It is never about who can offer the best broadcast/streaming platform, it's always been about those who can pay the most money wins the contract. And that is where the problem lies because then the broadcaster/streamer has to raise their subscription prices so they can afford to pay the yearly contract fees. In my opinion that is not doing what is in the best interests of customers. Raising subscription prices is not a good deal regardless of what the broadcasters/streamers say.Disney needs a way to pay for their expensive $2.62 billion per year NBA media rights deal
NBA TV deal FAQ: What's next for ESPN, NBC, Amazon and 'Inside the NBA'
The NBA announced an 11-year media rights deal with Disney, NBC and Amazon on Wednesday. What's next for the league and its fans?www.espn.com
Their current deal that started during the 2002-2003 season was $400 million a year. This new deal is a 555% increase.
ABC, ESPN, TNT and a new national cable sports network jointly owned by the NBA and AOL Time Warner all will show NBA games starting with the 2002-03 season. The total deal is worth a reported $4.6 billion, and leaves NBC without the NBA for the first time in 12 years.
The deals are worth $765 million a year, a 25 percent increase from the $615 million the league made annually in TV rights under the four-year, $2.46 billion deals with NBC and Turner Sports that expire after this season.
In the new packages, ESPN and ABC are paying $400 million a year on average, while TNT pays about $365 million, NBA commissioner David Stern said.
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Disney Raising Prices for Hulu, ESPN+, and Disney+ This Fall
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And it is never about what is in the best interest of customers. It’s about making money. Never lose sight of that.
If you think about it, ESPN is pretty much ground zero for the situation that we are in. In the old days, cable TV was cheap and so if you only watched a handful of channels that was fine because you got what you wanted and there was something for everybody at a very reasonable price. Your local over-the-air network TV affiliate was carried for free - by law under the must-carry rule.
Then ESPN began paying too much to gobble up play-by-play contracts and, to cover costs, began shaking down cable companies for more money. Crap rolls downhill and whatever cable companies were paying ESPN was passed through to consumers. The price went up every year.
Then, federal legislation was passed allowing local over-the-air TV affiliates to give up must-carry status. In return, they were allowed to follow the ESPN model and shake down cable companies for increasingly high fees for permission to carry their signal. And everyone else adopted the same business model.
After a while, people began cutting the cord because cable had become too expensive. And now, we’re seeing the scenario play out again in the streaming world. The problem is, most of these streaming services are not making money. So the subscription pricing and bundling experiments will continue - until the services either make money or fail.
Myself, I get Netflix, Hulu, and Apple TV+ (all with ads) for free through T-Mobile. If I had to pay I would cancel. I do pay for Amazon’s Prime Video - but only because I had Amazon Prime beforehand and the video service was added by the company. I’m not sure how much longer I will keep Prime in any form.
There is less and less that I care about on any streaming service - hell, on television in general - with each passing year. To my way of thinking, something has to change very soon. But that’s just me. The rest of the world may feel otherwise. But complaining online isn’t going to help. Canceling services that aren’t good enough and/or cost too much will do something about it. Consumers have far for power than they realize.
Anyway, I’m done. Sorry for rambling.
Perhaps, but can anyone with a straight face say we're in a "Golden Age" of TV right now? There's no Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Battlestar Galactica, The Wire, I could go on an on. Perhaps you're right but as they've spent more and more money, I don't the we've had a corresponding increase in quality at all.
I bought a PS5 in December. Since then, that has become my primary form of entertainment. I have logged into Disney+ maybe twice since then? My subscription runs up in November and that's when I'll bail. Like most everyone else, if a show comes along that I want to see, I'll either pirate it or subscribe for a month and cancel.
Yup, precisely!
If you thought inflation in these past few years has been bad, the rate that all these subscription services have just constantly kept ballooning up in price is even more so
Just absolute lunacy
And that right there is why I don't have a credit card that doesn't have a fee attached to it
Sure, some of the benefits are great, that is, if you are able to take advantage of them a ton like if you're a frequent flyer, but if you don't use them much then that fee is just silly
No Disney in my household, ever since they turned into a political organization! Besides, I’ve been pairing down on my subscription services over the last few months and it’s starting to make a difference. 🫤
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I’m nearly ready to cancel every single TV streaming service and just pirate. These price hikes are ridiculous, and the way each company segments media off into multiple services is tiresome. I don’t owe these studios anything, they can suck it.
I agree with you there. A lot of the content these days feel very disposable and not all that memorable. Like I don't mind watching them because it's the "flavour of the week", but then I find no reason to go back and rewatch it ever again. It feels like it's there to meet a quota because users expect some content for their subscription dollar.
Whoever is first to try streaming contracts is going to learn an interesting lesson about the actual value and desirability of their offering
That was the initial dream. Then all the media companies saw how successful Netflix was and decided to create their streaming service. I agree its unaffordable for families with all the streamers raising prices by a significant percent every year.
Which is exactly why they're raising prices again so soon. The more people that do that, the less income they generate. I'm surprised they haven't given us cheaper annual plans and much higher month-by-month plans. Reward those who commit and who cares about those who only show up once or twice a year?
Two different things. Cracking down on people stealing your service is different than people quitting (or scaling back by subscribing for only a month or 2 a year). People who lost access to Netflix obviously wanted the service and were happy to pay the price once they couldn't share a friends account. Plenty of people are streamlining by only subscribing for a month or 2 so they are losing subscribers -- they're losing the long term income, too.
Netflix is far from a step ahead - Netflix is profitable (now/recently) because their subscriber base is so high. They still rely on the Iger's of the world to backfill content because they can't afford to only make original content. ALSO.... who do you think makes Netflix orginals? They farm it out to WB, CBS, etc. They don't have their own studios.
The problem in streaming is that traditional studios F'd up the model hardcore and killed box office and rental income by rushing things to their streaming platforms.
Old Way:
1. Theatrical Release (90+ days windows)- Home Video (90 day plus windows) - Their own cable channel (HBO, Showtime), liscense to third party linear netrowkrs/streamers for residual income
New Way:
1. Theatrical (30-60 day windows) - Home Vid/Digital Rental (0-60 day windows) - Studio owned Streaming Service - and MAYBE license to other steaming/linear sometime later
You can't cut out these massive chunks of income and rely and streaming subscription dollars to not only make it up, but make more.
Original price: $6.99
New Price: $15.99
That is not a couple of dollars.... it's $9 (just for Disney+_ or $108 per year.
With every steaming service doing this, it's more like $600-$1000 per year in added costs for people.
So no, it's not feelings that are hurt.... its lack of intelligence and math skills.
And with original premium cable channels like HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Disney Channel, etc. (which, inflation adjusted, were much more expensive than today's streaming services), you also had to pay for an additional cable/satellite TV plan, cable box rental, etc.
Besides, the vast majority of today's streaming service subscribers would be paying for Internet anyway. They aren't paying for it because of the streaming service, they'd be paying for it regardless.
Ok…and in that same time frame of 6 years, have you not gotten any raises at work? Almost every single employer offers yearly raises for inflation or otherwise. So guess prices should stay the same as well as your pay huh? Makes sense
Netflix is a step ahead by definition because they've been doing this model longer than anyone. They started DTC and were first with making exclusive DTC content.
The main challenge for Disney in particular right now is nobody wants to go see their expensive formulaic preachy movies.
Maybe not historically. But Netflix recently bought a big portion of the old Fort Monmouth Army base in central New Jersey. They are building studios there.
Netflix at Fort Monmouth: Find out where the studios, helipad and hotels can go
The latest plans for Netflix at Fort Monmouth splits up the land into 12 zones, giving us an idea of what features of the studio will go where.
That's what I thought too as far as Netflix owning their own production studios. They seem to have bought their first studio back in 2018 while spending a good amount of money to "produce their own" shows.Maybe not historically. But Netflix recently bought a big portion of the old Fort Monmouth Army base in central New Jersey. They are building studios there.
Netflix at Fort Monmouth: Find out where the studios, helipad and hotels can go
The latest plans for Netflix at Fort Monmouth splits up the land into 12 zones, giving us an idea of what features of the studio will go where.www.yahoo.com
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/08/media/netflix-albuquerque-production-studio/index.html