261–270 of 362 posts
As an American, I've always found it mind-boggling how average Americans cheer these types of M/As. The argument is that consolidation leads to more "efficiency" and "synergy", but those benefits are usually not passed down to consumers (actually, market domination allows a company like Disney to price-gouge even more on movies and merchandise).
So, will the Fox fanfare return to all Star Wars films, past and present, from now on?
Serious question: why do people want this so badly? Just nostalgia? (Too young to have see the OT movies in theaters, so I don't have that) For me, sticking the cheesy fox logo and fanfare at the beginning of the movies would make them worse, not better.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Neither of the two articles even mention the Disney-21st Century Fox deal. What specifically about this deal should be of concern for antitrust regulators?
For one, it would give the resulting entity a majority stake in Hulu and control over a lot of content that they could potentially yank from the likes of Netflix. It's also the default position of regulators that horizontal mergers are bad for competition, so I'd expect a fight regardless of the ultimate basis [1]. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
If they merged with Netflix and controlled pretty much all distribution, then that might be a more compelling argument, but still difficult.
It seems to me that people throw the term monopoly around way too freely. Two major content distributors in today's environment is not destroying Netflix's ability to compete. When Microsoft controlled the OS of just about every desktop in the world and wouldn't allow competition in the browser space, that was a monopoly. When Standard Oil owned every oil field in the United States and the gas stations, that was a monopoly.
Earlier 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.
Earlier 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…
In what way(s) is Disney not currently fully empowered to compete with Netflix?
This is covered in the linked article, read around this quote:
> Moreover, not only does 21st Century Fox have a lot of content, it has content that is particularly great for filling out a streaming library: think The Simpsons, or Family Guy; according to estimates I’ve seen, in terms of external content Fox owns eight of Netflix’s most streamed shows
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For one, it would give the resulting entity a majority stake in Hulu and control over a lot of content that they could potentially yank from the likes of Netflix. It's also the default position of regulators that horizontal mergers are bad for competition, so I'd expect a fight regardless of the ultimate basis [1]. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
Is the majority stake in Hulu really an antitrust concern? Streaming services are pretty competitive and Netflix has plenty of their own exclusive content.
Earlier 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 Netflix approaching monopoly? If anything I've seen a ton of competition coming up from the likes of Amazon, HBO, and a billion smaller services.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You make it sound like having a single proprietary browser as the standard for browsing the web is a minor concern. Can you imagine if nowadays anybody who's not using IE/Edge was a 2nd class citizen on the web, not able to access most content? Remember the days of flash? For one thing it would've hurt massively the development of non-MS smartphones. Nowadays Chrome seems to be the new IE but at least they're a bit m…
> Nowadays Chrome seems to be the new IE but at least they're a bit more open overall. eeeeeh "Google Chrome is required to run the new Google Earth. Please try this link in Chrome. Learn more." "Launching the new Allo Web, only available in Chrome." "Launching Google Inbox Beta, only available in Chrome." Granted, Allo and Inbox and the new YouTube design are now available in Firefox, but with artificial performance…
Earlier 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 Netflix approaching monopoly? If anything I've seen a ton of competition coming up from the likes of Amazon, HBO, and a billion smaller services.
It is one of the biggest companies facing a ton of competition and still doing a superb job.
So along with Disney pulling all their titles from Netflix for their own streaming service, I guess the FX content will be next to go from Netflix.
Oh it's crazy how much stuff Disney can pull off Netflix, I don't know if they will, because it's in their interest to have some stuff accessible over more than one place, but they own ABC (Lost, Castle, Firefly, etc), ESPN, Marvel, LucasArts, now Fox and their assets, not to mention they distribute on behalf of many publishers (Dreamworks for example), they would probably clear more than half of Netflix's content if…