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[Cfabar1]

Internet service costs have also ballooned though. Gone are the days of getting internet and TV for around $100… Now in many areas internet alone can be $70 a month.

 

[Brian Noble]

Most consumers seemed to think that the streaming model would mean everyone paid less for entertainment. However, media companies had no intention of suddenly making less money.

There are only two ways out of that: closing less popular media sources, charging more for the popular media sources, or both. My money has always been on both.

 

[RivShore]

Internet service costs have also ballooned though. Gone are the days of getting internet and TV for around $100… Now in many areas internet alone can be $70 a month.

Ahh, those were the days - I remember the original Triple Plays (TV, internet, & landline) being 79.99! We did not know how good we had it.

 

[bryaalre]

Streaming is still relatively cheap, even having 4 or 5 services. I have the Disney bundle, Crunchyroll, Peacock, and Apple TV. My wife and I currently pay around $20 for those services. I also use my parents max login.

I currently get Hulu free (with ads) from my phone carrier and this gets me a discount on the bundle (Disney Plus has no ads). My phone carrier also gave me a year of Apple TV and Paramount Plus (this has ended and I did not pay to renew). I got Peacock for a year for $20 just a few months ago. The only service I pay full price for is Crunchyroll, which I pay yearly and get a discount.

Internet is definitely getting a bit crazy but still manageable in my area. However, spectrum is trash and way over priced once the promo price ends and it’s annoying to call and negotiate a better price again.

 

[Jwaire]

Streaming is still relatively cheap, even having 4 or 5 services. I have the Disney bundle, Crunchyroll, Peacock, and Apple TV. My wife and I currently pay around $20 for those services. I also use my parents max login.

Those days are over though. They aren't chasing subs anymore. Your phone carrier isn't giving you Hulu for free either, you're paying for it (even though it's discounted).

Paramount+ - came "free" with my Walmart+ subscription, ending in the next few months will be $5.99/month w/ ads
Max - came "free" with my AT&T Unlimited Elite data plan for 1 year, already ended now $9.99/month with ads
Apple TV+ - came "free" for 3 months with my last iPhone, ended now $9.99/month (no ads) up from $5.99
Disney+ - three-year D23 promo ended last year, went from $4.29 to $7.32 to $14.25/month (no ads)
Hulu - went from $12.99 to $17.99/month (no ads)
Peacock - currently paying $2.50 per month with ads (1-year special rate)

I don't do Netflix anymore, but it's gone up considerably also.

The best deal out there ? YouTube Premium with Music. Currently paying $9.99/month

I'm keeping YouTube Premium, Apple TV (as part of my Apple One sub) and Hulu (with ads). Max, Prime Video (once they start charging) and Disney+ will go month-to-month depending on content.

The rest I'm saying goodbye to once their promos are over.

 

[clarker99]

Those days are over though. They aren't chasing subs anymore. Your phone carrier isn't giving you Hulu for free either, you're paying for it (even though it's discounted).

Paramount+ - came "free" with my Walmart+ subscription, ending in the next few months will be $5.99/month w/ ads
Max - came "free" with my AT&T Unlimited Elite data plan for 1 year, already ended now $9.99/month with ads
Apple TV+ - came "free" for 3 months with my last iPhone, ended now $9.99/month (no ads) up from $5.99
Disney+ - three-year D23 promo ended last year, went from $4.29 to $7.32 to $14.25/month (no ads)
Hulu - went from $12.99 to $17.99/month (no ads)
Peacock - currently paying $2.50 per month with ads (1-year special rate)

So, if I add up all those services above from Paramount+ to Peacock you are under $70month and you have access almost every single movie and TV show in history, mostly ad free and on demand.

I may have spent $70/mo at blockbuster every month back in the day to rent and/or buy a handful of movies (not including late return fees) plus paid for cable and went to the cinema. Lol.

 

[bryaalre]

Those days are over though. They aren't chasing subs anymore. Your phone carrier isn't giving you Hulu for free either, you're paying for it (even though it's discounted).

My Hulu is free. I received that perk from Sprint 8 years ago and as long as stay with them, now T-Mobile, it is free for life.

I also don’t think those days are over as I got peacock for a year a for $20 about 2 months ago.

Walmart plus for new subscribers is half off right now and comes with paramount.

I don’t have Verizon but they offer the Disney plus bundle (Hulu with ads and Disney without) for $10 as an add on and apple one as an add on for $10.

T-mobile gives Netflix and Apple TV for free with some of its plans.

Certain credit cards give subscriptions away for free.

Even if the streamers themselves don’t do the discount, there’s usually someone that will.

I agree that at full price, most of the streamers are not worth it but it’s still super easy, barely an inconvenience to find a way to have multiple services at reasonable rates.

Best deal for me, Crunchyroll $80 for a year. I love anime and there’s always all the new seasons, sub and dub. New movies get added slowly but do eventually show up. One big downside is it’s the worst UI in the world.

 

[Jwaire]

My Hulu is free. I received that perk from Sprint 8 years ago and as long as stay with them, now T-Mobile, it is free for life.

I also don’t think those days are over as I got peacock for a year a for $20 about 2 months ago.

Walmart plus for new subscribers is half off right now and comes with paramount.

I don’t have Verizon but they offer the Disney plus bundle (Hulu with ads and Disney without) for $10 as an add on and apple one as an add on for $10.

T-mobile gives Netflix and Apple TV for free with some of its plans.

Certain credit cards give subscriptions away for free.

Even if the streamers themselves don’t do the discount, there’s usually someone that will.

I agree that at full price, most of the streamers are not worth it but it’s still super easy, barely an inconvenience to find a way to have multiple services at reasonable rates.

Best deal for me, Crunchyroll $80 for a year. I love anime and there’s always all the new seasons, sub and dub. New movies get added slowly but do eventually show up. One big downside is it’s the worst UI in the world.

My point was, and is, the cell phone providers are building it into their plan costs. It's not free. They get a reduced rate from the streamer (marketing dollars) to bundle and build it in to their plans.

We're going to see a lot of those "marketing dollars" go away as streamers continue to march toward profitability. That's their goal.

Credit card companies (like Chase) may keep it around longer just because they make it up with interest.

 

[Cfabar1]

Credit card companies (like Chase) may keep it around longer just because they make it up with interest.

My understanding is the streamers subsidize the credit card benefits heavily. So Amex provides $20 for the Disney bundle on the platinum card because Disney pays for it or at least defeats the cost significantly.

Look for those types of benefits to start being curtailed. Right now the Platinum Card from American Express is a great deal. You can in essence get a lot of streaming content for free or very cheaply - Peacock, Hulu, Disney Plus, ESPN and Paramount Plus all have partnerships with that card. How long does that last. Who knows.

 

[Jwaire]

My understanding is the streamers subsidize the credit card benefits heavily. So Amex provides $20 for the Disney bundle on the platinum card because Disney pays for it or at least defeats the cost significantly.

Look for those types of benefits to start being curtailed. Right now the Platinum Card from American Express is a great deal. You can in essence get a lot of streaming content for free or very cheaply - Peacock, Hulu, Disney Plus, ESPN and Paramount Plus all have partnerships with that card. How long does that last. Who knows.

Yeah, the same with my Chase cards. It's all marketing dollars from the streamer. Although there will be cards that offer 10% cash back for streaming services long-term just like all the other rotating categories each month.

 

[bryaalre]

My point was, and is, the cell phone providers are building it into their plan costs. It's not free. They get a reduced rate from the streamer (marketing dollars) to bundle and build it in to their plans.

We're going to see a lot of those "marketing dollars" go away as streamers continue to march toward profitability. That's their goal.

Credit card companies (like Chase) may keep it around longer just because they make it up with interest.

Cell phone providers can and do build it into their plans but it’s still free for me if every provider has it built in and there’s not gonna be a better price.

These “marketing dollars” won’t dry up even when streamers are profitable. The latest deal with Spectrum proves this that these third parties will use the services as a tool to bring in customers. That’s not going to change for these providers as well.

 

[Jwaire]

Cell phone providers can and do build it into their plans but it’s still free for me if every provider has it built in and there’s not gonna be a better price.

These “marketing dollars” won’t dry up even when streamers are profitable. The latest deal with Spectrum proves this that these third parties will use the services as a tool to bring in customers. That’s not going to change for these providers as well.

How is it free to you if you are being charged within your cell phone plan? That's like saying because water and sewer is included in your rental fee, you are getting the utility for free.

As for Spectrum, those customers lost 8 channels and gained D+ streaming access with no promise of future price protection.

AT&T no longer offers a bundle with Hulu since they sold their stake in 2019.

Verizon's current offer - They claim you're saving $8.99/month with their Disney bundle (Hulu with ads, D+ no ads and ESPN+ with ads). First of all, you'd have to want all three services. Then, if you drill down into that post-paid plan with "perks" it would actually be about $20-25 cheaper to go with their very similar 5G prepaid plan and pay for the bundle outside of Verizon.

Any way you go, you're paying for it. Buyer beware. Do the math for you. It's complicated on purpose.

 

[bryaalre]

How is it free to you if you are being charged within your cell phone plan? That's like saying because water and sewer is included in your rental fee, you are getting the utility for free.

As for Spectrum, those customers lost 8 channels and gained D+ streaming access with no promise of future price protection.

AT&T no longer offers a bundle with Hulu since they sold their stake in 2019.

Verizon's current offer - They claim you're saving $8.99/month with their Disney bundle (Hulu with ads, D+ no ads and ESPN+ with ads). First of all, you'd have to want all three services. Then, if you drill down into that post-paid plan with "perks" it would actually be about $20-25 cheaper to go with their very similar 5G prepaid plan and pay for the bundle outside of Verizon.

Any way you go, you're paying for it. Buyer beware. Do the math for you. It's complicated on purpose.

It is free for me and realistically it would cost money if I switched to any other carrier or switched plans within T-Mobile. My plan is grandfathered in from even before the pandemic. Also, the promotion was added to the plan after the plan was available. No price change happened and so, yes it was and is free.

If we want to speak on technicalities, nothing is free, but no one would speak that way as it makes no sense.

It’s also not a complicated process. I’m not going to counter your points as we’re just going around in circles.

 

[wabbott]

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/d...E4BA55144CAA0A4C98A5%40AdobeOrg|TS=1699204368

Disney and other entertainment giants report after upbeat results from peers, but investors are getting harsher on companies that don’t deliver
Published: Nov. 5, 2023 at 10:31 a.m. EST
By Bill Peters

Earnings Watch: Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery report results this week, amid investor push for stronger streaming profits. Results from Rivian, Uber, Lyft and Robinhood are also due.

• Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Lions Gate Entertainment, and AMC Entertainment Holdings are set to report their results this week.
• The streaming industry is under pressure to turn a better profit, leading to consolidation and increased prices and advertisements.
• Cable TV providers and movie theaters are also trying to navigate the rise of streaming.
• Disney faces questions about losses at Disney+, cost-cutting efforts, streaming-account sharing, and potential media property sales.

Disney and other entertainment giants are reporting their results after seeing positive performances from their peers. However, investors are becoming more critical of companies that fail to deliver. As the streaming industry strives to increase profits, consolidation is taking place and platforms are charging higher fees and including more advertisements. Cable TV providers and movie theaters are also grappling with the growing popularity of streaming. Disney, in particular, faces various challenges and uncertainties, including losses at Disney+, cost-cutting measures, and potential media property sales.

 

[wabbott]

https://variety.com/2023/film/columns/what-comes-after-marvel-1235780410/


Nov 5, 2023 9:50am PST
What Comes After Marvel? Better Hope It’s Not Something Worse
With the MCU in its early endgame, many may think that movies can return to "normal." Think again.
by Owen Gleiberman

Fifty years ago, the release of two movies — “Jaws” in 1975, and “Star Wars” in 1977 — changed movies, America, and the world, not just by giving rise to “the blockbuster mentality” but by ushering in the cinematic age of all-popcorn-all-the-time. There had been antecedents, of course. In hindsight, much of our fantasy culture sprung from the loins of J.R.R. Tolkien. And there was a film that preceded “Jaws” and “Star Wars” that I think had just about as great an influence on movie culture: “The Exorcist.” That said, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are inarguably the transcendant game-changers of the second half of the Hollywood century. That’s a fact that justifiably became a mythology.

In many ways, the Age of Marvel is also a mythology, one that’s often been thought of as a ramped-up sequel to the Lucas/Spielberg revolution. Not that the rise of comic-book-movie culture happened overnight. It took place gradually, over the decades, kicking off in 1978 with “Superman,” building through the ’80s with the “Superman” sequels and, in 1989, the next-level marketing juggernaut that was Tim Burton’s “Batman” and its scattered sequels, then hitting a new plateau of centrality in 2002, with the release of “Spider-Man.” By the mid-2000s, it felt like we were swimming in comic-book movies — but how quaint that feeling now seems considering that even then, we had no idea what we were in for.

On May 2, 2008, Paramount released “Iron Man,” the first entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and depending on your point-of-view that date was either the Hollywood answer to Christmas or the end of cinema as we knew it. The world after the Marvel takeover was, in certain basic ways, a lot like the post-Lucas/Spielberg world: a shiny new galaxy of escapism, of feel-good fantasy engineered to seduce your eyeballs and melt down your brain.

But there’s a difference in how we think of the two eras. By the mid-’80s, when the addictive culture of technologically driven movie junk food had taken over, no one fantasized about putting that genie back in the bottle. There’s no way that we were ever going back to a world before “Jaws” and “Star Wars,” Sly and Arnold, “Top Gun” and “Flashdance.” But because comic-book movies, in their intertangled sprawl, are such a specific genre, the idea that they might one day actually go away, leaving movies free to be whatever they were before, retains a potent hold on a great many viewers.

The Marvel movie-making machine, as captured in Tatiana Siegel’s startling Variety cover story, is now in a moment of breakdown. The gears and cogs are coming loose; the numbers aren’t measuring up; the era of Peak Superhero may finally be past its peak. And, of course, this is really about something larger than mismanagement, mediocre sequels, or the legal morass of Jonathan Majors. If this week’s upcoming Marvel movie — entitled, almost fatefully, “The Marvels” — turns out to be the box-office disappointment that early tracking indicates it may be, it will top off a perception (fair or unfair; I’d call it fair) that the audience, overwhelmed on the big and small screen by Marvel entertainment product, is growing weary of that product. The fan enthusiasm isn’t on life support (yet), but the original thrill is (mostly) gone.
Seasoned moviegoers know in their bones that all genres have their day, that every movie form ultimately comes and goes. Nothing can last forever, and that includes the MCU (and yes, fans, I’m aware that we still have James Gunn’s DC). So if we’re now entering the early stages of the endgame, what comes next? Many consider the MCU to have been a blight on movies, a virus of processed storytelling and CGI overkill that invaded mainstream cinema and toxified it from the inside out. It poisoned the crop. If the Age of Marvel is over, can the movies recover?

We’re at a moment, symbolized by everything from the epochal success of “Oppenheimer” to the eloquent anti-Marvel sentiments of Martin Scorsese, when people are pining for a return to what movies used to be. A return to movies for adults, with supple scripts, great acting, and true human drama, experienced as communal events in movie theaters. Awards season, with its token plethora of movies that are just like that, always summons the nostalgia for a time when movies were the art form of our time.

But let’s be honest. That ethos, while it’s still hanging in there (it lives every time you see a great movie), wasn’t threatened only by Marvel. The body blows began way before that. Our whole culture of escapism, of movies as dehumanized effect-laden fantasy, has been entrenched for far too long.

If you want a preview of what movies could turn into after the Age of Marvel, look no further than the monster success of “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” a silly-scary horror trifle that became as big as it did because it’s based on a video game that’s bigger than movies. Video-game films have historically sputtered, but this year the makers of “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” got it right, and the makers of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” did too — at least, commercially. The infiltration of video games into the hearts, minds, and reflexes of young people is a process that’s been building for decades (just like the rise of comic-book movies). Could we only now, finally, be entering the sweet spot of video-game cinema? If so, it would make the Age of Marvel look like the Italian Renaissance.

The real problem isn’t, and never has been, “the junk that Hollywood makes” (as if we were all being force-fed). It’s the junk that Hollywood makes because audiences vote for those movies with their ticket dollars. That’s the way that movies have always worked, never more so than in the era of zappy populist escapism ushered in by Lucas and Spielberg. That legacy was fully in place when the MCU was just a gleam in Kevin Feige’s eye. It will still be in place when the MCU fades. The question is: Can movies back off not just from comic books but from the narcotic lure of compulsive fantasy, and return to something that looks more like the real world? Can moviegoers vote for that? If not, we’re all but fated to replace superhero spectacle with something that’s equally lacking in nourishment.

 

[clarker99]

I love how industry journalists blame the movies that make all the money. Theatres are dying and only being kept alive by Marvel and other franchises or sequels.

We are pushing toward 30% less theatre tickets sold in 2023 vs. 2019.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1720965904039563356

Scorsese and DiCaprio can’t draw a crowd. Is this also Marvel’s fault. Lol

 

[Jwaire]

I love how industry journalists blame the movies that make all the money. Theatres are dying and only being kept alive by Marvel and other franchises or sequels.

We are pushing toward 30% less theatre tickets sold in 2023 vs. 2019.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1720965904039563356

Scorsese and DiCaprio can’t draw a crowd. Is this also Marvel’s fault. Lol

It doesn’t matter because Apple financed it. That’s really the difference. Apple didn’t expect to make a return at the theater on this film, it was a vanity project to claim they got Scorsese on Apple TV+.

Disney is in a much different position.

 

[clarker99]

It doesn’t matter because Apple financed it. That’s really the difference. Apple didn’t expect to make a return at the theater on this film, it was a vanity project to claim they got Scorsese on Apple TV+.

Disney is in a much different position.

The real story is that theatres are dying and there is no recovery in sight. 30% less domestic tickets sold is an extraordinary stat. People are blaming content but even the unstoppable hype machine that is Taylor Swift underwhelmed.

 

[wabbott]

The real story is that theatres are dying and there is no recovery in sight. 30% less domestic tickets sold is an extraordinary stat. People are blaming content but even the unstoppable hype machine that is Taylor Swift underwhelmed.

I think the last movie I saw in a theater was Toy Story 4. Mrs. wabbott went to see to see Top Gun: Maverick last summer, but nothing since. I guess for young folks, movies are still a go-to date night thing, but with big screen TV's and Lazy-Boys, it has to be something really special to make me go.

 

[Elijah Abrams]

I love how industry journalists blame the movies that make all the money. Theatres are dying and only being kept alive by Marvel and other franchises or sequels.

The real story is that theatres are dying and there is no recovery in sight. 30% less domestic tickets sold is an extraordinary stat. People are blaming content but even the unstoppable hype machine that is Taylor Swift underwhelmed.

Please stop dissing the moviegoing experience, or you’ll become a social pariah.