[HN Gopher] Netflix Plans to Cut Spending by $300M in 2023
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Netflix Plans to Cut Spending by $300M in 2023
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 36 points
Date : 2023-05-12 17:24 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| [deleted]
| costanzaDynasty wrote:
| I stopped streaming in Sept. Now I watch PlutoTV. It made me
| realize I'm done paying for tv or movies services.
|
| $100 per month times 12 for 20 years = $24000
|
| now do you want the $24,000 for the next 20 years or do you think
| the entertainment will give you $24000 worth
| nomel wrote:
| > I'm done paying
|
| Related, I will pay whenever I can, because I'm done with ads.
| A quick google search says Pluto averages 10 minutes of ads per
| hour. That means over 15 percent of each of my viewing sessions
| would be watching ads.
| [deleted]
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| For a short while I knew I was going to be in bed recovering
| from a medical procedure and thought it was a good time to
| use YouTube Premium since I'd be watching so much. I (maybe
| sadly, maybe not), cannot fathom the idea now of going back
| to using it without it. Which is something I would have
| before then totally ridiculed someone for say!
| temp_praneshp wrote:
| Premium plus an addon to block sponsors
| (https://sponsor.ajay.app/) has been great for me. I hate
| watching youtube on the tv now, because that still has
| sponsor blocks
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| What types of ads do you see on YouTube?
|
| I use the Brave Browser and never see ads on YouTube.
|
| Only ads in podcast shows where the podcaster is
| advertising it, but even for those I have the SponsorBlock
| plugin that skips those portions of the videos.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I would pay for youtube premium to remove ads if Youtube
| made it clear they intended to be good to non-mega sized
| youtubers and be a helpful and supportive platform for
| their needs.
|
| Instead they have consistently taken a strategy of ignoring
| anyone as much as physically possible, punishing even "big"
| youtubers for asking innocent questions, making creator's
| content worse without their permission and actively against
| their will, and siding with large external businesses over
| the needs of the majority of their content creators.
|
| A youtube that I would spend money to support would do
| things like provide dedicated support channels to medium
| sized creators that could actually do things instead of
| just being a sounding board, be VERY clear about what
| advertisers do not want in content you want to make money
| from, create high quality sponsor and/or merch integration,
| reward creators for effort and polish over simply filling
| the space with as much as possible, get rid of clickbait in
| general, build a robust content licensing system so it
| would be easier and more reliable for content creators to
| sample video content in legitimate ways for a reasonable
| cost (creators are not afraid to spend hundreds of dollars
| on stock footage for a valuable video and would be willing
| to license content), and other ways to make content
| creators more effective and not encourage them to work
| themselves to death in a content machine and antagonistic
| treadmill system.
|
| So yeah, fuck giving them a dime for actively harming the
| people who actually make the stuff that brings me to the
| platform.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| $100 is a lot to pay for streaming services. And to list prices
| over 20 years is also strange. Netflix can cost $6.99/mo. Is it
| worth $6.99/mo, or $83.88/year? I don't know, maybe, but it is
| certainly more realistic than answering if a bundle of services
| are worth $24000 per 20 years.
| donmcronald wrote:
| The password sharing thing really annoyed me. We were sharing a
| password between two households, so, fair is fair, we tried to
| pay the extra fee for an additional household.
|
| However, the profile transfers don't work properly. We couldn't
| transfer the right profile to the second household. I think it
| has something to do with it being the first / primary profile.
| It's still broken. They said they'd give us a refund, but didn't.
| Now we're paying more for a worse, broken product.
|
| I spent 45m with support that _did not give a single fuck_.
|
| It's not on my credit card or it would have been cancelled months
| ago. I don't care if they want to change pricing or crack down on
| password sharing, but when they're asking for more money I expect
| things to work. They deserve to get out-competed IMO.
| ei8ths wrote:
| netflix is just trash, half the shows or more push the woke
| agenda, whenever two males get near each other i just know
| they'll some how magically both be gay. there is nothing creative
| and are falling into the disney problem.
|
| now i think netflix shines with the foreign films, i've been
| enjoying those more then the american films, but that doesnt
| justify paying the monthly fee.
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| haha I agree - there's a couple netflix shows that I'll renew
| for to watch for a month ("I think you can leave" season 3
| which comes out soon)
|
| But generally I'm not going to sub past one month for it.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| The biggest mistake Netflix made was thinking that they are a
| tech company instead of being a media company. All the extremely
| high paid software devs creating this massive mangle of
| microservices. What they should have realized is that porn sites
| have been supporting far more users around the world without
| doing any of this microservices nonsense.
| segmondy wrote:
| I must be the only one here that loves Netflix. I probably have a
| 100+ TV shows and Movies in my to watch list. Anyways,
| $300million is a drop in the bucket compared to their yearly
| expense. Why is this news again?
| alexfromapex wrote:
| This sounds like a false narrative designed to cover up the
| negative impact that the news of the password crackdown has
| caused
| daemon_of_chaos wrote:
| Finally getting the hint and canceling Witcher.
| lemoncookiechip wrote:
| It's just gonna be the same as HBO Max and D+. They'll remove
| shows with low views from the platforms has a cost saving method
| on residuals.
|
| Increase prices, again.
|
| And finally decrease the budget of newer shows, as well as
| increase the amount of newer shows to try and capture a new
| audience that won't subscribe, while pissing off the pre-existing
| one.
|
| Wouldn't be surprised if they also try to save on bandwidth by
| increasing compression, removing a few servers...
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> They'll remove shows_
|
| Arrr matey! We'll still get them.
| nomel wrote:
| Yes, and people will help propel the service to failure.
| spacemadness wrote:
| I am really skeptical they have any more room to increase
| prices, at least at 4K.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Yup. Their prices are just too high for occasional content.
| It's simpler and cheap to just pay directly through Amazon
| Video. Unless Netflix has three or four shows that you can't
| miss, it's just too expensive.
| jfengel wrote:
| I wonder if they find a sweet spot of relatively cheap shows
| with a small target audience. It may not matter if only a few
| people watch, say, Filipino soap operas, if they can get it for
| not much money.
|
| That stuff strikes a lot of people as "crap", and it's a
| problem that Netflix will recommend it to you when they've run
| out of other things you actually want. A good recommendation
| engine helps, but in the end Netflix is always going to have
| mostly stuff that doesn't interest you.
| ftxbro wrote:
| they should spend even more money, to train a generative AI that
| makes netflix shows
| jdlyga wrote:
| Netflix still has a strong app and a great interface. But quietly
| other streaming services are starting to have much better overall
| content than Netflix. You just wouldn't realize it because the
| apps themselves aren't quite as good yet.
| wand3r wrote:
| Man, Netflix is really going down hill. I get that the entire
| landscape has changed but they dont seem to be innovating. Why
| not try to give small budgets to UCLA students or something like
| that. Prefect the dubbing of all their content to make it more
| appealing in other markets. Have some conviction in their shows
| on a longer timeline and stop cancelling things after 1-2 seasons
| effectively making the IP worthless. They can improve their
| search so people have a better experience finding content and
| don't churn. License their own content to othet studios.
|
| They can definitely keep making money, but in my exoerience
| Netflix has not been #1 or even #2 when I go to watch media now.
| Which is a big change from a few years ago. I dont pay for it
| myself or I would have cancelled.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| Here is the problem: What you're doing is describing ways that
| Netflix can be a good media company. Netflix is valued as a
| tech company and pays tech workers like a top tier tech
| company. At some point they either have to do some innovative
| new tech that separates them from the competition, or they have
| to become an excellent media company- and that probably starts
| with firing all the fat and happy tech workers.
| thebradbain wrote:
| Who's to say the proposed $300M in cuts won't touch tech?
| They may be still trading as a tech company, but it looks
| like they may be firing some of those engineers anyways.
|
| So worst of both worlds?
| curiousDog wrote:
| Describing engineers as "fat and happy" is really derogatory.
| Their spend on tech employees is a tiny fraction of total
| content spend. Also, an even tinier fraction of what they
| spend on services like AWS. If they want to cut costs,
| there's a ton more low hanging fruit than letting people go.
| In fact, revenue per employee is the highest compared to
| other FAANG
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Netflix is very unique in that they put significantly more
| stock (and subsequently, capex) in making data driven content
| decisions than other studios do.
|
| I don't know how the gamble will play out, but if it works
| well for them, I imagine they'll continue to pay top tier.
|
| So while we may hate all their weird reality tv shows or
| wonder why good stuff gets cancelled why other things
| continue, it may have a lot less to do with a single
| individual's decision.
|
| Also note, Netflix is known to pay significantly more than
| the rest of FAANG at this point, though they hire much less
| frequently.
| preommr wrote:
| > Netflix is very unique in that they put significantly
| more stock (and subsequently, capex) in making data driven
| content decisions than other studios do.
|
| > I don't know how the gamble will play out, but if it
| works well for them, I imagine they'll continue to pay top
| tier.
|
| This would've made sense a little under a decade ago. The
| last few years have shown how badly the idea works or
| Netflix's models are.
| panick21_ wrote:
| And for anybody who is keeping score Amazon who is often
| not data driven, but rather driven by random opinion of
| random empowered employees. The result are worse not
| better.
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| The good dubbing would also help me with learning Spanish. I
| remember trying to watch The Office when it was still on
| Netflix and it didn't have Spanish dubs or subs!!
|
| I was floored. Peacock has both for The Office and the dubs are
| pretty good.
|
| I understand Netflix not wasting the time on content that isn't
| theirs, like The Office. But still - its crazy their content
| library hasn't at least added language support for the next 1
| or 2 most popular languages. They can overlap those languages
| with their top 50 or so shows?
|
| I don't know if they've already looked into this and it just
| isn't profitable.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| Can't you watch... Spanish-language TV shows?
| jfengel wrote:
| I think that the budget cut means starting fewer high-end
| series. They've been saying for a year or so that they realize
| it's not a good look to cancel so many shows. But I suspect
| that manifests less as "finish shows they start with" as
| "commit less".
|
| I'd like to see them do more shows as one-season limited
| series. I understand why they want to have cliffhangers that
| encourage you to stay subscribed for months waiting for the
| rest, but obviously that doesn't work if they cancel it.
|
| I'm watching 1899 right now, and I'm enjoying it despite
| knowing that it was canceled prematurely. It's pretty and fun
| to watch. But it moves at a glacial pace and could just as well
| be compressed into one season.
|
| (For that matter... it's clearly "Lost, But On A Boat", and
| whatever ending they actually had in mind was gonna suck. Shows
| like that never end well. I'll probably be just as happy not to
| have to watch whatever unsatisfactory solution they were going
| to throw at me.)
| arrjayh wrote:
| I didn't read the article but the headline is hilarious. For a
| company that has been so outward about hiring "all star talent"
| I'm amazed they're needing to cut back. Just from the outside it
| appears that things are pretty broken there...
| lljk_kennedy wrote:
| I wonder if No Rules Rules is still the playbook there.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| https://archive.is/uwNXi
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