You know that bad feeling you’re sensing deep down in the pit of your wallet? That’s the inevitable consequence of Hollywood getting in bed with Silicon Valley. Make no mistake, incessant price hikes over time in exchange for a product that’s qualitatively inferior to the one we signed up for in the first place is the calling card for the tech industry as a whole. Now, viewers who simply want to catch the latest episode of “House of the Dragon” season 2 after a long day of work or revisit “Mad Max: Fury Road” before checking out “Furiosa” in theaters have to deal with yet another headache. Compared to when everybody just had cable, it’s fair to say this ain’t exactly the revolutionary viewing experience we were first promised, is it?
Obviously, much of these measures come down to the simple fact that streaming isn’t — and never was — as profitable as studios wanted to believe. Most streamers continue to operate under millions (or, as was the case with Peacock, billions) of dollars of debt, floating by on the mere promise of future rewards to their shareholders at some point down the line. This is yet more evidence of why the actors’ and writers’ strikes were so important last year, which were aimed in large part towards fixing a broken system where streamers were getting away with all sorts of shady business tactics: squirming out of giving artists the residual checks they deserved, hiding the analytics behind how any given movie or show was actually performing, and more.
Sure, at the end of the day, an increase of a buck isn’t the end of the world. But does anyone really think this is sustainable?