Tag Archives: Pay television

Business

Netflix is raising prices by $1-$2 a month

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Netflix!
Photo: ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images

Netflix announced tonight that it’s raising the prices for all of its subscription tiers by $1 to $2 a month. It’s been roughly a year and a half since the streamer’s last price hike, which hit in October of 2020.

The increases—which will “roll out” for existing subscribers in coming months, as part of the company’s ongoing efforts to not get torch-and-pitchforked every time they do this—break down like this: Premium subscribers, who currently pay $18 a month for 4K content and 4 screens at once, will be knocked up to $20 a month. Standard plan members (HD content, 2 screens) will be jumped up a buck fifty, from $14 to $15.50. And Basic members, who don’t get HD content, will now be paying $10 a month for the privilege.

The price increases come at an undeniably weird time for the service, which is simultaneously riding about as high as it’s ever been, while also finding itself facing down stiffer competition than it’s ever seen. On the one hand, Netflix’s subscriber base is about as good as it could conceivably be at the moment, with the service currently supporting some 200+ million subscribers planet-wide, and 74 million in the U.S. and Canada—where these latest price increases are aimed.

The problem is that Netflix’s subscriber base is also, well, as high as it can conceivably be at the moment; when you’re already installed in the homes of basically every internet-enabled home in a decent chunk of the planet, it’s hard to carve out that pesky “growth” that shareholders crave. Hence, partly, the price increases, which put Netflix on par (or a little past, for Premium) HBO Max, which has generally been the priciest plan in the game at $15 a month. (For comparison, Disney+ remains at $8 a month, Paramount+ at $10 a month, Apple TV+ at $5, and Hulu just kicked its own prices up to $13 a month last year.) (That’s for the non-ad versions of the services, to be clear.)

And the mere length of the above parenthetical demonstrates the other issue Netflix is currently facing down: There are a lot of other companies out here right now trying to house its lunch. And while its multi-year head start in the streaming wars is obviously a boon, the company still needs to keep throwing as much money as it can at original content to keep subscribers happy. (Especially since studios who were once eager to license their shows to the streamer for some quick post-life profits are now far more reticent to feed a rival the content that it needs.)

The upshot of all of that being: Expect that little monthly bill to get a little less little in the coming months.

[via The Verge]

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Entertainment

HBO Wants to Woo Amazon Prime Users With Deep Discount

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Photo: Evan Agostini / Staff (Getty Images)

Like a New Jersey mobster struggling to take care of his family while simultaneously confronting his own mental health issues, HBO is trying to make you an offer you can’t refuse.

After hemorrhaging subscribers as a result of executives’ decision to yank HBO from Amazon Prime Video’s Channels, WarnerMedia, the platform’s parent company, is dangling a 50% off sale in front of would-be HBO Max users in an effort to woo them back to the platform.

According to Deadline, the half-off discount will run from today through September 26 and will be available to both new and returning subscribers who had previously accessed HBO via Amazon’s Channels platform. The deal, which will last up to six months, would bring HBO Max’s monthly subscription cost down to $7.49 (HBO Max typically costs $15/month without ads, or $10 a month with ads.)

On Sept. 15, HBO was removed from Amazon Prime Video’s Channels service—the result of a deal cut by HBO’s parent company, WarnerMedia, years earlier that had sought to end the relationship as part of an effort to cut out the middle man so that HBO “owns” more of its subscribers. For the record, HBO Max will still be available as an app on Amazon’s Fire TV service—which is distinct from Amazon Channels—but the decision to sever Channels users from their HBO accounts has already resulted in roughly 5 million canceled subscriptions, all in the name of hopefully securing HBO Max as the primary entry point for future subscribers who want to access its proprietary streaming content.

It’s worth noting that the sticking point in the previous placement deal was the fact that it had allowed Amazon’s Channels division to maintain control of HBO’s streaming data—which just didn’t sit right with HBO. Sometimes you just want to be the capo of your own subscription data, capiche? This affluent north Jersey suburb isn’t big enough for all these streaming platforms and their respective tough wars—and at the end of the day, there can only be own big boss in town. In gabagool’s name, we pray.

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Business

Hulu Is Raising Its Prices Again Oct. 8

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Photo: Jenny Kane (AP)

Less than one year after Hulu jacked up the price of its Hulu with Live TV subscription package, the streaming service is preparing to put another dent in customers’ wallets by raising prices once again.

Beginning on Oct. 8, anyone who subscribes to one of Hulu’s on-demand plans, Hulu and Hulu with No Ads, will be subjected to a $1 increase, TechCrunch reports, which more or less sounds like a pittance when you recall that the price of Hulu’s Live TV bundles increased by a whopping $10 apiece last year. What that means in practice is that the ad-supported version of Hulu will now cost $7 per month, up from $6, while Hulu with No Ads will cost $13 per month, up from $12.

Thankfully, Hulu’s Live TV bundles have not been subject to any price hikes this year, probably because making them any more expensive would further erode what little artifice is left to the idea that cutting the cord is in any way cheaper than buying a cable package.

Notably, the planned price hikes also won’t affect any plan where Hulu is bundled with Disney+. Disney—which assumed full ownership of Hulu in 2019 after it bought out Comcast’s stake—is likely doing this on purpose in order to incentivize customers who don’t require live TV to shell out for a package that includes its own flagship streaming product. The package that combines Hulu with Disney+ and ESPN+, for example, costs $14 per month—just $1 more than Hulu with No Ads will cost after the price hike goes into effect next month.

In its third-quarter earnings report last month, Disney announced that while Hulu still trails Disney+ in subscribers, it actually leads in average monthly revenue per user. Hulu’s subscription on-demand video service has also grown to 39.1 million subscribers, per the report, and its Live TV option, which bundles its live and linear programming, has 3.7 million subscribers, leading to a grand total of 42.8 million total subscribers—up 21% year-over-year.

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Entertainment

Movies on Some Streaming Services Could Be Headed for Peacock

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Photo: Catie Keck/Gizmodo

The battle between streaming services for your binge-watching hours continues.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Peacock parent NBCUniversal has been mulling pulling its movies from services like Netflix and HBO Max to boost its own content offering. The outlet additionally reported that contracts that HBO Max and Netflix have respectively with Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment will expire at the end of 2021.

Bloomberg reported that no final decision has been made as to whether it will pull its films from rival services where they appear less than a year after releasing in theaters. A spokesperson declined to comment on negotiations but did confirm that pay 1 rights agreements are coming up at the end of the year and that negotiations with interested parties are currently underway.

It doesn’t come as any surprise that Peacock would be weighing such a decision, though. While those licensing deals are likely lucrative for NBCUniversal, Peacock entered the streaming wars alongside a number of other platform launches. Everyone is competing for viewers, and nobody is quite pulling off the numbers of Netflix or Disney+, which have 200 million and 100 million subscriptions, respectively. Peacock, which launched last year, reported having 33 million subscriptions in January.

Peacock does offer a lot of content that other services do not, and its WWE hub will likely be a draw for some subscribers. That said, Netflix and HBO Max are dumping a ton of money into producing high-quality originals, which will help them continue to scale and draw in new subscribers.

Even if NBCUniversal proceeds with yanking its films from rival services to instead offer them on its own, it is questionable whether that will carry the service—particularly for films that have already been released in theaters. This is especially true as the promise of vaccines for covid-19 reaches a greater percentage of the population and consumers begin to return to public spaces to go to the movies.

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Will this potentially suck for subscribers? Well, yes. But I wonder if many HBO Max and Netflix users would even know the difference if Peacock does pull this lever.

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