With so many streaming platform options, viewers may feel overwhelmed with how to make the best, cost-effective decision for subscriptions. Joan E. Solsman, a senior reporter at CNET, joined Opening Bell to talk through how consumers can make educated choices with their subscription dollars and maybe even find some added value, including streaming platforms offering the more budget-friendly option of ad-supported tiers. This is in addition to existing ad-supported, free platforms that have grown in popularity as of late, such as Tubi, Pluto TV, and more. 

Opening Bell

Streaming Wars: How to Find Your Budget-Friendly Streaming Service Combination 

Welcome back to Cheddars, Opening bell, everyone, the streaming service market is getting crowded with multiple subscription options and rising prices. It's becoming expensive to watch content even as a cord cutter. So we're going to dive into some ways that you can trim your streaming bills to get those extra savings every month and here to break it off down joan Solsman Cnet senior reporter, thank you so much for joining us. We know a lot of people are feeling the pinch of inflation these days and are probably looking for ways to cut back when it comes to their budget, especially when it comes to streaming. So how are people choosing which subscriptions are on the chopping block right now? Yeah, these streaming decisions are complicated for consumers because the landscape is so disaggregated and so diverse. You know, people love to hate their cable company, but one thing the upside of cable is you paid one big bill and you got everything all in one place. Now, people have to decide which services have which kind of content they need at various prices and released on different schedules and that desegregation diversity of options that can be freeing compared to cable, but it can also be really overwhelming when you're trying to decide what to cut back on when you want to save for your streaming bill. Yeah, joan I want the T. So which streamers are getting less valuable here and which ones are becoming more valuable? Well the consumer value of a platform, it's really relative to the individual viewers. So you know netflix is is the biggest one by subscribers worldwide, but in a household that lives or dies by life. Sports, netflix is useless. But what we are seeing is that the number of subscribers and subscriber growth you can use as a proxy for how people are voting with their wallet and we are seeing that netflix even though it is the biggest, is having some unprecedented declines and subscribers and other services are growing but at some like Disney Plus the rate isn't as steep and as I'm sure everyone can imagine and during the pandemic, when social distancing was at a tight and when lockdowns were at their worst streaming was really valuable and now as the world has been opening up and you have more options to spend your time and your entertainment dollars, they're becoming less valuable, less valuable to consumers overall in overall spending. I'm glad that you point out a lot of those different details, but it's not just one size fits all across the board. It really is based on viewer preferences and it kind of gives an alarm bell in the distance I think for Disney plus that's going to be hiking their subscription prices off of the new users that they're adding off of this latest earnings report. So I'm wondering what your outlook is when it comes to prices for streaming, Do you think you're gonna see more people switching to those affordable ad supported tiers that we're seeing pop up really all over the board. Yeah, a silver lining of these prices going up is that services are becoming more assertive and offering these cheaper ad supported tiers. Netflix has for years said that they are not interested in and they will be launching one soon. They haven't said what the prices and you know, you even brought up, you know with Disney Plus, they're going to be launching one of these ad supported tiers, but at the same time they're raising prices. So to keep watching Disney Plus at the same price people are paying now you have to start watching it with ads. We're definitely seeing especially with these declines in consumer and subscriber growth companies are trying to figure out where they can find growth elsewhere. And a lot of them are saying, well we'll increase prices to find the growth there. Okay, so where I get hit is by signing up for the free trials and then I realized months later, Oh, I've been paying, you know, an extra $5 a month on this streaming service that I didn't necessarily use. What are some of the best ways for people right now to save on their streaming bills. Right, well, what you described is what I think one of the most difficult ways to save and that's cycling in and out of different services either signing up strategically for a free trial for those services that still offer them when you know that something that you really want is going to be hitting cycling out of it when the series or the movie you're really interested in has that you've already watched it that can save you money. It's a lot of work to monitor it. So some other things that you could try are looking at your phone's carrier. A lot of phone mobile phone carriers have deals with streaming services to offer you free netflix, like with T mobile, free Disney Plus with Verizon or free HBO max with a T and T. There's a lot of these sort of discounted bundles and some services do their own discounted bundles, you know, Disney has packages where you can have Disney Plus hulu and ESPN all bundled together at a discount paramount does the same thing with Paramount Plus and and Showtime. So you do, you know, as this is a very complicated, diverse landscape, you do have to do some research shopping about what kind of bundles work for you, what you already qualify for. But there are ways to cut those prices down elsewhere. Yeah, I think I was on a ticket platform recently for like live events and purchased tickets to an event and got some sort of deal pop up at the end of my transaction. So I think those opportunities are out there, we know people are really looking for free alternatives. Are there other platforms that viewers should be aware of right now that do offer some of the same benefits as some of these paid streaming services? Yeah, absolutely. There's three that I mentioned. There's what are the most popular and most easy to find and use are these free, ad supported streaming services. So these are things like to be the Roku channel, Pluto Tv amazon's freebie, even Peacock has paid here, but a totally free tier with ads now, these tend to have more limitations on what in the library, you can see how much you can choose what you're watching. Some limit being able to fast forward, they limit how much you can choose on demand, but there's still tons of things to choose from. And then there's other services like Canopy, which is a library supported service. They tend to have artier films, but they don't, it doesn't have ads and might be something you can unlock free just by having your local library card and then this isn't a streaming option, but it's something that people overlook. You can consider getting an antenna and just receiving broadcast networks. The most popular network on television, free over the air antennas are relatively cheap. They're 10 to $40 at the, at the highest kind of end. If you want something fancy the downside is it depends on whether or not you can get a signal where you are and you have to install it, but it's a one time cost and it gives you some of the most popular programming on regular television free? What's old is new? That's all really good advice. I want to throw you one more curveball just because I think I have a moment left with you. I'm wondering because you've been following this so closely. How far do you think we are streaming not being as much of the Wild west and being able to find some of these free alternatives? Is there a point when you think a lot of these streaming platforms are going to have to resort to uh, some of these requirements with their subscriptions and making it so that customers can no longer avoid that churn. Yeah. Yeah, we're definitely seeing that period enter now. It has been a period of, you know, white city on a hill growth is always going to keep happening and happening. We can spend spend spend throw billions of dollars at making programming give it away at a really low price and now we're starting to see some of the economic realism sink in companies, you know, like in addition to netflix saying that they're going to introduce that ad supported here. We've also heard about these tests where they're cracking down on password sharing, sharing your account with other people where they might start charging fees if you know devices and multiple households in different zip codes in different areas are using the same account. So we're starting to see a lot more fiscal responsibility. Um, if you could call it that on the side of these platforms because they realize they can't just spend, spend, spend and make it up anymore on such low prices. All right, Joan Solsman, Cnet, senior reporter, really appreciate all of this info and those tips as well. Thanks so much.