DannyMacNetflix axes its $10 ‘Basic’ plan in the US and UK
TheSaneWriterGenerally it’s agreed the best way to stop piracy is by offering a more convenient alternative. I generally for example don’t pirate video games available on Steam. With streaming services being so disjoint and expensive now I’ve gone back to pirating, at least with cable you can bundle channels.
islandofcaucasusat least with cable you can bundle channels
For about the same price as it currently costs to bundle all the major streaming platforms. Plus, cable never had anything near the amount of content we have now on streaming.
I think people who compare cable to streaming don’t remember what it was like before streaming
A lot of it is the same we saw with the rise of Steam and the like in gaming
“People are just looking for a more convenient way to buy games and all this DRM is making it easier to pirate. Steam is awesome, but I might need to play in an airgapped environment in Iraq and steam’s offline mode is bad. So I might as well just pirate everything. Fucking Valve”
That said: Tinfoil hat and all, but I really do think the increasing rise of “Ugh, this streaming is so expensive and confusing. I should just get cable” is an astroturfing campaign. Because the two big elements of the SAG side of the strikes are streaming residuals and AI. And the advantage of cable tv is that the networks control who get the residuals. Take a look at where the cast and crew of Friends ended up, and you start to get an idea of why TBS will never stop airing reruns of that show. Same for Seinfeld and, to much lesser extents, Frasier and King of Queens and the like.
Which is why I expect the outcome will be to do hybrid models. And a lot of the current discourse is about making people think they want to have to “record” an episode of Becker rather than just choose to watch wherever they left off as a VOD.
Flying Squidan episode of Becker
I haven’t seen that show in so long. It was cancelled way too soon. I may have to, um, acquire it…
It was a genuinely bad show. But Ted Danson is magical and can make the most unlikable and obnoxious sitcom characters into reflections of the soul that stick with you in ways they really shouldn’t.
I liked it, yes, it was because of Ted Danson. I would watch a show where Becker and Dr. Cox from Scrubs just had a sarcasm-off.
Same.
It isn’t the same, but it is well worth catching some Curb Your Enthusiasm clips on youtube. Ted Danson is a recurring character and his interactions with Larry are magnificent.
I’m not sure how you mean the last paragraph, but P+ already removed Star Trek Prodigy, and I think it just stopped “airing” so people might rightly want to “record” the show.
You know what it’s like? It’s like that show “Becker,” you know, with Ted Danson? I watched the entire run of that show, hoping that it would get better, and it never did. It had all the right pieces, but it just… It couldn’t put them together. And when it got cancelled, I was really bummed out, not because I liked the show, but because I knew it could be so much better, and now it never would be. And that’s what losing a parent is like. It’s like “Becker.” Suddenly, you realize you’ll never have the good relationship you wanted, and as long as they were alive, even though you’d never admit it, part of you - the stupidest goddamn part of you - was still holding on to that chance. And you didn’t even realize it until that chance went away.