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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

#241

Post by r00fus »

sib wrote: post #85
Rjevski wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It's highly likely (see what happened with Disney removing content from Netflix) that, as consolidation continues, other major studios will also remove their content from Netflix. Once that happens, Netflix may find it harder to keep people happy to pay their monthly subscription (which is why Ted Sarandos recently stated that 85% of Netflix content spending is going to be on originals https://variety.com/2018/digita…

Good riddance. I don't like most of the trash that's out there.

Disney and Netflix are going to go head to head because, anecdotally speaking, my kids and all their friends watch these two sources primarily (some overlap ie, Moana on Netflix will likely vanish once Disney's streaming solution goes mainstream).

The key here is that Netflix is essentially free due to it's low overall cost, and parents like the non-kid content so the kid content being free (and no upsell) is a big deal - and unlike YT kids, is relatively trustworthy.

Disney will have to compete to either make a generally good Netflix replacement, or somehow dovetail into that model as a "high cost/high value" seperate subscription and edge out all other such services.

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

#242

Post by StillBored »

scarface74 wrote: post #50
skinnymuch wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lionsgate Starz isn’t a big company with a lot of products so paying extra to watch things for that channel will be a challenge no matter what. On the other hand, HBO seems to be doing well enough with their not so cheap stand alone offering. Disney with Fox’s media would be a pretty big streaming provider and many people would likely get onto it. Good chance of it becoming a standard streaming service. So I don’t se…

Even without Fox, Disney has the best chance of success even if it e dis up having a smaller library. Small kids will watch the same thing over and over again. If you have kids, being able to pay $10-$15 a month for all Disney content is a great deal.

Do you think its going to be "all" content or just the couple hundred titles they think you should watch this month?

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

#244

Post by scarface74 »

StillBored wrote: post #242
scarface74 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even without Fox, Disney has the best chance of success even if it e dis up having a smaller library. Small kids will watch the same thing over and over again. If you have kids, being able to pay $10-$15 a month for all Disney content is a great deal.

Do you think its going to be "all" content or just the couple hundred titles they think you should watch this month?

For kids, that would probably be enough....

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

#245

Post by mikeash »

AnAfrican wrote: post #206
mikeash wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music seems to have no trouble competing on quality content despite the nearly identical catalogs of the various streaming services. You just allocate subscription money based on plays (or whatever other metric approximates “how much the paying customers like this”) and it works fine.

Music production costs are much much lower than TV/Movies. The argument is that differentiation (and then exclusive content) is the reason why content distributors are willing to take risks.

TV production has typically been tied to consumer channels, but movies certainly haven't. Back in the day, we'd go to the video store and find tapes (and later DVDs) from all the major studies. Today, you'll find them all on places like the iTunes store. Throughout that time, theaters have carried movies from many different studios. It seems to work fine, and I don't see why subscription services would be different. (Netflix did a DVD subscription service for years, still does, with a broad catalog.)

Content distributors don't need to take risks. Theaters do a bit, because screens are limited. Stores do a tiny bit, because shelf space is limited. Online services don't have to at all. The producers take the big risks, but I don't see why that should imply that streaming services have to involve exclusivity agreements.

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

#246

Post by chiefalchemist »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #15
chiefalchemist wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But Devil's Advocate here... Aside from stack, whatelse does Netflix have going for it? Pre-internet Blockbuster had an overpowering / dominate "stack" and that was their downfall. If VR is the next progression in home entertainment, who is best poised for that? Who has the tech + creativity DNA?

> Pre-internet Blockbuster had an overpowering / dominate "stack" and that was their downfall. That is because the internet replaced them. Streaming is a direct replacement for video rentals. It's the exact same movie but you don't have to drive to the video store to get it. The industry itself doesn't go away. There isn't any apparent new distribution method that will do to the internet what the internet did to bric…

> "VR is a completely different industry, more related to video games than..."

I see it differently. Entertainment is entertainment. In addition there is a finite amount of disposable income and disposable time.

For example, the myth is that the internet was what killed the music industry. Sure, maybe it was the death blow, but what brought music to its knees was video games. It changed the habits of plenty of kids. The only reason it didn't show was due to CD sales. Not only where ppl paying $15 for a single (since CD singles were almost nonexistent), but they were also rebuying music they already own in other formats. The music industry was a zombie propped up on inflated revenue.

As entertainment goes, Netflix is not in the next market.

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

#247

Post by sean2 »

macspoofing wrote: post #147
SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Age of piracy is going to end as well. I don't know how to break this to you but as long as there are more than one country there's going to be one that will not hunt down the privateers of the other. >You are dreaming if you think media and production companies are going to leave $90/mo on the table. You will see prices rise. Then so do my sails >Talk about entitled! Not really, I'm willing to pay you something for…

>I don't know how to break this to you but as long as there are more than one country there's going to be one that will not hunt down the privateers of the other. Ok. Piracy will be made harder and harder, to the point where it will be inaccessible to mainstream. This also means that the tech savvy pirates will be more exposed. >If studios weren't greedy and produced objectively garbage content I would buy a product…

I'm not the author of GP, but I'm really feeling his vibe.

> You don't have an inalienable right to watch movies

If you include news and documentaries, I kinda do. Though not quite as righteous, I get a little indignant that some company gets to dictate how much I'll have to pay to remain informed of our shared (though purely-entertainment) culture.

> universal judge of movie quality

The word "objectively" here is used like "literally", a in a meaningless sentence enhancer.

> you aren't entitled to dictate how you want the business of media to operate

I think I should be, it's my money I'm giving them after all, I'd like to have a vote in the content, how I access it, and even how much it's worth.

>(i.e. you get to pick how much or how little you pay)

Demand and supply: if you want to charge more than I want to see your service I guess I can unsubscribe; I wish we could barter about it. However, if I have to pay $39.99/month for who knows how long to watch one documentary, which I know was dirt cheap to make, I'm going to feel so morally justified while I pirate it that I will indeed think I'm the 'good guy'.

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

#248

Post by Retra »

zaphirplane wrote: post #202
Retra wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I down-voted them for stating the obvious and adding nothing of value to the discussion. Either way, it doesn't take an 'entitlement mentality' to prefer paying less for something. That's just good sense. And lots of people do pay for entertainment with the expectation that they can share it with people. Humanity has spent its entire history freely sharing things that grab our social fancy and percolate through our c…

I don’t think people are not replying to your comment because it makes a convincing argument. I suppose if you refuse to lend your car out for a $ it’s ok for someone to take it. Oh it’s a digital copy, so it’s ok for people to copy your work and give it away.

You're over-simplifying the problem, which is that digital distribution naturally promotes decentralization of distribution. Media and information products suffer due to that, but most media and information-content producers are already piggybacking on human social behaviors to produce value in the first place.

If you produce digital music, for instance, it has almost no value if nobody shares it. The decentralization of distribution is exactly the mechanisms one uses to make money off of these things. Your hope is that things go "viral" and that they are shared so prolifically that you'll be able to extract value out of your importance to the network overall, not due to some analogous 'artificial' manufacturing bottleneck like you would with concrete goods.

The argument that it is ok to consume media for free hinges on the fact that it is both efficient and natural human behavior, and that it doesn't undermine the whole-network of value. If the latest Avenger movie makes $1Bn in one week, then it's pretty clear that plenty of value is being extracted from the network, regardless of how many people have not paid to see it. People have no moral obligation to allow a content producer to monopolize all distribution, especially when the rational basis for such level of profit is simply not there. And you can't have it both ways anyway: you can't expect to have "viral" information that people also have to pay to exchange. (Or rather, you can't expect them to be Ok with that.)

The appropriate analogy for that situation would be more like Toyota trying to make it illegal to sell cars that they manufacture without their consent. It would destroy the second-hand market and be highly inefficient for people. If my sister streams her DVDs over the internet to me, all we're doing there is avoiding the coordination costs and being economically efficient. In either case, I pay for my internet access, so I would, in fact, be paying for media that I torrent or share online.

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

#249

Post by makecheck »

wvenable wrote: post #188
makecheck wrote: post #61

Companies focus on buying content while ignoring the quality of the broadcast experience. I am tired of competitors that skimp on this. Netflix doesn’t shove ads in your face, works on every platform and almost never has mysterious transmission failures. And now they have excellent content too. They have figured out so much more than some of the last-century providers.

Amazon prime shows ads for other prime shows occasionally and it just pisses me off. I'm seeing less of them, so maybe they got the message. Prime is also very much a superficial copy of the Netflix interface.

Pre-ads on services also don’t play well at all with failures. Even a short crappy promo for 15 seconds gets old if it keeps replaying the crappy promo every time my actual show fails to play. So the experience goes: $ad, $error, $same_ad, $same_error, and before you know it you’re muttering about how much you’re over-paying.

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

#250

Post by EADGBE »

bookbinder wrote: post #150
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…

People don't want to pay $100 a month for cable TV either, but they did it anyway (for decades) and continue to do so. Now we're being asked to buy a bunch of streaming services and we'll bitch and moan, but ultimately we'll pay because every major platform will have at least one show that justifies their existence. I associate CBS with bland procedural crime dramas and awful three-camera sitcoms. CBS All Access woul…

> I associate CBS with bland procedural crime dramas and awful three-camera sitcoms.

The Good Fight is really good, now I'm going back to watch the predecessor.

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