“The Disney+, Hulu and Max streaming bundle launches today for $16.99 per month with ads or $29.99 without ads.” Reports Far-left deadline.
This means that “bundling Hulu, Max, and Disney+ will save you up to 38% compared to the prices of the three separately.”
They lure you in with a low price tag, and one day you realize you’re a lazy, boiling frog paying $100 a month for content you barely watch.
That’s exactly what happened with cable/satellite television (CSTV), Hollywood’s cash cow for decades. At one time, over 100 million households were paying for CSTV bundles. Prices kept creeping up, and advertising per hour rose to crazy levels (sometimes as much as 20 minutes per hour). Then one day, you woke up and realized you were paying $150 a month to watch four or five networks.
Bundling, whether streaming or CSTV, is left-wing Hollywood’s affirmative action, a way to convince viewers to pay for loads of content they will never watch, thus subsidizing content that is openly hostile to viewers (CNN, MTV, Comedy Central, etc.).
At least with streaming, you have choices. CSTV was a monopoly. A few providers offered a poor selection of equally low-cost channel packages. CSTV customers couldn’t just pay for the networks they watched; they had to pay for dozens of channels they never watched in order to get the ones they did. People who fell for these streaming bundles were even more likely to be fooled.
Instead of paying $17 for three services, why not subscribe to one for a month, then the next month to another, and so on. CSTV doesn’t let you do that. These streamers do, at least for now. If you’re going to stick to giving your money to people who hate you and want to sexually seduce your kids, at least be smart about it.
This is the future of bundled streaming resemble:
News of the bundles made waves earlier this year, but the combined services fall short of the bold change many industry veterans and consumers had hoped for. While bundle subscribers save money, at least for now, they still have to access a separate app to watch shows. Many observers believe that in the next few years, the friction that currently exists in the streaming experience will need to be significantly reduced to drive more revenue for media companies.
This feels like another big, expensive chunk, similar to the CSTV package that costs $175 a month just to watch Fox News.
Here’s a little secret…
If customers resist these streaming bundles, the product may improve. The reason it’s all woke and gay right now is because CSTV is making it so Hollywood doesn’t have to please its customers. You pay for the content anyway, whether you watch it or not. As bundling shifts to streaming, we can expect more of the same. But if they resist streaming bundles, each of these streaming outlets will need to attract and retain enough customers to survive, which means they need to offer a product that people actually want to watch.
Trust me on this one…
Resist the bundle.
John Nolte’s first and last novel Borrowed time, Winning 5-Star Rave Reviews Submissions from our everyday readers. You can read excerpts here here And a detailed review here. Also available in hard cover and Kindle and Audiobooks.
