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Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

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Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#31

Post by Thriptic »

rayiner wrote: post #21
MisterTea wrote: post #3

These companies are obsessed with fragmenting the market for the sake of owning content from production to delivery. I have bad news for them: you're going to lose. People don't want to go back to paying $100/month for a dozen streaming "channels" with one or two good shows and a the same crap the rest of the other "channels" have. We want an on-demand nexus. A single hub. Just the other day I had the urge to watch g…

What you’re proposing would lead to a terrible market structure. It would eliminate the most important differentiating factor: content. Subscribing to multiple streaming services might be somewhat less convenient, but it also allows competition based on producing and distributing quality content.

That would be true if each of these services had enough unique content to stand on it's own. Netflix does, Amazon does, and HBO does if you take their entire historical cannon into account. The rest of the services (Starz, Cinemax, Hulu, Showtime et al) have 1-2 great exclusives and a bunch of old so-so content.

I shouldn't have to pay for 5 additional instances of Netflix to get one instance of Netflix worth of quality content. You were late to market and lost, deal with it and list your content on Netflix or Amazon, band together to form a joint competitor, or service a niche market like what Crunchyroll did with anime.

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#32

Post by waffle_ss »

compcoffee wrote: post #11
empath75 wrote: post #5

If those company think it’s about content libraries they’re going to lose. All those companies think: we own a lot of media, we can just build a streaming media platform. And I think they’re way underestimating how hard it is to build the technology stack and processes that Netflix has. Netflix has an engineering team and a development and deployment process that has some production studios attached to it. Disney can…

> If those company think it’s about content libraries they’re going to lose. As long as your platform meets some bare minimum standard of reliability (and every service I use seems to be able to) then content is the only thing that matters. > And I think they’re way underestimating how hard it is to build the technology stack and processes that Netflix has. I think you are way overestimating the complexity. Sure, it'…

Nobody in here seems to appreciate the networking complexity that Netflix deals with - they are 37% of North America's internet traffic! At that point the network isn't an abstraction that "just works" like most web apps; you have to be aware of physical and business realities that dictate traffic (e.g. negotiate peering agreements, deploy caching/CDN boxes to network POPs, etc.).

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#33

Post by berbec »

iOShosts wrote: post #28
adenadel wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AT&T bought Time Warner. Comcast and Disney both want Fox?

Not that the Fox News outlet is the only thing that Fox does, but I for one would prefer cartoon substitutions for the human hosts on Fox News. At least it would equalize the current hosts with their true reality.

One can argue that some of the hosts on Fox already are Disney characters. Hannity/Malificant?

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#34

Post by paganel »

Rjevski wrote: post #23
kgwgk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney does realtime streaming already. What does Netflix have that they would have problems to “copy”? Edit: the question was obviously in the context of the parent comment talking about “the technology stack and processes“. Regarding the market share advantage, it’s debatable if each user is worth over $1000.

Marketshare? People are happy to pay a single Netflix subscription, and many people already have one. People would be less happy to shell out for yet another subscription, especially for a single kind of content (unless you watch Disney all day, it doesn't make sense to subscribe).

I'll add that they have very good and especially very diverse shows. "La Casa de papel" is killing it (at least here in Europe), and that's because Netflix doesn't care if their shows are spoken in English, Spanish or Swahili, they know that bringing diversity into the cinematic game it's what is badly needed right now.

I'd compare this to Hollywood in the late '60s - early '70s, when it needed the breeze of fresh air brought by La Nouvelle Vague or by Kurasawa's and Jean-Pierre Melville's movies. Right now Hollywood (and the media companies behind it) is stuck in making movies for late-teenager geeks (the comic-book-based endless series, the Star Wars soap opera etc), movies which have almost no interest for the general public.

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#35

Post by Mindwipe »

drngdds wrote: post #13
rhino369 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We want an on-demand nexus. A single hub. So you want one company to control all media? Seems like a poor plan longterm.

There could be many such hubs. They don't have to control the content, just buy the (non-exclusive) right to distribute it.

Non-exclusive distribution is a failed business model.

Exclusivity works. Most of the population don't torrent. Exclusivity drives subscriptions.

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#36

Post by Mindwipe »

Rjevski wrote: post #23
kgwgk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney does realtime streaming already. What does Netflix have that they would have problems to “copy”? Edit: the question was obviously in the context of the parent comment talking about “the technology stack and processes“. Regarding the market share advantage, it’s debatable if each user is worth over $1000.

Marketshare? People are happy to pay a single Netflix subscription, and many people already have one. People would be less happy to shell out for yet another subscription, especially for a single kind of content (unless you watch Disney all day, it doesn't make sense to subscribe).

> People would be less happy to shell out for yet another subscription, especially for a single kind of content (unless you watch Disney all day, it doesn't make sense to subscribe).

There are multiple market reports (not a public one that I can find) that show the vast majority of Netflix subscribers already do shell out for another subscription (and that's true internationally, including in non-Prime Amazon territories, so it's not about Amazon delivery).

Most people will very much happily shell out for multiple subscriptions.

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#37

Post by rhino369 »

drngdds wrote: post #13
rhino369 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We want an on-demand nexus. A single hub. So you want one company to control all media? Seems like a poor plan longterm.

There could be many such hubs. They don't have to control the content, just buy the (non-exclusive) right to distribute it.

So much content is already locked behind exclusive streaming rights. I don't see how this would happen without extensive regulation.

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#38

Post by adrianmonk »

reubenmorais wrote: post #17
bootlooped wrote: post #10

I think maybe the title could use some punctuation or reworking > Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner... Ok, yes, they bought Time Warner > Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner and Comcast... They bought Comcast too? > Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner and Comcast and Disney... And Disney!? > Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner and Comcast and Disney want Fox AT&T bought Time Warner and Comcast; Disney w…

"Want" disambiguates to plural subject, so it can only be "Comcast and Disney want Fox".

You're absolutely right, but that still leaves it a garden path sentence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence) and thus a poor title.

The measure of good writing isn't that it's possible to parse unambiguously with sufficient dedication. Good writing gets the idea across without placing any undue burden on the reader.

(And it's easily fixed by adding a second "why": "Netflix is why AT&T bought Time Warner and why Comcast and Disney want Fox".)

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#39

Post by rayiner »

Thriptic wrote: post #31
rayiner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you’re proposing would lead to a terrible market structure. It would eliminate the most important differentiating factor: content. Subscribing to multiple streaming services might be somewhat less convenient, but it also allows competition based on producing and distributing quality content.

That would be true if each of these services had enough unique content to stand on it's own. Netflix does, Amazon does, and HBO does if you take their entire historical cannon into account. The rest of the services (Starz, Cinemax, Hulu, Showtime et al) have 1-2 great exclusives and a bunch of old so-so content. I shouldn't have to pay for 5 additional instances of Netflix to get one instance of Netflix worth of qual…

If you don’t want to subscribe, then don’t. But these services are cheap compared to what they’re replacing. The average cable bill is over $100. These streaming services are the a la carte channels everyone was always saying they wanted in the bad old days when content was bundled together in cable packages.

Re: Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and Disney want Fox

#40

Post by rhino369 »

woolvalley wrote: post #9
rhino369 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We want an on-demand nexus. A single hub. So you want one company to control all media? Seems like a poor plan longterm.

There seems to be quite a few available for music. Using apple music, spotify, tidal or whatever else doesn't seem to have the exclusivity problems that TV equivalents have. I can probably count the number of exclusive artists to each music provider on my hand.

There are laws that set statutory royalty fees for music recordings, which strongly encourages non-exclusive licensing, even when those laws don't apply.
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