Netflix Raising Pricing! See Post #12 (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

So Amazon Prime for me is a freebie; I subscribe to Prime for the free shipping, and I order a lot from Amazon, so it pays for itself.. the video streaming is a perk.

I added Hulu a few years ago for Handmaid's Tale and am likely to drop it. I added CBS All Access for The Good Fight, and I'll keep it. Yeah, I get DirecTV with all the channels and so on, since we have AT&T Fiber. But, something is going to get cut. It's likely Hulu.

That's how I feel about it.

 

[dpippel]

Me too. We do at least 60% of our non-grocery shopping on Amazon, so we're members mostly for the Prime benefits geared towards buying hard goods. Prime Video is a perk.

 

[BobO'Link]

Same here with Prime. I think I watch a movie or two a month there. The main thing I've watched is Man in the High Castle. It's for the shipping and I always take "slow with digital credits." I've purchased software and Warner Archive titles with those, earning enough in a year to fully offset the cost of Prime.

I checked availability of specific movies and TV shows at Netflix a few years back. I then looked in general. I've checked back several times since then. At no time have they had enough product I was interested in watching to bother with a subscription. The majority is "newer" product that I generally don't like.

My son "cut the cable" several years back and has Prime and Netflix. His kids (ages 2-7) watch lots of cartoons on the services so he gets value. I doubt the increase will cause him to cancel the service.

 

[John Dirk]

I guess I'm one of the very lucky ones where Amazon is concerned. With three Fulfillment Centers within 20 miles of my home [and a fourth planned a little further out] I usually get 2 - 5 day shipping when I select the free option. One of the Fulfillment Centers is actually only 5 miles away. No need for Prime 2-day shipping but I'll take another look at Prime Video as it's been awhile.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Hulu is the first thing to cut.

I subscribe to cable, so I don't subscribe to Hulu since there's a ~90%+ overlap. But if I ever cut the cord, Hulu would be one of the first things I'd replace it with.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I subscribe to cable, so I don't subscribe to Hulu since there's a ~90%+ overlap. But if I ever cut the cord, Hulu would be one of the first things I'd replace it with.

I think Hulu will endure longer than most of the other services because they have pretty much every current broadcast program on there. They also have several tiers of offerings, from a lower-cost version that plays shows with commercials, to a commercial free option for a couple bucks more, to a super deluxe version that lets you actually watch live TV content as its happening. They also allow the ability to add on content from other premium networks - for instance, you can subscribe to HBO through Hulu.

As long as broadcast TV is still viable, Hulu will be as well. I think they'll survive longer, but I think their survival is guaranteed at least until then.

 

[Jake Lipson]

NBC Universal announced their streaming service the other day which will launch in 2020. Warner Bros. and Disney have both announced their own services which we know will launch later this year. Other studios will probably try the same thing.

Before long, all the studios will want to keep their content for their service. Netflix's solution to that is to own more content, because they've already lost the Disney output deal on theatrical releases that they've had since 2016. They paid a high amount of money to keep Friends for another year, but then it will probably go to the Warner service since WB is the producer. Universal will probably take back The Office when the deal expires so it can live on their service. But Netflix owns Roma outright, and no one will take that from them. They want more stuff like that because they're bracing for the time when their library content from other studios is nonexistent. That costs money. So, therefore, the price increases.

Josh's idea of subscribing when there is content you want to watch and unsubscribing at other times makes sense, but is a lot of work to keep up with what's showing where at one time. I think probably the various streaming services will eventually become too much for people to handle. Netflix, which made this streaming model work, doesn't have all the other businesses and avenues to make money that Disney or Warner/AT&T or NBC Universal does.

Not in the immediate future...but eventually...years down the line...they might end up in serious trouble if they lose all their library content to the studios' individual services and people lose interest in what Netflix is making.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Josh's idea of subscribing when there is content you want to watch and unsubscribing at other times makes sense, but is a lot of work to keep up with what's showing where at one time.

What I think will happen is that most households will have one or two streaming services that they keep active year-round, the bread and butter type services, and then will supplement that with a shorter-term subscription to other services when there is something that they really want to watch right away, whether that's a limited series or original movie or something else entirely.

Netflix is a good candidate to be one of them because they are always in the cultural zeitgeist. They sort of occupy the position that HBO did in the cable world. Sure, there are lots of premium cable channels, but in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, the one that mattered more than all of the others combined was HBO. It can probably be argued that they're still the biggest and best of the premium cable channels. So if HBO could hold on for that long, I wouldn't be surprised to see Netflix do the same. And because they have such a wide user base and such high customer satisfaction, I think they'll be able to hold on when other services start running into problems. If anything, when lesser services start to fold, Netflix could very well be in a position to pick up their original programming.

I think Hulu is also going to be around for some time. Hulu is jointly owned by the broadcasting networks, and as long as broadcast television is a thing, I think Hulu will be as well. Hulu is probably smart in that their app can offer an entire ecosystem beyond their original and licensed content. Not only can you watch Hulu stuff on Hulu, but you can also use your Hulu subscription to subscribe to services like CBS All Access and HBO Now. So I think they'll stick around and they'll do well not only as a provider of their own material but also as a gateway to material from other services.

We'll then see how many of these other services can remain viable by subscription revenue alone, and which ones will need to consolidate in order to have a large enough audience to survive. It's probably not sustainable to have as many paid streaming subscription services as their are cable channels, if one has to subscribe to each service on its own. But at the same time, I can't blame the different services for trying. For years, cable subscribers have said over and over that the one feature they most want is the ability to unbundle the cable packages and pick and choose only the channels they want. Any type of market research done into cable customers over the past decade or longer has shown that as the thing that customers really really want. And that's exactly what streaming is offering right now. I don't know that it's viable long term as I don't think people really want to pay $10 or more for a dozen different services at once - but I don't think customers have really thought that far ahead. They just see that they've got a hundred channels on their cable box and that they tend to watch the same dozen.

 

[Tino]

This is just a taste of more rate hikes soon to come. Before long Netflix will hover around $20 a month. At that point, is it still worth it?

For me? Absolutely.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

This price increase must be to cover the cost of their new Space Force series...I just read it is their most expensive project ever.

Still no word on my application to join the Space Force though...

 

[Mike Frezon]

Still no word on my application to join the Space Force though...

We've all got our fingers crossed for you, Reggie!

 

[Clinton McClure]

Our Dish bill is already $70/mo and we have Amazon Prime, Netflix, and I just subscribed to CBS All Access two weeks ago. I dropped Hulu last month because I had not watched anything on it in probably 6 months. My CBS sub is the cheaper “commercials” version that will get dropped in a few weeks if Season 2 of ST Discovery isn’t any better than the first.

A dozen fragmented studio streaming services at $10+ each per month isn’t the à la carte programming we have been hoping for all these years.

 

[DaveF]

This time, the price for the cheapest plan is going up to $9 per month. A premium plan offering ultra-high definition will jump to $16 per month from $14.

Oh boy. I’m eyeballing the UHD plan price, as that’s part of my mental planning for my super duper, all-encompassing, UHD upgrade 2019 extravaganza.

I don't think anyone is asking them to invest in all this "original" programming. I find it completely annoying that when I try and use Netflix, what appears for options are mostly "A Netflix Original".

Me! Why do I want old and busted programming on Netflix? I’m mainly there for Stranger Things and Bojack Horseman and Maniac, and their other brilliant original series. I do watch non-original stuff too. But if they’re spending on one thing, make it original content over more reruns of Friends.

This is just a taste of more rate hikes soon to come. Before long Netflix will hover around $20 a month. At that point, is it still worth it?

Maybe. If there’s still Stranger Things and Bojack Horseman, and I can reduce my cable bill to compensate, yeah, probably.

Hulu is the first thing to cut.

Not until I’ve watched Handmaid’s Tale!!!! hashtag-too-much-awesome-content

 

[Carabimero]

What I do is keep my Netflix cancelled until there is something I or my wife specifically wants to watch. Then I subscribe for two screens for a month, and the next day cancel. We watch Netfix for a month, see what's important, then let it lapse. I kept records last year. We subscribed for seven months out of twelve. So we saved about $50, which I keep in the subscription budget. And I never felt like I was missing Netflix in those months we didn't have it because we have Prime (and I have a 6000-disc library).

I'm not a "subscribe and then forget it" person. Too many months of subscriptions go unused for me to keep them running for convenience sake, especially since it only takes the click of a button to restart them.

 

[DaveF]

^ That’s completely reasonable. I intend to do that with CBS, to watch Star Trek Discovery. I would probably do that with Amazon for Man in the High Castle if I didn’t get it for “free” with Prime.

But Netflix for me is currently recurring sub: I use its offline viewing regularly on airplanes and in hotels.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Thanks Dave and Alan for serving as living examples of my guesses above

 

[Worth]

There’s just an explosion of content now, both on Netflix and every other new and emerging platform. You gotta figure that at some point, it’s gonna start stabilizing and leveling out with smaller numbers of things being made overall. I don’t think constant expansion at all times is eternally sustainable.

I think Netflix is well aware they're soon going to lose much of the content they don't outright own and have frantically been trying to create a library deep enough to hold onto their subscribers. Once there's enough of a cushion there, they'll start to pull back on their production output.

 

[Robert Crawford]

An interesting CNN article about Netflix and the amount of money they're spending each year at a loss.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/18/investing/netflix-cash-burn-stock/index.html

 

[Randy Korstick]

I guess I'm one of the very lucky ones where Amazon is concerned. With three Fulfillment Centers within 20 miles of my home [and a fourth planned a little further out] I usually get 2 - 5 day shipping when I select the free option. One of the Fulfillment Centers is actually only 5 miles away. No need for Prime 2-day shipping but I'll take another look at Prime Video as it's been awhile.

Same here I don't have Prime and always get my packages in 2-3 days sometimes overnight once they ship. The biggest problem is with Free shipping sometimes they ship immediately and sometimes they wait a week to 10 days but the actually shipping is fast so no need for me to ever have prime.

 

[John Dirk]

Thanks Dave and Alan for serving as living examples of my guesses above

Josh's shortest post to date!

"I only roast the ones I love" - Jeff Ross