Comfort movies and TV shows follow us through life, a shadow we can’t and don’t want to get rid of. They’re present for the good times and the bad. We have streaming services to thank for the joys brought to us by having easy-accessibility to our favorite productions. Unfortunately, streaming services are taking advantage of how much people value them; considering all of the changes made to the original innovation, they are no longer worth paying for.
The streaming services we use daily—Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus—are taking off their best-selling shows and movies, and then the productions are getting shifted around from platform to platform. For example, after its licensing deal with Netflix expired, New Girl was moved to Hulu, complicating things for viewers who loved the show but have only Netflix. Due to situations like this, the only way to get all the shows you want is to pay for all the streaming services. Prices and fees are skyrocketing, and the services are bombarding subscribers with different levels of subscriptions. These money-making tactics unfairly take away the original magic that movies and TV put into viewers’ lives.
When streaming services were first introduced, the best shows and movies were offered on one service with one fee per month—a reasonable price for what consumers were getting. Now, there are endless competing streaming services that all have one, maybe two, shows we all love to rewatch. “New Girl” was recently removed from Netflix and moved to Hulu due to licensing agreements and “Lala Land” was just taken off Netflix in January. In order to have access to your favorite shows and movies, you now have to pay significantly greater amounts of money for the same thing; all the while, each service climbs up their prices.
On top of all else, streaming services have different levels of subscription you can buy into. On Hulu, to watch without ads, the price of the subscription doubles. In order to get a decent viewing experience of a couple good shows, viewers are paying obscene amounts of money.
While it is unrealistic to expect streaming services to work together and have all shows available on the same platform, they should be expected to lower their prices and give better deals to viewers. Something that is so valuable to so many should not be tainted by relentless ads and sky high prices that take advantage of its worth.
