No, streaming isn’t cable TV all over again

If only I had a penny for every time someone said streaming TV was turning into cable again.

Here’s the latest, from CNN’s Brian Lowry, in a story about efforts to package various streaming services together:

Streaming appears poised to undergo what some have called “The Great Re-Bundling,” with services merging, combining or forming alliances that will essentially reconstruct the cable “bundle” that consumers relied upon for decades.

As always, reports of the cable-style bundle’s resurgence are greatly exaggerated. At best, streaming service bundles are happening piecemeal, don’t resemble cable at all, and might not even be successful. If you enjoy the freedom and flexibility that cord-cutting brought, you shouldn’t worry losing it anytime soon.

The “Great Re-Bundling” is more like a small gathering

It’s true that some streamers are finding new ways of working together.

Comcast, for instance, recently assembled a $15-per-month “StreamSaver” bundle for its home internet customers, consisting of Netflix (with ads), Peacock (with ads), and Apple TV+. Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery are working on their own bundle of Disney+, Hulu, and Max for a still-undisclosed price, and Verizon offers a bundle of Netflix and Max (both with ads) for $10 per month with its latest mobile and home internet plans.

But if this is a trend, it’s happening in slow motion. Throwing two or three streaming services together does not constitute a cable-style bundle, especially when you need a specific wireless carrier or home internet provider to take advantage. Calls for a “Spotify for TV” model, which would combine everything into one big package, are also unrealistic for reasons I just wrote about last week.

Some TV bundles are shrinking

This fall, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox plan to launch “Venu Sports,” a new live TV streaming service that only includes channels with live sports, which means no Fox News, CNN, FX, or HGTV. While CNN’s story casts Venu Sports as an example of the “Great Re-Bundling,” it’s really an unbundling that provides a cheaper alternative to the likes of YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV.

Meanwhile, Spectrum now offers a $40-per-month TV package that excludes those broadcast and sports channels but still offers CNN and Fox News. It’s essentially the inverse of Venu Sports, aimed at folks who just want news and entertainment. Programmers have always insisted on packaging all their cable channels together, but the pressures of cord-cutting are finally forcing them to trim the fat.

You still call the shots

Streaming providers must still answer directly to their customers. With every price hike, password-sharing crackdown, or content removal comes a risk of higher cancellation rates or more piracy. Meanwhile, younger viewers are tuning into YouTube and TikTok instead, showing little interest in paying for expensive TV packages.

In light of all this, I can’t envision a scenario where you’re forced to pay upwards of $60 per month for an entire bundle of streaming services just to watch a particular movie or show. (How quickly we forget this is how things worked in the cable era.) There’s too much pressure to offer cheaper, standalone entry points, with discounts for the savvier deal-hunters among us.

The real future of TV

The “Great Re-Bundling” was coined in 2020 by TVRev analyst Alan Wolk, but it’s since become a catch-all term for any type of collaboration in the streaming business, much of which isn’t new. I’ve seen it used to describe all kinds of things, from Amazon’s “Channels” marketplace (which has been around since 2015), to the freebies you get with some wireless plans (a trend that began roughly seven years ago), to industry consolidation (which has been happening for decades). Having that broad a definition strips the term of any significant meaning.

To the extent that a true re-bundling does happen, it’ll look more like a bunch of mini-cables than one big package. Netflix is already becoming more cable-like, with a growing interest in live events and sports, and that’s putting pressure on traditional TV companies to be more like Netflix, with broad entertainment offerings that still cost less than cable. That means slimming down in some cases, bundling in others, and generally slicing and dicing their offerings to reach different audiences.

That’s an interesting trend to watch, but it’s not at all like cable, no matter how many times people suggest otherwise.

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