Is There A Super Bundle Of Joy In Your Future?

This is the time of the year when the word, "Super” gets thrown around a lot. In fact, marketers can get into a whole lot of trouble just by adding the word, "Bowl” after the aforementioned "Super”. However, since I am but a lowly blogger, I think I’m good at putting those two words together. So yeah, Super Bowl LVIII is on Sunday, February 11th. But this post is not about the football. It’s about a new buzzword called, "Super Bundling”. In the coming months, you may be hearing a lot more about this new game in town.

The concept of bundling has been around for a while. You can see it in action on the many NFL game commercials with everyone from Flo at Progressive to Patrick Mahomes, his coach Andy Reid and Jake from State Farm discussing the merits of purchasing multiple types of insurance for one price. It’s also been popular with Cable-TV providers. My first experience with price bundling was several years ago when I agreed to a two-year contract with that company whose name rhymes with bombast. The bundle included Cable, Internet and a home phone hardline. I was given a discount that essentially gave me the hardline for free. However, after I retired and had the time to do some research, I found that the old adage, "nothing is free” is pretty true. It turned out that I really didn’t need a free hardline and by cutting that and my other cords, I was able to save over $200 a month.

Fast forward to 2024 and there are new bundles from that cable company, including one with home security and cell phone services. Cell phone companies have also joined-in, bundling products such as Netflix, Disney, Hulu, ESPN+, Apple and Microsoft products and Internet as part of their pricing packages. And the streaming services themselves are offering their own bundles. For example, there’s the Disney Bundle which includes Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+. Not to be outdone, Paramount+ offers Showtime and Warner Bros. has Max and Discovery+ in their bundling plans. It seems like everyone has got some kind of bundle. Back in December I touched on the whole thing in a post titled, "Let’s Bundle in the TV Jungle”. Here's a link to that post - https://www.lowertechbills.com/post/let-s-bundle-in-the-tv-jungle.

But the bundle that many of us are looking for is the one that takes all of the above and includes them for one price. While the idea of having Cell, Internet and all the streaming TV services in one package is not showing-up in my crystal ball, is it too much to start with TV? Remember when you paid one bill for all your TV services and found all the channels in one viewer guide? Can we at least go back there? Well, it seems that after years of busting the cable bundle and strip-mining so-called linear networks for premium channels, the TV industry has been working at reversing course and figuring out how to reassemble its parts in ways that we will embrace. 

And that brings us to TV’s newest golden goose hunt, the "Super Bundle”. David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, has been open with his belief that the bundle is set to make a return. He’s noted that the current experience consumers face as they try to locate their favorite programming on a dizzying number of apps is far from ideal (there’s an understatement). Zaslav states, "As we talk to consumers, they find it difficult, and so I think one of the things that we’re going to see as we look into the future is bundling.”

There are actually two reasons for a TV "Super Bundle” – One for us consumers and one for Mr. Zaslav and his fellow TV CEO’s. From our point, a "Super Bundle” might finally allow us to access all of our streaming choices in one place for one price. Imagine one viewer guide where all of our channel choices and shows would show-up, making it far easier to change from show or channel to another. Then getting all of that on one monthly bill. I know, that used to be called the Cable-TV!

As good as it could be for us, it would also help streaming services with their so-called, "churn”. That’s because many of us cancel a service when we’ve finished bingeing a show or, in the case of something like Redzone Channel, when a sports season ends. The research firm Antenna recently said that the cancelation of streaming services reached an all-time high in October of 2023, hitting 5.7%. By bundling up, streamers are hoping to reduce those cancelations in exchange for offering larger content libraries at a discount. Jeffrey Zaslav says the independent, walled-off models that have existed over the last several years are "not really sustainable because it’s not a good consumer experience” and "because there are a lot of people in this business that are just losing too much money.”

So there you have it. A double dip of a poor consumer experience coupled with the companies providing that poor experience, losing money. The good news is that the "Super Bundle” is coming. The bad news is that some TV channels are going away. Which leads us to one more term making the rounds - "The Great Culling”. That is, lesser TV channels being kicked to the curb in new deals between channel owners and the companies that distribute them.

The first great culling occurred in September, 2023 when Charter Communications (owner of Spectrum Cable) made its new deal with Disney. Tucked into the official announcement was news that eight of Disney’s cable channels won’t be on Spectrum anymore: Baby TV, Disney Junior, Disney XD, Freeform, FXM, FXX, Nat Geo Wild and Nat Geo Mundo. That will save Charter an estimated $300 million to $350 million a year in carriage fees, according to analyst estimates. Indeed, Charter CEO Chris Winfrey called the Disney deal "the framework for what should be developed throughout the entire industry.” If Mr. Winfrey is right, terms like "Super Bundle” and "Great Culling” are going to be added to our TV lexicon.

Since I retired from Radio, I’ve done my best to keep up with all of these changes and that’s how I’ve been able to save households up to thousands of dollars a year on TV, Cell and Internet costs. For a free "Tech Check” look at your bills, email hmwellsradio@gmail.com or visit lowertechbills.com because you may not have the time to do the research on all of this, but I do.