Slight tangent: Does anyone find it weird that no matter what you watch, HBO puts a 30 second preview for something else before your show. Fix that - and a skip intro button. Otherwise, keep it as is.
AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages
61–70 of 112 posts
Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're in a golden age of television in part because everyone is producing high-quality shows. For every Deadwood, there's a Justified; True Detective, a Mindhunter. HBO has never been the best place for comedy series and, good as Crashing was, it remains an also-ran there as well. HBO's quality has been pretty far off its peak for awhile. GoT is a tentpole show with a rabid audience but it's not especially good (it's…
> GoT is a tentpole show with a rabid audience but it's not especially good (it's no The Wire). Deadwood and the Sopranos are from a different era of TV. Veep is great, but True Detective, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, Enlightened, and The Newsroom would all be in the middle of the pack at Netflix. As The Dude once said "Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man" Objectively speaking, there isn't a single Netf…
That's not a great metric. Here's a much better one: Metacritic will give you an aggregate score for every TV show made during a year, and also does a year-end Pazz-and-Jopp-style roundup of critic top 10 lists; here's 2018's:
https://www.metacritic.com/feature/critics-pick-the-top-10-b...
(You can edit the URL to go back to 2015).
The actual critic roundups tell as much a story of FX's dominance of prestige TV as HBO's. And if you want a popular opinion instead, the ratings have a much bleaker story about HBO.
While I think Netflix does just fine as an original producer lined up against HBO, it's not a central part of my argument that they're better than HBO. My core argument is that HBO doesn't host enough prestige series for it to command a premium over all the other series available across other platforms.
Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're in a golden age of television in part because everyone is producing high-quality shows. For every Deadwood, there's a Justified; True Detective, a Mindhunter. HBO has never been the best place for comedy series and, good as Crashing was, it remains an also-ran there as well. HBO's quality has been pretty far off its peak for awhile. GoT is a tentpole show with a rabid audience but it's not especially good (it's…
> HBO has never been the best place for comedy series Hey now! The Larry Sanders Show begs to differ. ... also Mr. Show.
This is the same HBO that let Mr. Show die, refused to pick up Mr. Show 2.0 when Bob and Dave pitched it, and let them wind up at (checks notes) Netflix?
Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> True Detective, a Mindhunter. "Mindhunter" was great but it's no "True Detective" IMO.
Mindhunter was basically the Netflix algorithms saying "True Detective is popular, let's do that!"
No, it was David Fincher wanting to do a crime series. Netflix orders a lot of crappy algorithm based content but a lot of their content is created through purchasing other people's ideas/concepts.
Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages
#65My problem with this is as follows: HBO has led the way in making some of the highest quality television of the last 20 years. Competition has gotten stiffer, but I still view HBO as the premier place for TV (Sopranos, The Wire, Sex and the City, Curb, Veep, Leftovers, True Detective, Deadwood... and of course GoT, the list goes on and on). I would argue many of our favorite broadcast/cable shows would simply not exi…
I’d add Tom Fontana’s “Oz” [1] to the list, to this day I keep track of its excellent actors by saying “I’ve seen this guy on Oz before” whenever I see a former Oz actor in a movie or a newer series.
Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
> GoT is a tentpole show with a rabid audience but it's not especially good (it's no The Wire). Deadwood and the Sopranos are from a different era of TV. Veep is great, but True Detective, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, Enlightened, and The Newsroom would all be in the middle of the pack at Netflix. As The Dude once said "Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man" Objectively speaking, there isn't a single Netf…
How many of those HBO titles are more than 5 years old? Because, comparing 45 years of programming to 5 is completely missing the point. GoT was low hanging fruit with great source material. Recently HBO’s actual original content has been lacking. Their library is enough to get people to sign up and binge watch old content, but they need to pay for a lot of 3rd party content and or high volume production like Netflix…
> How many of those HBO titles are more than 5 years old? Because, comparing 45 years of programming to 5 is completely missing the point.
No, having 45 years of exclusive back catalog is a real and concrete competitive advantage.
> GoT was low hanging fruit with great source material.
I'm not sure I agree; I mean, I get why it seems like they in retrospect, but the history of genre fiction jumping from print to film (whether big screen or small) is littered with dozens of corpses of failures of conversions of “great source material” for every even modest success.
> Their library is enough to get people to sign up and binge watch old content, but they need to pay for a lot of 3rd party content and or high volume production like Netflix to keep people paying 15$ a month.
I pay for both HBO Now and Netflix, and I pay of HBO Now largely because it has fairly consistent if low volume high quality new original exclusive content, unlike Netflix's high-volume firehose of stuff I have no interest in that occasionally produces something of value, which even with their supposedly personalized recommendations is still hard to find and identify among the sea of mediocrity.
> In the end streaming needs new content to keep people paying every month.
So did premium TV. HBO is more focussed on providing very high quality to a more focussed audience while Netflix is running a scattershot content approach; the latter probably has less value per customer but can perhaps support a larger customer base; or it's a consciously unsustainable model that only lasts until they figure out what their target audience really is.
EDIT: however, AT&T seems to want to try something closer to the Netflix strategy with HBO, which I think is likely to be a disaster, but possibly one that gets recognized in time to turn around.
Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> GoT is a tentpole show with a rabid audience but it's not especially good (it's no The Wire). Deadwood and the Sopranos are from a different era of TV. Veep is great, but True Detective, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, Enlightened, and The Newsroom would all be in the middle of the pack at Netflix. As The Dude once said "Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man" Objectively speaking, there isn't a single Netf…
How many of those HBO titles are more than 5 years old? Because, comparing 45 years of programming to 5 is completely missing the point. GoT was low hanging fruit with great source material. Recently HBO’s actual original content has been lacking. Their library is enough to get people to sign up and binge watch old content, but they need to pay for a lot of 3rd party content and or high volume production like Netflix…
> HBO titles are more than 5 years old?
5 years since their first season or since they discontinued content? If the former, why does that matter? 4 of those 7 are still all actively creating content/seasons...
> GoT was low hanging fruit with great source material. Recently HBO’s actual original content has been lacking.
So because GoT came from a book, it's not "truly original"? The Wire is arguably sourced from Simon's "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets" and several books/dissertations on crime in inner cities. Not sure what your real point is there....regardless of whether it's "truly original" (whatever that means) doesn't matter as long as people show up to pay.
> In the end streaming needs new content to keep people paying every month.
Again, 4 of those 7 shows have new content. You don't necessarily need a variety of content to do so. In fact, I would argue Netflix dilutes it's original content by having too much of it. Paradox of choice and all...
I think the scarier thing is HBO has no clear "anchor" going forward. Sopranos, The Wire, and GoT have all been that, but GoT is on its way out.
Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages
#68If AT&T wants to drag anything out of the dark ages, I wish they would take a look at the DVRs they give to their customers. They are so slow and their user interface is atrocious. When our contract is up, we are going to try YouTube TV and Hulu to see if either of those is better.
The solution is DirecTV Now and, while far from perfect, is under very active development.
Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I noticed something similar. HBO seems to have a "premium" brand mostly because it led the pack with their content before streaming, but that was a while ago. Given that I'm 41 years old, I remember the early shows that set HBO apart. But I'm not sure this holds for the 20 year olds and younger right now. It sure seems like HBO executives think they're a cut above, though: https://static1.businessinsider.com/att-ceo-…
The young people like Westworld. They may have duds, but their good exclusives are just that, good and exclusive. So long as they have one above and beyond show every time they will be fine.
As a young person who likes Westworld, this is a great strategy for like 1 month a year. What are they going to do for the 15-ish months of downtime they have between seasons?
Right now they have a limited selection of high quality shows, just enough to keep people hooked for the next great one. If they switch to just pumping out lower-quality, higher-quantity stuff, I suspect people will just cancel -- everyone already has Netflix for that.
HBO seems to think it's the next "Netflix", but if they follow the strategy they've described so far, I suspect they'll be the next "CBS All Access".
Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages
#70I like HBO just as it is and can't fathom why anyone would claim it is in the dark ages. "Decisions are made slowly and by consensus; longtime employees guard the network’s lucrative, award-winning status quo." -- this is said like it is a bad thing. There is nothing wrong with not being "disruptive" and being slow and steady to stay excellent. Many businesses and consumers would be better off if there were less pres…
Not having 4k streaming is a big one.