Media pundits on CNBC love to say that subscription streaming will eventually be bundled in something that kind of looks like (and is priced like) traditional cable TV.
But years into the streaming wars, this hasn’t happened. No one has emerged as the dominant aggregator. No bundle of many services exists. It’s complicated to get media companies on board to agree to what something like that would look like.
This executive said 2024 will be the year companies finally get serious about bundling, predicting Disney would agree to bundle its trio of streaming services (Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+) with Max and Netflix to offer a selection of streaming services — at a discount — that rivals cable TV.
A second executive noted that such a discount will probably need to be championed by an anchor distributor. This executive’s guess is that it will be Amazon. He also predicted Paramount Global’s Paramount+ and Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max will be a part of the first streaming bundle that Amazon offers.