Canadian Netflix Competition thoughts.
Reading this week that many consumer advocate groups in Canada are complaining to the proper authorities in a bid to get Shomi and Crave barred from blocking their services behind their owners other services and many articles are speculating on what it will mean. I have some thoughts on that.
Firstly, costs will go up. This is a bit of a no-brainer, especially for Crave which is just $4 a month. The purpose of these services was to make them competitive with services like Netflix and to get ahead of other competitors, but also as a way to rope people into their internet and/or cable packages. In other words, the value at $4 a month is not in getting $4 a month. It is in getting people to pay for your other services.
If they felt that the businesses were profitable in and of themselves at the current price points, they wouldn't be blocking them behind their own services. More subscribers should mean more money after all.
Frankly, I see the complaints winning over, if not now, then eventually. They do clearly fly in the face of certain rules that have been setup. But, will consumers actually win? Probably not. Or at least not as much as they hope. Probably the best thing Shaw and Bell can do to combat this is an inflated price on the service with a huge bundle discount if you buy into their services. In other words... consumers get decisions, but it is unlikely that they'll get what they wanted.
I actually need to blame the providers for this. The low prices are clearly there to try and get people on-board but they aren't listed as time limited or anything. And that is just baiting people to complain. If the services were advertised as being regularly $15+ a month many more people may have ignored it. But at $4 and $8 dollars these are well below Netflix's $15 and that creates an interest. Regardless, all the complaint will do is make those tantalizing costs go up, in the very least for those not in a bundle.
The next bit of guess work was around content. If they are forced to open the services, they may also be banned from content exclusives. People are speculating Orange Is The New Black showing up on Shomi and Crave. Honestly, I see the parallels, but I'm not sure if this will be enforced the same way that is or even delivered the same way as it is on television networks today.
I don't suspect this will come to fruition. But if it does I don't expect it will really have a noticeable impact. Firstly, it can only really apply to content owned by the networks. So, don't expect everything on each service to be available on the others. And, it is unlikely that it would amount to anything than more than forcing the networks to license their own material, not give it away for free. The existence of a cost means one network would only buy another networks content if they felt it was important enough to have it.
At the end of the day competition is a better driver of positive change for consumers than government enforced sanctions. What we really need to improve the landscape is more services that started off with the intent to compete directly with Netflix. Forcing huge Telco's to change their services to be more like Netflix, to me just means that the market will become too saturated too quickly by people who know how to squeeze your money and people who care to compete for your money.
Firstly, costs will go up. This is a bit of a no-brainer, especially for Crave which is just $4 a month. The purpose of these services was to make them competitive with services like Netflix and to get ahead of other competitors, but also as a way to rope people into their internet and/or cable packages. In other words, the value at $4 a month is not in getting $4 a month. It is in getting people to pay for your other services.
If they felt that the businesses were profitable in and of themselves at the current price points, they wouldn't be blocking them behind their own services. More subscribers should mean more money after all.
Frankly, I see the complaints winning over, if not now, then eventually. They do clearly fly in the face of certain rules that have been setup. But, will consumers actually win? Probably not. Or at least not as much as they hope. Probably the best thing Shaw and Bell can do to combat this is an inflated price on the service with a huge bundle discount if you buy into their services. In other words... consumers get decisions, but it is unlikely that they'll get what they wanted.
I actually need to blame the providers for this. The low prices are clearly there to try and get people on-board but they aren't listed as time limited or anything. And that is just baiting people to complain. If the services were advertised as being regularly $15+ a month many more people may have ignored it. But at $4 and $8 dollars these are well below Netflix's $15 and that creates an interest. Regardless, all the complaint will do is make those tantalizing costs go up, in the very least for those not in a bundle.
The next bit of guess work was around content. If they are forced to open the services, they may also be banned from content exclusives. People are speculating Orange Is The New Black showing up on Shomi and Crave. Honestly, I see the parallels, but I'm not sure if this will be enforced the same way that is or even delivered the same way as it is on television networks today.
I don't suspect this will come to fruition. But if it does I don't expect it will really have a noticeable impact. Firstly, it can only really apply to content owned by the networks. So, don't expect everything on each service to be available on the others. And, it is unlikely that it would amount to anything than more than forcing the networks to license their own material, not give it away for free. The existence of a cost means one network would only buy another networks content if they felt it was important enough to have it.
At the end of the day competition is a better driver of positive change for consumers than government enforced sanctions. What we really need to improve the landscape is more services that started off with the intent to compete directly with Netflix. Forcing huge Telco's to change their services to be more like Netflix, to me just means that the market will become too saturated too quickly by people who know how to squeeze your money and people who care to compete for your money.
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