Do you pay for a lot of subscription-based news and entertainment?

Outside The Beltway
1

The other day, I was listening to an entertainment segment and someone mentioned that one of the best TV cop shows was a British show from the '70s called “The Sweeney.” So I checked it out, and on youtube, you can watch the pilot (it’s called “Regan” after the main character) but you can only get the series if you subscribe to BritBox.

Now I have cable, Amazon Prime, which gives me their streaming, and a family member put me on Netflix, which I seldom watch. I can’t remember ever watching Hulu, HBO, Starz even when we get a free weekend. On the news front, we had subscribed to CRTV, then it changed to Blaze, some people we liked left, and we haven’t watched it for months.

I appreciate the difficulty and expense that networks and cable news have in soliciting and maintaining enough advertisers to support their programming, and see their rationale in switching to a subscriber-based model, but I have found that in all cases, out of the dozens of offerings, I rarely watch more than one or two. And if there are one or two programs I want to watch on several services, I have to pay the monthly fee for all, and that adds up to the point where you could easily be paying $$$/month just for news and entertainment, not for food, utilities, rent, health insurance, transportation. I just have a hard time justifying it.

2

I subscribe to HBO due to being a game of thrones junky. Otherwise the only other things I subscribe to revolve around video games (ps plus, fallout 1st, etc) since I spend more time playing games than watching tv/movies

3

Not a penny from this wallet.

4

Cut the cable yesrs ago. I get free HBO through my cell phone plan and subscrive to Hulu, Prime, Netflix and Disney.

Anyone who is still paying cable companies hundreds of dollars each month are idiots

1 Like
5

Why are people idiots spending money the way they want instead of the way you think they should?

6

Well, here’s the order:

  1. Pay Obligations: housing, food, clothing, healthcare, utilities, transportation, loans
  2. Pay yourself: emergency savings, 401k at least to full match, IRA/401k to max, 529
  3. Anything you want to make you/your family happy depending on life phase, goals, risk tolerance - :slight_smile: Streaming stuff, vacation fund, kid activities, pay down mortgage/loans, donate to charity, invest in other things, buy pink flamingos for the front yard, whatever…
7

Well you’re an idiot if you spend 100/month on streaming when your savings account has 50 bucks in it… :slight_smile:

But once you get past your obligations and logical savings, I agree - spend what you want on what you want! (Although, I’d argue many people have a very poor concept of the discretionary spending that yields the greatest happiness - for example, if you buy 5 cups of coffee per week for yourself, you’ll increase your happiness if instead, you buy 3 cups for yourself and 2 for someone else)

8

Very well said.

9

I have Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Amazon Prime video - to which we’ve added HBO, Showtime and Starz.