Around the Net
$200 Per Month For Pay TV: Insanity -- Or Not?
- Gigaom, Wednesday, April 11, 2012 4:28 PM
Will consumers really pay the $200 monthly rate for pay TV predicted for 2020 by the NPD Group? The notion first "seems like insanity" for both consumers and cable companies, writes Stacey Higginbotham.
But with competition between streaming video on demand and premium TV suppliers heating up, "we are witnessing the first steps toward the creation of a combined pay-TV and broadband bundle that gives consumers most of the TV they want on demand and encourages them to avoid going to the outside Web," writes Higginbotham.
"If done quickly, consumers, who are just discovering how pleasant (and economical) it can be to watch TV via broadband using over-the-top services such as Netflix or Hulu, will be lulled back into complacency and will still view their pay-TV and broadband subscriptions as necessary."
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The sad truth is that people like Netflix are taking advantage of a short-term loophole to convince the world everything should be cheap (which it can't be). But it's probably going to end up being a bait-and-swtich. Because in the long run we'll all end up paying far more for future TV than we do for cable. Even today, start adding up TiVo (just a start), Hulu+ (cha-ching), Netflix (which doesn't really have much), individual movies through Apple/Amazon, internet broadband service, and any of the many more paid internet services out there. And to think...we complain about cable today...we'll end up wishing for the good old days.