It's becomingly increasingly clear that television is moving away from cable packages, and Showtime will soon be adapting to that change with a new streaming service.

Last week, HBO announced that they would be offering a streaming service that consumers could buy without having to purchase a cable subscription, as we previously reported. That service will cost $15 a month and can be bought by itself just like Netflix or Hulu.

Now Showtime is also unveiling a stand-alone streaming service, according to Slashfilm. CBS Corp head Les Moonves said that we should expect it to be debuted soon, noting that now the "floodgate is open." Moonves also said that the days of 500 channels are now over.

The announcement was made to investors at the Deutsche Bank Securities 2015 Media, Internet & Telecom Conference.

Just like with HBO, currently the only way to watch Showtime is to have cable and then purchase Showtime as part of a package. But with the rise of streaming like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Instant Video, more and more consumers are getting rid of cable entirely, and for those people there is no legal way to watch these shows. They can't simply buy Showtime or HBO by themselves, as the channels are currently still only available through cable. That will be changing very soon, giving consumers the opportunity to only purchase the channels they really want and not paying well over $100 a month and only watching a few channels.

Moonves noted that the company's recently launched CBS service CBS All Access, which gives viewers access to CBS without cable for $6 a month, is doing extremely well.

For cable companies, this is all pretty terrifying. The more companies that offer streaming services, the less of a reason consumers have to stick with cable. Currently the main incentive is to able to watch shows live and to watch shows, but even some services are beginning to offer live viewing now.

One concern some people are having about these streaming services is that if you actually do watch a lot of TV on a lot of channels, you might end up paying nearly as much as you did for cable but for less content. If you were to subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, and HBO's new streaming service, that would cost $31 a month. If we assume Showtime will be about the same amount of money as HBO, that brings you to $46. Maybe you want to throw in CBS; that would bring you up to $50. If more and more channels start offering these services and you have to keep adding on to that, you have to ask yourself how much money you're actually saving here.

But for consumers who maybe don't watch as much TV, or who don't care too much about watching it live, services like these are going to be pretty valuable, and in the long run moving to streaming over cable will probably be much more convenient. We'll just have to see if it ends up being as cost-effective as we would hope.

HBO's streaming service, HBO Now, will be available this April.

image courtesy of INFphoto.com