Is Pluto TV the future of streaming?

Slate

With advertising and no subscription cost, Pluto TV is "old-school basic cable brought into the digital era, and its business model will become the standard alternative to premium streaming access," says Andrew Paul. "Free streaming platforms like Pluto TV remind us that digital entertainment, like everything else in this world, is a medium predicated on class. You may have long since given up purchasing physical media, figuring it a dead or, at least, dying industry, but lots of people still use these 'basic,' cheaper streaming and rental businesses....Compare that with the rising costs of each premium subscription option. Digital streaming services’ original appeal lay in the notion of viewers getting the chance to pick and choose their content providers, trimming the fat from cable TV providers’ years of bloated, overpriced subscription packages. Now, thanks to an ironic combination of atomization (CBS All Access, Peacock) and amalgamation (Amazon, Netflix, etc.), we are facing that same financial strain for our media entertainment all over again. Like the ubiquitous Fox and ABC affiliates of the ’90s, Pluto TV is ostensibly just … there. The most bare-bones kind of television, ready for viewing, with no credit card or digital cable box or antenna required. Pluto TV also takes away the anxiety of choice plaguing most of its competitors. Too often have I succumbed to the Death Scroll, that interminable amount of time spent deciding what, exactly, to watch—a process made exponentially more stressful by the number of people seated around the screen."