To Bundle or Unbundle, That is the Question

I asked my wonderful daughter Sydney what she thought about all of this and here39s how she repliedquot39What do you think about all the new subscription services39 That39s what my dad asked during our twoandhalfhour car ride to Connecticut I answered sarcastically 39It means bad news for Netflix39 But more than that it means bad news for consumers Having everyone take back their piece of the pie means it will be harder for consumers to find and watch what they want when they wantquotPeople flocked to sites like Netflix because it made their lives easier They are able to access a multitude of shows and movies from several genres Everything is made readily available and the setup is easy to navigate You can watch Thor Ragnaramp246k one moment a Nat Geo special the next and then move onto binging a new show all in one placequotConsumers don39t like sifting through multiple layers to find what they39re looking for While new streaming services such as DC Universe and Disney may seem like a good idea to wealthy businessmen looking to get wealthier I don39t think consumers will be as excited about this trend For them it just means their favorite shows and movies are being removed from the sites they already pay for They will have to pay for multiple streaming services to get the assortment of movies and shows they wantquotI can easily see this causing strife between consumers and streaming services Personally I am very upset that the new season of Young Justice is only available on DC Universe when I watched the first two seasons on NetflixquotAs a member of Gen Z I can assure you we find ways to watch what we want even if it39s not through conventional channels Whether on YouTube or some lessthanlegal website Gen Z would rather find their own way to get the content they desire than pay for something they don39t wantThere is a point however where the desire for good content overpowers pride To appeal to consumers these new services need to keep their prices down and their options open Users are more likely to switch if they believe the transition will be easy and painless It is clear the decision to make individual streaming services was based on a desire to make more money so streaming services will need to work hard to prove that they care about the customer39s experience tooquotGood luck to Netflix when they go toetotoe with Disney to new companies trying to find a niche and to consumers who will have to navigate the sea of streaming services Honestly good luck to everyone involved in this shift you39ll need itquotI share her frustration Sadly this had been going on for some time now I wrote this article back in 2015 During our SXSW presentation that year William one of our speakers made an excellent point about content and Gen Z quotIf the experience of free is better than the experience of paid then they won39t be payingquotAlthough content providers and cable companies do everything they can to generate additional revenue they continue to make it more difficult for consumers It39s not enough to have a full cable subscription anymore now you also have to subscribe to individual channels to get certain content Want to see any of the new Star Trek shows CBS All Access Impulse YouTube Premium The Handmaid39s Tale Hulu Well you get the idea Suddenly I39m spending 100month for these services and I don39t have premium cable channels yetI39ve recently started seeing people asking quotWho will start bundling all of these channels back together againquot For example in this FierceVideo article Barclays analyst Kannan Venkateshwar wrote quotIn our opinion however ISPs that can create product bundles will be a lot more effective than those creating price bundles but the only company that has invested in this among ISPs is ComcastquotSo we39re back to looking at who will bundle all of the streaming sites back together again In a Vox piece from March Emily VanDerWerff wrote quotThe streaming revolution which promised to break down lots of barriers in the TV industry is beginning to morph into something else And what it39s morphing into looks a lot more like traditional televisionquotBGR reports that with Apple already offering music and TV bundles the company is now thinking about creating a superbundle From that report it was stated that quotApple has priced Apple TV aggressively on a standalone basis It only costs about 5 a month which is a testament both to the newness of the service and to the fact that there won39t be a lot of content available at the beginning amp8212 just a handful of shows compared to the hundreds and hundreds of TV series and movies available on something like Netflixquot What Apple seems to be working on with this new proposed bundle offers some interesting possibilities such as an opportunity to include the company39s subscription news service Apple News Depending on where Apple prices such a megabundle it might be less of an ask to encourage consumers to sign up for it than to try and convince those same consumers that they need another standalone news app or something like Apple TVquotThe real question for everyone involved amp8212 consumers content providers networks amp8212 is how many of these will the consumers want and pay for How will we discover shows if we have to pay for a channel to see a single show Will consumers pay for one month of a service and binge everything like I39ve been thinking about with CBS All AccessTV would have failed at the very start if I needed to pay separate prices for each channel I don39t think we39ll see these established channels failing but there39s no doubt that in a few years we39ll be back to paying someone to bundle everything again and complaining about how much it all costsClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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To Bundle or Unbundle, That is the Question

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David Polinchock

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To Bundle or Unbundle, That is the Question

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