Nickelodeon and its parent company Viacom just announced that it will be following in the well trodden footsteps of HBO, Sling TV, and (perhaps the misguided) CBS by creating a monthly subscription-based video service.
Basically, there’s never been a greater time to be a cord-cutter. Arguably, an a la carte TV future would need to provide four essentials to become ubiquitous in family rooms: sports, entertainment, kids shows, and wrestling. (Ok, JK that last one). With Nickelodeon now on board, the circle is now complete.
Now a big hurdle will be trying to figure out pricing. A lot of these a la carte services are offering much more than their cable counterparts by posting whole libraries of shows and movies, not just what’s playing right now. But all that content doesn’t come cheap—we’re talking at least $55 for just HBO, Amazon, HULU, and Netflix (that is, if you’re not borrowing some of those already). A la carte television will be more convenient, but probably not cheaper.
https://gizmodo.com/with-standalone-hbo-how-much-will-it-cost-to-cut-the-c-1646653151
Interestingly, Variety says that Viacom will focus on bringing Nickelodeon to mobile devices, not mentioning if a desktop option would be available. This initial report doesn’t mention how much money Viacom will be asking for a subscription or if it will be a tiered service like Netflix, but we should know soon enough when the service launches next month. [Variety]
