The wrong way to do streaming media

Streaming should kill cable. Bandwidth will continue to increase. There's really not much point anymore to push every channel into every home when most families are only going to watch one or two channels at a time. Moving forward, streaming seems far more logical than the cable approach.

People are already cutting cable in favor of… streaming cable. Okay. Maybe that's a bit of an oversimplification. Regardless, streaming services have been too inhibited by the approach taken by cable networks. There are definitely some differences, but we're doing streaming wrong.

There are two primary approaches to streaming. One is to use channels. For live programming, this makes sense. For things like classic programming, there isn't really a point to telling people that they have to watch what a streaming service tells them to watch.

The other approach is on demand. In many ways, this is more logical. People should be able to stream on their own time. Oddly enough, most streaming content is either meant to mimic how we have typically handled television shows and movies. Streaming should be more flexible. Why target every episode for the same length? Why worry about a standard movie length? If programs are recorded specifically for streaming, wouldn't it make more sense to base such things as length off of what seems best for the content rather than what's best to fit more traditional schedules?

On top of all of that, streaming is still secondary to cable. Most content designed for streaming is garbage. If it's any good, they target broadcast networks. Between broadcast networks and streaming networks is cable networks. Streaming is still at the bottom. Simply put, streaming content still has a very long way to go.

One of the hopes for streaming was to finally allow people to only pay for content they want to watch. That's another area where we have failed. Most streaming services try to provide broad content. Because these services are secondary, you still have to pay for cable if you want cable-like programming. In many cases, different streaming services gain the rights to redundant content. In other words, you have to pay twice for the same content.

Even if we want to choose which providers we want, there are still a lot of complications. Streaming services are run independently of each other. This means that you have to maintain different accounts for each service. You have to keep track of which content is located in which service. Ideally, I would prefer a subscription manager that tracks all of your content from a single location. By contrast, cable provides a convenience that simply can't be found with streaming services.

I want to say that streaming is the future. Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go if we want this to be true. Instead of looking for the convenient way to stream, we should look for the best way to stream.