Every month, streaming gets a bit closer to good old fashioned pay-TV. Now seemingly every service pairs its scripted entertainment with lowbrow reality fare and live sports.
And, increasingly, the monthly prices for those services are making the glory days of the pay-TV bundle seem that much more appealing.
Take Thursday’s price hike from Netflix, which raised the bar for its standard ad-free plan to an eye-watering $19.99 per month. $20 per month is a symbolic number, but it underscores how the model has shifted. Streaming platforms want to give users the option to avoid most ads … but advertising has increasingly become the big game.
When Netflix introduced its ad tier three and a half years ago, the standard plan was $15.49 per month, and the ad tier was $6.99. Now the standard plan is $4.50 more expensive, and the ad tier is $2 more. In
...Keep reading this article on Hollywood Reporter.
