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KAB said:

NBC finally jumps in the streaming wars — announces a new service to compete with Netflix and others

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All the cool kids are doing it

NashGuy said:

We'll never have individual a la carte cable channels but we do appear to be moving toward a system where each "channel family" has its own a la carte streaming service where they put their new and old content for on-demand consumption.

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Another much hoped-for "advantage" of OTT bludgeoned to death.

harshness said:

Another much hoped-for "advantage" of OTT bludgeoned to death.

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Eh, I personally never expected all those individual cable channels to be sold a la carte via OTT. The economics don't make sense to do that. But the bigger point I foresaw was that channels would gradually just fade away and morph into brands associated with certain collections of content. That's what each of these existing and forthcoming SVODs really are.

In the world of OTT, there's really no point in a given brand having a bunch of different channels that each fill up 70% of their airtime with reruns.

NashGuy said:

Eh, I personally never expected all those individual cable channels to be sold a la carte via OTT. The economics don't make sense to do that. But the bigger point I foresaw was that channels would gradually just fade away and morph into brands associated with certain collections of content. That's what each of these existing and forthcoming SVODs really are.

In the world of OTT, there's really no point in a given brand having a bunch of different channels that each fill up 70% of their airtime with reruns.

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But live sports....

comfortably_numb said:

But live sports....

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Yup. Live sports is the "killer app" supporting the linear cable channel system and that will likely be the case for at least a few more years.

We're going to see increasing overlap of the content available in the SVOD world vs. the cable bundle. (The first wave of that happened when HBO, Showtime and Starz moved from being purely cable channels to being hybrid services that also offered all their content via standalone OTT SVODs.) Both sides will feature a lot of the same new entertainment shows, although a given episode might debut on one side a day or so before debuting on the other.

But each side will also have certain exclusives that the other side doesn't have. On the SVOD side, we'll always see various entertainment series and movies (whether scripted or docu/reality) that aren't on cable TV -- think of all that fresh original content that is and always will be exclusively on Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, CBS AA, HBO+, etc. You're not gonna see Stranger Things or The Handmaid's Tale on any cable channel.

On the cable bundle side, the great majority of pro and top-level college sports will remain exclusive to cable channels. I do expect, over time, to see increasing bits and pieces of live sports become available through standalone OTT services such as ESPN+ but I think it'll take years for the dam to break, at which point basically all sports will be able to be viewed live through some subscription app or another. ESPN+ is clearly Disney's lifeboat for the day that happens. Right now, they're just testing the waters but they'll be ready to sell the entire ESPN live and on-demand content bundle as an OTT standalone service through that app when the day comes. Will be interesting to see if Sinclair, after they finish the acquisition of all those RSN cable channels, decides to offer them as OTT standalones, maybe priced at $10/mo each.

The other thing that I think will prop up the cable bundle besides sports is live feeds of the primetime "talking head" opinion shows on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN. Live news channels are already moving to OTT; CBSN and the Cheddar channels were born in the OTT world (although they're getting added to some cable channel bundles now) as free ad-supported services. ABC News now has something along those lines inside The Roku Channel. NBC News is getting ready to launch their own OTT competitor to CBSN any day now, reportedly named NBC News Now. It's easy to imagine CNN following suit and offering a free OTT news source at some point too, taking advantage of AT&T's Xandr targeted ad platform.

But what you're not going to see on this new NBC News free OTT channel are their popular MSNBC primetime talking heads (Maddow, O'Donnell, etc.). Fox News is never going to give that stuff away either nor would I expect CNN to. So keeping Hannity, etc. exclusive to the cable bundle will be a reason for some folks to stay there (although they're mainly older viewers; in 2017 the median viewer of both Fox News and MSNBC was 65, and 60 for CNN).

NashGuy said:

But what you're not going to see on this new NBC News free OTT channel are their popular MSNBC primetime talking heads (Maddow, O'Donnell, etc.)

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Nobody wants to see that

comfortably_numb said:

Nobody wants to see that

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Actually, I watch at least part of Maddow's show most nights. NBC News breaks up all their major shows into segments (basically just slicing up each show at the points where there were ad breaks) and puts the whole thing in their NBC News app for Apple TV about 3 hours after originally airing on MSNBC. They put most of it on YouTube as well. But if you want to catch the live feed of MSNBC in the NBC News app, you have to authenticate with your cable TV login.

NashGuy said:

Actually, I watch at least part of Maddow's show most nights. NBC News breaks up all their major shows into segments (basically just slicing up each show at the points where there were ad breaks) and puts the whole thing in their NBC News app for Apple TV about 3 hours after originally airing on MSNBC. They put most of it on YouTube as well. But if you want to catch the live feed of MSNBC in the NBC News app, you have to authenticate with your cable TV login.

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If I could buy an app to MNBC I would do it. It is the main channel I watch for cable news. Paying $10.00 just to have the news channels added to the Flex pack seems too high to me. To get the $5.00 news pack with Sling tv I would still need to pay $25.00 for Sling blue core pack. Just seems like they should offer a stand alone OTT app that provides all MSNC CNBC and NBC news for $5.00 or less that isn't dependent on having cable or satellite programming. Sooner or later they will have to consider this as an option as more people are cutting the cord and even cutting out the skinny bundles that Satellite and cable offer.

MikeD-C05 said:

If I could buy an app to MNBC I would do it. It is the main channel I watch for cable news. Paying $10.00 just to have the news channels added to the Flex pack seems too high to me. To get the $5.00 news pack with Sling tv I would still need to pay $25.00 for Sling blue core pack. Just seems like they should offer a stand alone OTT app that provides all MSNC CNBC and NBC news for $5.00 or less that isn't dependent on having cable or satellite programming. Sooner or later they will have to consider this as an option as more people are cutting the cord and even cutting out the skinny bundles that Satellite and cable offer.

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Well, keep in mind that NBC is owned by Comcast and they're not thrilled on the idea of unravelling the cable channel bundle. My guess is that a standalone streaming NBC News bundle (including the live feeds of MSNBC and CNBC) priced at $5 would probably be a net money-maker for them -- depends on how many additional current cable TV subs would be encouraged to cancel service. My guess is that there aren't too many folks who are sticking with cable ONLY for MSNBC and CNBC.

At any rate, the simplest solution for you would be to nicely ask a family member or friend who subscribes to a cable TV package with MSNBC if you could use their cable login inside the NBC News app so that you can get the MSNBC live feed (in addition to all the on-demand segments that are already free). If you gave 'em a $40 gift card or bottle of whisky once a year as a thank you, you're only paying $3.33 a month!

comfortably_numb said:

All the cool kids are doing it

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I do like that it will not cost me anything extra since I have Dish. The NBC/MSNBC apps are free.

NashGuy said:

At any rate, the simplest solution for you would be to nicely ask a family member or friend who subscribes to a cable TV package with MSNBC if you could use their cable login inside the NBC News app so that you can get the MSNBC live feed (in addition to all the on-demand segments that are already free). If you gave 'em a $40 gift card or bottle of whisky once a year as a thank you, you're only paying $3.33 a month!

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Is it really ethical to advocate for something that causes someone to violate their subscription agreement?

harshness said:

Is it really ethical to advocate for something that causes someone to violate their subscription agreement?

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I'll leave that to him to decide. I would also state that programming providers are well aware that account sharing happens (which is why they have limits on the number of simultaneous streams allowed, with more streams costing more money). HBO and Netflix have said they're "cool with it," even if it does technically violate the EULA.

Netflix CEO Says Account Sharing Is OK – TechCrunch

The technology exists to sniff out accounts that show patterns of repeated out-of-household sharing, although no one uses it yet, to my knowledge. If programmers decide at some point that account sharing is a real problem, then they'll crack down or change their pricing policies.

One of the things I hate about Netflix's pricing policy is how they link picture quality to number of streams. I can't believe they even still offer a non-HD stream option, which is tied to the single stream plan (which is all I need). I don't like having to pay extra for the fact that people share accounts. I mean, multiple streams makes sense for a household. But I'm sure the main reason number of streams is tied to cost of plan is due to the multi-household account sharing. It didn't start out that way, of course. It's just Netflix's way of monetizing the issue of sharing instead of spending tens of millions of dollars on technology development and lawyers to stop it.

Zookster said:

I can't believe they even still offer a non-HD stream option, which is tied to the single stream plan (which is all I need).

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I can. It takes much less bandwidth so they shouldn't charge as much. There are likely millions of Netflix customers that are viewing all of their content on phones and smaller tablets or running slow/expensive Internet connections that can't avail themselves of higher resolutions.

The other factor is licensing and I'm betting that cost is the same regardless of resolution.