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Subscription Fatigue (1 Viewer)

Towergrove

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An interesting article from Home media magazine about Subscription fatigue. Everyone and their uncle wants you to subscribe to whatever. Anything from video, games, music, software (microsoft and adobe for example). These small fees start to add up and you eventually pay much more that you would have initially.
My question is what does this all add up to for the average consumer? Say I’m a wrestling fan ($9.99 a month) who wants to have access to CBS programming ($5.99 a month) with a basic Netflix subscription ($7.99 or more a month) in addition to my basic internet/cable access cost and goodness knows what other programming.
It seems to me that cord cutters may get more specific choices, but may end up paying more than what they would with your average cable package. As any restaurant customer knows, a la carte menu items often end up costing more than the buffet.
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/steph-sums-it/subscription-fever-could-break
 

bigshot

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I can't even picture how many Roku channels I would have to subscribe to to add up to a typical pay channel packed cable bill! I have Netflix, Amazon Prime and Warner Archive. That is something like $30 a month, and it gives me more programming than I can get around to watching.
 

Towergrove

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bigshot said:
I can't even picture how many Roku channels I would have to subscribe to to add up to a typical pay channel packed cable bill! I have Netflix, Amazon Prime and Warner Archive. That is something like $30 a month, and it gives me more programming than I can get around to watching.
Yes but your figures above are not including the cost of high speed internet service that you need to get those few roku channels. Add that cost because you need that to stream otherwise you cant. Mine is around 70 month. Then netflix which is another 10, warner archive around 10 more, Then HBO subscription service which is said to be around 15.00 , Cost of HULU v well that brings it way, way above what I was paying for Cable.

Also many people are being asked to subscribe to microsoft office 360, adobe photoshop online, Sony Playstation Network, Xbox, subscription music like spotify and beats, cloud storage subscriptions...heck Im a girl who enjoys cooking and Paula Deen wants me to subscribe to her cooking shows online now. All of this adds up and the consumer will become fatigued in due time. I think the home media magazine article sums my feelings up well.

Also do a google and search for Subscription Fatigue. Its being talked about more and more now.
 

Ejanss

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Now that channels are off the networks, and advertisers are (slightly more) out of the picture, subscriptions are supposed to answer that question everyone forgot to ask during the Dot-Com Bust:
HOW are you planning to make money on the web, when the audience expects their content to be free?

I used to be on a struggling budget, and only concentrated subscriptions where they needed to be: Netflix, and Amazon Prime (for the shipping). Anything else can keep begging.
 

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Towergrove said:
These small fees start to add up and you eventually pay much more that you would have initially.
Absolutely. I think people will pay for a channel with quality programming like HBO or AMC or Turner Classic Movies or even something like Cartoon Network or The Disney Channel where they can sit their kid in front of the TV to watch but a lot of channels need to be deeply worried if they have to convince people to pay $5-ish a month for their programming. Once people see that they're spending hundreds of dollars on TV a month and they're no longer forced to buy channels they don't watch, how many people are going to pay for 20 channels when they only casually watch half of them and they only 'need' 5 or 10?
 

Josh Steinberg

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I've definitely cut back on things I subscribe to - at the moment, I don't really have any subscriptions to services. We have Netflix in the house but that account is not in my name (I canceled my own a while ago before I moved in with someone who had it, I found I just wasn't really using it.) I have Amazon Prime, but I don't think of that as a video subscription service, I'm signed up for that really for the purpose of getting fast shipping on my Amazon purchases, if they took away all of the video streaming I don't think I'd even notice.

I tried Hulu once, and I didn't even make it out of the free trial period. I was stunned that even after paying for a subscription, you're still forced to watch commercials throughout the show. I was also stunned that it wouldn't allow me to watch all of the shows they offered on my Roku. About half of the content I was interested in, I kept getting error messages saying that that content was only allowed to be viewed on a computer and not on a set top box. I was both annoyed and creeped out by that... if I pay their subscription fee, what business of theirs is it what device I watch it on? That was back in 2010 or 2011 so I don't know if they've made their service more user friendly since then, but I have no desire to try it again.

I like the idea of subscription services, but in practice, I don't get a lot of use out of them in my day to day life. I'm sure there will be times when having a subscription again would be useful. If Netflix brings back "Arrested Development" for another season, I'd probably subscribe for a month to watch the episodes and then cancel. When Showtime brings back Twin Peaks in 2016, I'll subscribe for the period of time that the season is on, and then cancel afterwards.

My cable company currently offers a discount on internet service because we're subscribed to basic cable. If we canceled the cable part of the package, they'd double the internet fee. Their attitude is basically, "you're gonna pay us $100 a month regardless of what services you have. It's up to you if that's just for high speed internet, or if it's for a cable TV and internet bundle" I don't watch a lot of live TV either, but the things that I do watch aren't as easy to stream online in a timely fashion. There's something nice about watching Craig Ferguson or Comedy Central's "@midnight" game show the day they air, which you can't do if you're streaming.

The idea of adding another monthly subscription, another obligation, another bill, doesn't really appeal to me right now. We've been hearing for years about how consumers would like cable unbundled because you have to subscribe to 50 channels you don't want in order to get the three or four you do... and I've started to feel that in a lot of ways, streaming services are similar in that you might sign up for Netflix or the proposed CBS streaming service for a particular show or film, but you get stuck with a whole bunch of choices that don't appeal to you either.
 

TravisR

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Josh Steinberg said:
When Showtime brings back Twin Peaks in 2016, I'll subscribe for the period of time that the season is on, and then cancel afterwards.
I don't really know much about iTunes but wouldn't it be cheaper to buy each episode there than subscribe to Showtime for 2 or 3 months?
 

Josh Steinberg

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TravisR said:
Absolutely. I think people will pay for a channel with quality programming like HBO or AMC or Turner Classic Movies or even something like Cartoon Network or The Disney Channel where they can sit their kid in front of the TV to watch but a lot of channels need to be deeply worried if they have to convince people to pay $5-ish a month for their programming.
Even in the case of AMC... I'm not hugely familiar with the network outside of "Breaking Bad" (I only made it through 2 1/2 seasons of "Walking Dead" before giving up), but it seems like they only are running one major show at a time. "Man Men" was on earlier in the year, and when that ended, "Walking Dead" began. They don't seem to offer a ton of original programming. So will it be worth it to the consumer to pay a large monthly fee for that channel when there might only be one episode of programming they watch per week? Same for HBO, although they do have a little more, but it's still the same kind of idea - Sunday night is their big night for shows, and then the rest of the week is basically reruns and movies. Is it worth a monthly fee (Towergrove cited $15 a month) for one night of shows per week?

There's also this idea, as seen with my Hulu trial subscription, and with CBS's proposed plan, to take both a subscription fee from the customer, and still force them to watch advertising, and in the case of Hulu, still restrict on what devices people can watch the content. I can only speak for myself, but that's not at all appealing to me.
 

Towergrove

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TravisR said:
Absolutely. I think people will pay for a channel with quality programming like HBO or AMC or Turner Classic Movies or even something like Cartoon Network or The Disney Channel where they can sit their kid in front of the TV to watch but a lot of channels need to be deeply worried if they have to convince people to pay $5-ish a month for their programming. Once people see that they're spending hundreds of dollars on TV a month and they're no longer forced to buy channels they don't watch, how many people are going to pay for 20 channels when they only casually watch half of them and they only 'need' 5 or 10?
This is a great posting Travis. I think in the long run many of these lower tier subscription services will fold due to the lack of subscribers.
 

Josh Steinberg

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TravisR said:
I don't really know much about iTunes but wouldn't it be cheaper to buy each episode there than subscribe to Showtime for 2 or 3 months?
Possibly, but usually shows from the premium networks like HBO and Showtime don't appear on iTunes during their original run. So I'd likely have to wait until after the season had concluded before I could get them on iTunes. The other thing is that shows don't appear on iTunes until the day after broadcast, and in the case of Twin Peaks, I want to see it when it airs.
 

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I remain optimistic that AMC can pick up something good to replace the hole left by Breaking Bad and the soon departing Mad Men.
Josh Steinberg said:
Same for HBO, although they do have a little more, but it's still the same kind of idea - Sunday night is their big night for shows, and then the rest of the week is basically reruns and movies. Is it worth a monthly fee (Towergrove cited $15 a month) for one night of shows per week?
Yes. :) For me, the shows on HBO are good enough that I'd have no problem paying $15 a month for it.
 

Ejanss

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Josh Steinberg said:
"Man Men" was on earlier in the year
(Mad Men fan joke, or Freudian slip?...) :D
TravisR said:
Yes. :) For me, the shows on HBO are good enough that I'd have no problem paying $15 a month for it.
Although most every cable show ends up finding their way to the general streaming sites (Netflix, Hulu) by the end of the season, all you're left with is the movies.
And I said it back then, why would you want HBO if you have a Blu-ray player?
I remain optimistic that AMC can pick up something good to replace the hole left by Breaking Bad and the soon departing Mad Men.
(Movies would be nice...I'll even take a few reruns of Backstory.)
 

TravisR

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Ejanss said:
Although most every cable show ends up finding their way to the general streaming sites (Netflix, Hulu) by the end of the season, all you're left with is the movies.
And I said it back then, why would you want HBO if you have a Blu-ray player?
I don't want to wait nearly a year for a show to come out on Blu-ray to see it.
 

Carl Johnson

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I haven't had cable tv in over 10 years, and even then it was a $20 per month basic channel package. Now I subscribe to Netflix and Amazon Prime, but refuse to be nickel and dimed to death by getting more than that. I don't count internet access as part of the equation because I was paying for access before it merged with television, and I would still be paying if the internet was limited to chatrooms and message boards.
 

Towergrove

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Carl Johnson said:
I haven't had cable tv in over 10 years, and even then it was a $20 per month basic channel package. Now I subscribe to Netflix and Amazon Prime, but refuse to be nickel and dimed to death by getting more than that. I don't count internet access as part of the equation because I was paying for access before it merged with television, and I would still be paying if the internet was limited to chatrooms and message boards.
I know you indicate you had high speed internet beforehand but many people subscribe to the higher tier Internet specifically to get things like video to their homes faster and to allow for better quality streams and downloads. It's a price to factor in to the total because without it you don't stream or download. However you look at it it's a cost per month coming out of your bank account.
 
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Patrick Donahue

I definately feel subscription fatigue. Let's see:NetflixHuluAmazon PrimeSirius/XM for the cariTunes MatchA digital subscription to my newspaperHyundai Blue Link for my carEtc, etc, etcIt occured to me the other day that 30 years ago you would have had none of this. Not even cable or internet.
 

Carl Johnson

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Towergrove said:
I know you indicate you had high speed internet beforehand but many people subscribe to the higher tier Internet specifically to get things like video to their homes faster and to allow for better quality streams and downloads. It's a price to factor in to the total because without it you don't stream or download. However you look at it it's a cost per month coming out of your bank account.
When I first got internet access at home I was paying $25 per month for dialup service plus another $25 for a landline phone. Now I'm paying $45 for high speed internet. If you compare what's coming out of my bank account now vs 1997 I'm actually paying a bit less for high speed internet plus video streaming than I did for basic cable, a landline phone, and dialup.Fear of getting nickel and dimed to death is why I cancelled my subscription to Xbox Live about a year ago. Why pay them an annual fee for something that I don't use regularly?
 

bigshot

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Towergrove said:
Yes but your figures above are not including the cost of high speed internet service that you need to get those few roku channels.
I don't have a high speed connection. I have a regular low end Fios connection and it works fine for streaming. I'd have internet anyway. How else would I be chatting with you here?

People get super high speed connections because they think that will make the streaming better. Unless you have multiple people in the house streaming at the same time, there is no reason for high volume internet.
 

Ejanss

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bigshot said:
I don't have a high speed connection. I have a regular low end Fios connection and it works fine for streaming. I'd have internet anyway. How else would I be chatting with you here?
People get super high speed connections because they think that will make the streaming better. Unless you have multiple people in the house streaming at the same time, there is no reason for high volume internet.
I have the Basic 3.5-5MBps connection that's good enough for posting and YouTube, and it brings in a very nice Netflix, Amazon and Crunchyroll, often in broadcast 720-HD. (Especially on the PS3, which is designed for high streaming traffic, and knows how to use its bitrates efficiently.)

If you ABSOLUTELY INSIST that your streaming connection bring in true 1080 HD Blu-ray quality on your movies...um, have you tried just watching the Blu-ray?
And if you're one of the folks who insist that their weekly HBO/AMC series come in at true HD quality, y'know, I can remember a time when TV wasn't the movies, and we could accept that fact as a part of its nature.

(Not to mention, all that high-volume Internet comes at a price, usually every month, when you find out just how many gigs you were streaming every month to get that quality.)
 

TravisR

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Ejanss said:
And if you're one of the folks who insist that their weekly HBO/AMC series come in at true HD quality, y'know, I can remember a time when TV wasn't the movies, and we could accept that fact as a part of its nature.
Yes but the nature of TV has changed and the best of the medium now looks as good as any movie.
 

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