It seems like so many of the innovations of this industry take away from something that was already there. Well this time they've come for the shows themselves.
Do you remember when one guy's success on the phones, was a babe's success... was all viewers' success... was the operator's success? That was a babeshow. Pure and simple. This forum. Why we came here. Why we are still here (for a lot of us).
Even pervcam originally worked in conjunction with fta use. It encouraged guys to view (both feeds) and use the small cam to circumvent what Ofcom were making the shows do with the big one. Pervcam may have lessened main cam's utility for eroticism but it certainly didn't replace it - quite the opposite it gave new reason for fta's (and by extension proper babeshows') continued existence. Nor did perv work to destroy fans' ability to enjoy a channel surf of our stuff. Nor negate the egalitarian, formerly central, value of interaction as described in my opening sentence to paragraph two.
Nowadays, the industry seems increasingly set on wrecking that aspect of the user experience. They must see it as not granting them enough advantages... So we get curtains and blur, and other inter-show paywalls, like the encroachment of privates, pushing their way into a babe's regular shift. All of these cut into the simple pleasures of fta session time AND the value of PAID USE on such streams. So now, we go one step further by switching the babe out from the fta element completely.
And in doing so, these Premium affairs push foward the current regressivism that the shows are all about the individual's faux relationship with his muse and the level of exclusive
attention a babe will grant him. This is what we are meant to be paying for now. I say bobbins. I say, that's not what's central to what I pay for or love about this stuff AT ALL.
As much as many babes surely hate it, the babeshows by definition require a free to view element. The value of the fta aspect is inherent to what defines its special USP's. Without it the ability to help create better entertainment
for all fandom via interaction is gone; and that's a good part of what SELLS to me, and to other guys I know. A good part of the excitement and anticipation, stuff that MAKES the shows, goes out the window when the openess to all comers is removed. Without these things it's not a babeshow, it's camming and therefore not the central subject of this forum; or what made me or keeps me a fan.
A babeshow has a studio, it has a babe, it has a "fta" feed; and it has at least one method thru which the babe can communicate with those watching... Anything else is associated material. Some of it worthy, some not. And because Premiums feeds are out to REPLACE so much of the former (you think not? Check how often there'll be a Premium feed while there are no fta ones and check how many of 66's bigger names even bother to do fta anymore), I'd suggest they are most unworthy of any punter wanting the shows to continue in anything like their traditional form.