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
Uh, no? Netflix used to have everything good. You could drop your $150/mo cable sub and get $10/mo Netflix and never look back.
Netflix has always been missing a ton of shows I love, and had a ton of shows I dont like. But that’s subjective. Objectively, Netflix has had a lot of shows, and you dont get to pick and choose what you pay for. Which is exactly the criticism being targeted at cable TV here.
The criticism isn’t that you get a lot of crap you don’t want. It’s that you’re paying out the nose for a lot of crap you don’t want. Netflix had (arguably, granted) a much higher ratio of watchable shows, no commercials and at a fraction of the price!
The issue is that now all the best stuff got parcelled out onto their own streaming platforms so you no longer get that high ratio of watchable stuff all for one low price. Parks and Rec isn’t on Netflix anymore. Neither is 30 Rock or Futurama or Bobs Burgers. Neither is Daredevil. Etc etc. To get all that content that used to be in one place, I now have to go to Peacock, Hulu, Disney+, etc. It ends up being the same problem of having to pay a huge monthly fee to see everything I want except instead of paying it to Comcast, I’m paying it to 10 different streaming services.
Oh you want to watch Parks and Rec? That’s $10/mo or whatever the fuck Peacock charges. I wouldn’t know because I’m not paying for an entire streaming service to watch one fucking show. Same goes for every other garbage streaming service with one or two good shows and no other redeeming qualities (looking at you Paramount+, Apple TV+, etc).
The issue isn’t that there’s a lot of crap I don’t want to watch. The issue is that there is very little I DO want to watch on each and if I were to buy them all, I’m paying the same amount I was before for cable.
You make it sound like Netflix was broken up and has less on it now, but it’s gotten more shows over time. For me Hulu popping up was amazing, Im big on animation and a lot of cartoons that were never on Netflix were on there. Hulu not existing before didnt mean those shows were on Netflix, they just werent available. Which is the upside to Netflix getting competition to its monopoly, more choices and more shows available. I hope we get more genre dedicated streaming services like Crunchyroll, then you’ve got more of an objective argument that you’re paying for what you want to watch and not “a ton of stuff you didn’t want to watch”.