^^^Opportunity to rant alert!
I despise waist-up shows. They rob us all of so much of what made the shows what the are. Limited movement, no full body shots, hugely lessened ability to express any sensuality via body language... all for a £3 a minute crotch shot, that has no lasting appeal if it continues to be built on the foundations of such flimsy TV material.
The specifics are equally troubling: When I'm buying a theatre ticket, it'll say "Restricted View" if part of the action can not be seen from the seat in question. I usually avoid these tickets - despite their being priced accordingly. I want my experience to be all it can be, not stiffled by some unnecessary imposition. But I'm given the choice of the lower price and that's good. Contrast this with the modern day BS, who expect a large slice of their TV callers to just accept a similarly 'restricted view' whilst offering absolutely no concessions on price whatsoever.
BS, the main offenders with the waist-up only tactic, have shown not a single consideration for the downturn in the VFM on offer to callers on these sessions. It's like it or lump it - oh, and come online to spend even more...
Any operator who adopts these practices is playing a dangerous game IMO. If they are prepared to degrade their most visible services
and customer draw in such a cavalier fashion what assurance does that give us that its paywalled offerings are going to be in anyway good value? Word of mouth on BS's high profile 'event' cams has been almost overwhelmingly poor and the changes in the main shows do nothing to counter that impression. Are the oft stated grips about lacklustre content and image quality (all for eye-watering prices) really that surprising when you look at how BS have gone about things in general since they adopted pervcam?
These are things that can turn off even the best customer. Viewer, cammer, caller are all the same in this - we are all influenced by how these things come across on the public face of the shows and will vote with our remotes based on what we see.
Businesses alter their products and services all the time, but when the best of them do it they do so with care and an effort to take existing customers on the journey with them. (Amazon tweaked their main service to better chime with what they were doing on Prime but they didn't bowdlerize the former to the detriment of the things that brought you to use their service in the first place.) Innovation can obviously drive short-term success but you'd hope attention to detail and good customer care are needed to maintain it.
The style of BS's changes, over so much of what they've done lately, just says 'we only see short term pound signs and blow everything else'. The huge relutance to strike a more encouraging balance between perv and TV is just the most visible manifestation of that...
Buyer beware indeed.