It’s all Plastic Forks
The internet wrote a lot of cheques that private companies were never going to let it cash. The early promises of the freedom to stoat down the Information Super Highway toll-free were always pie-in-the-sky. They had to be; after all, we live in a rentier economy. But one area that looked to be bucking this trend was TV. Sure, the streamers wanted to be paid, but in comparison to the king’s ransom Sky and Virgin often demanded for satellite & cable TV, it was a bargain, with the added advantages of being on-demand and not requiring an ugly dish hanging off the side of your house.
Fast forward to today, and although the cord may have been cut and the dish disassembled, the promise of choice has eroded, and the fees are climbing. It’s all plastic forks; it takes ages to wade through them to find the good cutlery.
“An economy where advertisers thrive while journalists and artists struggle reflects the values of a society more interested in deception and manipulation than in truth and beauty"
~ Jaron Lanier
I took a notion to re-watch The Sopranos. I had watched the patina of shows skimmed thinly across multiple streaming services (Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, BBC iPlayer and Apple TV), and I decided I wanted to watch a classic. Nobody had it. Amazon and Apple wanted £2.49 an episode on top of the subscription they already charged. Amazon sold the boxset for £39.99, the price it would cost if I bought the series digitally on top of my subscription. Classic rentier behaviour since the files were already taking up server space in an AWS server. Ultimately, I found the box set for £7 at The British Heart Foundation.
If I add up the annual costs of all those subscriptions, we get:
Amazon Prime (£95)
Netflix Premium (£215.88)
Disney+ (£109.90)
Apple TV (£107.88)
BBC iPlayer (licence fee - £159.00)
A grand total of £687.66.
The cheapest Sky TV (only) package costs £607 for 18 months (including set-up). And they have The Sopranos. Plus, they give you all the streaming channels included in the price. But I’m not here to sell you Sky. Because fuck Rupert Murdoch and the incessant adverts the evil auld gobshite infests his awful, non-HD offerings with. You don’t get something for nothing, after all.
Eeek, the Profit Motive
It’s all capitalism’s fault. Nothing to see here; go on home. But not quite. No law of economics or the universe says price gouging and artificial scarcity must happen. So what gives? Why have fewer choices for more money?
Sky has a network of satellites in orbit, news studios and infrastructure to support, plus the exorbitant football payments they make (and tax non-sports users for). They also make shows, albeit shit ones.
So, what excuses do the streaming services have?
They don’t have extensive infrastructure reaching our houses via the ether. Sure, they have servers and all the associated paraphernalia. Still, someone else takes care of the fibre optic pipe to my house and the digital spigot in my living room—no satellites in orbit, no dishes with an army of white van men to fit them. Streaming services make shite shows too. Amazon found over $1bn down the back of the bold Jeff’s couch to make The Rings of Power. Streaming services are also not bothering their arses to make decent user interfaces (UI) for their products either.
Given that Apple designs devices around a UI, one can only surmise that the terrible UI in Apple TV is to encourage you to watch what they want and buy what they wish you to. With the least offensive UI from a terrible bunch, Netflix is a buffet of filler, garbage, and reheated leftovers. Or dishes inspired by things I’ve eaten before.
So why keep any of it?
It is hard to justify the costs. Whilst these are reduced through subscription sharing and the like, it still doesn’t justify how bad the services are. I can only theorise that the lack of quality streaming shows is either artificial scarcity creation or just much wrangling over rights. Either way, this still leaves us more out of pocket for less stuff. I would suggest that, as with most extractive systems, someone shall come along and replace them, do a version of what Sky do, without the adverts to subsidise the almost £7bn they send to entities like the English Premier League, and make an open interface that can transcend rights and formats and allow us, the consumer, to browse catalogues of what we want, when we want, for less dosh than the streamers and other rip-off merchants are charging now.
Until then, though, get a hooky streaming pack, get a VPN and torrent the shit outta things because, for whatever reason, these informal networks of people, all decentralised, find ways to get you what you want, when you want, without unavoidable ads and minus the god awful UI.