Don’t throw any more, my (credit) card is full. I’ve officially reached my breaking point with the multiple digital platform subscriptions that eat up and destroy our budgets like a cordyceps in The Last of Us.
All because of CityTV+, the latest kid siphoning money off us slowly, but monthly. City what, you ask? CityTV+, a $4.99 per month add-on on top of Amazon’s base Prime Video subscription, which costs $100 per year.
Like Jenga in Big Brother Celebritiesthese online services stack on top of each other and removing a block causes the collapse.
I didn’t know about CityTV+ at all until I read some rave reviews about the new series. Poker face by director Rian Johnson (Knives Out), which stars Natasha Lyonne, so terrific in Russian Doll from Netflix.
In the USA, Poker face is housed on the Peacock service and in Canada, this new kind of Columbo is hiding on CityTV+, at $4.99 a month, let’s not lose sight of it.
It looks great, Poker facegreat top quality, but, no thank you. I land here.
I already have Netflix, Crave, Club illico, Disney+, Tou.tv Extra, Apple TV+ and Prime Video, plus regular cable is enough. At some point, there are limits to taking the public for piton banks.
Besides Poker faceCityTV+ offers nothing very titillating, only classic and already seen shows, like Law & Order, Chicago Fire And The Bachelor. Who will subscribe to CityTV+ just to watch Poker face and unsubscribe after the free trial? More me. Too many times have I acted in this repetitive film.
Systematically, we say to ourselves, well, another TV thing more, why not, it’s less than 10 dollars, I’ll pay a month and cancel afterwards. The problem ? We always forget to pull the plug. Always. But the bills do not forget us and accumulate, often exceeding three figures.
It happened to me, again recently, with AMC+. I had added it to my wallet ($8.99 per month) to bite into the very good series Interview with the Vampire. I gobbled up the episodes and, unsurprisingly, forgot to cancel my contract. And I paid in the void. Once again. We can’t be tamed, we have to believe.
By ramping up expensive additions to its core service, Prime Video is playing a dangerous game. The fans of Yellowstone – and there are many of you – have still not digested that the American giant has placed the fifth season of this popular western behind the paywall of Paramount+, which entails an additional expense of $9.99 per month.
And like CityTV+, Paramount+ doesn’t offer anything as enticing as the well-stocked catalog of Netflix, for example. It’s not worth shelling out $10 for so little content.
Parenthesis about Yellowstone : the French version of the fifth season has been purchased by the Quebec channel Séries Plus, which will relay it from Wednesday, April 5, at 9 p.m. This is why it is not found on Paramount +. Another annoying factor.
You can easily empty your RRSPs by checking all the expensive options of Prime Video. For reality TV (The Real Housewives, Below Deck), there’s Hayu ($6.99 per month). For British TV series (Line of Duty, Doctor Who), there’s BritBox ($9.99 per month). For even more movies, there’s Starz ($5.99 per month).
Honestly, it’s too much and it becomes ultra-complicated to consume our good old TV. Who has the time and patience to record the start and end date of each of their subscriptions?
Already it’s a pain to renegotiate your cell phone and internet contracts every year, if you also have to fight with Amazon and Netflix, which is now attacking the sharing of accounts between friends, it’s going to take us more than DSTROY to get through.
Unfortunately for our economies, the trend of scattering productions across different platforms won’t slow down. Attendance at these “premium” services continues to increase. In Quebec, 71% of adults subscribe to at least one online viewing platform, compared to 66% who still pay for so-called cable TV.
The ideal, for consumers here, would be to merge Club illico, Crave and Extra from Tou.tv to create a real rival to Netflix or Disney+. A $30 or $40 a month superplatform that would bring together the best of the small screen in one place. A bill, all the TV, I already have the slogan.
But that will never happen, for a host of public funding, revenue sharing and competition reasons. Quebec media giants, such as Bell and Quebecor, have been wrangling for years in court over access to telephone poles or sports channel preferences. Do you think they will seriously want to collaborate and trade company secrets while drinking kombucha?
If this miracle happens, get out the prefilled syringes of epinephrine and revive me STAT, thank you.