The streaming landscape has become too much like cable

• Can you keep justifying the various streaming service bills?
• The process has spread out too much
• It’s not getting any better
• What can be done

You’ve got mail — and it’s another email announcing that another streaming service is raising its prices. You just shake your head and think to yourself, “Why do I keep dealing with this?”

You start running through what you actually watch on the platform to figure out if it’s still worth it. When you first signed up, the price was something like $7 or $8 a month. Now it’s jumped to $13. That might not seem like a massive difference, but it adds up — especially because every streaming service is doing the same thing. Streaming services try to strike a balance when they raise prices, but when revenue projections fall short, price hikes often follow.

Coupled with the rising prices is the number of platforms available. Your friend raves about a great new show they’re watching, but it’s on a streaming service you’ve never heard of. Now you’ve added another $9 per month to your bill because that show really is worth it. It feels like you’re adding specialty channels to get specific shows, similar to how you could add on premium channels to your old cable subscription. That’s because streaming has become too much like cable.

Can you keep justifying the various streaming service bills?

It’s harder and harder to do

It’s hard not to want to keep up with every new or big show that’s out in pop culture. People are talking Love Island? You must check it out on Peacock. Severance Season 2 was amazing? Apple TV+ it is. Stranger Things is finally concluding this year? Better remember your Netflix login. This isn’t any different from watching things on any TV ever, as different shows were on different channels. The real difference is paying for separate subscriptions to watch these shows.

Cable bundled everything under one roof. You could add more channels to your cable or keep it light. But you at least got the basic cable channels of ABC, NBC, FOX, and CBS. You know how you can guarantee watching those channels today? Buying a subscription to Disney+, Peacock, FOX One, and Paramount+. It makes sense for these companies to branch out and get their own piece of the pie. But what happens when people start refusing that slice?

The process has spread out too much

People are getting tired of it

Opening up your smart TV and looking at a grid or list of countless streaming apps is a bit exhausting. It has become as overwhelming as scrolling through the guide of a cable subscription. Remember when a built-in guide didn’t exist, and you had to watch something like the TV Guide channel to know what was even on? That’s how I feel scrolling through my Roku grid. But once I choose a streaming service, I then have to do it all over again to find what I want to watch.

A Cord Cutter News poll found that 54.7% of readers now subscribe to three or fewer streaming services. This was an increase from 51.7% from a survey earlier this year. It hasn’t even taken a full year for 3% of people to say “this is too much.” That’s because the disjointed feeling that people get trying to just sit down and watch a show is exhausting.

If you don’t want to pay for many different streaming services, you can get everything under one roof again. You can use services like YouTube TV or Sling TV and get a load of channels all in one package. These even allow add-ons, so you don’t have to open up a number of apps to find all of your streamable content. These let you choose your plan and pick the channels that you want. You know what this also sounds like? Cable.

It’s not getting any better

Eventually, you have to make a call

It’s important to recognize how much streaming services are asking for these days, especially if you’re trying to set a realistic entertainment budget. If there’s a service you use constantly, you should absolutely pay for it — you clearly enjoy the content. It’s all about finding the right balance.

This month, the price of Disney+ (with ads) goes from $10 per month to $12 per month. The Disney+ Premium subscription jumps from $16 a month to $19 a month. If you still have Hulu as a standalone, you can enjoy one more price hike before you’re forced to pay for the Disney+ bundle, which includes Hulu, as the Hulu subscription with adds jumps from $2 a month to $12 per month.

FOX One and ESPN offer a bundle for $40 a month. If you watch a ton of sports, this is a great idea for you. But it doesn’t get you NFL games on CBS. It doesn’t get you March Madness games — those are all on Paramount+. Amazon Prime has Thursday Night Football. YouTube and Netflix have entered the live sports rights holders as well. To watch everything you want to, you’re going to have to cough up the cash.

You can also get FOX One and ESPN’s streaming services separately.

What can be done

Get to cord-cutting

You have to prioritize your time. You can’t watch everything, and you certainly can’t pay to watch everything in today’s sliced-up streaming economy. Has it been a massive struggle for me to skip shows on a platform I don’t subscribe to? Not really. Have I added a streaming service to watch one show in particular and then canceled that streamer as soon as the show was done? Yes.

While that method can be exhausting, I have found myself pivoting more towards free streaming services. I’m not alone, as the subscribers for platforms like Pluto TV and Tubi have grown exponentially since they began. These services offer a ton of movies and TV series for free. Are they the newest shows? Not always. But are they major movies and TV series? Yes.

Roku TV offers local news and the opportunity to watch basic cable channels. There are many ways to get much of the content you want without having to pay. If you want to keep paying $9-12 per month on average for a streaming service, be my guest. But you might be better off switching back to cable if it gets too overwhelming.