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<p>Back in the old days, we had the ultimate in unbundling: you
walked up, got a ticket, and watched the movie.</p>
<p>In principle it wouldn't be that hard these days to do something
similar with a tremendous reduction in friction. Basically
pay-per-view on steroids. <br>
</p>
<p>My sense is that it would be tremendous failure though: how would
a consumer know how to value different content? Going to a movie
is comparatively a big commitment with plenty of time to decide if
you think it's worth it. Channel surfing, not so much. So maybe we
are doomed to some sort of bundling.</p>
<p>The big problem is that I don't want to pay for a month of
content to watch one or two shows. And I definitely don't want to
pay a month's worth of content to three dozen providers of which i
may only watch a few of their programs a couple of times a month.
Now if you reduced that to, say, a day pass I might bite,
especially if there was no more friction than the usual channel
surfing.</p>
<p>Mike<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 11/28/19 2:23 PM, Robert Haylock
wrote:<br>
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<div dir="ltr">I agree with Brian, this is not unbundling, it's
just removing one layer of distribution; you no longer need the
Cable company to play aggregator to the content distributors,
you now buy from them direct (especially true in the case of HBO
and Disney, except ESPN is not yet included). The next logical
large player to enter the global** direct-to-streamer market
would be NBCUniversal, so I'm sure we will soon be preparing for
that one too :)
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<div>Rob</div>
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<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, 29 Nov 2019 at 06:47,
Brian J. Murrell <<a href="mailto:brian@interlinx.bc.ca"
moz-do-not-send="true">brian@interlinx.bc.ca</a>> wrote:<br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">On
Thu, 2019-11-28 at 10:50 -0800, Owen DeLong wrote:<br>
> While I agree about the likely outcome, I will point out
that<br>
> consumers have been<br>
> begging for unbundling for years.<br>
<br>
This is not the "unbundling" that consumers have been begging
for. <br>
Rather I would submit that it's actually quite the opposite
and much<br>
more like the bundling that they have been railing against.<br>
<br>
The "unbundling" that consumers have been begging for is
minimally, the<br>
ability to buy a single channel for a fair price and not have
to take<br>
14 other channels of *garbage* with it at 15x the cost one of
those<br>
channels. I say minimally because I suspect that the really
savvy<br>
consumers would actually rather even pay (again, at a fair
price) per<br>
show or episode.<br>
<br>
But that's not what's happening with this fragmentation. This<br>
fragmentation is like the cable company splitting up that
"once price<br>
for all" bundle and putting the pieces into other bundles,
each at the<br>
same cost as that original "all in one" bundle that the
consumers were<br>
originally happy with and saw as fair value. Of course now to
continue<br>
to getting those pieces of the original bundle that they were
happy<br>
with, consumers are having to buy multiples of these new
bundles and<br>
their costs are driving up sharply accordingly.<br>
<br>
> This fragmentation of streaming services _IS_ the direct
result of<br>
> that request.<br>
<br>
I would submit that that is completely untrue. Do you really
think<br>
Disney pulled out of Netflix and started their own service
because<br>
consumers wanted Disney to unbundle from Netflix? I would
suggest that<br>
that is completely not why. Rather, Disney was not happy to
have just<br>
a piece of the Netflix pie, and decided, as greedy as they
are, that<br>
they would sell their own pies and take the fully monthly
subscription<br>
price.<br>
<br>
> It’s unbundled service, exactly what they have been
asking for.<br>
<br>
Again. No. Not at all. Not even close. Quite the opposite
in fact.<br>
<br>
The problem with suggesting that this is unbundling is that
the cost of<br>
Netflix didn't reduce when Disney pulled out and Disney (I
would bet, I<br>
haven't actually looked at it's cost) isn't charging the
faction of the<br>
Netflix cost that would be commensurate with their percentage
of the<br>
entire Netflix library.<br>
<br>
So there has been no "unbundling" of any sort. Rather it's
been an<br>
exercise of actually creating a new bundling. And I still
predict that<br>
once the reality of this sets in with consumers, they are
going to<br>
reject it and head back to that low (zero) cost means of
obtaining<br>
their media that they used when they were unhappy with the
previous<br>
generation of bundling.<br>
<br>
b.<br>
<br>
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