I’m old enough to remember the promise that cable TV was paid so you wouldn’t have commercials…it lasted what, 6 months? The channels without commercials cost extra…le sigh
Yep. It was pretty clear streaming services were always going to end up the same way from the start. Even YouTube has, although that was harder to predict when it was mostly 30s cat videos.
The predictable backstop of subscription plus the nearly limitless potential upside of ad sales is just too tempting in the long run for media companies. They get to have their cake and eat it too. Spotify, Amazon, Netflix and have all eventually given in, despite insisting they never would. Shareholder owned media companies will always gravitate to this model. It’s the only way to maximize quarterly revenue growth.
I’m old enough to remember the promise that cable TV was paid so you wouldn’t have commercials…it lasted what, 6 months? The channels without commercials cost extra…le sigh
Yep. It was pretty clear streaming services were always going to end up the same way from the start. Even YouTube has, although that was harder to predict when it was mostly 30s cat videos.
The predictable backstop of subscription plus the nearly limitless potential upside of ad sales is just too tempting in the long run for media companies. They get to have their cake and eat it too. Spotify, Amazon, Netflix and have all eventually given in, despite insisting they never would. Shareholder owned media companies will always gravitate to this model. It’s the only way to maximize quarterly revenue growth.