn't do it.
On the other hand, there are users like me who take one look at that and say, "ew", and walk away from TV completely. And it's not like I'm unwilling to pay for content, I just want to get what I want when I want it and not pay for the privilege of wandering through this ridiculous maze of content that no one cares about.
Maybe I'm being naive, but it just seems to me like this is a strategy that's going to kill the cash cow on the long run. Am I wrong?
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