Netflix Wants to Manage Your Streaming Bill - DTNS 5338

**Tom Merritt** (0:08)
This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, August 24th, 2026 We tell you what you need to know, give you important context and help each other understand.

**Robb Dunewood** (0:17)
Today, Netflix inches closer to becoming the platform to manage your streaming subscriptions.

**Tom Merritt** (0:23)
Does it really want that? I don't know. I got some thoughts, Robb's got some thoughts. I'm Tom Merritt.

**Robb Dunewood** (0:27)
And I'm Rob Dunewood.

**Tom Merritt** (0:29)
Let's start with what you need to know with that big story.
So the New York Times becoming the latest to say its sources, say folks at Netflix have considered adding on programs. What the New York Times has that we haven't seen before is names. Netflix considering selling access to Peacock and Fox One and possibly making it available from within the Netflix app. That part was not sure. Maybe they just haven't decided yet, but whether you would get the programming in the Netflix app or just add the bundle and then you'd go to the Peacock app or the Fox One app. This follows a similar report that Netflix execs were considering this. The Wall Street Journal put that out back in July.
And starting on July 19th, Netflix began offering France's TF1 programming to subscribers in France.
No extra charge there. You get the TF1 linear channels and all of that. It's sort of an experiment. Netflix is saying, if this goes well, we might do more of this sort of thing. What we're talking about is something that already exists. You can add channels to Amazon. In fact, Amazon and Apple, both you can add channels to, and you can add each other's channel to themselves. If you're on Amazon, you can add Apple TV to your Amazon. If you're on Apple, you can add Prime Video to Apple. Roku Channel also does this. Hulu lets you add some services as well. And YouTube, very interestingly, lets you do this through YouTube TV. You can add like Stars and HBO Max and all of that to YouTube TV, as well as YouTube Premium. Even if you don't have a YouTube TV subscription, which is their more cable-like subscription, you can add some channels to YouTube Premium. In fact, you can add Peacock right now to YouTube Premium, but starting next year, YouTube and Peacock reached a deal where Peacock will just be available as part of your YouTube Premium subscription. No additional charge. And a lot of people don't realize this, but in the United States, a lot of the cable companies, Comcast, Cox, etc.,
include streaming services with your cable subscription. It's a way to keep people from canceling cable. Like, hey, we'll just give you Peacock. We'll just give you Disney Plus as part of your subscription. So we have definitely entered the stage where streaming services are sorting themselves into platforms and programming providers. This is something that on the other show I do, WordKillers, I've been talking about for a long time. We were in the consolidation phase, which we're still kind of in with Paramount trying to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. And that platform phase where companies decide, do we just want to make programs? That's what Sony's doing. Do we want to have a channel but not try to run everything? That's what companies like Stars have done.
For the most part, Showtime is kind of like that. And it looks like Peacock might be leaning that way. Or do we want to be the platform provider? Do we want to be the bill that people pay and decide when they add channels and when they don't? Robb, I know you are way into this as much as I am. What do you think of all of it?

**Robb Dunewood** (3:34)
So Tom, I am a serial churner. I will cancel a subscription just because there's nothing on it that I want to watch that month. And if I pay for it, if I can just cancel it and I pay for it and then come back a month or two or three later and then watch the thing that I want to watch.
So because of that, I am a huge fan of Amazon. That's where I do a lot of my viewing because I can just buy everything. I've got MGM through Amazon. I now have HBO because of Lanterns through Amazon. As soon as Lanterns is over, HBO probably gets canceled again unless there's a Lanterns 2 that comes out the week after Lanterns 1 stops. So for me, it makes sense because it's much easier to remember that I only have to go one place to subscribe and to cancel to stuff. And because I do it so regularly, I am literally in and out of accounts almost on a monthly basis. So for people like me, it makes sense. I think another part of this is that the industry is just maturing. Some of the, when you look at a Netflix, Netflix has been around for decades. It was a whole different company before it is the company. Now the people don't even remember. And it was huge when it was doing DVDs. It was ginormous doing that. And people don't even think of it as that type of company any longer. So they've been around, they've been doing this for a while, and they're probably no longer looking to add users by Leaps and Bounds. Why? Because they've already added all the users in Leaps and Bounds.