1y ago

Americans’ new TV habit: Subscribe. Watch. Cancel. Repeat.

www.nytimes.com

Americans’ New TV Habit: Subscribe. Watch. Cancel. Repeat.

Many more people are jumping from one streaming subscription to another, a behavior that could have big implications for the entertainment industry.

…

Americans are getting increasingly impulsive about hitting the cancellation button on their streaming services. More than 29 million — about a quarter of domestic paying streaming subscribers — have canceled three or more services over the last two years, according to Antenna, a subscription research firm. And the numbers are rising fast.

The data suggests a sharp shift in consumer behavior — far from the cable era, when viewers largely stuck with a single provider, as well as the early days of the so-called streaming wars, when people kept adding services without culling or jumping around.

Among these nomadic subscribers, some are taking advantage of how easy it is, with a monthly contract and simple click of a button, to hopscotch from one service to the next. Indeed, these users can be fickle — a third of them resubscribe to the canceled service within six months, according to Antenna’s research.

“In three years, this went from a very niche behavior to an absolute mainstream part of the market,” said Jonathan Carson, the chief executive of Antenna.

Non-paywall link

105 comments

I really don't understand why streaming business are so surprised. They are providing television for rent and users are renting it plain and simple.They seem to think they are entitled to lengthy subscriptions from users when in reality they aren't providing a service that's even stable or worth it.
- The Netflix model was only ever really sustainable as long as there was only one or two providers. As long as there was only Netflix people were quite happy to just stay with the subscription because all of the content was on one convenient platform.
  If I want to watch popular shows and how I have to subscribe to five or six services. Why would I do that if they are all still going to be there in a couple of months.
  
  The Netflix model was only ever really sustainable as long as there was only one or two providers
  The netflix model of streaming for cash was sustainable. The practice of gouging to where people will churn, that's more widespread and an expected result.
  
  if they are all still going to be there in a couple of months.
  That's the beauty of Netflix. They won't.
- Exactly. I want to watch 1 show and when I'm done I'm cancelling. I'm looking at your paramount plus.
  
  Paramount+ is especially bad. Tiny selection, mostly shit, costs as much as the other services.
  
  What you mean the Star Trek streaming service with some extra stuff no on cares about?
- Users: Fine if you want me to pay a monthly fee I'll only pay 3 months of the year.
  Streaming services: Shook
- I would be happy to keep subscribing for a reasonable price. But I'm starting to trim the fat as they continue to price gouge.
- You're probably being ~~theoretical~~ rhetorical, but they're definitely not surprised. Any actual confusion as to why an article like this can be cleared up when you consider the author isn't really talking to us. Try reading it as if it's a business brief, talking about us as a 'problem' that must be addressed. That 'problem' is we users are getting more value from the current model than was calculated by corporate.
  Soon there will be another article (also addressing the room as if we're not part of the discussion) detailing how corporate managed to "fix" it, and the revenue increases it brings. The other companies will follow suit to thunderous applause

Just the fact that the author here is using the word "impulsive" in conjunction with canceling services tells me that this is just guilt based propaganda trying to put a negative spin on this. No thanks, you can fuck off.
- Americans new habit: Being poor.
  
  Millennials new impulse buy: food and rent.
  
  Wasting money on impulsive grocery purchases like vegetables and bread when they could be subscribing to every streaming service.

The subtle corporate dick sucking of using "impulsive" against the cancellation of the thing and not the impulsive purchase of the thing.
The NY times can go fuck itself.
- It could fit.
  Each subscription is carefully planned based on what shows the family wants to watch.
  Each cancellation is on a whim. "Hey, the monthly bills are too high. Are we done with [service]?"
  
  It doesn't make any sense for somebody that "carefully plans" their subscription to be surprised by the monthly bills and "on a whim" cancel.
  Impulse buyers are the ones that get surprises at the end of the month.
  Judging by comments here, plenty of people carefully plan subscribing for one month only: so they subscribe and immediate cancel, all planned, and then have a month to see the bunch of series and movies exclusive to that provider that they planned to see.
- My favorite/least favorite instance of this kind of oh-so-subtle dysphemism is when CNN (I think) ran a piece about some marketing suit's complaint that millennials are "brand promiscuous", for basically the same reason as we're seeing with these streaming services applied to other products. This sort of thing is what led to r/DeathByMillennial.

It just makes economic sense.
The data suggests a sharp shift in consumer behavior — far from the cable era, when viewers largely stuck with a single provider, as well as the early days of the so-called streaming wars, when people kept adding services without culling or jumping around.
Yeah, turns out when the monopolies are eliminated, people get more competition and a better deal on the consumer end. It's why I'll never understand people who say streaming services became as bad as cable.
One option for slowing the churn, executives think, is to bring back some element of the cable bundle by selling streaming services together. Executives believe consumers would be less inclined to cancel a package that offered services from multiple companies.
No, I'm less likely to cancel a service that's worth what you charge for it. Be happy you got one month out of me, and if you want more, offer me more value. Putting serialized shows out week by week doesn't do it for me either, because I'm just going to wait until the season is done to start watching it anyway.
Price sensitivity is also a factor. Americans with a streaming subscription are spending an average of $61 a month for four services, an increase from $48 a year ago, according to a new study by Deloitte. The increase was due to higher prices, not additional services. Nearly half the people surveyed said they would cancel their favorite streaming service if monthly prices went up another $5, the study said.
Mystery solved.
- Yeah, turns out when the monopolies are eliminated, people get more competition and a better deal on the consumer end. It's why I'll never understand people who say streaming services became as bad as cable.
  I'd argue that streaming is in such a bad place right now because each streaming service has a monopoly on their own content. Sure, you could argue that studios "compete" with each other on the content they produce, but I'd argue that cable companies were a different layer of the stack entirely. Cable companies all offered the same channels and the same content, and in areas where they did overlap, competition to offer the best delivery of those channels was great. What made cable bad was that there was little incentive for companies to geographically compete. In the era of streaming, companies have little incentive to allow their content to compete across platforms.
  If you ask me, every streaming platform should be broken up from their production parents, so that streaming companies can compete on what they offer, and how they deliver it. There is no incentive for the platforms themselves to compete with each other. It's all about how hard the services can enshittify before people stop watching the content they have a monopoly on.
  
  This is why Uncle Sam made it illegal for movie studios to own their own movie theaters 100 years ago.
  
  Cable companies still did the same practice too though, and even the ones that weren't cable providers still negotiated with the providers that if you got channel A in this tier of service, you must also get channel B, and then Disney brings in a certain amount of money per channel in a given bundle every month. No matter how you slice it, even with the problems above, what we've got now is better.
  
  Copyright is a government granted monopoly.
  So the fragmentation is not surprising: each economic agent used their government granted monopoly on some content to make sure nobody else could distribute that content and, because of the monopoly of copyright unlike with, for example, cooking oil or soap, nobody can set up a business that just buys it on one side from several different "factories" to sell it on the other on a single shop front.
  There are lots of massive market distortions in the area of content exactly because its foundation are government granted monopolies with no obligation for fair access selling, resale or second-hand sale.
- The data suggests a sharp shift in consumer behavior — far from the cable era, when viewers largely stuck with a single provider,
  What a stupidly obsequious statement. You didn't change providers because you couldn't. It wasn't until satellite TV took off in the late 90s that people started having options for more than one subscription TV provider.
  And now these financial geniuses are talking about bundling, when the whole reason this "problem" exists in the first place is because all of them yanked their content off Netflix to start their own streaming channels in the belief that they could be as profitable and as successful. Maybe they should try listening to what consumers want?
- I prefer the weekly release schedule of shows. It's something to look forward to and something to talk about week to week. A lot of people don't want to hear spoilers either. Releasing all at once leads to that.
  I do think there are those who would subscribe instantly instead of waiting for all shows to be released. Not everybody, but enough of them to stay for two to three months instead of just one and done.

Viewers didn't stick with a single provider in the cable era.
They were stuck with a single provider.
- This is exactly what I came to mention. It’s not like you had a choice. The cable mafia only allowed one provider per area.
- And you couldn't even pick and choose what channels you wanted. Basic cable meant you had to pay to subsidize 100+ channels you were never going to watch. I've been cable free for almost 10 years and it was awesome until all the networks started taking their balls and going home by starting their own streaming services. That left less and less content that I actually wanted to see on any single service. The last straw was when they all jacked their prices way up and added commercials.

So I was thinking about subbing to Netflix again to watch something, and they had already deleted my account (it’s been about a year). So I went to my email to just try and verify that I was trying to login using the correct email address.
While doing this I found a statement from 2018. The price of Premium Netflix then was $13. Now it’s $23 I think. And they cracked down on password sharing so the service isn’t even as good, really.
Every one of these services has raised prices over and over, boiling us frogs in the pot, so it’s no wonder everyone now just subs for a month or two then bounces. It’s smart. The companies here are the stupid ones, chasing the all-mighty “line-go-up” quarterly statement MBA shit when they could have had loyal customers for years and years. I think I had a Netflix account for at least a decade or more (back when it was just mailing DVDs) until they started jumping the price by a few bucks every six months. It’s just not worth it to keep services around waiting for a show or two to come back.
- Tbf, Netflix - along with Blockbuster - really was one of the pioneers in offering streaming services, when nobody else would. And it is not their fault that ISPs decided to throttle them, essentially holding their entire business hostage until they ponied up more dough, and now the content providers are doing the same. Also, most of the time they tend to grandfather people into older plans, so whatever the price is they usually (tbf, not always) tend to honor for many years in the future.
  I am perpetually a year or less away from cancelling my own subscription b/c of how they continually skirt the line of pushing forward to do things like adding in "advertisements", but then walking back to make them more bearable before they start losing customers like me in droves. So I am not exactly a full-on "fan" of Netflix, just trying to offer a balanced perspective.
  They also did put in the work to make a SUPERB player, plus invested heavily in making apps for physical devices. It was only this year that I finally stopped being able to play Netflix on my 9-year-old TV, and even that has a heavy chance of being more the fault of the device itself (I mostly don't care b/c my Chromecast still works just fine). Plus I still can do things like e.g. go workout in a gym while watching a pre-downloaded Netflix video without needing to use any of my mobile data, all that needing virtually no setup at all, unlike e.g. piracy that would require paying for a VPN and investigation into what mobile apps are available, plus constant monitoring to see if they remain trustworthy (so many famous examples of apps that got taken over from the inside by a malicious update).
  Even so I may still leave it in a year or two, regardless of whether it is their fault or not, b/c I am not sure that I am getting anywhere close to the "value" for the amount that they are charging, anymore:-(. Seeing shows come out like Stranger Things gave me some hope, but then watching that same show enshittify itself immediately for the sake of chasing after profits to the exclusion of all else quickly killed it.
  Though in that case I will need to research some alternatives...
  
  Netflix [...] tend to grandfather people into older plans, so whatever the price is they usually (tbf, not always) tend to honor
  Where's this? I've yet to hear of this happening ever.
  
  Having used Disney and Paramount apps, I'm blown away by how much better the Netflix user experience is.
  
  I think Blockbuster became a legend of failed business strategies because it didn't offer streaming when no one else would. They waited until Netflix grabbed all the momentum for streaming to try their own, sad service.

In three years, this went from a very niche behavior to an absolute mainstream part of the market
It’s because of the fracturing of the marketplace. For a while there were only a few major Film/TV streaming services. Netflix and Hulu, then HBO and Amazon, and a handful of niche or genre platforms.
Then around the pandemic time, every network and their mother decided to pull their licensing to start their own streaming platform or several. The platforms all cost as much or more as before, but you need more of them to watch the different IP you are interested in.
What the studios don’t realize (or won’t publicly admit) is that instead of replacing cable TV, they have effectively recreated the video rental industry.

- When this happens I hope PayPal or Klarna has a usable emulant I can give Netflix so they'll fuck off AND not get power to my actual banking.
  
  Have you tried Bittorrent with Proton VPN? It’s great for downloading Linux ISOs. I know that’s not related to this conversation, I just felt like you might want to download some Linux ISOs.
  Also https://1337x.to has a great directory of Linux ISOs you can download.

One service, everything on it, no ads, no "leaving soon", 4K Blu-ray quality visuals and audio.
It doesn't matter how much you pay right now, this service does not exist outside of piracy. I will pay up to £30 a month for this. The ball in in your court.
- Arrrr, matey

Yarr
- This be the way maties!

Subscribe? You mean torrent?
- Sonarr, the TV channel with everything.

This is a good thing. No matter how they try to paint it. I only stuck with some when interest and content waned because I was grandfathered in. When Netflix etc. took that away it made dumping them an easy decision. Not an “impulsive” one. There’s no point in being loyal to these companies. Especially when they pulled this shit after previously they claimed we were locked in on that pricing and started forcing ads. Greedy bastards.
- Netflix is the only one I don’t cancel but I get a free sub through my provider. The rest come and go at my whims.

Americans are getting increasingly impulsive about hitting the cancellation button on their streaming services
GOOD.

Laughing in Plex server
- Plex is deep in the enshitification process. I'd consider spinning up Jellyfin alongside it so you switch relatively painlessly when you decide that Plex's bullshit has gone too far.
  Even if you never reach that point, it'll be useful to have a media server that won't lock you out if you ever lose your Internet connection for an extended period of time
  No reason they can't run alongside each other, in case your concerned about resources or storage.
  
  I agree with you; Plex is completely enshittified. Unfortunately, Jellyfin still lacks apps for some platforms, even though they recently added webOS (old versions included) so the situation is slowly getting better.
  
  You can change the settings in Plex and still access it locally without Internet connection. But yeah Plex is kinda behind the curve on a lot of things, although jellyfin has it's own issues
  
  I couldnt get jelly to see my external drives
- Laughs in VLC and HDMI out

It's the only practical option. Unless we get cable like packages (which I wouldn't be surprised to see soon), nobody wants to pay for some 10+ subscriptions for 1-2 shows on each platform. But if you cycle a couple subscriptions every few months, it's the same (cheaper) cost year round, but you get all the content you want.
Having described it, I think that's probably why we're seeing more and more shows returning back to weekly releases - that model keeps the subscribers on the hook for longer. We can always just wait till it's done, of course, but there's a number of factors that can pressure viewers into remaining subscribed.
- You don't want to pay $150/month for 10 different streaming services with one show you want to watch each??
  I wholly agree but I think the weekly model is about more than money. It gives fans time to talk about each episode and have fun conversations speculating on what comes next. I much prefer that. When 10 episodes are released at once, people binge it over a weekend and the buzz is gone a month later. Single episode releases make for a ton of free word-of-mouth marketing
- The Hulu/Disney/ESPN bundle already exists as a prototype, but I'm sure it'll go much further from there

To me this is the way the streaming companies have designed it, with fracturing content.
- Yep. They should have settled for passive income and left their content on Netflix.

Not a chance that's gonna last. The next step is you must buy 3,6, or 12 months at a time. We already have streaming services doing channels and ad breaks. Cableless TV will be the circle completing.

I've been waiting for the services to start requiring a year commitment or something equally dumb to prevent this behavior. I subscribe under two conditions : There is something I want to watch, and all the episodes are available. Once I've finished the content I subbed for, what is my incentive to stick around, exactly?
Unfortunately for streamers they can only churn out a season of my favorite shows every 2-3 years, and I'm not really about paying for availability to content that doesn't interest me. Especially while those rates have doubled and tripled.

Cancelled all services a couple months ago that offer an ad+sub tier. I'm ok with ads for free or sub, but mix them and that kind of greediness like cable TV i can't abide. It's given me more time for other hobbies I'd rather be doing anyways.

That's too much effort. Easier to just not watch anything at all.

[Streaming services raising prices, producing garbage, canceling good shows, losing access to shows, straight-up deleting entire shows for a tax write off.]
"Why have consumers suddenly changed in only three years??? Inexplicable!"

Netflix bungled this. They could have said “starting on January 1, 2022, no new accounts will be able to share passwords between households.”
No one would cancel. Some would probably go to a cheaper tier but would keep their accounts active forever. Plus, people who share accounts don’t cancel because their family members might be watching. Netflix’s churn rate would have embarrassed HBO and Disney.
But no, they are chasing shortsighted, anti-customer gains and now are reaping what they sowed.

Cancel all services
Get Stremio + Torrentio + Debrid
Enjoy life

Well, the true economics of the subject considering the entire market are than a 1 month VPN subscription is cheaper than the cheapest subscription of a single one of these services.
It would be interesting to see the graph of VPN # of active subscriptions next to streaming service # of active subscriptions for the last 2 years.

site:github.com radarr sonarr docker
- The hard part is saving for all the expensive hard drives. That's my next step.
  
  You can use the money you saved by cancelling your streaming services. assuming an average of two streaming services thats like £22 a month.
  Secondhand electronics shops sell used hard drives dirt cheap.
  I wouldn't trust those drives with any data i want to keep but if it's just movies that could be redownloaded then who cares?
  A couple months down the line you could add redundant drives and then re-downloading isn't even a consideration any more. dead drive? pull it, replace it, sync... done
  With the added benefit of improving your server management skills
- no docking for me thanks /s

During the writer's strike, I watched an interview with an industry insider and member of the WGA. He mentioned that it's been well known to the industry that people are subscribing for one month to binge watch and then unsubscribe. I was a little surprised to hear this was already such a common practice and the industry was, in part, renegotiating contracts with this in mind. Personally, I've been doing a version of this since Netflix first started online streaming.
I don't currently have any streaming service plans in large part because they keep increasing the prices. These services are fine for the prices they used to be but they keep raising prices. Perhaps the content is better but it's not like my life is impacted by a slightly better tv show or movie - an hour of content is an hour of content. If you want to make better stuff, create another service or offer a higher subscription tier. I'm voting with my wallet and I'm not allowing social pressures to dictate where I get my entertainment. Let's not lose sight that this is entertainment we're talking about.
The other issues I have with them, incidentally, are poor content and poor user experiences. I cancelled my Netflix subscription because they implemented auto-playing trailers. I've stopped using Apple TV entirely because they too have implemented auto-playing trailers.
At this point, getting up to change the channel with a rotary knob might be a better experience than most of these streaming platforms. In fact, I've been watching a lot of Pluto and Tubi lately. They have ads but they're relatively minimal and they're placed in appropriate places in the program.
🏴‍☠️
- Tbf, Netflix did start auto-playing crap but then walked back on that. They do that continually - pushing the boundaries past what people are willing to take, then a few months later dialing it WAY down, but still forward from where it started. Although more recently they did get it to a nice place imho - if you have a friend with a subscription, check it out and you may be pleasantly surprised. I am not saying that it makes up for the loss of content that they used to have, or that it is a fully good experience, but it is a LOT better than it was there for awhile (so: not that you would consider ever going back, but at least you would know:-).
  
  They do that continually - pushing the boundaries past what people are willing to take, then a few months later dialing it WAY down, but still forward from where it started.
  I had a boss like that. What a fucking dickhead.
  Had.

ahoy matey
- We be consistent on the high seas, yarg.

Price gouging plus adding ads to paid services. Time to yarr
- plus adding ads to paid services
  No, no, no.
  Remove the ad-supported tiers from your mind. Pay the amount for ad-free watching. Compare the rates and affordability of that package only, and when it becomes non-viable then fucking bounce SO HARD. Ad-supported crap needs to be forgotten so it can cease to exist.
  If we want ads, we have Pluto. Either take my money and my personal info or show me ads. PICK A LANE.

Stremio + Torrentio + Real Debrid is my favourite streaming service.
- Love it. My only issue is some older things I want have really shit quality when I know there are better versions out there. I use it in conjunction with my own offline cache for full coverage.

… ⛵️

I skip the subscribe part. Just watch and repeat.

I’m going back to buying DVDs.

There are months, I don’t even watch anything. I’ll subscribe when the need arises. When the need subsides because I’m busy. I’ll cancel. The idea that I’ll just pay on autopilot went away when they raised prices and made it impossible for me to share the subscription.

My issue is that none of these streaming services have a backlog of content large enough to be worth it, and they only add one good show every few years. I can just pirate the one good thing they put out, and then I don't have to pay for the heaps of trash they've shatted onto their streaming service.

Sounds like streaming services should start doing automatic credit checks on sign up. Then jumping around would result in lowering credit score, just like jumping around cell providers. And they should all do it around the same time coincidentally.
Streaming service execs, I'm ready to accept an exorbitant consulting fee for this insight. 💵🫲

105 comments