Bundles of Bundles

My cable bill is now five different bills…

First, I tried Sling. Then, I signed up for Playstation Vue. Next, DirecTV Now. Soon, Hulu. Then YouTube. At some point, undoubtedly Amazon. And then, of course, Apple.

The traditional cable television bundle is absolutely decaying. But the weird thing is that it’s not breaking apart as many predicted. Because, in fact, things aren’t really even unbundling.

Well, some things are unbundling. This started with HBO — which makes sense because HBO was always sort of its own traditional cable micro bundle, since you had to pay for it additionally on top of your regular cable bill. With HBO Now, the network simply allowed you to pay for it without the need for that cable base. Which was great. I’ve been a happy subscriber from day one. Showtime, Starz, and the like followed suit.

Others, such as CBS, also went direct. This was also a little different since CBS is a network station, which anyone can already get for free, over-the-air, with an antenna.

But the more traditional bundlists have remained loyal to cable for the most part. There are continued whispers of an ESPN direct-to-consumer offering, but it would seem that this will not be the traditional ESPN we all know and love. That is, it won’t be the cable bundle ESPN.¹

Anyway, beyond that limited unbundling, what’s really happening en masse is that the bundlists are partnering with the new players listed at the top of this post to create new, smaller bundles. The “skinny” bundles are both more svelte in scope and price. But make no mistake, they are still bundles.

And while the packages from Playstation Vue, Sling, and the like all offer slight variations, they’re all basically offering the same bundles. And those that aren’t — those still missing CBS, for example — will eventually cut the deals to offer the same content. So what we’re going to be left with, as consumers, is basically a of choice between UIs.

But because not all of these skinny bundles are created equal right now, I’m forced to have multiple bundles. Bundles of bundles, as it were! I suspect this will change over time, but not fully.

While you may have your “traditional television” skinny bundle, you’re still going to have to augment this with Netflix and Amazon and iTunes and Google Play. Even if/when the latter three have their own “traditional television” bundles (probably at a discount if you subscribe to their other services), many people will undoubtedly still want/need multiple offerings.

So again, bundles of bundles.

Presumably, this is why Apple hasn’t made their major move in the space yet. While the reports have suggested they’ve been trying to negotiate for years at this point to create an entirely new television experience, the powers-that-be in television clearly don’t want that. They recognize the demand to “unbundle” by cord-cutters, cord-nevers, and the like. But they’re hoping to alleviate them by simply creating these skinnier bundles. And they’re willing to work with any and everyone in this regard. May the best UI win, as long as the networks are getting paid, of course.

My guess is that Apple’s gameplan here is to sit back on the couch, awful/awkward Apple TV remote in hand, and watch it all unfold before they make their move to try to tidy things up a bit. You can already see their tests in this direction with the new “TV” area of the Apple TV itself. This attempt is currently comically bad. But if you squint, you can see what they’re trying to do.²

But it’s not going to be easy. One reason is that their rivals are doing interesting and differentiated things. Amazon and Netflix are full-on in the content game at this point. YouTube has basically all the UGC in the business. AT&T is trying to… wait for it… bundle their service with their mobile offerings. And so on.

So the fear here is that this takes years to shake out. And even then, there may not be one or two “winners” in the space. We really all may need to be subscribing to three or four different services to fully quench our content thirst. And when all is said and done, that’s probably not going to be that much cheaper than the old cable bundle we left behind — if at all.

Still, such competition should be good for content creators in the short term and for consumers in the long term. Even live sports is getting sorted out, slowly but surely! We’ll eventually whittle the offerings down to packages that trump the current state of the art in cable. But it’s going to take some time to get there. And a lot of bundles.

¹ Yet.

² Though it seems they may get distracted in “interactive TV” for a bit, which will undoubtedly go nowhere.