For starters I should mention that I don't believe I have ever subscribed to cable tv, though I had some roommates who have had it already when I moved in. Because of this, I don't think I am one of those people they are talking about when they mention the whole unbundling of cable and whatnot. I also have to wonder if the metrics that Wall Street seeks actually feed into the metrics of any given service. For example, I have had, and cancelled, Netflix. I cancelled it not because it was bad, but rather because it was too unwieldy to find anything on. I don't normally want to binge a season of anything, at most I will watch 2-3 episodes of a half-hour show in a row, before deciding to switch to something else, then come back a week or two later and watch another few episodes. Wall Street only cares that I subscribe, and I don't know if Netflix actually processed my viewing habits, because I may not have been their ideal customer. Anyway, aside from Netflix, I also just cancelled Paramount+ and Showtime, which I had as a bundle, and that was because I wasn't watching enough. So far, even though all the news services decry the lack of content, I have enjoyed Apple TV+, which I am not cancelling, even when my free time expires (a new season of Snoopy just dropped, and Ted Lasso will be back soon as well). The Disney+ bundle with Hulu and ESPN is also something I pay for, and I think I spend more time in the Hulu part of the bundle, but don't see any reason to change things there. Finally, I use BritBox, as I enjoy all sorts of content there, even the lit up holiday train.
Overall, it is kind of funny, my neighbor told me his cable package was $270 or something stupid, and he has Netflix on top of that, even counting my internet bill on a monthly basis, I don't pay half that, and I have more than enough on TV to keep my attention. I know those businesses need to figure out how to keep people subscribing, but I also think they need to remember not every subscriber wants the exact same thing from their streaming services, while variety is nice, it is also nice to have something small with a limited selection that someone may have actually cared about when they chose the shows, rather than just doing a hope and prayer that it would hit some algorithmic section of the audience enough to keep it from being cancelled after one season.
