I hope everyone likes the Fantastic Four, because we're probably going to get a few years of Fantastic Four Marvel Cinematic Universe movies out of this deal.
Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox
211–220 of 362 posts
Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not so black and white. Stratchery posits consolidation may promote competition at the distribution layer, where Netflix presently stands to dominate: "To that end, might it be better for consumers, not-so-much today but ten years from now, if Disney were fully empowered to compete with Netflix? What is preferable? A dominant streaming company and a collection of content companies trying to escape the commoditiz…
Stratchery has a pretty laissez-faire attitude towards government regulation in general. He seems ok with the net neutrality repeal, for example.[1] [1] https://stratechery.com/tag/net-neutrality/
It would be more accurate to say, he's ok with reclassifying internet services as Title I, given that 1) ISPs have almost never tried to throttle by traffic type, 2) business model innovation (e.g. zero rating, etc) can have positive effects, and 3) internet access has lots of room for improvement that will require investment, and tying the hands of the providers may prevent that.
(I don't necessarily agree with all those points, but Stratechery has been about the only useful counterpoint recently.)
Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox
#213Sane antitrust regulations should kill this deal. It is bad for everybody other than shareholders of those two companies. In particular bad for customers, other companies and employees: https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/2172555... https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21695385-profits-are...
It's not so black and white. Stratchery posits consolidation may promote competition at the distribution layer, where Netflix presently stands to dominate: "To that end, might it be better for consumers, not-so-much today but ten years from now, if Disney were fully empowered to compete with Netflix? What is preferable? A dominant streaming company and a collection of content companies trying to escape the commoditiz…
Don’t be fucking ridiculous please. Popcorn time was compiting with Netflix and offered a great service. Developed by a handful of students by using mashups.
Now you tell me Disney can’t do that?
Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox
#214Sane antitrust regulations should kill this deal. It is bad for everybody other than shareholders of those two companies. In particular bad for customers, other companies and employees: https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/2172555... https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21695385-profits-are...
Antitrust regulations should kill google and facebook, but they’re not. In my opinion those two are much bigger fish to fry than two movie companies.
Every new day is a day that puts the Gilded Age to shame. I'm scared for the future.
Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox
#215Why not go all the way and merge all companies into 1 big one. Being born on the wrong side of the iron curtain I already saw economy based on monopolies. Communism failed because prices were centrally set. We knew how to build useful things (that don't break 1 day after warranty) but not which ones to build and how many. (wiki) A price signal is information conveyed to consumers and producers, via the price charged…
> Communism failed because prices were centrally set. We knew how to build useful things (that don't break 1 day after warranty) but not which ones to build and how many.
A problem easily solved with modern technology. There's nothing inherent in communism or capitalism that prevents or enables, respectively, the use of price signals.
Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost seems like Netflix knew what they were doing when they started funding a bunch of original content. I remember when people thought they were being silly.
"The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us." - 2013, Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer, Netflix https://gizmodo.com/5980103/netflix-the-goal-is-to-become-hb... Edit: He just got the company wrong.
Kind of like how Google made Android free to head off Microsoft, not realizing that Apple would be their mobile competition.
Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now they're gonna get worse. Before that, we could at least hope to see a good movie like Logan. Now if Marvel does them, we know they're going to be mediocre like all other Marvel movies, with bad jokes every 87 seconds.
Everyone's definition of "good movies" differs, and that's excellent. I, for one, consider the average MCU movie to be a step above even very good movies like Logan and some of the recent X-Men titles. From a geek standpoint, I can't wait for these universes to be merged.
I disagree. I mean, sure I'll watch a Disney/Marvel movie, but they all their movies tend to be samey. And now DC wants to copy Marvel...
All in all, I can't wait for Star Wars Episode CCXXXIV...
Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not so black and white. Stratchery posits consolidation may promote competition at the distribution layer, where Netflix presently stands to dominate: "To that end, might it be better for consumers, not-so-much today but ten years from now, if Disney were fully empowered to compete with Netflix? What is preferable? A dominant streaming company and a collection of content companies trying to escape the commoditiz…
Is Disney planning to start their own Netflix-like service or are they planning to just open the online Disney store where it will only have Disney content. The latter doesn't seem like a proper Netflix competitor. Netflix serves more than their own home-grown content.
The merger would give them a majority stake in Hulu.
Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox
#219Generally what does huge mergers in industry mean for disruption (in the more traditional Clay Christensen model). For example, if the #1 and #4 player in a specific industry does that mean there is more space for an upstart to grow since #4 has left the party? Or does the new #1 suck up all the air and put such a choke hold on industry that new players cannot flourish?
(Christensen model) Disruption is about business models, not competition. New technologies that help existing companies improve their products are "sustaining innovations" (e.g. 2.5" hard drives let laptop companies make smaller, better laptops). But if they don't help existing companies and allow the development of a "worse" alternative, it's a disruptive innovation (e.g. SSD drives were too expensive and low capacity for laptops, but they were perfect for iPods and smartphones, which have now surpassed laptops in sales, use, etc).