The Dismal State of Content

While streaming was once hailed as a revolutionary alternative to cable, many of the same pitfalls—rising costs, increasing ads, and content dilution—have made it, in some ways, an even worse experience.

The latest: Last week, the streaming service Hulu sent an email to subscribers announcing that even its ad-free plans would contain some ads.

• In a comment to the AV Club, Hulu clarified this would apply only to sports and live events.

• As the AV Club’s Emma Keates noted, this is a continuation of the industry consensus that “streaming is reinventing cable.”

Zoom out: In recent years, streaming has overtaken cable as the most widely used TV viewing service.

• Streaming services now make up roughly 40% of total TV consumption in the U.S.

The costs: “Cord-cutting” was supposed to be a way for consumers to get away from cable packages that had become expensive and bloated with channels they never watched.

• The average cable bill in 2013 was around $65.

• Today, bundling multiple major streaming services often surpasses that figure.

• The average U.S. consumer now spends $61/month on video streaming, up from $48 in 2023.

Bubba’s Two Cents

A big part of the reason we launched Bubba News was to counter the short-sighted incentives we saw in media—news outlets churning out clickbait for traffic, and streamers like Netflix flooding the market with content just to keep subscribers hooked.

Sure, business metrics matter, but when the focus shifts from quality to pure monetization, you lose sight of the actual product. These short-term tactics may boost numbers, but it's still not meeting audiences where they want in the end.

I try to break media down into production and distribution, and a smart person I know framed it well: “Content is king, but distribution is the queen, and she wears the pants.”

This gets at the tension media companies face, and after working in a handful of startup media companies that (for lack of a better term) whored themselves out, I just happen to think that compromising audience satisfaction is a bridge too far. Media companies would be better served to really think about audience first and balancing that with the distribution demands that successful business requires.

Here are some of the more interesting charts, quotes and insights we’ve seen recently.

In a new interview with the Free Press, Tablet editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse tries to make sense of the current political moment by differentiating between “brokenists” and “status-quoists.”

I think a lot of the more well-educated people in America still underestimate how dissatisfied the masses are with the status quo…

Some prominent media voices believe the online right, emboldened by Trump’s victory, is repeating the left’s mistake—getting too extreme and pushing away middle-of-the-road Americans.

Check out Thomas Chatterton Williams in The Atlantic…

…and River Page in the Free Press.

Related: The latest polling shows the president’s approval rating is slipping.

According to DOGE’s official website, it has already saved Americans an estimated $55 billion. But per a new NPR analysis of “verifiable work completed so far,” the savings add up to just $2 billion.

Others have pointed out apparent issues with the methodology DOGE is using to calculate its savings figures, such as including the full price of a canceled contract even when some or most of the money has already been spent.

Last week, we wrote about how Congress has been deferring its power to the executive branch, and cited the 118th Congress passing only 274 laws as one example.

As Bruce Mehlman, a friend of this newsletter, pointed out in an email to me, while laws may be fewer in number, they’re much longer in length. Bruce cautioned, “The notion that “Congress never gets anything done” is wrong and risky for those who fail to engage.” Bruce never fails to make good points.