As more and more Canadians continue to cut the cable cord and switch to an all-streaming media diet, services are beginning to become less and less appealing with many of the benefits slowly slipping away, namely choice, price, and an ad-free experience.
For starters, when Netflix kicked off this whole media shift the cost was a huge incentive for people with just an $8 price tag at launch. Now, with different pricing tiers going all the way up to $20 for some services, not to mention the countless companies all having to have their very own streaming service, good luck getting all the content you want without forking over serious cash to several different services.
For a couple who wants access to all their favourite shows (for a family, it's even more), the price is meeting or going well beyond what we use to pay for some cable packages. Netflix? $15. Disney Plus? $11.99. Crave? $20, if you want HBO. With more and more companies fragmenting from the big streaming services to create their own, we're getting less and less content with each one of our subscriptions.
With the recent announcement that HBO max would be offering an "ad-included" (albeit cheaper) tier to their American streaming service, this is just another crack in the wall that use to separate streaming from cable. Even browsing on supposed ad-free services like Prime Video and Crave in Canada, viewers are still forced into sitting through ads for other content created by whatever streaming service you happen to be watching.
It seems the only benefit steaming still holds over cable is the "on-demand" nature of the services (and even that isn't as black and white as it used to be). Streaming has fallen a long way since its inception and many people aren't happy with where it's going. Enough to switch back to cable? Maybe.
Featured image courtesy of Flickr via flickr.com
