This is true, but the problem I have with bundling is that it creates a distorted market. If I like, say, Firefly, I want to essentially vote with my wallet and encourage the creation of more like that. If I'm paying for a bundle, the networks get to churn out whatever garbage they want and I'm either locked in or locked out. While I can elect to just not watch what I don't like, I can't prevent my money being used to make more of it.
With the old networks, a lot of the decisions about what to make are based on advertising. For now, Netflix can decide what to make based on accurate viewing stats and their only motivation is to increase and retain subscriptions. As long as things stay that way, they are motivated to prioritise good content, which is a step in the right direction.
I do worry however, that they still need to serve a lowest common denominator mass market, so bundling leads us back to where we started, with a few high quality exclusives per channel (e.g., Stanger Things, Game of Thrones, Mr Robot), but ultimately we're still paying for a lot of unwanted garbage.
With this model, the "channels" aren't incentivised to do what IMO they should be: curating high quality content to specific demographics (anime fan, sci-fi fans, romcom fans, etc). Instead, they will just do the minimum needed to retain each of them, while not really doing a very good job for any of them.
With the old networks, a lot of the decisions about what to make are based on advertising. For now, Netflix can decide what to make based on accurate viewing stats and their only motivation is to increase and retain subscriptions. As long as things stay that way, they are motivated to prioritise good content, which is a step in the right direction.
I do worry however, that they still need to serve a lowest common denominator mass market, so bundling leads us back to where we started, with a few high quality exclusives per channel (e.g., Stanger Things, Game of Thrones, Mr Robot), but ultimately we're still paying for a lot of unwanted garbage.
With this model, the "channels" aren't incentivised to do what IMO they should be: curating high quality content to specific demographics (anime fan, sci-fi fans, romcom fans, etc). Instead, they will just do the minimum needed to retain each of them, while not really doing a very good job for any of them.