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Originally Posted by MickMcGeough
They're different businesses.
Shaw/Telus have a massive investment in infrastructure and extremely high burn rates, and they exist on the backs of monthly subscribers that use (and pay for) that infrastructure.
CraveTV offers nothing remarkable to compete with the incumbent Netflix in the independent content streaming space (or Amazon, or Hulu for that matter). This is why it costs less than half of any other service. Price is the only remarkable thing about it.
Shaw/Telus have no intent on competing in service provider-agnostic streaming, because they're a service provider! Shomi/CraveTV is 100% a customer retention play: a Netflix-like service that you can have at half the price, if you stay on as a paid subscriber using their infrastructure.
I actually think it's a pretty smart play. I think they've identified that cord cutting "evaluators" hesitate when faced with losing the live networks and local news, but are ok with special interest (HGTV, DIY, etc.) and premium (HBO, Showtime, AMC) content being time-shifted. You need internet regardless, so they're positioning basic cable + streaming (CraveTV) as an alternative to an all-streaming "cord cut" approach.
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I was going to post this. I'm not interested in saving $4 a month on my streaming service, but I can see the play here. I think eventually the subscription becomes free with cable. Let's be honest, how we consume media is changing rapidly, so in order to continue to sell access to media, you need something to retain it.