Streaming companies have promised consumers more flexibility and a better overall experience than cable. But as Wall Street has pivoted from subscriber growth to profitability, it’s become messy. Today, consumers are confronted with ads, password sharing crackdowns, multiple bills and logins to juggle and more difficulty finding content — in some cases making their overall household streaming outlay just as expensive as before, resulting in canceled subscriptions that send churn rates trending in the wrong direction.
It’s a vicious cycle.
One short-term solution, streaming companies are finding, is a more flexible recreation of the cable bundle that streaming was supposed to leave behind.