The Star Trek franchise and CBS are planning a new series.  Except for the first episode the series will air exclusively on CBS's All Access (Video on Demand) streaming platform.  They are counting on legions of Star Trek fans signing up for the $5.99 per month service.  And the chances are they will.

This isn't a new strategy.  Star Trek Enterprise originally aired on UPN (does anyone actually remember UPN?), which the Ithaca cable franchise did not carry.  But Star Trek brought new viewers to the network in markets that included UPN, and Trekkies brought pressure on cable franchises that did not offer UPN to do so.  But the recent widespread adoption of this strategy also heralds a new, expensive and confusing age of television entertainment. 

$4.99 is expensive, you ask?  Well it's not so bad if all you ever want to watch is CBS shows, most of which could be seen free over the broadcast network if we could actually get television over the airwaves here in Tompkins County.  But let's look at what television cost at the beginning of most of our lifetimes and what it costs now.

When I was a kid television cost only the cost of a television and the audience's agreeing to watch commercials.  I remember feeling deprived because my family was possibly the last household in Massachusetts that didn't have a color TV.  My Dad said he was waiting for the price to go down, so we watched everything on a portable (you probably needed a wheelbarrow to carry a portable TV in those days) black and white number that sat on a stand similar to those TV tables (remember TV tables?  The little folding tables you ate TV dinners off of?  Oh boy am I showing my age!)

Then cable TV was introduced.  None of the cable providers will admit it any more, but cable originally cost a few dollars so you could watch shows without commercials.  It was a great idea, and people who were sick of commercials signed on in droves.  Then the cable providers and networks realized they could make a ton of money if they showed commercials.  And they raised their rates.  And they raised their rates.  And they raised their rates.

Even though the cable market is declining they still use this strategy.  The reason I stopped watching any of the cable news networks a few years ago was twofold: they were all biased as heck, and if I want someone's opinions I am perfectly capable of forming my own, given the facts (which are an endangered species on cable news these days).  The second reason was the volume of commercials.  I tended to take a half hour for lunch, during which I would turn on cable news.  I figured I got about two minutes of news, 13 minutes of commercials, and the rest opinions.  It was an extremely bad value, so I started getting my news on the Internet (which is now so cluttered with popup ads that a lot of news outlet pages don't load properly or make it so hard to read the stories that it is becoming virtually unusable.  But that is a different rant for another editorial).

Disgusted with the cost of television I did some research into streaming TV as an alternative to cable, as well as satellite services.  I could see no advantage to satellite once the special offers expired, and a much lower savings in streaming options than I expected.  Assuming you want to watch TV on a television set, you need to pay for the TV, a streaming device like a Roku or Apple TV, and an Internet connection that is capable of handling all that streaming.

If you currently have Internet and cable TV from a cable provider you probably have a package.  The package seems expensive, but when you break it down you are getting a special price on the elements in the package.  If you wanted a standard Internet connection with no TV, phone, security or anything else, a Time Warner Cable representative told me it would cost $57.99 per month ($695.88 per year).  The next level, Turbo, would cost $77.99 per month.  The representative didn't say whether that price included the rental of the cable modem.  If not, add to the monthly price or do what I did and buy your own for about $80.

A streaming device costs between about $30 and $200, depending on which brand you get and what you want to use it for.  But the various streaming options are not available on all these devices, so you need to choose carefully.  So now you have all the equipment.  What about the cost of the streaming services?  This chart shows the current pricing of some of the more popular services, though certainly not even close to all of them:

A Sampling of Streaming Television Services
Streaming Television Outlet	Monthly Cost
CBS All Access	4.99
HBO Now	14.99
Netflix	9.99
Amazon Prime	10.99 (or $99 per year)
Sling TV	$20
Hulu	$7.99 with commercials, $11.99 without

Originally I thought I'd make a killing by dropping cable and using a selection of streaming services that would let me and my wife enjoy all the shows we currently like on cable.  But when I found out how much cable Internet costs without TV it knocked a big chunk of that savings out the window.  And then I tried some of the services -- they all work differently.  And my wife hates learning curves.  I found Sling TV a good package that was confusing to use.  Hulu seemed OK, if a bit disorganized.

Amazon Prime is confusing because they mix included shows with paid ones -- sometimes different episodes or seasons of the same show.  So you can browse for something you want only to find you have to pay to see it, even though you are a Prime member.  Apple does a better job of separating paid and included shows -- because all the shows available on iTunes (with a few exceptions that are meant to be samples that will motivate you to buy a 'season pass') are for sale.  Everything on Netflix, however, is included in the monthly fee with no commercials and no pay per view choices.

So add everything up and the saving isn't the panacea you thought it would be.  Using more than one service is going to be confusing, and in more ways than one.  When we watch shows on Netflix I reach for the clicker every time I sense the end of an act (which is where the commercials are inserted on commercial television) because I have been so trained to either mute or fast-forward the commercials (viva la DVR!).  Now imagine every service working differently with the same buttons doing different things (or different buttons on different remotes).

I could go on, but you get the picture.  I think a backlash is coming.  Folks will start abandoning televison to boldly go where people have gone before: sitting around their living room telling stories and singing songs.  There is a lot to recommend it: it doesn't cost anything.  You don't need any special equipment.  And the interface is one that everybody understands.

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