The Messy, Confusing Future of TV? It’s Here
If you’re like me and the millions of other Americans who have canceled a cable television subscription
over the past few years, you’re probably familiar with the phenomenon I’ve started calling “the hunt.”
It goes like this: First, you decide to watch one of your favorite shows — HGTV’s “Fixer Upper,” in my case.
Disney, which has built an enormously profitable business
that includes movie ticket sales and cable revenue from ESPN, is betting that a significant number of customers will pay $10 or $20 a month to watch “Frozen” and keep up with their NBA teams, above and beyond what they’re already shelling out for Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime subscriptions.
To navigate all of this, a few third-party services have popped up to replace the TV Guides of old — like Can I Stream It?, a search engine
that will tell you which streaming platform hosts your favorite show — but there’s no industrywide solution, and no simplification in sight
On the surface, these seem like very different strategies — selling premium video to an existing audience of fans,
versus giving away premium video in an effort to sell hyper-targeted ads and attract a network of amateurs.
We were told that the internet would usher in a golden era of streaming video, and
that incredible shows and movies would be a click away through low-cost, easy-to-use services.
