re: Amazon Prime Video will soon have ads

Even before streaming services were a thing, I heard people in the industry, talking about how we would have every conceivable movie or TV show available online. This was at least when blockbuster & Netflix were still sending out DVDs in the mail.

Sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it? But the problem isn’t the technology as much as it is how to profit from it. Because that is the real fly in the ointment. It isn’t AI, as much as the writers on strike want us to believe. It’s about streaming services not wanting to show the actual numbers of who is watching these shows. Because to do so with crush their revenue scheme, which they use to sell ads.

As for Amazon, all they had to do was stick to the source, material of one particular author, and give us an authentic version of his world. But they could not help themselves. They wanted a “broader more international audience“ which is itself a load of rubbish. Now they are sinking underneath the weight Of their own virtue signaling hubris.

Hulu already does it, but I *pay* for ad-free, LiveTV, unlimited screens, etc.

It seems to occur far more often on some networks than others, and usually seems to happen on things that aired less than 24 hours ago. This just happened to me this afternoon: I got an option to "interact" with an ad for 30 seconds, or have a 2.5 minute ad break that I could mute.

The result? I'll wait until tomorrow to watch that episode; I watched some other trash.

These streaming services must want people to get back into piracy.

The streaming model doesn't work financially. Disney has cut back what they intended on offering, and they own the 2 biggest franchises (MCU and Star Wars) for males, a huge built-in children's audience, etc.

I don't want to pay monthly fees for "a library" of movies I might have watched casually, when I channel surfed a decade ago. I want new releases, and after Game of Thrones, I also want new, good, premium series. And honestly, when I say "premium", I mean movie-quality. If I'm getting 8-10 episodes for a season, it needs to be something impressive.

We used to get 26 episodes a season in the old days, and for stuff like Miami Vice, Magnum PI, NYPD Blue, there's really not a lot more they could add in. Maybe some T&A (but that's now considered "incel" and bad), maybe some cussing (but that's just a bit more trashy). If you're gonna give me about a third of that, I don't want the same genre, I want something much more visually impressive.
The problem is, they can't deliver on that. It costs as much as a movie to make, and you're not getting movie revenues. No matter how good Rings Of Power could have been, they (Amazon) weren't going to get LOTR trilogy level of income.
But now, we EXPECT that quality, to even consider it.

I agree, Prime shipping ain't what it used to be; but I WAS able to get some next-day stuff the other day. But for the price you pay, really everything should be that way.