For a moment, it seemed like the streaming apps were the things that could save us from the hegemony of cable TV—a system where you had to pay for a ton of stuff you didn’t want to watch so you could see the handful of things you were actually interested in.
Archived version: https://archive.ph/K4EIh
Doesn’t look like that bundle is increasing in October, but it’s only a matter of time.
I was listening to boomer radio in my car yesterday and one of the hosts brought up an interesting point that eventually all of these streaming services will just have ads anyways because there’s a certain breaking point in the subscription price past which people start unsubscribing and they absolutely have to keep revenues up and the only way to do that is through ads. A couple years ago I would have thought that was unlikely and that there will always be a more expensive no-ad tier for everything and a cheaper ad-supported one, but man I think the future’s bleak for streaming services from a user perspective, I think he might be right. Fucking Spotify still runs ads on some stuff with a paid subscription, as does ESPN+.
This is what happened to cable too I think. My grandpa was saying back in the day cable was what you got to avoid ads
I can’t see any removing the ad free option, they’ll just make it more expensive.