Time to press ‘pause’ on your streaming habit?

Want to support Hollywood’s striking actors and writers? Then don’t cancel your streaming subscriptions, says the Screen Actors Guild. Keep watching. It proves to the studios they need real actors, not an AI imitation.

If you want to save money on your TV viewing, that’s another thing. And you’re not alone. Subscription fatigue is escalating among consumers, according to the 2023 US digital media trends survey published by Deloitte in April, findings confirmed by a survey of the Irish market for Pure Telecom this week. It’s getting harder and harder for streaming services to retain customers.

About half of US consumers said they have made at least one change to their entertainment subscriptions because of financial pressure, according to the Deloitte survey. The figure in the Irish survey was closer to a third.

Consumers in the US are spending an average of $48 a month (€44) on subscription services, says the data. Half of them feel they pay too much, while a third say they intend to reduce their number of entertainment subscriptions. Households are cancelling services, switching to free ad-supported versions and bundling services to save money.

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Householders in Ireland with basic subscriptions to Netflix, Disney+ and Now, for example, are paying about €28 a month. Those getting the first two and bundling Netflix with Sky are paying about €50 a month.

Everyone is flip-flopping more on their TV subscriptions, according to the survey. Those most likely to have tweaked their subscriptions because of cost are millennials – that’s those aged from 23 to 43. They spend more than everyone else on subscriptions, but about 45 per cent have “churned and returned” to a paid service within six months, according to the study. That means they subscribe to watch a specific show or movie and then cancel when they’re done – only to resubscribe later to watch something else.

Even though inflation has begun to ease this side of the Atlantic, the cost-of-living crisis isn’t over just yet. Petrol, diesel, alcohol and streaming services are all going up in price over the coming weeks, according to Bonkers.ie.

Spotify has announced it is hiking the cost of its individual and duo plans by €1 a month to €10.99 and €14.99, respectively. Meanwhile, Netflix is clamping down on password sharing, meaning many will have to fork out for their own subscription starting from €8.99 a month. This means some music and movie lovers may need to fork out an extra €120 a year.

Whether you are feeling financial pressure or not, it’s good to scrutinise your direct debits. Here’s five ways to get smart about your TV spend:

Binge watch

Ever sign up to a streaming service just to watch one show? We all do it. Now TV had new subscribers flocking to it for hits such as Succession and the Sex in the City sequel, And Just Like That.

The weekly drip feed of episodes makes for an old-school TV viewing experience with fans glued to their telly boxes at the same time. That’s part of the buzz, right? There’s something else at play however. The slow drop of episodes keeps us hooked to our subscription for weeks longer, slowing churn rates.

Season four of Succession had 10 episodes, dropping weekly and ending on May 29th. And Just Like That started a few weeks later with the latest of its 11 episodes dropping weekly until September 7th. Fans of both shows will have had to pay for about 24 weeks or six months of Now TV at a cost of €72.

If you can bear to wait until the final episode of a season has dropped, however, there are savings. Binge watch the final season of Succession over one month, and you’ll pay €11.99. Kill your Now TV subscription and resume it again when all episodes of And Just Like That are available and that’s another €11.99.

The truly patient will wait until all episodes of both have dropped and binge watch the lot over a month for €11.99. Sure, you may have tripped on some spoilers in the interim and missed a bit of water cooler chat, but you’ll be €60 better off.

Plan and churn

Rotate services depending on what’s hot to watch. This takes a bit of planning, but you will make savings.

Near the end each month, you’ll find media reports and reviews about what’s coming on the big streaming services. Scan the offerings and weigh up how much time you’ll have for telly and which service is worth your hard-earned cash. Then get trigger happy and cancel the subscriptions that aren’t delivering in the month ahead.

If you want to get really forensic about it, time your subscriptions to the last days of the month when listings and reviews of what’s coming are available. If you choose to cancel, you can do it before your membership tips into the new calendar month.

For example, on Netflix, the “member since” month/year is the most recent date your account was started or reactivated. It is displayed at the top of your account page. You are charged on the date you subscribe. If you cancel and rejoin, the “member since” month/year restarts on the last time you rejoined.

You can cancel most services on the spot and renew later if you wish with no penalty. Most platforms will retain your profile and viewing history for a year in the hope of your return. Subscribing again is as instant as unsubscribing.

If you are subscribing to watch a particular movie or a series, set a reminder on your phone to cancel it. You’ve got to be ruthless about direct debits and eliminate the subscriptions that just aren’t delivering.

You can shut off the automatic renewal of a subscription too. This prevents “vampire subscriptions” you rarely use leeching your funds.

The kids are all right

How did Irish parents manage before Disney+? And manage we did, before it wormed its way on to our tellys via a free trial. Three years later, this subscription service has become a direct debit fixture in many households.

Parenting experts will tell you that if you take a toy out of circulation for a bit and then reintroduce it, the kids feel like they are getting a new toy all over again. Just like putting Scalextric in the attic for three months, you could do some strategic warehousing of the subscription services your kids use too.

Do they really need Netflix and Disney+ at the same time? Pick one and drop one on a three-month rotation and you’ll save about €108 a year.

Don’t overlook the free stuff on RTÉjr and the kids section of RTÉ Player too. It’s also worth scanning online TV listings and picking off some kids’ films to record for rainy days. Film4 has shown classics like Kung Fu Panda, Monsters vs Aliens, How to Train your Dragon, and Mean Girls this summer. Try bulk-recording favourites on CBeebies and CBBC too, like Mallory Towers or Grizzy and the Lemmings. The website Commonsensemedia.org has reviews of suitable content by age.

Choose basic subscriptions

Yes, watching ads can be a pain, but it can make for a cheaper streaming subscription. You’re probably happy with the chance to peek at your phone anyway.

Netflix had intimated it would start to offer a cheaper membership option here supported by ads, a payment model common in the US and now the UK.

In the UK, Netflix offers membership from £4.99 a month (€5.80) with ads and from £10.99 (€12.80) without ads. If this model is introduced here, you may end up having to pay more for the ad-free version you currently enjoy.

Surf free trials

There are fewer free trials than there used to be – Netflix and Disney have ended theirs, but Apple TV is still offering a seven-day free trial. That means you can watch Severance, Bad Sisters, Ted Lasso and The Morning Show for free, for a week at least.

Prime Video is offering a seven-day free trial where you can catch movies Dune and The Lego Ninjago Movie. Then the service auto-renews at €5.99 a month.

Mubi, which markets itself as “handpicked cinema”, or a type of curated cinema club, also has a seven-day free trial that auto-renews to €11.99 a month. Paramount + is also now offering a seven-day free trial before auto-renewing to €7.99 a month.

Now TV doesn’t have a free trial, but offers 50 per cent off for six months. That’s €11.99 for the entertainment and cinema package before the price doubles to €23.98. As with all free trials, don’t forget to set a reminder to cancel before it auto-renews.

The end?

However, subscription services need to do more to retain viewers, according to the Deloitte report. TV shows and movies are great at attracting subscribers but they don’t seem to work well at retaining us. Until streamers figure out a way to keep us, households will save money by hitting cancel.

Millennials could be the canary in the coal mine of subscription viewing services, according to Deloitte. They drove adoption of TV subscriptions but this generation is now showing signs of subscription fatigue and cost-sensitivity, and may be reaching their limit. Half of Gen Zs and millennials prefer user-generated video to streaming services, according to Deloitte. This content is free to watch, it’s about topics they are interested in and it’s convenient. The appeal of sitting on the sofa and watching telly, just like borrowing a video from a shop, may be on the wane as content continues to evolve into new formats and platforms.

It may seem unlikely now, but someday we may remember Netflix or Now TV in the same way we recall (increasingly dimly) platforms such as MySpace, Bebo and Xtra-vision.

You can contact us at OnTheMoney@irishtimes.com with personal finance questions you would like to see us address. If you missed last week’s newsletter, you can read it here.