We originally had just free advert-supported broadcast TV. Then came Sky TV in the 90s, a subscription service. This slowly became a must-have service for many people, mainly due to it cornering live sports. And it's where movies and some series first appear on TV here. And eventually most people seemed to have it, and seemed to be paying around $100 a month for it, depending on which channels they subscribed to. (As I never considered TV worth that, I never subscribed.)
And they had a monopoly with regards to pay-TV here up until about 2015, when streaming services started to appear, with Netflix being the first, I think. And Netflix Premium is currently less than $20 a month, and the competition (such as Amazon Prime) is mostly cheaper, I think. You need decent broadband for it of course, but fibre's now reaching a high percentage of the country, so most have it if they use the net.
And the streaming services are providing real competition to SkyTV in everything other than sport. (And NZ content, but that's mostly still on free-to-air TV.)
The point of all this is that people will pay if a service is seen as good and the free alternative has issues, such as advertising interrupting programmes on TV. And FB has way more issues than just advertising. And its key features are hardly difficult to copy. So there's an opening for someone who wishes to fill it. DW's free+paid-for-extras is one approach, with plenty of others that could be dreamed up.
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Date: 2017-11-10 11:02 am (UTC)And they had a monopoly with regards to pay-TV here up until about 2015, when streaming services started to appear, with Netflix being the first, I think. And Netflix Premium is currently less than $20 a month, and the competition (such as Amazon Prime) is mostly cheaper, I think. You need decent broadband for it of course, but fibre's now reaching a high percentage of the country, so most have it if they use the net.
And the streaming services are providing real competition to SkyTV in everything other than sport. (And NZ content, but that's mostly still on free-to-air TV.)
The point of all this is that people will pay if a service is seen as good and the free alternative has issues, such as advertising interrupting programmes on TV. And FB has way more issues than just advertising. And its key features are hardly difficult to copy. So there's an opening for someone who wishes to fill it. DW's free+paid-for-extras is one approach, with plenty of others that could be dreamed up.