Pittsburgh Pop podcast: Talking local baker on Food Network, ‘streamflation:’ the rising costs of streaming services
Share this post:
In this episode of the “Pittsburgh Pop” podcast, host Tim Benz and TV Talk columnist Rob Owen discuss Pittsburgh pop culture news of the moment including Pittsburgher Jasmine Cho, a past winner of Food Network’s “Christmas Cookie Challenge” who competes again on the show at 9 p.m. Thursday.Eight former “Christmas Cookie Champions” return in teams of two. Cho owns the online bakery Yummyholic — specializing in custom cookies, particularly portrait cookies — and she’s paired with another baker, Ricky Webster of Spokane, Wash.
Benz and Owen also discuss the new trailer for the long-gestating “Band of Brothers” follow-up “Masters of the Air” and “streamflation,” the rising costs of streaming services. Owen reports Carnegie Mellon University professor of information systems Rahul Telang is studying streaming services’ increasing prices – see: Apple TV+’s October price bump from $7 to $10 per month – because the streaming services largely aren’t making money.
“The price they’re charging and the amount of content they’re producing, it’s just not sustainable,” Telang said. “The writing was on the wall very clearly that the prices were too low. It all signals that what they’re doing currently is not sustainable and the price is going up.”
Owen also reports that Disney is planning to combine Disney+ and Hulu into a single Disney+-branded app once it buys out Comcast, which still owns a portion of Hulu.
And Benz and Owen discuss the end of the actors’ strike and when viewers can expect their favorites to be back with new episodes.
Listen to Pittsburgh Pop on the TRIBLive Podcast Network or on iTunes.