[HN Gopher] Netflix's New Chapter
___________________________________________________________________
Netflix's New Chapter
Author : jkestner
Score : 235 points
Date : 2023-01-23 15:50 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stratechery.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stratechery.com)
| xrd wrote:
| The first time I've seen a well written critique of activist
| investors like Carl Icahn. He certainly scuttled any chance that
| Blockbuster had of succeeding. He's often right about small
| details when it comes to traditional companies and where to cut
| costs (as are many activist investors), but this story reads like
| he sabotaged Blockbuster when it had an actual substantial and
| viable chance to compete. I had not heard this story before, I
| always assumed Blockbuster was just too dumb to compete, but it
| wasn't the case at all. And, interesting if people like Hastings
| knew the forces at play in his competitors, and as Strategery
| points out, can play the long game when they know their
| competitors can't. Terrific article, as usual.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| "Activist investors" engage in what will be considered a crime
| in the near future, which is purchasing shares to obtain board
| ownership -> take in obscene amounts of debt for stock buybacks
| -> dump shares and let the company fall into bankruptcy. I
| prefer their original name "corporate raiders".
| jessaustin wrote:
| FTFA:
|
| _Netflix would go on to offer to buy Blockbuster Online;
| Antioco turned the company down, assuming he could get a better
| price once Netflix's growth turned upside down. Carl Icahn,
| though, who owned a major chunk of Blockbuster and had long
| feuded with Antioco, finally convinced him to resign that very
| same quarter; Antioco's replacement took money away from Total
| Access and funneled it back to the stores, and Netflix escaped
| (Hastings would later tell Shane Evangelist, the head of
| Blockbuster Online, that Blockbuster had Netflix in checkmate).
| Blockbuster went bankrupt two years later._
|
| OK, it was probably a mistake to cut back on "Total Access",
| but that takes on a deckchair character considering the whole
| firm was _bankrupt_ in _two_ years! That isn 't a convincing
| support for previous management. ISTM the best decision for
| shareholders would have been to take the Netflix deal?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> I'm not sure there is any company of Netflix's size that has
| ever been so frequently doubted and written off._
|
| _< cough/>_ Apple _< cough/>_
| enumjorge wrote:
| Sort of an aside question, but the article praises Hastings
| ability to execute:
|
| > To say that Hastings excelled at execution is a dramatic
| understatement; indeed, the speed with which the company rolled
| out its advertising product in 2022[...] is a testament that
| Hastings' imprint on the company's ability to execute remains.
|
| Is there a place where one could read details on what made him so
| great at execution?
| ajmurmann wrote:
| The No Rules Rules book by him and an actual author is really
| good.
| jedberg wrote:
| I can tell you as a former employee what I think it was. Reed
| was a developer, and in fact made software to make other
| developers more productive. He still thinks with that mindset
| internally.
|
| The entire culture at Netflix is built around enabling
| engineers to do what they think is the best thing. This in turn
| attracts engineers who like that kind of environment. I would
| gladly work with any of my former Netflix coworkers again in a
| heartbeat.
|
| The way this manifests is the mantra "context not control".
| From Reed on down, management's job is to tell the people that
| work for them "this is what we want to accomplish as a
| company/team/group". It is then up to those people to set the
| agenda.
|
| So I'd say Reed's execution is that he is great at making sure
| the right people get hired and the culture remains one of high
| performance, attracting talented engineers who want to work
| somewhere where making big changes is accepted.
|
| I wasn't there for the ads rollout, but I suspect it went
| something like Reed saying, "The time has come for us to roll
| out ads, we need the extra revenue". Then everyone down the
| line said, "this is how our department will contribute to
| that". Then the engineers said, "this is what needs to change"
| and just made it happen and no one got in their way. They have
| excellent developer tools that enable rapid prototyping and
| deployment, so while the engineers were building the ad tools,
| the content team was hiring the best ad exec they could find,
| who was very interested in the challenge of building an ad
| organization from scratch, and then everyone probably got out
| of _their_ way.
|
| I say this because I was there for streaming, and it went very
| similarly. Reed (and the other execs) agreed that the
| technology had now caught up to his vision, and it was time to
| stream over the internet. So the engineers built it while the
| content team was created to start licensing content. Then some
| of the engineers said, "we could do this a lot faster and
| eventually worldwide if we hitch our wagon to this new AWS
| thing". And so management got out of the way and said "if
| that's what you think is best, we will support that". And so
| they started building on AWS, and hired a bunch of people who
| expertise in building on AWS (that was how I got in) and the
| rest is history. We kept hiring great engineers and saying "if
| we do it this way it will be a better experience for the
| customers" and for us internal teams, our customers were other
| engineers, so we made the best internal tools we could to
| enable developers.
| secabeen wrote:
| > "we could do this a lot faster and eventually worldwide if
| we hitch our wagon to this new AWS thing"
|
| Standard reminder, this was for all the non-content delivery
| parts of Netflix. They have always and continue to run their
| own CDN in-house, and don't use AWS for that part. It also
| took almost 8 years to fully transition to AWS:
| https://ayushhsinghh.medium.com/case-study-how-netflix-is-
| us...
| jedberg wrote:
| That article is full of inaccuracies FYI. It took six
| years, not eight, and 95% of the transition was done in
| four years.
|
| Also, Netflix didn't always have its own CDN. We used
| Level3, Limelight, and Akamai to deliver video from 2010
| until about 2012/13. And content is still stored in AWS.
| It's all rendered there and all the original copies are
| stored there.
|
| You are correct though that Netflix never delivered video
| bits to users via AWS, because it was cost prohibitive.
| JacobDotVI wrote:
| He wrote a book called Blitzscaling regarding how to execute:
| https://www.amazon.com/Blitzscaling-Lightning-Fast-Building-...
|
| The book Netflixed (mentioned in the article) is likely also a
| good source: https://www.amazon.com/Netflixed-Epic-Battle-
| Americas-Eyebal...
| wheelinsupial wrote:
| I think the book Blitzscaling is by Reid Hoffman, founder of
| LinkedIn. Reed Hastings wrote No Rules Rules
| https://www.norulesrules.com/
| criddell wrote:
| I don't know if it has anything to do with his business acumen,
| but he was a pretty talented software developer. I originally
| knew of him from the Purify memory debugger.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Two readings:
|
| * Netflix Culture (originated and articulated by Reed): latest
| version at jobs.netflix.com/culture
|
| * No Rules Rules (book he co-wrote). In essence it is about how
| the aspirational / North Star culture maps to the day to day
| experiences of people who work there
| thiago_fm wrote:
| Something I don't understand is why Disney and others need to
| have their own streaming service.
|
| Why Netflix can't sit down with Disney and merge the two
| streaming services. Disney is amazing at making content, so is
| Netflix at the moment.
|
| They could take a look at the present, their market cap, debt and
| so on and structure a solution that would:
|
| 1. Make Netflix the best streaming service with the best content,
| also best variety as it would have all of Disney
|
| 2. Fix the negative cashflow from Disney and its streaming
| service AND give them a good amount of control of Netflix, and
| its profits
|
| I doubt Amazon or Apple would be able to compete against Netflix
| in that sense. Their content is also good, but hard to compare
| against a Netflix+Disney combo. They would easily eat a lot
| subscribers from the competition.
|
| Also, business-wise, it would make a lot of sense for Disney.
| They wouldn't need to support their crappy app or do any
| engineering work at all, because they aren't anywhere as close as
| Netflix in that sense, and they will need at least a decade to
| get where Netflix is, maybe never, as they don't seem to be able
| to know how to run a technology company AT ALL.
|
| Also users would be happier and thankful again, as they don't
| need to pay for so many services. Right now it is a fucking pain
| in the ass.
| gumby wrote:
| There are mergers and consolidations to come, that's for sure,
| but it would make no sense for Disney to do a deal with
| Netflix.
|
| Netflix is a pure play. Disney+ is part of a somewhat
| integrated business: streaming, theatre, toys, theme parks,
| cruises each advertise and reinforce each other. Everything
| they do is a cross sell. And though I don't personally enjoy
| most of their output, I see it as generally very high quality.
|
| During COVID things got out of whack, with streaming being a
| significant, high-growth source of revenue while in-person
| revenue streams languished.
|
| The right way to think of Disney streaming is (ultimately) a
| low cost way to scoop up residual revenues. They put a film in
| theatres and can do hundreds of millions, and even billions in
| revenue. Then stick it on streaming (marginal cost for
| subscribers and Disney: essentially $0). Take it off streaming,
| sell disks. Put back on streaming. Repeat.
|
| The thing Disney and Netflix have in common is high quality
| software and deployment, head and shoulders above anyone else.
| But that's about it.
| hbn wrote:
| > Disney is amazing at making content
|
| Are they? They're certainly good at buying IP that people like,
| and now they own a big back-catalogue of beloved franchises.
| But the vast majority of content they pump out these days is
| mediocre at best. They own so much that if you want to go to a
| theatre to watch a movie, your pickings are essentially all
| owned by Disney. They generally make money but it's because
| they bought everything.
|
| I can definitely think of more Netflix originals that I've
| enjoyed in recent years than offerings from Disney's zero-risk,
| safe, predictable gray goo.
| ghaff wrote:
| That makes an assumption.
|
| - That Netflix has a infrastructure competitive advantage. That
| probably used to be true with microservices, chaos monkey, and
| all that. But while a big streaming platform isn't something a
| couple engineers throw together in a weekend, it's a pretty
| well understood problem. It's content that attracts
| subscribers.
|
| And that content doesn't really have economies of scale. Having
| twice as much good content probably costs about twice as much
| which means you ned to charge about twice as much which doesn't
| offer a compelling advantage over just having two separate
| subscriptions.
| minhazm wrote:
| Netflix's infrastructure advantage was/is in Open Connect.
| They work with ISP's and ship servers that locally cache
| terabytes of content as close as possible to the customer to
| reduce bandwidth costs for themselves and ISP's. Nowadays
| with higher and cheaper bandwidth there are many CDN's that
| have similar arrangements with large and small ISP's that
| Netflix's advantage is not as significant anymore. But even
| today Netflix's streaming experience is noticeably superior,
| just not enough for it to be a selling point anymore.
| deepzn wrote:
| In regards to content scaling, that seems right on the face
| of it. But, Netflix had been pushing the idea of
| "Amortization of Content" in that content once created has an
| extremely long lifecycle, and essentially a long tail. As
| people will always watch older content. And a lot of times
| people would miss it, and things start trending later on.
| However, quality of content matters. If you're spending money
| on poor quality content. People won't watch it once, let
| alone multiple times across time. I feel that's what Netflix
| had been doing lately. And lost their competitive edge, as
| competitors increased the quality of their shows.
| ghaff wrote:
| People do watch at least certain types of older content.
| They watch movies from the earlier part of last century.
|
| But I'm not sure how much money is in there, especially for
| a subscriber service--which mostly justifies licensing
| costs by retaining or gaining subscribers.
|
| I'd also observe that Netflix has allowed their back disc
| catalog to deteriorate. Which suggests a fairly
| comprehensive back catalog doesn't necessarily pay the
| bills.
| deepzn wrote:
| Yeah the author suggests as such..."it turns out, though,
| that Netflix gets and keeps customers with new shows that
| people talk about, while most of its old content is
| ignored", again lies the difficulty in churning out new
| hits with new IP.
| matt_s wrote:
| I think what you're describing could be a white-label Netflix.
| Essentially a different UI skin, branding and content library
| but served by Netflix's tech stack, etc.
|
| Its probably more likely any consolidation would happen with
| the smaller players (NBC, CBS) doing this with Netflix rather
| than Disney.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| It's also interesting to note that while Netflix may not yet
| have a white label arm, _others_ do. Vimeo pivoted from
| trying to compete with YouTube to being a white label
| streaming service and there are several "powered by Vimeo"
| if you look under the hood. YouTube themselves offers some
| "gray label" services (Google is too proud of the brand to
| entirely wash it from such services).
|
| Most interesting to this particular discussion is that Disney
| themselves have a white label platform at this point. Disney
| Streaming powers Disney+ and others at Disney, started as the
| pure white label platform from BAMTech (which Disney
| acquired), has merged in some of the platform used by Hulu as
| well (and Hulu had some white label deals beforehand, to my
| understanding) and is still the white label powering things
| like MLB and NHL streaming services (which both used to have
| small amounts of ownership in BAMTech, but now Disney is sole
| owner).
|
| _If_ Netflix were to build a white label platform today,
| they 'd already have Disney as competition.
| czx4f4bd wrote:
| I've wondered how it would work if Netflix implemented
| something like Amazon Prime Video Channels and let
| distributors offer content as additional/separate
| subscriptions in the Netflix UI.
|
| Like, Netflix's UI has some annoyances, but it would be so
| much better if I could access all my streaming content in one
| central place instead of having to manage a dozen different
| shitty services, all with their own separate accounts, apps,
| watch lists, etc. and their own idiosyncratic quirks and
| buggy (or outright missing) features.
| levi-turner wrote:
| Funnily enough, Disney+ is built by BAMTech who is a spin-off
| of MLB Advanced Media (ref
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Streaming ).
| [deleted]
| JakeTheAndroid wrote:
| Well this is already sort of the case. But instead of Netflix
| it's Hulu. Hulu was the sort of agnostic platform that included
| live TV and needed to be able to VOD all the shows available on
| live TV networks. Now, you bundle Hulu + ESPN + Disney. Until
| every company wanted their own streaming service, Hulu was
| where you could find broad network content. And they even have
| commercials, so it worked great by classical TV metrics.
|
| The issue is, Hulu created content is meh. Hulu's UI is meh.
| And Hulu doesn't aggregate ESPN+ and Disney+ in a single pane.
| And now everyone wants to own their own cut of the streaming
| service pie. So there was a push for this type of service that
| saw the incumbents rallying together against Netflix. For
| whatever reason that wasn't good enough for them, so the idea
| that now they will just partner with Netflix seems unlikely.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| > And Hulu doesn't aggregate ESPN+ and Disney+ in a single
| pane.
|
| My Hulu shows aggregated ESPN+ in the "Live TV" category
| (which does show up on the Home Hub as well). It's quite
| obvious to me because that and HBO (incidentally) are the
| only "Live TV" I pay for so all _I_ see in the Live TV
| section at all are ESPN+ and HBO.
|
| Disney+ aggregation isn't there in Hulu, but the opposite is
| definitely already happening: a bunch of Hulu shows are now
| aggregated in Disney+ for me. Though the border between
| "aggregated there" and "slowly moving there" is quite blurry
| as Disney does seem keen to move towards Disney+ as the final
| brand left standing and eventually killing the Hulu brand.
| This is already the case in most of the world (Star+ which
| was the Indian sub-continent Hulu equivalent that Disney also
| outright bought is a "hub" in Disney+ rather than the other
| way around, despite predating Disney+ by several years just
| like Hulu; incidentally Disney did integrate a Star+ hub into
| Hulu in the US if you were curious what some of that content
| looks like), so it does seem inevitable in the US eventually
| Hulu will be eaten by Disney+.
|
| (The one weird twist to that being how protective Disney as a
| brand has been of their family friendly part of their brand
| image in the US and in their merger of Fox and Hulu they
| found it useful to treat the Hulu brand as "Disney After
| Dark" and avoid some of the "family friendly" issues in the
| first few months of Disney+ while they added parental
| controls and other family focused tools after the US launch
| date. Disney will get to unwind the concept that they _need_
| a "Disney After Dark" that their own PR created in the first
| place in order to eventually merge Hulu into that plus in
| Disney+.)
| based_bobby wrote:
| [dead]
| gumby wrote:
| I had never heard this part about Blockbuster:
|
| > Blockbuster ... started with Blockbuster Online, an entity that
| was completely separate from Blockbuster's retail business for
| reasons of both technology and culture...a test version went live
| on July 15, 2004 -- the same day as Netflix's quarterly earnings
| call
|
| Blockbuster really snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. The
| corporate incentives had become completely backward. As we
| commonly see time and again in oldline companoes like GE, Sears,
| Google, Boeing...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The was a long series of articles posted on HN about a decade
| ago about how Blockbuster fell. TL;DR: Netflix didn't kill
| Blockbuster, Blockbuster killed itself with a revolving door of
| those in charge all trying the same simple, obvious and wrong
| solution to its problems.
| prewett wrote:
| I don't think Google belongs in that list of "oldline"
| companies... GE, Sears, and Boeing are all over 100 years old,
| and made/shipped actual physical products. Regardless of
| whether Google's internal incentives are backwards, they are
| certainly not a stalwart manufacturer. Google is in the
| business of selling ads, but they keep trying to branch out
| into selling products/services. Heh, I'd say the fact that they
| haven't really succeeded in that (aside from maybe Android) is
| empirical evidence that they are _not_ an oldline company!
| jonfw wrote:
| How much influence did franchisees have on the corporate
| decision making?
|
| I can definitely see how, as a franchisee, I would rather ride
| the brick and mortar video rental business into the ground
| rather than try and transition the business, given that a
| retail franchise is a dead end either way
| glenstein wrote:
| Right, it's a remarkable story. There's a wondery podcast
| series about it that was pretty interesting.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| One thing that wasn't mentioned was that Netflix has a
| monstrously large catalogue at the time, and the user ratings
| and content recommendations made their offering extremely
| sticky.
|
| Switching to Blockbuster's competing service was a bit painful
| because you'd lose all your movie ratings, often stretching
| back years to the DVD-by-mail era.
|
| While Blockbuster could acquire _brand new_ streaming
| subscribers by pricing their product similarly to Netflix, it
| was really tough for them to poach existing Netflix
| subscribers.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Most of us weren't Netflix customers yet at the time this was
| going on.
|
| Whatever the case I was an active in-store Blockbuster
| customer at the time their stuff started to launch and I
| never had an inkling they were doing anything online.
|
| It was only a couple years later I remember trying the
| Netflix DVDs in the mail service. I don't remember actually
| subscribing till I moved into my current house in 2010. When
| we moved in there was no video rental store in town.
|
| 2004 was a long time ago! I remember 100% I was still going
| to the neighborhood Blockbuster in 2004.
| gumby wrote:
| > I was an active in-store Blockbuster customer at the time
| their stuff started to launch and I never had an inkling
| they were doing anything online.
|
| In a comment in this thread, jonfw mentioned that
| Blockbuster was a franchise business, which I hadn't known.
| That would explain why the physical shops wouldn't
| advertise an online alternative -- it would have been a
| direct competitor.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| This is explained the first time Blockbuster's streaming
| service is mentioned in the article, in the third
| paragraph, but perhaps could've been more explicit:
|
| > Blockbuster Online, an entity that was completely
| separate from Blockbuster's retail business for reasons
| of both technology and culture: Blockbuster's stores were
| not even connected to the Internet, and store managers
| and franchisees hated having an online service
| cannibalize their sales.
| mhzsh wrote:
| And at the beginning, they tried to partner with Enron to do
| it. For some reason that part didn't pan out...
| hintymad wrote:
| Is it just me or Disney+ does not have as engaging and
| comprehensive content as Netflix? I feel it's so easy to run out
| of the existing catalog on Disney+, and boy the newly added are
| single-dimension: superhero this and Star Wars that, plus a few
| great animations. I understand that there are other content. It's
| just that they seemed so so that I don't even remember which ones
| I watched. On the other hand, on Netflix one can find shows of
| different genres, many of which are binge-worthy. One can also
| find rotating old catalogs, many of which are worth rewatching.
| fryz wrote:
| You might not be the right market (or at least, the marketplace
| might be different for your demographic).
|
| I'm a parent, and for me, and all my parent friends, Disney+ is
| the streaming service that generates the most value in our
| households. Along with all the old/nostalgic Disney animated
| films, they generate and acquire a lot of the "in" content for
| kids (Bluey, Mickey Mouse Kids House, etc.)
|
| Before my kids, Disney+ would have been the first streaming
| service to make the cut. But now, it'll be the last.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I wonder if the time isn't ripe for a kind of "meta" service.
|
| Essentially, one group provides the content, branding, some kind
| of licensing data structure describing date ranges and countries,
| and so on. An abstracted look and feel. Another service spits out
| the app and has the streaming infrastructure.
|
| The apps produced would have the benefit of reaching many, many
| platforms and so deduplicate a lot of the work getting something
| to work on a Roku, or a Firestick or a Chromecast. This could
| open up the door to a lot of smaller groups and allow them to
| focus on obtaining, curating, and producing content, their
| specialty.
|
| Netflix _could_ be that platform. Of course, they would have to
| be their own clients first, learning how to abstract the Netflix
| app, going over their databases and adding columns to various
| tables, marking all of their content as ContentID = 1 or
| something. Once they got through that exercise, they could reach
| out to the smaller providers who are struggling.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Isn't this exactly what YouTube tried?
| agentwiggles wrote:
| This is kinda like what Amazon does with their channels, which
| is a bit clunky in various ways, but on the whole I don't hate
| the model. (besides the fact that the increasing fragmentation
| of content means I have to have a dozen subscriptions).
|
| What I really want is some sort of meta "subscription manager"
| where I could mark what I'm currently watching and what I
| always want access to, and it could manage cancelling and
| uncancelling the various subscriptions that I have. Even better
| if it could just give me access to everything through a unified
| interface. I would pay for this - I think it could save a lot
| of money.
|
| What I've been doing recently is whenever I sign up for a new
| thing, I just immediately cancel. That way when I hit the end
| of the month and I'm not using Peacock or Shudder or whatever
| other bench team service, I just won't have it any more. If I
| need it again, rinse and repeat.
|
| Currently the only subscriptions I'm maintaining long-term are
| HBO and Disney. Disney will probably be a long-runner as long
| as my kids still want to use it for Bluey and the odd movie.
| HBO has their classic shows like The Sopranos and Deadwood,
| plus the Adult Swim catalogue, so they land in a good value
| spot for me too.
| svachalek wrote:
| Years ago we joked that someday there would be a service like
| that, and they would call it "cable".
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Now we call it cable cutting.
|
| There won't be a return to cable; probably a return to piracy
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Really good article.
|
| One extremely minor grammatical quibble-- the first "not" in this
| sentence in the final paragraph of the article, renders the
| sentence confusing. It should be removed.
|
| "It's impossible to not dive into the history of Netflix and not
| come away with a deep appreciation for everything Hastings
| accomplished."
| jdorfman wrote:
| > Three months later Netflix cut prices and referred to Amazon's
| assumed imminent entry to the space; Netflix's stock slid again.
|
| I never understood why Netflix would continue to become one of
| the largest AWS customers after Amazon entered the space. Will
| someone please enlighten me?
| paxys wrote:
| The same reason Apple buys iPhone displays from Samsung and has
| a search deal with Google. Companies can directly compete with
| each other while simultaneously having partnerships and signing
| win-win deals. Happens in business all the time.
| jdorfman wrote:
| Great point.
| xylophile wrote:
| Switching cloud providers at Netflix's scale is an enormous
| multi-year technical undertaking, plus they would be exposed to
| the risk of two cloud providers instead of one while in
| transition, plus there are a lot of unknowns in switching
| providers at that scale which have all been ironed out over the
| years at AWS, and which could negatively impact customer
| perception of their product. Plus, as one of the showcase
| examples of cloud computing success that AWS loves to refer to,
| I'm sure that Netflix has some sweetheart deals that are
| difficult to compete with. It would take many many years for
| "dollars diverted from our competitor" to come close to
| "dollars spent executing the transition", even with the
| assumption that a successful transition is possible.
| coredog64 wrote:
| Amazon doesn't really compete with Netflix. Prime Video is
| there as a marginal benefit to keep customers paying for Prime,
| which in turn keeps them shopping at Amazon. The Prime catalog
| frequently changes to the point that a third or even half of my
| bookmarks are either pay-to-rent or just not available at all.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| To be fair, by now Netflix is rotating a lot, too. By now I'm
| surprised if a movie or series I'm recommended actually is on
| Netflix. It's not on Amazon Prime level yet, but it's not
| that far off, at least in my experience.
| layer8 wrote:
| I wouldn't dismiss pay-to-rent and the additional
| subscription channels. If you're not averse to those, Prime
| is still the best one-stop besides Netflix.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > Antioco's replacement took money away from Total Access and
| funneled it back to the stores, and Netflix escaped (Hastings
| would later tell Shane Evangelist, the head of Blockbuster
| Online, that Blockbuster had Netflix in checkmate). Blockbuster
| went bankrupt two years later.
|
| That's fascinating because I always wondered why Blockbuster got
| rid of Total Access. It was so much better than Netflix at the
| time because you could also rent games and not have to wait for
| anything. It wouldn't have mattered long term obviously but for
| about 8 more years or so they could have driven Netflix out of
| business using the capital investment in brick and mortar stores
| they made over the previous 30+ years. But they totally blew it -
| wow!
| rvz wrote:
| I can only see Microsoft acquiring Netflix on the horizon at this
| point.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _can only see Microsoft acquiring Netflix_
|
| This makes no sense. Microsoft licensing _e.g._ the Halo
| franchise to Netflix for serialization is a solid pitch.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| they already did that with paramount+
| no_wizard wrote:
| I'm gonna attempt to break this down:
|
| - Netflix has 5-6 Billion USD free cash flow, and because they
| got what debt they do have under favorable terms, they are
| positioned to retain most of that free cash flow
|
| - Disney, Comcast (Peacock), CBS/Viacom and other media
| corporations are saddled with debt, and are all losing money on
| their own independent streaming businesses. Likely untenable in
| their shareholder model
|
| - Therefore, Netflix needs to do what it can to retain / attract
| subscribers, but essentially can wait until the other services
| have to give up due to cost
|
| In a nutshell, Netflix is poised to play more long game, due to
| cost structures of their competitors.
|
| so fair, sounds good, but it assumes the boards / leadership of
| these companies won't also play a long game, seeing some sort of
| profitability horizon is they cannibalize their existing
| businesses for sticky services (like streaming). I could see
| Disney doing this, to some extent, with their cable TV channels
| and movies. I'm less bullish on Comcast/NBC, CBS/Viacom or really
| any other media company being able to do this, simply because
| they don't have the "staying power" Disney does.
|
| This also fails to account for the strength of HBO Max (very
| strong sub numbers)
| bbarnett wrote:
| HBO / Netflix merger FTW?
| devmunchies wrote:
| I think Netflix is better served getting exclusive rights to
| top IP that differentiates them from others. They don't have
| many memorable brands that people would buy a T-Shirt for.
| Like a $5B deal for exclusive streaming rights to all
| Nintendo IP (think live action Zelda, animated Mario Kart
| series for kids, Metroid series for adults, etc).
| CSMastermind wrote:
| > think live action Zelda
|
| Honestly an animated Zelda would be better. You could even
| do each season in a different art style as a callback to
| the games.
| exhilaration wrote:
| HBO is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, likely one of their
| most valuable assets. I can't see them giving it up.
| de_keyboard wrote:
| Indeed. Feels like vast majority of the TV worth watching
| is HBO. I value my time so I'd rather have access to a few
| HBO series / year than an endless sea of A/B dross.
| no_wizard wrote:
| That would now mean buying out WarnerMedia Discovery Group
| which just merged, and WarnerMedia was the owner of HBO
| before that. AT&T was forced to divest at least.
|
| Never the less, that would be a massive acquisition, they
| carry alot of debt.
| e40 wrote:
| $53B in debt at HBO. Crazy.
| publicola1990 wrote:
| What about the state of affairs in emerging markets, which are
| likely going to be bigger revenue source than US/Europe in the
| not too distant future?
|
| Also what about (live) sports coverage? Does Netflix have a
| strategy there? For many subscribers it is appealing if their
| streaming service carries sports coverage.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The ARPU is a lot smaller and the article even calls out that
| different markers want local content meaning that content
| costs will also grow.
| publicola1990 wrote:
| ARPU could be smaller but the user volumes would be much
| higher. In absolute terms it could be a significant portion
| of revenue. Netflix perhaps is not doing as well in these
| markets, presently.
|
| There are reports that Netflix is doing badly in India, for
| example, which is a massive potential market.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Revenue - yes
|
| Profit - no
| zamadatix wrote:
| What I don't understand is how e.g. Disney+ is losing so much
| money. It's Disney's content, has an enormous userbase, and
| somehow is bleeding billions?
| cjrp wrote:
| Is it possible that Disney (Walt Disney Co) makes more money
| by providing its content via Disney+ rather than in
| theatres/via other streaming platforms? So while Disney+
| itself might be losing money, Disney as a whole is
| benefiting.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| Disney+ doesn't just get all its content "for free" even
| though Disney owns it all.
|
| A company as big as Disney has to be able to look at its
| different subsidiaries and analyse how they're performing
| individually. So maybe Walt Disney Animation Studio spends
| money making movies and earns money selling the rights to
| those movies, and so Disney+ gets exclusive access to
| streaming rights, but it still has to pay for them.
| paxys wrote:
| Disney's content library only appeals to very specific
| demographics. Mostly just kids and the Avengers/Star Wars
| crowd. Netflix has something for literally everyone.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I don't know if it's the same in the states, but here in
| Canada we get Stars with it as well, which is a huge bunch
| of Fox stuff, including It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
| and American Horror Story, so it's a little more varied
| than you're making it out to be.
| voisin wrote:
| > Netflix has something _[mediocre, that will be cancelled
| after the first season]_ for literally everyone.
|
| FTFY.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Disney has a lot of adult content as well (via
| subsidiaries), but as far as I know they have pushed most
| of this to Hulu.
|
| But yes, as a guy in his 30s, Disney+ provides nothing
| compelling to me. I do pay for Hulu though
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I think you underestimate how much they hand out Disney+. For
| example, Verizon has a deal with Disney to give out free
| Disney+ with many plans. Comcast, I think, was also offering
| me free Disney+ access. This _must_ eat into margins on some
| level while keeping the subscriber number up - there 's no
| way that Verizon/Comcast are paying full price for that free
| subscription (in most cases, it's only a year free).
|
| Contrast that with HBO Max that has never had a sale of any
| kind except for a single free trial week.
|
| I also think that people underestimate the cost of serving
| streaming entertainment. It's very compute- and data-
| intensive. If you architect your systems badly, which I
| assume Disney did, you will be paying a LOT of money for this
| service.
| gratitoad wrote:
| FWIW I used to get HBO Max free with my AT&T phone plan, so
| they have at one point given it "for free."
|
| And I think you could be right about D+ architecture, they
| went from zero to a streaming service very quickly.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I can watch Disney shows for a month, cancel for 4 months,
| and then come back and maybe have enough content for another
| month. We're talking one or two movies and a TV show. It's
| simply not enough.
|
| Disney+ is also a very specific fan-oriented service. Don't
| like Star Wars or comic books? Not a child? Good luck finding
| something worth watching that isn't a documentary.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| It's extremely cheap.
| baby wrote:
| > It's Disney's content
|
| I have a feeling it might be that they don't have enough
| established TV shows. But this is the problem of pretty much
| everyone but Netflix, and this will most likely change in the
| next 2-3 years.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Marketing. I also suspect that alot of Disney's most core
| userbase don't make up enough volume to make this profitable.
|
| I consider myself an ardent Star Wars & Marvel fan and I just
| couldn't keep up anymore, so I axed Disney+.
|
| Netflix still drops enough documentaries that I keep it
| around.
| chongli wrote:
| Yeah I think there's a big Marvel and Star Wars fatigue
| factor that isn't talked about enough. Only the hardest of
| the hardcore fans can keep up with all that stuff. Regular
| people and casual fans pretty much only see the big
| blockbuster movies and maybe watch the Mandalorian to see
| what all the baby Yoda memes are all about.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > It's Disney's content
|
| That is partly the problem. You spend hundreds of millions to
| make blockbuster movies and then release it on Disney+ in a
| few months for free (or sometimes directly). That costs
| money. Add to that over reliance on only Disney content
| creates two problems:
|
| 1. You can't have enough new content every month, subscribers
| therefore don't keep the subscription year round.
|
| 2. You have to pay money to create content. Vs the ability to
| buy content for cheap or add it for a few months.
|
| On top of that, Disney overseas also includes live sports in
| their packages which can get expensive.
| surge wrote:
| A lot of it also, is just not that good.
|
| And they keep pulling stuff down or putting stuff up. I
| don't need artificial scarcity, I want access, just as I
| want to listen to a song on Spotify when I really want to
| hear it without being told its no longer available with my
| subscription. I'm subscribing to the Disney library and
| most of the time half of it is unavailable.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Disney+ isn't free though...
| warent wrote:
| I think the economics of it is basically like, Disney
| spends so much on creating content that Disney+ just
| doesn't bring in enough money to cover cost, because
| users get a subscription to binge / burn thru several
| things in a single month and then cancel their
| subscription.
| dls2016 wrote:
| > users get a subscription to binge / burn thru several
| things in a single month and then cancel their
| subscription
|
| Surprisingly similar to the old days of bugging my
| parents for the Disney channel (of course, didn't have
| on-demand selection back then).
| msluyter wrote:
| "1. You can't have enough new content every month,
| subscribers therefore don't keep the subscription year
| round."
|
| For our household, this is true of all streaming services.
| We rotate them, or subscribe for short stretches. For
| example, I got Paramount+ for a couple of months, watched
| all of the Star Trek content, and then cancelled. Amazon
| Prime is the exception (because free(-ish) shipping.)
|
| I wonder to what extent the big streaming services are
| aware of this phenomenon and how they hope to mitigate it.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I wonder to what extent the big streaming services are
| aware of this phenomenon and how they hope to mitigate
| it.
|
| I suspect that not many people do this.
|
| It it becomes a problem, they can always bring back the
| old weekly episode model.
| XorNot wrote:
| Since I became a parent, waiting for weekly episodes to
| completely release and then subscribing has become
| immensely favorable since it turns out I can easily live
| without being a part of the internet discussion of
| whatever.
| twblalock wrote:
| The services definitely know about this and to a large
| extent they build it into their model. Every subscription
| service has a churn model being accounted for.
|
| The services also know that the only thing they can do
| about this is release enough new content to keep users
| engaged, or bundle the subscription with other ones.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Or rotate what parts of the library are available each
| month.
| auggierose wrote:
| Or each day! And we are back to where we started.
| mattkrause wrote:
| Hear me out: what if we had like...an hour block where
| EVERYONE streamed one of the same 15-20 shows at the same
| time?
|
| Obviously, we'd also need to have a few random catch-up
| blocks for older shows, maybe in the mid-afternoon.
| Perhaps we could even do it over the air wirelessly, with
| no ISPs involved.
| TrueSlacker0 wrote:
| They don't even list all their old content. For example the
| old Donald duck cartoons, there seem to only be about 15 or
| so streaming. The rest are not available. Why?
| LarryMullins wrote:
| I don't know about Donald Duck cartoons in particular,
| but I think a lot of those old cartoons are difficult to
| find because they contain content that the corporation
| fears might offend somebody. Racist (or arguably so)
| ethnic caricatures, extreme cartoon violence, that sort
| of thing.
|
| For instance, the original version of Disney's _The Three
| Little Pigs_ has the wolf disguising himself as a
| stereotypical Jewish merchant.
| golem14 wrote:
| So, pay someone with good sensitivities to watch the
| cartoons and decide based on notes. How expensive can
| that be ?
|
| Or, integrate a feedback system and take down complained-
| about cartoons quickly. That's probably better since
| sensitivities change and some perfectly fine items today
| might be off-limits tomorrow.
|
| Doing nothing is not a great option, even if it's the
| easiest to implement.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| > _So, pay someone with good sensitivities to watch the
| cartoons and decide based on notes._
|
| Maybe they did, and that's why the cartoons aren't
| available? If you have to cut X% of a show for content,
| maybe they make the call to cut the show entirely and
| pretend it doesn't exist, just so they don't have to
| answer awkward questions about why so much of the show is
| missing.
| ghaff wrote:
| >You can't have enough new content every month, subscribers
| therefore don't keep the subscription year round.
|
| I suspect that, in addition to ad-supported tiers, we'll
| see more annual subscriptions or at least subscriptions
| where annual is sufficiently cheaper on a monthly basis
| that it's essentially an offer a lot of people can't
| refuse.
| ska wrote:
| Isn't this basically what amazon does via prime
| membership? Apples and oranges I guess because it isn't
| "just" streaming, but does anyone pay this monthly?
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| > I suspect that, in addition to ad-supported tiers,
| we'll see more annual subscriptions or at least
| subscriptions where annual is sufficiently cheaper on a
| monthly basis that it's essentially an offer a lot of
| people can't refuse.
|
| I think they're already experimenting with things like
| that. I signed up for an annual subscription when Disney+
| launched (I knew my wife and kid would love it) and when
| it came time to renew they offered a "Disney Drop Box" as
| a reward for signing up for another year. The box was a
| themed selection of Disney merchandise that they claimed
| was valued at ~$150, which is probably a stretch, but my
| kid loved it.
| smachiz wrote:
| along with maybe a broader return to serialization and
| longer seasons again - but this only really is valuable
| for shows that capture the zeitgeist, otherwise most
| people will just wait until the season ends and subscribe
| for a month to binge and move on.
| baxtr wrote:
| Actually I'm personally ok with 1-2 really good series
| (e.g. Andor) a year. I think the yearly price tag is
| reasonable for that.
|
| I have to admit though that the rest of the year is used up
| by the kids watching cartoons on D+
| madeofpalk wrote:
| On top of the... 'opportunity cost' of not licensing out
| content that otherwise would have went to Netflix, ABC,
| whoever.
|
| If previously Disney made Daredevil and 'sold' it to
| Netflix for $1m (hypothetically), but now you're holding
| that back to stream yourself, you've got to account for
| that missing $1m somehow.
| rcme wrote:
| No you don't. You don't normally include opportunity cost
| on your balance sheet.
| itake wrote:
| yes and no. The problem is if last year they earned $1m
| from it by it being on Netflix. Moving it to their own
| streaming platform will look like a $1m less revenue.
| nebolo wrote:
| Not to be pedantic (ok a little bit), but you don't
| normally include any costs on your balance sheet, but you
| might want to include them on your income statement.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| You don't, however Disney was making this money before as
| they were directly licensing it to these services, so
| it's not just opportunity cost, but actual lost revenue
| when compared to previous years.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Depending on how org and financials are structured
| Disney+ may need to purchase Daredevil from the other
| part of Disney for $1m, which is recognising that
| opportunity cost.
| WalterBright wrote:
| What I don't understand about the movie business is the
| cost of making them. The most important ingredient to the
| success of a movie is the plot. We've all seen low budget
| movies that made lots of money - because of the plot.
| Casablanca, Psycho, Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield,
| Primer, ...
|
| Star Trek TOS was a very low budget affair, and produced
| excellent results, because they hired the best scifi
| writers. When they threw money at the Star Trek movies,
| they were all terrible.
|
| It's the plot that matters. Nothing else.
| jimjimjim wrote:
| nah, you can't tell me that the transformers movies have
| plot and they raked in the money!
| LarryMullins wrote:
| All substance and no style can work, as your examples
| prove. But it's also possible to find examples of
| successful movies which were all style, no substance. For
| instance the first Avatar (I haven't seen the recent
| sequel.)
| WalterBright wrote:
| Yeah, well, I saw the first Avatar, too. It was
| completely boring. Didn't bother with the sequel.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Tbh I agree, but it was certainly a commercial success.
| gorbypark wrote:
| The issue is making money. There are lots of low budget
| movies with good plots that don't make money (or not a
| lot of it). While at the same time, they can make the 5th
| sequel to some shitty comic book video and almost
| guarantee a few hundred million in profits. Of course
| movies can tank, but generally they are not stupid and
| the accounts have it figured out.
| WalterBright wrote:
| If you're going to spent $100 million on a movie, why
| settle for a boring plot and pedestrian dialog?
|
| I watched the La Brea show for a while. Lots of expensive
| special effects. But the dialog was just pablum. The
| characters each talked like they were the same person -
| using the same words and phrases. They behaved the same,
| too.
| dbfx wrote:
| Because it makes money anyway and getting actually good
| people would cost more nd take longer.
| latexr wrote:
| > The most important ingredient to the success of a movie
| is the plot.
|
| Provably false by all the bad sequels which nonetheless
| made more money than the original1. If plot were that
| crucial, movies would consist of a person sitting down
| reading a book, a la The Invention of Lying2. _Money_
| matters to commercial success of a film above anything
| else.
|
| 1 https://www.vox.com/2016/7/1/12070048/resurgence-
| independenc...
|
| 2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invention_of_Lying
| scarface74 wrote:
| That's not entirely true. Disney+ is partially losing money
| because of "transfer payments". Disney+ has to "pay" Disney
| studios the market rate for the right to stream a movie. Of
| course the money mostly flows up to Disney. But from an
| accounting standpoint, Disney+ can't say it's profitable by
| getting movies for free from Disney studios and cause
| Disney studios to lose potential profits they could have
| made elsewhere.
|
| There are also revenue share agreements that are involved
| with actors. That are still taken into accounts
|
| > You can't have enough new content every month,
| subscribers therefore don't keep the subscription year
| round
|
| That's not strictly true either for kids content. You can
| keep recycling content to kids for years and kids will
| rewatch the same thing.
|
| Disney has been making money off the same animated content
| for over half a century. To a first approximation, no one
| cares about Netflix's back catalog.
| subsaharancoder wrote:
| > That's not strictly true either for kids content. You
| can keep recycling content to kids for years and kids
| will rewatch the same thing.
|
| I'm looking at you Netflix and your lack of new seasons
| of Octonauts and Cat in the Hat :-)
| nkingsy wrote:
| Octonauts would like to have a word
| golem14 wrote:
| Wonderpets maybe also (not on Netflix right now, but it
| used to be). And TimmyTime. And Adventure Time.
| pbronez wrote:
| Creature Report, Creature Report. Creature Report!
| 867-5309 wrote:
| sound the Octo-Alert!
| voisin wrote:
| Ok, totally off topic, but am I the only one that hears
| "Explore, Rescue, Rrotect" rather than "Protect" in the
| intro?
|
| See here at 0:40ish: https://youtu.be/mR_Ui_3Iz2o
| sogen wrote:
| I also hear this, sounds very faint, a little bit clearer
| with headphones.
| hawski wrote:
| If I can go on another tangent I would just like to
| recommend Octonauts. It is charming, funny and clever
| show. My 5 year old daughter loves it and she would like
| to have a Tweak costume.
|
| I can't stand many kid shows, but this one even I can
| love. It is incredible for me how Octonauts are not
| pretentious, like so many "science!" shows for kids are.
| prawn wrote:
| I would recommend it for children also. My kids have
| learned a decent amount from having watched it, unlike
| many other shows without any real educational content.
| semireg wrote:
| There's no where else to say this, but for wholesome kids
| entertainment, Bluey is hard to beat. Every 10 minute
| episode is basically a guide on how to play. Kids love
| it. Parents relearn how to play. It's so charming and
| ridiculous. Totally worth the money.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Fair warning there is a Bluey episode where the kids push
| their father down steps. A day after watching one of my
| wards pushed someone down the steps :/
| duderific wrote:
| I have some beef with how Bluey depicts the parents as
| stooges to be toyed with and manipulated as the kids see
| fit, with little pushback from the parents. In the end
| there's generally some kind of lesson to be learned, but
| the parents go along with pretty much anything the kids
| propose.
| sideshowb wrote:
| > You can keep recycling content to kids for years and
| kids will rewatch the same thing.
|
| Furthermore, kids will complain if they lose access to
| frozen etc so disney+ has an exit cost. Like the admiral
| said, it's a trap!
| panick21_ wrote:
| In theories those movies should make most of their money
| back in the movies. Otherwise the finances don't work out.
| phphphphp wrote:
| Content is expensive to produce. Disney+ is not just a
| streaming platform for existing Disney content, rather,
| Disney produce content for it. Likewise, Netflix spends most
| of its money on content, operating the actual platform is
| comparatively cheap.
| tootie wrote:
| Yeah, D+ is churning out an enormous volume of what would
| be considered prestige content at other services. All the
| Star Wars and Marvel shows are star-studded and larded with
| top-tier visual effects. And some of them aren't really
| getting a lot of viewers from what the rumors say.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| That's why it's so surprising imo. Disney+ has a very
| wide and deep catalog of pre-existing IP, and I would
| have imagined that most subscribers care more about that
| than any future original production. So it's weird to see
| them invest so much in new content, more so than
| competitors that have a much weaker, smaller catalog.
| Especially when the content is made exclusively for
| Disney+.
|
| But I'm almost certainly completely wrong, and I'm sure
| they have tons of data justifying their investment in new
| content. I guess I'm biaised since I pay for Disney+ so
| that my little sister can use it, and original shows
| weren't important to my decision to subscribe at all.
| treis wrote:
| Think it's a bit of a double edge sword. Disney+ is all
| Disney IP which is great for those that like it. But if
| you're not into Marvel or Star Wars or the kids catalogue
| there's not a lot there.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Yeah, this is my family. We don't have kids, but we
| probably wouldn't have D+ if it didn't come bundled with
| our Verizon bill. I don't know how everyone else is
| managing, but I'm suuuuuuuper burned out on superhero and
| star wars movies. It really feels like Disney in
| particular but Hollywood more generally need to branch
| out more and not rely so much on stamping out franchise
| films--they're good for an occasional flick, but there
| needs to be more substance on offer (if the market
| doesn't already agree with me on this, I suspect they
| will in time).
| jessaustin wrote:
| _...we probably wouldn 't have D+ if it didn't come
| bundled with our Verizon bill._
|
| This feels like it should be illegal. You're certainly
| paying for D+, and it's not as though Verizon competes in
| a free market.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Eh, I don't really have a problem with it. I'd pay
| Verizon's rate even if they didn't offer D+ because the
| network is just so much better than the competition (I
| have no loyalty to Verizon; I've used AT&T, T-mobile, and
| US Cellular and they're worse by a considerable margin in
| my experience traveling around the country).
| mrpippy wrote:
| At least by US standards, cellular service is about as
| free a market for a utility as we have.
|
| If you need to be on Verizon's network, you could go to
| Visible or another MVNO. If not, there's ATT and T-Mo and
| all of their MVNOs as well.
| JackFr wrote:
| I could watch The Godfather, Goodfellas, Patton, The
| Shining, Barton Fink and Millers Crossing a million times
| without getting tired of them and if I'm just flipping
| channels will always stop to watch if one of them is on.
|
| But I don't think I've ever streamed any of them other
| than maybe to show a friend who hadn't seen them.
|
| Don't know why that is, but it's weirdly true.
| TylerE wrote:
| Theory: When you come across a movie you love on TV, it's
| already in the "good bits".
|
| Where as on streaming you have find it, sit through 2 or
| 3 studio logos, and then 5-15 minutes of exposition that
| even in most good movies isn't _that_ good.
| lrem wrote:
| Disney+ is also very disappointing on that back catalog.
| There are Disney cartoons that I watched as a kid and
| would love to show to my kids. I can find them on
| YouTube, apparently badly copied from VHS tapes. I can't
| find them on Disney+, or only find a "modern" remake
| that's outright cringy :/
| thedrbrian wrote:
| >All the Star Wars and Marvel shows are star-studded and
| larded with top-tier visual effects.
|
| I'm just going to throw this out there. What if these
| shows just aren't that good?
| vnchr wrote:
| I'd say it's a mixed track record, and that risk of
| disappointment is enough to deter customets from content
| they might actually like.
| ska wrote:
| > What if these shows just aren't that good?
|
| What if they aren't that good in a very calculated,
| lowest-common-denominator way?
|
| Any really big $$ production has to have really broad
| appeal to succeed. Maybe the _safest_ way to do that is
| just to target some minimum threshold for ticket buying
| on a rainy thursday.
| layer8 wrote:
| You don't need a "what if" for that. ;)
| JackFr wrote:
| Also if you're not into superheroes and Star Wars,
| despite it being _Disney_ there's not a ton there.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Marvel released 4 movies and 3 series in 2022. Plus a
| second season of an existing one and a holiday special.
|
| There were four Star Wars series.
|
| That's _too much_ content.
|
| Two movies a year that Marvel started with was perfect.
| It gave you tome to unwind, and get hungry for more.
| saghm wrote:
| Even if you are, there's the chance that the glut of the
| content coming out causes fatigue. I used to really look
| forward to new Star Wars things because it didn't come
| out super frequently (a new trilogy of movies every few
| decades, a TV show here and there), but it was enjoyable.
| Then they started coming out with a new movie and
| multiple TV shows year after year, and it just wasn't
| good enough to justify going out of my way to consume all
| of it. Marvel stuff seems the same way; I'd generally go
| to the movies maybe once or twice a year, so when there
| are half a dozen of them coming out for a single
| franchise within a year or two, it feels more like work
| than entertainment to keep up with it all. At this point,
| I'm not sure I'll _ever_ go to see a Star Wars movie in a
| theater again, which is extraordinary since even 5 or 6
| years ago that would have seemed ludicrous to me.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I knew I was done with Star Wars movies when I caught
| myself looking at my watch about a half hour in.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Totally.. Disney has completely missed the fact that a
| big part of the pent up love of some of these franchises
| had to do with people having to wait their entire
| childhood for a new release. I went to ROTJ for my 7th
| birthday party. There was no more new Star Wars content
| till I was 22!
|
| Now there is so much you need to pay attention or you'll
| miss it. People get sick of drinking out of a firehose.
| Volundr wrote:
| TBH this more or less describes the problem at least for
| me. I'm like 3 Star Wars series behind. Catching up at
| this point feels more like a chore than entertainment.
| Forget Marvel.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| That's always been an issue with shared universes. I
| remember trying to follow X-Men in the 90s. You couldn't
| just read X-men, you had to read Gambit, Wolverine, &c.
| ghaff wrote:
| Or even just a TV series you didn't watch at the time.
| For a traditional 1 hour drama on TV, that could be 7
| seasons times 20 hours per year even absent any spinoffs.
| I'm unlikely to catch up on 140 hours of past content.
| wnevets wrote:
| > I'm like 3 Star Wars series behind. Catching up at this
| point feels more like a chore than entertainment.
|
| Here let me get you caught up. Blue laser sword is good,
| red laser sword is bad.
| akiselev wrote:
| Is green laser sword ecofriendly and organic?
| wnevets wrote:
| They are marketed as an ecofriendly alternative but that
| is just greenwashing by the kyber crystal mining
| industry.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Add to that the fact that Disney productions feel very
| formulaic and redundant, and you know you're not really
| missing anything. Just same ingredients stirred in a
| different bowl each time.
| taco_emoji wrote:
| Marvel seems like it'd be even worse since A) the
| storylines all intertwine, so you feel like you have
| "homework" to watch before seeing the latest one, and B)
| they're all pretty much superhero movies.
|
| With Star Wars, creators can ignore the tired Skywalker
| storyline, plus there's no genre expectations tying
| creators down (IMO sci-fi is not a genre so much as a
| meta-genre or motif). At least in theory--they've been
| pretty reluctant to spread their wings until recently.
| [deleted]
| cwmma wrote:
| here's some advice, skip everything else, just watch
| Andor, it's fantastic, best Star Wars since Empire. Other
| stuff has been hit or miss.
| duderific wrote:
| My gosh, I thought Andor was just a horrific bore. I
| literally couldn't stay awake for it. It felt like about
| four episodes worth of story stretched out to 12
| episodes. I feel like with all the glowing reviews,
| people are watching it through the lens of being Star
| Wars universe fans, and not judging it objectively
| against other content.
|
| I did enjoy the Mandalorian series because at least it
| had the comic relief of Grogu, if the rest was a bit of a
| slog.
| tootie wrote:
| That's a surprising take considering how little it
| intersects with the rest of the SW universe. There's no
| Jedis, no lightsabers maybe one brief space battle and
| barely any direct overlap with the films. You could come
| in cold without having seen anything else and still enjoy
| it. I thought it was outstanding, especially the pacing
| and suspense of the early episodes. The second half is a
| lot more action-packed and squeezes in both an epic heist
| and an emotional jailbreak sequence.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Half the season is an amazing heist story, the other half
| an amazing prison break story.
|
| It was truly excellent. For a complete surprise, do not
| watch _Rogue One_ first.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Andor reinvented the spy thriller in the Star Wars
| universe.
|
| Mandalorian reinvented the Western in the Star Wars
| universe.
|
| Both are superb. The other Star Wars series are not.
| ghaff wrote:
| In general, over the last decade+ the more peripheral
| Star Wars content is to the central storyline, the better
| it is.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| We got both a heist, and a prison break from _Andor_.
|
| _The Mandalorian_ is Western + Ronin / Samurai.
|
| And yes, they're both great.
| the_doctah wrote:
| Star Wars: Visions is good if you like anime.
| warent wrote:
| I agree with this and would add (perhaps partially and
| naively in the hopes of some Disney executive seeing
| this) that I feel very little excitement at the idea of
| watching any more super hero / jedi movies anymore.
|
| Somehow the branding has become severely distorted, so
| now these movies make me feel like the studio sees me as
| a barrier between them and my money.
|
| If Disney can once again make me feel like they're
| producing content because it's what they love to do, and
| because they love how we enjoy it, then I'll go back to
| giving them my money.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| The "Mickey Mouse shit machine" (to quote Rick and Morty)
| never loved to produce content. They love to make money
| with endless sequels.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| I mean their best bet seems to be to license it out to
| other companies but that would defeat the purpose of
| having D+ in the first place.
|
| Seems they've backed themselves into a corner
| theptip wrote:
| I don't know any detail on Disney's debt, but worth noting
| that a lot of "Disney's content" is stuff they just bought.
| E.g. they bought ESPN, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, etc.
| These are massive multi-billion purchases. Breaking even on
| the content purchases is hard work.
| Fuzzwah wrote:
| I have a pet theory, many families use D+ as a second
| streaming service mostly for the family content. Because of
| this there's no real concern about "profile contamination".
| So multiple profiles aren't needed for individuals who live
| in the same household. The profiles end up being used to
| share the account with other households.
|
| A grandparents single account is used in the households of
| all their grandchildren.
| [deleted]
| skrowl wrote:
| I've talked with several of my friends about this. EVERYONE was
| universally willing to pay Netflix their monthly sub when all
| the studios just sold their content to Netflix.
|
| NO ONE has subscribed to all of Disney+, Apple+, Paramount+,
| Peacock, etc. in the new everyone-built-their-own-netflix era.
|
| They're all either making do with less content or sailing the
| high seas mateys yo ho. In many cases they've even DROPPED
| Netflix.
|
| I don't see how the current over a dozen streaming media
| provider status quo stands for much longer. Some (many?) are
| going to have to fail before everyone gets pissed off and goes
| elsewhere for their entertainment.
| tzs wrote:
| I don't know how big a factor this is, but note that some of
| those have bundling deals with other services. For people
| that happen to use those other services this can as a side
| effect greatly reduce the annoyance of the things one wants
| to watch being spread over different non-free services.
|
| I have Hulu as part of my Spotify subscription.
|
| I have Peacock Premium as part of Xfinity internet.
|
| I have Paramount+ as part of Walmart+.
|
| I have Amazon Prime Video as part of Amazon Prime.
|
| Some T-Mobile plans include Netflix and Apple TV+.
| asdff wrote:
| For a lot of people I know their bundling deal is just
| sharing passwords with friends and family.
| jedberg wrote:
| > This also fails to account for the strength of HBO Max (very
| strong sub numbers)
|
| It's important to note that those numbers are very juiced. For
| example, my HBOMax comes for free with my AT&T internet
| (still). I've never paid them a dime directly. When they first
| started they were basically giving away accounts like crazy to
| get growth. I think they also gave free accounts to their cable
| subscribers.
|
| So while their numbers look really big on paper they aren't
| getting a lot of income from those subscribers.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| ATT's grandfathered mobile plans including HBO Max are a
| ripoff ever since they sold it to Discovery. You effectively
| are paying ~$15+$5 per line per month for 1 account of HBO
| Max compared to the current ATT plans offered to customer.
|
| I have 6 lines on my ATT Unlimited Premium Plan (the most
| expensive retail plan), and the monthly cost dropped by $60
| by removing HBO max and switching to the new plans.
|
| It is probably cheaper just to buy directly at HBOMax.com
|
| See the "new" ATT prices, all without HBO Max (couple years
| old now maybe?)
|
| https://www.att.com/plans/unlimited-data-plans/
| zippergz wrote:
| This may be the case with the mobile plans, but I get HBO
| Max with my AT&T fiber service, and short of going to a
| lower speed tier, I do not see any cheaper plan I can
| switch to without HBO Max.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Netflix comes free with T-Mobile Magenta plans, I think
| Comcast includes some sort of premium Peacock subscription. I
| don't know that AT&T bundling it would be much different than
| the other services bundling, would it?
| [deleted]
| cptskippy wrote:
| I think the difference might be that to leverage the
| Netflix through T-Mobile you have to actively sign up for
| Netflix or switch to T-Mobile being the payment processor.
| Where as with the AT&T/HBOMax deal, you just login to
| HBOMax with your AT&T credential.
|
| Interestingly, we're not on Magenta but one of the earlier
| plans so the OnUs benefit is for the HD teir of Netflix. As
| I said above, T-Mobile becomes the payment processor on the
| account so when I upgraded to 4K my T-Mobile bill went up a
| couple bucks to account for the difference.
| lubujackson wrote:
| Seems like the logical endgame is Netflix buying up and
| aggregating these legacy content producer/channels, possibly
| piecemeal. There are too many walled gardens right now and they
| will likely into 3 or 4 key players (say Netflix, HBO and
| Disney) with everyone else getting gobbled up.
|
| Then everyone has 3 channels on their TVs and we start the
| explode/aggregate cycle again, just like what happens to banks
| and telcos.
| nostromo wrote:
| The tech part of streaming no longer matters and Netflix is in
| serious trouble due to their lack of quality content.
|
| I'm no fan of Disney, but you have to give it to Bob Iger. He
| just paid out the nose to buy every piece of valuable IP:
| Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel, Fox, even Jim Henson.
|
| The amount of content they now own is insane. Everything from
| Sunny in Philadelphia to the Muppet show to Alien to Avatar to
| The Simpsons to Starwars. It's nuts... you can't throw a dead
| cat in Hollywood without hitting Disney IP.
|
| Meanwhile Netflix makes something worth streaming every year or
| two, if that.
| runako wrote:
| > Netflix is in serious trouble due to their lack of quality
| content.
|
| People say this often, but I have never seen it manifested in
| a viewership chart. Just using Nielsen data as an example,
| Netflix absolutely dominates the Top 10 chart, with 7/10 of
| the programs:
|
| https://www.nielsen.com/top-ten/
|
| Anecdotally, when traveling outside the US, Netflix & Disney
| are really the only providers I have seen have any kind of
| footprint.
|
| Is there any data to back up the "content quality" complaint,
| or is it just a personal preference?
| vlunkr wrote:
| The subscriber count continues to grow, so it seems like
| the content is fine. Or at least not so bad that people are
| unsubscribing.
|
| It seems to me that Netflix still has the most generally
| appealing content. Yeah Disney has some of the biggest
| names, but unless you 1. have young kids or 2. are a huge,
| not burnt-out Star Wars or Marvel fan, Disney+ is a pretty
| poor service. Most of the other services fall somewhere
| else in the middle of that spectrum.
| chadlavi wrote:
| I agree with you, but don't underestimate how many people
| just want to leave The Office or something similar running in
| the background for hours and are willing to pay Netflix for
| that.
| hintymad wrote:
| > Netflix is in serious trouble due to their lack of quality
| content.
|
| I feel the opposite. Marvel's content are getting really
| tiring now. Superheroes with superior technologies choosing
| primitive societal and political structures really turned me
| off. Not enough great action flicks, or binge-worthy dramas
| like Oz and Strange Things. Not enough international hit
| shows. Not enough old catalogs.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Unlike netflix, Disney+ has a good incentive to never become
| profitable. It pays enormous licensing fees to its parent
| company. This means the profits flows to there, and they don't
| pay a cent of taxes.
|
| Now you are going to say, but doesn't "The Walt Disney
| Company", the parent of Disney+, then pay all the taxes?
|
| No, because this company is located in Delaware, which means
| it's virtually exempt of taxes as long as it makes only money
| from activities outside of Delaware. Which is does, since it's
| only selling IP to other companies, like the entity managing
| Disney+ which has it's headquarters in California.
| tzs wrote:
| That might make it virtually exempt from _Delaware_ taxes,
| but what about Federal taxes?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| They still have to pay it, but skipping on the state taxe
| an is already a huge break, espacially since no vat is paid
| in the transfert.
| kwanbix wrote:
| I think that in the long term needs to merge with someone with
| great content.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| I can see them 100% getting into podcasting and picking up Joe
| Rogan when his contract with Spotify ends.
| matwood wrote:
| Good summary. Couple notes/IMOs...
|
| HBO Max is great, but it's tied to a terrible
| management/company anchor. Rumor is now they are going to drop
| the trusted HBO brand smh.
|
| Netflix is well positioned, but a player like Disney is also
| setup to acquire other streamers as they fall over from cost
| structure issues. I think we're about to see mass
| consolidation.
|
| Finally, I'm kind of sad that I think the content 'golden era'
| is likely coming to a close. Cheap money and the fighting for
| subs led to more money being spent on content relative to what
| subs paid than at any other point in history. If nothing new
| was ever made again, I think the list my wife and I already
| have to watch is longer than time we have left living.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| HBO max doesn't even have every HBO show, they dropped west
| world from the platform.
| runako wrote:
| This decision would be enough to cancel my HBO
| subscription, but apparently it's bundled into our cable
| package so I don't directly pay for it anyway.
|
| HBO has broken the core contract of branded services (i.e.
| you get access to everything they make), making the value
| of a subscription much more difficult to understand. I can
| go back and watch 7 seasons of Arli$$ from 1996, but not
| the West World episodes released last year?
|
| I will say I am curious how they plan to market a service
| where you can't use recent hits in your advertising,
| because they are no longer available...
| justincormack wrote:
| A lot of shows were pre-contracted elsewhere, so
| companies that moved into streaming have to wait for the
| rights to revert.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| and Minx and Raised by Wolves.
| tgv wrote:
| I switched from Netflix to Prime a year or so ago, and a few
| months ago to HBO Max, and they're all basically the same: a
| handful of good movies and series I haven't seen, some more
| mediocre but watchable stuff, and a lot that doesn't interest
| me or is just awful. I get that they want to serve as large
| an audience as they can get, but it doesn't keep me on their
| platform. The only plus of HBO Max is their low price for a 1
| year multi-screen subscription.
| jdmichal wrote:
| Disney is currently suffering under a load of debt from their
| Fox acquisition. I'm not sure going on a spending spree is in
| their favor.
|
| With Netflix's low debt load and free cash flow, they should
| actually be in a better position for buying up competitors.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Disney also will probably make more money on its four
| biggest movie releases this year than Netflix makes in all.
|
| Avatar 2- a movie that came from its Fox acquisition has
| already made over $2 Billion
| vero24 wrote:
| Tbf avatar 2 was also extremely expensive, its breakeven
| point was reported to be in the 2 billion ball park
| (https://time.com/6241639/avatar-2-costs-box-office/)
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Industry experts (including insiders at Disney) note that
| breakeven was approximately 1.5 billion (the 2 billion
| came from Cameron), accounting for marketing expenses,
| the theaters' share of ticket sales, and the fact that
| the bloated number includes the entire filming costs for
| Avatar 3 and a quarter of Avatar 4.
|
| So Avatar 2 has earned Disney a profit of at least $250m
| and it still has several more weeks without any
| competition. And Avatar 3 will have a far lower break-
| even point.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Even so, it's going to break even and make a slight
| profit before it ever hits streaming.
|
| You can't say the same about Netflix. Netflix is
| completely dependent on streaming revenue.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Netflix doesn't get anywhere near the theatrical release
| of Disney movies, but it does get _some_ :
| https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/coming-soon/netflix-
| movies-...
| scarface74 wrote:
| It's not enough to break even before it hits streaming.
| It doesn't really move the needle.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Right now, sure. Just like Disney+ doesn't break even for
| Disney. It does signal a horizontal expansion for Netflix
| though.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Part of that cash flow doesn't go to Disney at all, it
| stays with the theaters.
|
| I'm curious whether that total box office number includes
| taxes on the tickets as well.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Disney gets 70% of all revenue from theatrical releases
| during the first few weeks
|
| https://www.quora.com/How-are-ticket-revenues-shared-
| with-th...
| matwood wrote:
| No one is going on a spending spree right now. But, if
| someone asked me after consolidation who would be the last
| ones standing, it would be Netflix and Disney.
| jdmichal wrote:
| I agree with you 100% on that. I just disagree that
| Disney is well positioned to take part in consolidation.
| They might be able to pull off some content licensing
| like Netflix used to do. But right now, the only thing
| holding Disney afloat is the parks. And they've certainly
| upset some fans to make that statement true.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, and Amazon--if only because Amazon can probably
| ratchet down content spend while Amazon Prime stays
| attractive for other reasons.
| no_wizard wrote:
| On the content of HBO Max:
|
| Its been very hit or miss for me with HBO Max originals. HBO
| (they do brand them differently) originals are still stellar,
| for the most part.
|
| If the new _Velma_ show is any indicator of what HBO Max
| wants to do as run of the mill content though, I 'm wondering
| how long it'll hold up as a premium streaming service.
|
| Warner didn't even unlock their entire backlog of Looney
| Toons cartoons on their _own_ streaming service, which would
| bolster its brand and make it more sticky
| viciousvoxel wrote:
| FWIW my understanding is that WB withholding the Looney
| Tunes backlog is entirely due to the fact that there's a
| lot of problematic (e.g. racist, sexist) material in there
| that they're understandably worried about. I completely
| agree with you otherwise.
| parrellel wrote:
| This would hold more water if they weren't also trying to
| vault or bury a bunch of their other animated content,
| and sell off their back catalog for easy money.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Disney+ got around this problem by just adding
| disclaimers to the content. They did this for all their
| questionable content, and if people reported it (IE they
| missed something) they were quick to add it.
|
| It seems Disney+ isn't scarred by this at all (it
| definitely doesn't dominate the public conversation
| around it), so perhaps there is a lead in here?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| There is racist content made by Disney that is not
| available on Disney+.
|
| The stuff that WB removed from HBO Max is more comparable
| to Song of the South (which is completely unavailable)
| than to Dumbo (which has disclaimers).
| LarryMullins wrote:
| According to Wikipedia, Disney+ has the edited 1948
| version of _The Three Little Pigs_ , but not the original
| 1933 version with a disclaimer.
| TylerE wrote:
| Sort of. Disney as a company still tries extremely hard
| to pretend Song of the South never existed.
| andrewprock wrote:
| Unless you go to Disneyland and ride the ride. Although
| it is called Splash Mountain, it is 100% Brer Rabbit,
| Brer Fox and Brer Bear.
| TylerE wrote:
| Not for long:
|
| "In June 2020, it was announced that the U.S. versions of
| the ride would be receiving a new theme based on Disney's
| 2009 film The Princess and the Frog.[2][3] The new ride,
| which will be titled Tiana's Bayou Adventure, is
| scheduled to open at Disneyland and Magic Kingdom in late
| 2024"
| matwood wrote:
| Agree. Sticking a bunch of questionable content under the
| HBO brand (which Max is certainly piggy-backing on) is more
| proof of the incompetent management.
|
| Even though I benefit, I think it was also dumb for them to
| give away HBO to any AT&T subscribers (maybe internet
| only?). HBO was something I used to pay for.
| xwolfi wrote:
| Is HBO max that big? I only hear about it from time to time, it
| feels very English-language. I have 2 netflix subs I share
| between my Chinese and French family and I admit Disney+ has a
| huge advantage for kids stuff I couldnt get anywhere else, so
| they'll likely last.
| chadlavi wrote:
| Unclear what the perception of HBO is outside the US, but HBO
| is historically _the_ prestige television brand, and now they
| have a pretty good catalog of stuff that wasn't originally on
| HBO as well. It seems like Warner is hell-bent on ruining HBO
| Max though.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > - Therefore, Netflix needs to do what it can to retain /
| attract subscribers, but essentially can wait until the other
| services have to give up due to cost
|
| Good summary. Worth noting as well that he spends a lot of time
| in the article drawing the historical parallel to Blockbuster.
| The lesson is that Netflix has been in this situation before,
| of waiting for its competition to punch themselves out.
|
| Personally, I think it's impossible to really predict the
| future for stuff like this, but it's an interesting read.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| "Therefore, Netflix needs to do what it can to retain / attract
| subscribers, but essentially can wait until the other services
| have to give up due to cost"
|
| Much as they did with Blockbuster as he described in the
| article, correct?
| scarface74 wrote:
| The bear case for Netflix is once again the "DropBox problem".
| Streaming services is becoming a feature not a product.
|
| When Disney creates a movie. It can monetize the movie across
| its entire "flywheel" - movie theatres, video on demand,
| licensing to third parties, toys, theme parks etc.
|
| It's streaming content has already made a billion in the box
| office before it ever hits streaming. Streaming is additive.
|
| Netflix paid millions of dollars just for the rights to the
| "Knives Out" sequel for instance only to make a pittance in
| limited release and then go to streaming.
|
| The same is true for the other players.
|
| That's not even to mention Apple, Amazon and Google who are
| playing a completely different game.
| flyingpenguin wrote:
| I think Google quit.
| lvl102 wrote:
| Netflix is valued as tech but it's no longer tech. Once you
| recalibrate that you can easily see where the company is
| headed. It's not going to be pretty. They relied on the Koreans
| (among others) for cheap shows but that's not going to last
| long.
| treis wrote:
| >- Netflix has 5-6 Billion USD free cash flow, and because they
| got what debt they do have under favorable terms, they are
| positioned to retain most of that free cash flow
|
| This is a bit off. They had 1.6 billion in FCF in 2022 &
| project 3 billion for 2023:
|
| https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/2022/q4...
|
| That said, to me Netflix feels like it is lagging. Not enough
| to really hurt subscriber numbers yet. But feels like it's
| stuck in a local minima of A/B testing. Like they've driven me
| to the line of canceling. Which is good for them because I
| haven't yet but risky because Netflix is more a habit/default
| for me these days. Pretty close to canceling and not sure what
| would draw me back if I did.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| They lost me this year. I had been a subscriber for 12 years.
|
| Between the ads and the complete inability to let a show run
| more than 2 seasons unless it's a global hit... I'm no longer
| interested.
|
| I've had a kid - and my viewing habits have changed. I can't
| always watch a show right when it drops. The reality of my
| life is that I have other things going on, and I rarely have
| 10+ hours of uninterrupted time.
|
| But now... by the point I have time to watch a show, more
| often than not Netflix has already announced its
| cancellation, and I have zero interest in a catalog of dead
| shows. None. Nadda.
|
| My take is that Netflix is hot fucking garbage at determining
| the quality of their own shows, and that really - they don't
| have the creative side down at all. It's too much focus on
| the stats, and timelines that are too short.
|
| Some of the most widely watched shows in history had fairly
| lackluster first seasons (see: Parks & Rec, The Office,
| Friends). Netflix is busy killing off everything that's not a
| sizzle in the pan. But those flare up and burn out. They need
| the slow burn shows that grow into their own - and they've
| ruthlessly slaughtered them all because the numbers aren't
| great at first.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > complete inability to let a show run more than 2 seasons
| unless it's a global hit
|
| It just needs to be a slight success. If the show is cheap
| to make they'll keep it running forever. The only things
| that seem to get canceled are expensive or complete
| failures. I'd be interested if you have any examples that
| this doesn't ring true for.
|
| > My take is that Netflix is hot fucking garbage at
| determining the quality of their own shows, and that really
| - they don't have the creative side down at all. It's too
| much focus on the stats, and timelines that are too short.
|
| Most TV shows are canceled very few keep going forever.
|
| > Some of the most widely watched shows in history had
| fairly lackluster first seasons (see: Parks & Rec, The
| Office, Friends).
|
| Go look at the viewership of those even at the start they
| were good enough and cheap enough for a second season.
| Shows almost never grow after the first season. This idea
| that so many shows just need to get there legs under them
| is bullshit.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| > Most TV shows are canceled very few keep going forever.
|
| I don't expect them to go forever - I expect them to END.
| Ending is a (hugely) different proposition than being
| canceled.
|
| A show that wraps up the plot (even if not executed
| particularly well) is a-ok.
|
| A show that starts a story and then dies is not.
|
| One of them has value in watching, one is a complete
| waste of time.
|
| I also don't really care how they work out the budget - A
| show getting a mini-series as the final season because
| they don't want to invest in a full one? Fine - just
| resolve the fucking plot.
|
| Personally - I don't even care if the show is only one
| season (or two) as long as it wraps up. What I do mind -
| quite a bit - is the start of a story that we know will
| never end.
|
| If netflix wants to be so axe-happy, that's fine. Buy
| freaking mini-series and wrap them in a season.
|
| Or set a more strict budget if the creators want to run
| multiple seasons.
|
| My whole point about them being garbage at this is that I
| don't really care all that much _how_ the wrap their
| shows. I just want a story to consume.
|
| Personally - I really think production budgets are set
| far too high in an attempt to make them global hits, and
| it's really, really not panning out for them.
| skydhash wrote:
| I dont have a kid, but between work, chores, and other
| hobbies, I can only have 1 or 2 hours a day to watch
| anything. I can only slot a movie or a single episode
| within that time frame. Also, it's something I do together
| with my partner so we always pick something that suits us
| both. And our backlog is getting bigger as we are adding
| older movies.
|
| The cancellation of 1899 was a big blow for me. It's the
| kind of show you can't really binge watch as it requires
| focus to really follow what's going on. And I think it
| would have grown its audience organically over time.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| That's actually the cancellation that pushed me over the
| edge. I'm also not subscribed anymore because of 1899.
| silisili wrote:
| I don't understand why every single company needs to maintain
| their own. And there's more than what's listed of course,
| Paramount, Hulu, and whatever that new one is with Lifetime.
|
| It seems like at some point they'd rally behind whoever has the
| best interface and willing to accept deals - probably Hulu.
| Just charge for access to the content and forget about doing
| your own CDN and app dealings?
| papercrane wrote:
| I don't think the media companies are capable of cooperating
| on a platform like that.
|
| You mention Hulu which I think is a great example of that
| model failing. Hulu was originally a intended to be that kind
| of platform, and has at times included investment from ABC,
| NBC, FOX, and Time Warner. Now Disney owns a majority share
| in it and it's a brand under Disney's streaming services, and
| I think would like to just fold it into Disney+, but they'd
| need to make some sort of deal with Comcast for their
| minority share.
| dbcooper wrote:
| Does it involve not only producing dimly lit garbage?
| jdprgm wrote:
| A few thoughts:
|
| 1) On the talk of saturation Netflix had somewhere around 230 mil
| subscribers last year. In theory the addressable market should be
| adults ~20 and up so somewhere around 5 bil. So not even close to
| saturation. Discounting say half of that imagine how much better
| the service could be with 10x the current subscriber base. They
| talk about increasing subscription price... At 10x you could half
| the subscription price and still increase content spending 5x
| which would be pretty incredible.
|
| 2) The article talks about old content not holding value as
| expected. I think a lot of this has to do with the near complete
| failure to invest in rewatchable content. They were clearly aware
| the value of shows like The Office and Friends in terms of
| rewatchability. Off the top of my head I can't even think of an
| attempt at original content in that lane from Netflix (Licensing
| and extra seasons of Arrested Development is the only thing that
| comes to mind). To be fair though utterly bizarrely nearly every
| service has failed at this kind of content for the past 5 years
| or so.
|
| 3) The lack of global hits is very strange. I was trying to
| lookup high budget tv productions in foreign countries and not
| sure if it is just a lack of data or they don't exist. I would
| think even if there is a cultural bias around kinds of shows
| people watch just in terms of production quality western shows
| would still be globally dominant. Are there any examples of
| international shows with 20 mil per episode budgets?
|
| This one is definitely strange to me looking back on what I would
| have estimated for the world of streaming a decade ago. I would
| have expected a much more expected shared culture in terms of
| what is watched worldwide. Instead it seems if anything we have
| become increasingly isolated. It's crazy to think Netflix isn't
| even active in a country the size of China for example. I would
| have thought by now technology would lead to shows with
| viewerships counted in the billions not millions. Squid Game is
| apparently Netflix's most popular show ever but even that from
| brief research has under 200 mil views which in the context of
| total population still makes it incredibly unpopular. I.e. if you
| take 100 random humans and put them in a room almost none of them
| have seen it. I wonder if we will ever reach a point where
| anything is actually globally popular.
| thewebcount wrote:
| > 3) The lack of global hits is very strange.
|
| Yeah, this part of the article really struck me:
|
| > what's really interesting is there aren't that many global
| hits, meaning that everyone in the world watches the same
| thing. Squid Game was very rare in that way. And Wednesday
| looks like one of those too, very rare in that way.
|
| I have to wonder what the problem is. I've watched more
| foreign-language shows in the last 3 years than in the rest of
| my 51 years combined thanks to shows on Netflix, HBO Max, Apple
| TV+, etc. I'd love to see more of them, but they aren't
| surfacing in my searches and recommendations very frequently.
| I'd really like more variety in show selections. They don't
| even have to be big hits like Squid Games or Lupin. I'd be
| interested in any show that's good regardless of whether it's
| been a blockbuster hit.
|
| On something like Hulu, there are tons of shows that mostly
| fall into Police/Medical procedural, Office-like sitcom, or
| Friends-like sitcom. Those are fine, and some are even pretty
| decent, but I'm really tired of those formats. Seeing shows
| about other cultures has been fascinating. And just having
| other types of stories is nice, too.
| tedsanders wrote:
| Counterpoints:
|
| - Average person lives in a household of 4.9 people[1], which
| means market size isn't 5 bil but closer to 1 bil
|
| - Plus, the household needs broadband internet, which rules out
| vast swaths of the world today, brining down addressable market
| further
|
| - Many of the hundreds of millions of households not signed up
| are in markets like India, where the price is like 20% of the
| price in the USA or Europe; so a 100% increase in membership
| might only mean a 33% increase in revenue
|
| - Further, if you capture the Indian and Nigerian and
| Indonesian markets, sure you have more revenue (say +33%) to
| spend on more content, but a lot of that content will need to
| be Indian content and Nigerian content and Indonesian content,
| so the actual increase in content spend relevant to you will
| much much less than 33%
|
| In conclusion, I think a +500% increase in spend on content
| you're interested in is not a plausible outcome of everyone on
| Earth signing up for Netflix. It's probably an order of
| magnitude less, like +50%.
|
| [1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/31/with-
| billio...
| pnathan wrote:
| My take is that acted video on demand is ripe for collapsing into
| a few services.
|
| The next big streaming target is sports. That will, in my
| opinion, be the determinant of the streaming success in the next
| decade.
| kderbyma wrote:
| Why does everyone think Disney lost because of steaming....they
| lost because of politics....the steaming was the easiest target
| to hit...not the cause...lmao
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| The "Cuties" release helped to accelerate subscriber loses for
| Netflix.
| jedberg wrote:
| Netflix only lost to Blockbuster because Blockbuster didn't
| believe in online anything strongly enough to properly fund it.
| Blockbuster had the better network and better penetration, and
| even had equally good technology. But corporate didn't want to
| fund them to hire the next set of engineers they needed.
|
| Blockbuster would have won if their board had been just slightly
| more forward looking. And Netflix knew it.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I wonder if it would have been possible to 'bribe' blockbuster
| executives into making such decisions. As much as Blockbuster
| was prepared to pay them to do their jobs I'm sure Netflix
| would have offered them more to not do their jobs. An
| indirect/legal way to do this would simply be to poach talent
| away with good offers, easy to do when you're poised for
| substantial growth.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Isn't this the Sears case again? They were the veteran
| incumbent with a mountain of experience in the industry, but
| turning a corporate ship on a dime seems to be impossible.
|
| I guess that manifests as a form of "corporate didn't believe
| in..." or "didn't invest in the engineering" as you say.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| You can keep the shareholder calls easy for now by just
| keeping costs low and praying. If you suddenly add a new high
| cost department that isn't going to be pulling in revenue for
| 12+ months, those calls are going to get harder, and you need
| to have the clout with your investors to convince them it's
| the right more. If you're a hired CEO who's done nothing but
| tweak logistics and optimize inventory, then they aren't
| going to trust that you are making the correct move when it
| comes to completely changing customer acquisition and product
| delivery.
| hinkley wrote:
| If you didn't have the Sears Catalog you had the JC Penney
| catalog. They both dropped the ball, probably by watching
| each other to see who blinked first.
| macintux wrote:
| Aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
| joncrane wrote:
| Kodak is another great example.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Sears was already in the wrong place at that time because not
| just was it incapable of turning on a dime, it already had
| corporate raiders inside it turning over every couch for
| leftover dimes. It was already getting chopped up and shopped
| for parts by the time the internet arrived.
| jedberg wrote:
| It was worse than that though. They had already built a
| second ship pointed in the right direction, it just needed a
| little bit of extra fuel. They had already innovated.
| me_me_me wrote:
| Google has massive range and tons of way to push their services
| onto users, and google+ failed miserably.
|
| Resources are not guarantee of success.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I'm convinced that what killed Google+ was their slow
| rollout, which was an absolutely bone-headed move that I'm
| really surprised a company like Google would make.
|
| Google+ was a social network. For a social network to have
| any value, you need your friends to be on it as well. By
| making it invite-only and throttling how many people could
| join, they guaranteed that most of your friends weren't there
| and COULDN'T be there. There were so many memes being made of
| Google+ being described as this amazing party you got invited
| to, only to get there and find there's nobody there.
|
| GMail being invite-only at first wasn't a problem because
| using GMail didn't require everybody you sent/received
| e-mails to/from to be on GMail as well.
| function_seven wrote:
| Yes. It seems like they learned the wrong lesson from both
| Gmail as well as Facebook.
|
| With Gmail, the invite-only rollout had the effect of
| making the service seem exclusive and valuable. I remember
| getting my invite from a friend and being "let into the
| club". (I didn't take it _that_ seriously, but the feeling
| of being "in" was still kinda there). And as you note,
| email still works across providers, so no network effects
| were harmed.
|
| Facebook also had early exclusivity, but it was entire
| cohort schools at once! If I was allowed to create a FB
| account, that meant all my classmates were also being
| admitted to the club.
|
| G+ didn't start with any natural cohorts, so being rolled
| out slowly just guaranteed that initial experiences were
| tumbleweeds and disappointment.
| danjac wrote:
| Then again, Facebook did a slow rollout - first it was just
| for American college students, then (if memory serves) it
| was rolled out internationally for colleges and
| universities outside the US, then finally it was available
| everyone.
|
| This helped build word-of-mouth. While a social network has
| value, so does an exclusive nightclub with a long queue
| around the block to get in.
|
| I've no idea, but I wonder if this was the thinking behind
| Google+. Build up a demand with artificial exclusivity, so
| you build buzz (maybe "buzz" is the wrong word, given
| Google's other dead project of that name). This approach
| also helps you from the technical side - easier to deal
| with scaling and other teething issues when you have a few
| users at once rather than the mad rush.
|
| At the end though it was probably the wrong decision -
| people were already on Facebook so they just shrugged and
| forgot Google+ existed.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Excellent point. It's easy to remember google stuff used to
| be limited and "cool" and it was desirable to get an
| invite.
|
| G+ was around the time that started to swing around and
| people didn't think Google was so amazing or desirable.
| WelcomeShorty wrote:
| Cool story about Netflix growth and growing pains.
|
| I have 0 knowledge about the subject so can not judge the
| correctness.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Curious now - what percentage of global content is netflix seeing
| in Japan or Mexico, vs local content?
|
| I think that would be an interesting metric for all sorts of
| other influences, political, social etc. Essentially defining the
| landscape of balkanisation of the internet ...
| deepzn wrote:
| Even if Netflix is profitable, and makes money on streaming.
| Considering it's market cap of $160B with today's rise of ~6% and
| compared to others like Disney at $192B, and AT&T at $140B, and
| Viacom at $14B. It seems Netflix is viewed at some tech premium
| that existed in the early part of the decade. Considering now
| almost every competitor has their own streaming service, there
| isn't any tech advantage. Maybe a data advantage in that they
| know what works and what doesn't, but a lot of that is also
| public knowledge kind of. But, this seems overvalued right now.
| In my opinion, Netflix got 2 things right: 1) Streaming model
| with hits. (Becoming HBO) 2) Streaming internationally. (Where
| hits in one region can become global hits like Squid Game)
|
| And now they are trying to "Become TV" with all the wide spectrum
| of content that Cable TV offers. This means continuing spend,
| while competition will exist. And basically involves revenue
| growth in the form of advertising, which is the traditional model
| of TV. They are not going to grow revenue as fast in terms of
| subscribers because they are almost completely penetrated in the
| US, and international subscribers will have lower revenues
| associated with cheaper offerings. In other words, they really
| don't have a special lever of growth ahead that distinguishes
| them from the competition. And Amazon and Apple are continuing to
| spend money, and hire talent in their offerings.
| chipgap98 wrote:
| I think the point is that their competitors are in streaming
| now but won't be in the long term because it is costing them
| too much money. When that happens they will go back to
| licensing their content to Netflix.
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