Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have announced a brand new innovation: cable TV. Okay, not quite. But they have announced a streaming services bundle that looks very much like the cable bundles we expected streaming to get rid of. Starting this summer in the US, you'll be able to subscribe to a bundle that combines Disney Plus, Hulu and Max.
The bundle will be available from all three providers via their own branded apps, and you'll have a choice of a lower-cost ad-supported plan and a more expensive ad-free option. Prices for those options haven't yet been announced; more details "will be shared in the coming months" according to the press release.
The future of streaming looks a lot like its past
For viewers, the ability to have access to all three services for (presumably) less money than individual subscriptions is attractive. And that's because at the moment, as in the past, TV shows and movies are often siloed and exclusive to specific services – so you can't just subscribe to one service and get access to everything. But with a bundle you can access a whole bunch: as Disney and Warner Bros put it, their bundle gives you entertainment from lots of brands including "ABC, CNN, DC, Discovery, Disney, Food Network, FX, HBO, HGTV, Hulu, Marvel, Pixar, Searchlight, Warner Bros. and many more."
With the cost of the best streaming services going up significantly and frequently, the cost of accessing everything you want to watch is getting awfully high. That means many of us are being much more selective with our choice of subscriptions; I know in my own case the days when I happily subscribed to a half-dozen different streamers are long gone. But the problem for the likes of Disney and WB is that when people are cutting, they're mostly not cutting Netflix – it's become the default streaming service, and a bundle is the best way for other companies to try to compete with its breadth and popularity.
This isn't the only Disney/Warners bundle: the firms have also teamed up with Fox for a sports subscription bundle that's currently slated for a fall debut. And it won't be the last such bundle in streaming, either. We only recently saw that Apple is looking to team up with Paramount Plus. For streamers, bundling their services together can reduce the rate of people canceling their subscriptions and can boost engagement, and therefore ad revenues too. In a sector where despite attracting millions of subscribers, many services are still losing money, expect more such team-ups in the not too distant future.
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