“Streaming stops feeling infinite”: What subscribers can expect in 2026

Streaming may get a little worse before it gets better.

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[Major Major]

Right, because nothing says subtle and seamless like Star Trek: TOS. It’s hard to imagine anything more subtle than half-black, half-white people trying to kill each other while Kirk gives a monologue about the evils of racism. Or aliens disarming the humans and Klingons while lecturing them about how war is bad. Or a guy bringing out an American flag and saying that the Declaration of Independence is “worship words” that infidels shall not speak, prompting Kirk to look straight into the camera and explain that America’s ideals are for everyone if they are to mean anything to anyone.

TOS was every bit as woke as modern Trek. Trek’s inclusive, liberal politics were outspoken from the very beginning. Stuff like Stacey Abrams showing up as the President of Earth is entirely consistent with what Trek has stood for forever. It’s a big part of what makes it great.

But Kirk was a straight white manly man sex pest which made him “art” and not “propaganda”… or something.

So much for making it to at least noon on New Year’s Day without running into a sea-lioning bigot.

 

[odikweos]

Enshittification. The whole article and topic boils to that.

 

[Rival Vector Plot]

1. Rising prices (movie theater tickets as well)
2. commercials
3. locked out content due to licensing and studio bickering
4. wash and rinse repetitive formulaic content
5. the onslaught of AI scripts and AI generated actors

Except for AI, all of the above is the general enshitifiation we long associated with cable, but I distinctly remember many telling the cord-cutters all of the above would catch up with them at some point. For the Star Trek fans out there, remember the episode where Data states, "That particular form of entertainment did not last much beyond the year 2040." I can clearly see the ability for people to lose interest is a real possibility.

 

[MonkeyT]

realistic lifetime value per subscriber

Streaming is periodic. What "lifetime" value? If you got to own and keep what you had purchased, THAT is lifetime value.

 

[Rival Vector Plot]

I think we'll also see a rise in Just In Time Subscription - waiting until a desired series nears the end of its run, then singing up and - slowly or quickly - binging through it before your 1 month payment expires. Maybe wait until you can pick up two or three shows like that, then cancel and repeat again in a year.

Some services are already catching on to this, with monthly subscriptions being more expensive than an annual sub, but it's still a very significant savings, especially for those with multiple services only showing a limited amount of content specific people are interested in.

Just in Time Subscriptions will come with JIT risings costs. Just being realistic. The corps will continue squeezing until people give them the finger.

 

[Sadre]

As to the WBD situation "Any acquisition will be subject to regulatory scrutiny, causing more uncertainty for subscribers" is true. But some bids are more equal than others.

 

[Rival Vector Plot]

Streaming is periodic. What "lifetime" value? If you got to own and keep what you had purchased, THAT is lifetime value.

“Lifetime value” sounds like a bullshit meaningless marketing line conceived over a two martini lunch meeting.

 

[DorkboyDC]

Nothing on the internet gets better, any more.

 

[niftykev]

But Kirk was a straight white manly man sex pest which made him “art” and not “propaganda”… or something.

So much for making it to at least noon on New Year’s Day without running into a sea-lioning bigot.

but it's a tasteful sealion that likes art and doesn't like seams! Or something like that.

On topic though, streaming can be less or more expensive than cable. Just depends on how many services you have active at once.

And as Darth Slack said, sports either makes you keep cable if you watch it or ditch it if you don't because you pay for it with cable even if you don't watch sports. Interestingly, it cuts the other way with cable as the big providers force the non-sports stuff with the sports stuff, like NBC Universal is doing to Fubo right now.

 

[Sadre]

You don't see the seams because you grew up in a status quo that was shaped by that "propaganda" of earlier times. You simply bemoan the modern "propaganda" that will set the status quo for people who are growing up now.

You are Archie Bunker, basically.

Jeeeez.

We don't think about cohort effects during a period of rapid change! It's impolite to us old people!

Now stifle.

j/k . Cohort effects are making "commentary" on numerous topics today like the proverbial blind people describing an elephant. And the young are just as snagged as the old. There is no total view of the Gestell. We just each of us pass through it as it passes through us.

 

[Major Major]

For the Star Trek fans out there, remember the episode where Data states, "That particular form of entertainment did not last much beyond the year 2040." I can clearly see the ability for people to lose interest is a real possibility.

Too bad the holodeck can arguably be considered the ultimate evolution of the trend towards self-directed AI slop videos wrapped in better VR tech.

 

[SixDegrees]

Just in Time Subscriptions will come with JIT risings costs. Just being realistic. The corps will continue squeezing until people give them the finger.

As noted, that's already happening. Apple TV charges $13 for a month's subscription, $99 for a full year. For me, a single month makes perfect sense - they don't have any more content than that I want to watch, and only release new stuff once a year - or less - so even though the annual sub costs less per month I'm still way ahead with just a single month.

 

[lasertekk]

1. Rising prices (movie theater tickets as well)
2. commercials
3. locked out content due to licensing and studio bickering
4. wash and rinse repetitive formulaic content
5. the onslaught of AI scripts and AI generated actors

Except for AI, all of the above is the general enshitifiation we long associated with cable, but I distinctly remember many telling the cord-cutters all of the above would catch up with them at some point. For the Star Trek fans out there, remember the episode where Data states, "That particular form of entertainment did not last much beyond the year 2040." I can clearly see the ability for people to lose interest is a real possibility.

If the TV/movie industry continues down its current path, I can see people losing interest and that form of entertainment dying off. A return to live performances perhaps? Real people on stage?

 

[lasertekk]

Just in Time Subscriptions will come with JIT risings costs. Just being realistic. The corps will continue squeezing until people give them the finger.

I’m there now.

 

[lasertekk]

Nothing on the internet gets better, any more.

Peak greatness is in the past.

 

[LDA 6502]

Streaming was always destined to become cable redux. The sheer number of commercials on TV everywhere is staggering. TV viewing is unpleasant today. I do not have cable but I travel periodically for work. In the hotels, they, of course, offer cable. One time, I scrolled through 60 channels and all of them were showing commercials. All. Of. Them. Shudder.

I canceled my DirecTV subscription years ago when I pulled up the guide one Saturday morning and saw channel after channel of infomercials. I thought, "why am I paying for this shit?". I was already annoyed at the number of commercials per hour being shown during regular programming and those animated ads for other shows being shown in the lower corner when a show came back from a commercial.

 

[lithven]

If the TV/movie industry continues down its current path, I can see people losing interest and that form of entertainment dying off. A return to live performances perhaps? Real people on stage?

Have you seen how much live entertainment costs now? Almost any recent show my wife or I have looked at starts at $100 a head and goes up from there.

People complain about TikTok brain rot but social media such as TikTok, YouTube, Twitch and similar may be the only affordable form of video entertainment in the not too distant future.

 

[vep]

I read it as "Screaming stop feeling infinite" and thought that was a nice sentiment. don't forget to vote in the mid-terms, kids

 

[LDA 6502]

The key word is monopoly. We all know what happens when there is no competition and no regulation.

Unless or until Congress stops granting unlimited monopoly rights to the creative industries, those monopolies will be abused.

One way to help break the streaming media monopolies might be to break their vertical integration. When you go to an AMC movie theater, they're showing content from all the studios. When you used to go to a Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, they had content from all the studios. But in the streaming world, content is heavily locked behind a studio's own service.

It would really be nice to see a modern version of US v. Paramount Pictures that forces studios to license content to third parties using F/RAND terms, even if there was a 6 to 24 month initial lockup period.

 

[GILDude]

Live sports is the main reason I never "cut the cord" and streaming is ruining that, too, because I now need a Peacock sub, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime to watch certain games. Fortunately, I'm an oldster and remember when sports fandom required reading ink on dead trees and games were time-delayed or only available on OTA, ad-supported audio, aka "radio." So, suck it, Comcast. I'm not paying you twice to watch the Warriors and the Giants on NBC and Peacock. Those teams just lose my support because I only watch games on NBC.

I have Apple TV through the Apple One bundle and I view Amazon Prime Video as a benefit of having Amazon Prime, but I really don't feel like paying any more than that, or sharing my viewing habits with more companies.

Live sports is definitely an issue. Some, like yourself, want to watch it. Others, like me, don't. But they always try to get folks that don't watch it to subsidize those that do. For example Amazon has been doing football - they have been advertising "Thursday night football" to me even though I have the no ads tier. But I don't want my subscription fees to go to live sports. Yet it does. That was one of the things I had hoped (naively) that would be better on streaming - that the folks who wanted sports could absorb the costs of it and those that don't could avoid the cost. But it is getting more and more like cable where, for example, if you want channel X, you can only get it in a bundle with channels z,a,b,c, and d that basically nobody watches but you have to subsidize them if you want x. I saw an article just the other day that Netflix was going to get into more live sports over the next few years. Great! There goes some of my Netflix subscription fee towards sports when I want it to go to a strong back catalog instead.

 

[mrkite77]

Build your own media server. Buy physical media.

Exactly what I did. Put together a minipc running OpenMediaVault and Jellyfin. I've been using Automatic Ripping Machine to rip all my cds, dvds and blurays onto it.

I actually bought CDs this year.. first time in nearly 20 years.

 

[Zapitron]

Arrr, from what I've seen, all these proprietary streaming services still don't have a standardized interface, so you have to use their apps, both to access their content and also to play it! It's kind of hard to take a "business" seriously when it simply ignores the last quarter century or so of technological progress and consumer expectations.

 

[krhodes1]

As long as I can easily turn services on and off I am just fine with the status quo. I get a month or two, watch what I want to watch, then cancel and do the same elsewhere. Cheap entertainment that way. And there are a number of decent completely free ad-supported services anyway. These days I do most of my TV watching on Tubi. Prime I will always have because I use the heck out of the shipping, the streaming is just a bonus. I keep ad-supported Netflix around because it's SO cheap I can't be bothered to kill it. But I signed up for a single month of HBO just to watch Heated Rivalry, and immediately cancelled it.

I have no problem at all with ads. This stuff costs real serious money to provide, and more of it all the time in these inflationary times. I can either pay with cash or I can pay with a bit of extra time. I can do something else while the ads run, and compared to network TV, the ads are usually pretty unobtrusive anyway, so I keep my cash when I have the option.

 

[Godisdead]

I've realized I get more for my money by going outside for exercise, traveling, watching YouTube with ad blockers, and reading ARS than spending it on streaming services.

 

[nerdrage]

Streaming is still a whole lot better than cable, unless you're a sports fans. Just churn around the platforms one at a time. Know what you want to watch, watch your queue, when you're through, cancel and move on.

I figured out my monthly cost for streaming for 2025: a big $13.50, ad-free. That includes 3 months of free Apple for having a years-old Roku TV. So 2026 won't be as cheap but will still be well under $20/month.

I hit up all the major platforms (except Peacock, still not worth bothering with) and saw every show and movie I cared to. There are a lot of things to bitch about nowadays but streaming is very far down the list.

 

[Griking]

Streaming is as or more expensive than cable? How? When I last had cable I recall prices of over $200 a month. What streaming services are people paying for that costs close to $200 a month?

Currently I have Prime Video but it comes with my Amazon Prime account. I don't consider it as a separate streaming charge. I get Disney but it comes with my Verizon cell service. Other than that I pay for Netflix. Overall its all still a lot cheaper for me.

 

[mrkite77]

Have you seen how much live entertainment costs now? Almost any recent show my wife or I have looked at starts at $100 a head and goes up from there.

Try community theater.

I just checked the Gaslight Theatre in Tucson. $29 per adult.

Bonus, the Gaslight Theatre is an amazing experience.. it's a dinner theater with audience participation.. you cheer the heroes and boo the villains.

 

[equine_physics]

No. You see the seams and you like the seams. There is a difference.

I can guarantee you 99.99% of people that grew up watching old school Trek did not think to themselves "oh this is so strong and brave." They liked the story, the lore and the characters and being strong and brave barely came into top of peoples minds if at all.

You think thinking "this is strong and brave" is a good thing. But most people think having those kinds of thoughts come to top of mind instead of the worldbuilding, plot, characters and story is a bad thing. Because it breaks the immersion.

You have different priorities, and that's ok. But its not what the market wants. Because if it did people would be making original ip's with the kinds of quailities you prefer baked in instead of piggybacking on legacy properties that have already existed and gained popularity on a different set of metrics other than inherently obvious and worldbreaking propaganda-like qualities. And no, you don't have to wonder or imply because yeah I'm bitter about it.

It's like clockwork where something will gain popularity on its own. Especially a new show. Then in the second or third season the propaganda starts getting pushed to the forefront and the show gets cancelled. Its not rocket science. The market does not want it. But I have a sneaky feeling the people that are doing it think 'so be it' if these things die. Because the propaganda is more important than the ip itself. More important than the company, more important than the medium its being put in. And trying to convince them otherwise is a one thousand percent lost cause.

Trust me I get it. We just have different priorities.

I'm just curious as to a real example of what you say in the bold statement. You are trying to make a point that is not clear so help to clarify.

As someone pointed out, TOS took on some strong liberal issues which being episodic, allowed them place in front of the audience one week, then something very different the next. Many shows were written by different writers as well so did TOS follow your hypothesis and was cancelled for the reason of "propaganda" or that it was costing too much and the last season looked cheap (even though a few were the best).

Let's look modern, The Good Place, a more arc oriented series that also had some pretty strong themes (mostly liberal) and it also lasted three seasons. It was not cancelled, but between a diverse cast, intellectual topics (I mean quoting Kant?), and liberal positions it could be viewed as massively woke, but from what I read, widely accepted.

So, give some examples of where you got your view for then we all better understand your view (if still disagree with it).

 

[nerdrage]

You know what I would like to see... a bright-line separation between production of content and distribution of content. Some good old fashioned regulation, sort of like what we used to have in the financial services industry with the Glass–Steagall act, preventing commercial and investment banking under the same roof.

Companies like Netflix would have to divest their studios, Disney would be prohibited from owning its own "me too" streaming services, Comcast would have to give up its ownership in Philly sports teams, etc etc.

Netflix, Hulu, Fubo, and the other streaming services would be free to negotiate terms for content with whatever studios, sports teams, and other production companies they chose. Popular shows would probably be carried on more than one streaming service because they'd earn more money that way. Exclusivity deals would be prohibited (because that would effectively couple studios with distribution channels again). Streaming services could compete fairly, with bundles of content that they think appeals to their audience. Smaller services could license less content, or cheaper content, at lower monthly rates to subscribers.

Will never happen of course.

If government is inclined to get that intrusive - telling a company that they are prohibited from making their own content and then keeping it exclusive to their platform - then I have a couple of suggestions for intrusive government action that are a lot more important than teevee shows:

Regulate internet as a utility. Forget the content, I just mean connectivity.

Universal health care.

Once those are done, then they can go bother Netflix.

 

[stormcrash]

Streaming is dead, long live discs

 

[sykosoft]

I finally got so fed up with streaming that I decided to allocate about $20 per month to my digital library depending on who has the best sale price.

I’ve been using platforms such as CheapCharts and others to track my wish lists.

Getting box sets of TV shows for $10 when just showing some patience has proven to be extremely beneficial. Every Star Trek, House, most comedy and sci-fi TV shows that we care about, tons of kids TV shows, and just about anything else that we can think of.

With great patience comes great bargains.

And of course we have a NAS for the stuff that’s physical.

And some other things are on YouTube or archive.org

I’m just fed up with streaming subscriptions. If they’re not included with something I already subscribe to, I’m not buying.

 

[nerdrage]

Agreed, but having to maintain eleventy-hundred individual streaming service plans, all of which are slowly getting worse whilst rapidly increasing in cost is not sustainable.

I genuinely did not fly the jolly roger for years and years because I was happy to pay for a good service, but it's getting to the point now where I not only can't be bothered keeping track of them all, but also resent being ripped off.

It's perfectly easy and sustainable. You subscribe to one for a couple months and then cancel when you're done with their content for the year. Then you move onto the next. All the platforms make cancelling stupid-easy because they know that if they throw up barriers, you might never return.

You don't have to keep track of them "all," just one at a time. And there are really just six or so that are worthwhile at all. For whatever reason, I find it to be kind of fun. Weird, I know.

I think at this point, I'm churning just for fun and being an innate cheapskate rather than to save money. The amount of money saved is minimal anyway compared with other expenses and I could easily afford six ad-free services year-round. I just don't want them.

 

[klarg]

New, and different programming is on the way. A lot of people, good people, are saying Paramount is currently developing the “Hitler did a lot of good” series with DJT as the narrator.

 

[nerdrage]

...aaaaaand here we go with the lowbrow name calling.

I will respectfully ask the mods to give them a little nudge to keep things civil. Not because of my own feelings but because I don't want this to devolve into another fart sniffing contest of who can call somebody a Nazi the hardest. Because you know that is what's coming next. Atomic clocks are less predicable.
----------------------------

So back to the subject at hand.

The quality and tone of the content these streamers put out is extremely relevant. Because if they actually want to make money and keep people subscribed they are going to have to focus heavily on the overall quality of their programming. It's the only thing people are wiling to pay for. And people will pay out the wazoo for quality. People simply will not pay for low quality propaganda in enough numbers to keep the business going. Not with their own money they won't. The streaming services that don't learn this very quickly will simply go out of business or end up getting acquired by a bigger fish.

It's not a coincidence that Netflix didn't devolve into mass quantities of lowbrow low quality slop and propaganda until AFTER they had already conquered the market. It seems like the only ones that understand this dynamic are Apple TV+. Because they are the one service that consistently puts out quality programming these days and seem to be making the biggest headway in the streaming market vs. the behemoth that is Netflix.

Are you kidding about Apple? They have maybe 40M subscribers to Netflix's 325M. I keep worrying that Tim Cook will finally admit reality and pull the plug.

And I certainly don't think of Apple as unwoke somehow. They have zero problem showing gay characters. Maybe you don't notice because Apple is oddly sexless compared with other "prestige content" producers like HBO but Apple is woke as any of the platforms.

The reason Apple has stalled out with subscribers is simply that quality doesn't sell as well as schlock. Netflix has the schlock angle covered and then some.

 

[Zapitron]

You know what I would like to see... a bright-line separation between production of content and distribution of content. Some good old fashioned regulation, sort of like what we used to have in the financial services industry with the Glass–Steagall act, preventing commercial and investment banking under the same roof.

Companies like Netflix would have to divest their studios, Disney would be prohibited from owning its own "me too" streaming services, Comcast would have to give up its ownership in Philly sports teams, etc etc.

I think that's a terrible idea and I hope nothing like that ever happens. I would be happy, very happy, to see more direct-with-fewer-middlemen content, where the content makers are selling directly to me. I don't mind doing business with dozens or even hundreds of providers, as long as it's done right.

(But they need to remember the word in th above paragraph is "selling." Sell me a .mkv file. I am not interested in paying a flat fee to get to use a proprietary client to play from your catalog for a month. I want to buy files, paying roughly in proportion to how many files I buy.)

It's just like how I prefer to buy beer directly from the brewery than from a law-mandated distributor. The crazy situation with alcohol distribution (here in the USA, at least) is probably why I hate your idea so much. ;-)

If we're going to solve our video annoyances with regulation, then the top-priority regulation should be standards enforcement. Let's return to the interoperability of analog cable in the 1990s, where you can plug the cable into anything (any brand TV, any brand VCR, any brand PVR) and it Just Works, without the user being railroaded into anything else.

 

[perrosdelaguerra]

Live sports is definitely an issue. Some, like yourself, want to watch it. Others, like me, don't. But they always try to get folks that don't watch it to subsidize those that do. For example Amazon has been doing football - they have been advertising "Thursday night football" to me even though I have the no ads tier. But I don't want my subscription fees to go to live sports. Yet it does. That was one of the things I had hoped (naively) that would be better on streaming - that the folks who wanted sports could absorb the costs of it and those that don't could avoid the cost. But it is getting more and more like cable where, for example, if you want channel X, you can only get it in a bundle with channels z,a,b,c, and d that basically nobody watches but you have to subsidize them if you want x. I saw an article just the other day that Netflix was going to get into more live sports over the next few years. Great! There goes some of my Netflix subscription fee towards sports when I want it to go to a strong back catalog instead.

I feel the same about just about everything else on cable that ISN'T live sports, especially reality TV and cable "news." Remember when "TLC" was short for "The Learning Channel?" In my channel package, I mostly watch Cartoon Network, AMC, BBC America. I can only get 2 of the major networks OTA here, and only when the weather is good (such is life in a condo), but I get all of the rerun channels. That might be enough as I get older and grumpier

 

[atomic.banjo]

I finally got so fed up with streaming that I decided to allocate about $20 per month to my digital library depending on who has the best sale price.

I’ve been using platforms such as CheapCharts and others to track my wish lists.

Getting box sets of TV shows for $10 when just showing some patience has proven to be extremely beneficial. Every Star Trek, House, most comedy and sci-fi TV shows that we care about, tons of kids TV shows, and just about anything else that we can think of.

With great patience comes great bargains.

And of course we have a NAS for the stuff that’s physical.

And some other things are on YouTube or archive.org

I’m just fed up with streaming subscriptions. If they’re not included with something I already subscribe to, I’m not buying.

Don’t forget your local library! Lots of DVDs and decent streaming, especially if you’re into old movies. I also subscribe (i.e., donate) to PBS and can stream all their stuff for $60/year.