• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, July 10, 2023

Streaming consumers already are seeing ever-rising collective monthly fees for all their CTV spending. But they are not exactly what it comes to per month. Does that matter?  

Thirty-four percent of Americans don't know how much they spend overall per month on streaming, according to Reviews.org.

Maybe it's an attention thing: Consumers may have the general feeling that things are cheaper, and they wouldn't be that far off the market: 

Industry analysts guess they are paying $40 to $55 dollars a month for around four to six streamers -- against one recent reading that says the cable TV bundle average price tag is $83 a month.

Consumers need to become more focused. Hard-pressed streaming services -- which are still in the long-haul of trying to be profitable -- have been upping their pricing regularly.

Added to this is that consumers are a demanding lot. Research also shows they would like it all in one place -- like a cable-like TV bundle! Just one bill! You can only imagine many veteran TV/cable media executives shaking their heads: “Really! That's what you want now?”

Of course it's not all that simple. Consumers would also say they want lots of choice to add and drop new streaming services to those packages.  And did we forget that a huge portion of the modern U.S. TV consumers have both legacy pay TV services and anywhere from four to six streamers as well?

“Overkill,” many critics might say. “Complete coverage”, consumers would argue back. At the same time over half of U.S. media consumers say there are too many streaming services. 

On the other side of things, they also want more choice -- new episodes of “The Bear”, or new seasons of “The Mandalorian”, “Squid Game” and others. But what about unknown yet to come stuff? Streamers continue to need to figure out new shows they might like to watch.

And so we have a scattershot of efforts from all streamers. What are the differences in streaming platforms? Will it be like what we have seen for decades with CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox?Maybe it doesn’t matter if a show isn't on “brand” anymore. Mix your “NCIS”, with “21 Jump Street”, with “Cheers”, with “The Office”, with “Dancing with the Stars”, with your “Gunsmoke.”

All that means just one more piece of the puzzle that consumers need to figure out. Wonder why there continues to be consistent high level streaming networks churn of around 39%? Now you know.