11.12

Winter is coming

or

a Universal Plan we can all agree on

As the doldrums of winter approach and we start to look inward to plan our annual hibernation, two questions are at the forefront of the American mind: What will we binge, and...wait, how much is that going to cost me? Unfortunately, the surfeit of streaming services has become nearly unmanageable, and costs are getting out of control. What we need is reform: a universal streaming service that’s by the people, for the people, and of the people.

As more content becomes available on competing services, the financial demand - let alone the logistical headache of managing multiple accounts - is becoming untenable. The options are dizzying, as are the associated costs: Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, AppleTV, HBOMax, Showtime, and NBCU. (I’ve heard ramblings of Discovery Channel trying to get on board, but if you can stream Shark Week, is it even Shark Week anymore?)

To give us a sense, let’s look at the cost of each streaming service. For the sake of this article, we’ll use the most popular plan from each provider.

1. Amazon Prime - $12.99 per month

2. Netflix - $12.99 per month

3. Hulu - $11.99 per month

4. Disney+ - $6.99 per month

5. AppleTV - $4.99 per month

6. HBOMax - $14.99 per month

7. Showtime - $8.99 per month

8. NBCU - $10-$12 per month (This is a best guess, we don’t know what the cost will be yet)

According to Techwalla, the average cost of a standard cable package in the US is around $64, while the US BLS finds an average cost of cable in 2019 to be about $51. Assuming then that the true rate for most Americans is somewhere in the range of $40 to $80, maintaining accounts for just half of the services listed above puts you right back in that range of cost. This leaves the average content consumer with only one option: to crowd-fund access to content through shared streaming accounts with loved ones, friends, and even ex-lovers, an imperfect solution that may not always be viable.

Why can’t we address this madness? Cutting the cord was supposed to save money for users. Cable is already a thing of the past, a soon to disappear medium. But in this moment, the streaming wars are driving up the price of rival cable plans. And let’s not forget that these costs don’t include the monthly cost of internet access, which is already a necessary household cost in the range of $40 to $80. I mean, the streaming war is forcing me to make sacrifices elsewhere in my life – how can I max out my 401K and also watch the Mandalorian wrangle up galactic bad guys?

We need meaningful reform. It’s time to at least consider that the different services might combine somehow. It seems possible that a platform with a single price could function. Elizabeth Warren is claiming she can pull off a Medicare-For-All plan for $52 Trillion over ten years (which, side-note, I think might be a modest estimate). But where is the candidate with the plan for Universal Streaming?. More content at a better price: this frankly inalienable right of all Americans means I would gladly cast my vote for the Content Candidate! America needs meaningful change, it needs change we can believe in, sure, but it also needs affordable access to HBO! Give me liberty or give me death…or at the very least give me Bojack Horseman.

But who knows where the streaming wars will lead? 50 years from now we'll look back and tell our grandchildren stories about how we rationed our content so we could survive on just a smattering of Stranger Things and the occasional Mindhunter episode. Our children will never fully understand the choices we’ll have had to make in order to provide a better life for them. The cold wind is blowing in living rooms across the world in the year 2020. Winter is coming, and it promises to be a long one.

Seymour

November 12th, 2019