Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged • Hacker News Board

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#161

Post by ryanthemadone » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

tedsanders wrote: post #122

There's something I don't understand, but I'd like to. Most of the criticisms of Netflix I see fall into two buckets: One common criticism is that Netflix is worse than regular TV, because having to actively choose a Netflix show is more stressful than regular TV, where you can just turn it on, sit back, and relax. The second common criticism I read is that Netflix is annoying, because as soon as you turn it on, it s…

Trying to find something to watch on Netflix is definitely a chore, having stuff autoplay isn't facilitating that search - the feature often 'gets in the way' painfully and makes me mute my TV.

I don't have a regular TV service anymore, but I suspect it's quite easy to flip it on, jump to the guide (which probably isn't blaring loud stuff at you) and scan the currently airing shows for something you're familiar with and you like.

So no contradiction as far as I can tell.

My Netflix experience is one where I often have 2-3 shows that I'm currently watching. I want those shows front and center when I log in, perhaps with recommendations for similar shows alongside. It would be even cooler if two shows I was watching had recommendations that crossed over both of them. I should also be able to "close" a series I've started watching, but decided I don't want to watch anymore.

When I don't have active shows that I'm watching I kind of want Netflix to help me find stuff based on my viewing history, right now I have IMDb and other apps open on my phone so that I can check community scores and reviews of content I don't know about, whatever dumb business strategy decision prohibited that data being in the Netflix app should be rescinded immediately. Heck I should be able to pull up all sci-fi, filter for stuff I haven't seen, filter for TV series, movie or whatever, order by rotten tomatoes score and then filter for stuff that isn't space based or something. You get the gist, there's so much Netflix could be doing to enable discoverability.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#162

Post by brighter2morrow » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 10:45 PM UTC

Vomzor wrote: post #139

colemickens wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious to understand what you're describing. Can you give an example of a Netflix show, the season and political trope, and how it detracted from the show's quality? And I'm definitely curious what you're imagining as you write out "repulsive".

Netflix has gone 'woke' in a lot of their (new) shows. A lot of shows feel very activist now. Entertainment shouldn't be stuffed with identity politics and other progressive nonsense which only caters to a small minority.[1] Examples: The new show 'Mr Iglesias' where the main character is a history teacher. In one of the first scenes the history of the US is summed up as 'oppression and slavery'. Many jokes about whi…

>Examples: The new show 'Mr Iglesias' where the main character is a history teacher. In one of the first scenes the history of the US is summed up as 'oppression and slavery'. Many jokes about white people that would be considered racist had they been about any other race. And a whole episode about how the word latino is offensive and it should be changed to latinx.

>In the children sitcom 'No good Nick' a female chef ignores feedback from her employee by accusing him of 'mansplaining'. The daughter accuses the white dad of 'cultural approriation' when he suggests taco Tuesday for the restaurant. And that was only the first minutes of one episode.

These are great examples why I don't watch Netflix. Netflix especially is just TV by the political left and for the political left.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#163

Post by cyborgx7 » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 10:47 PM UTC

noelsusman wrote: post #147

archey1 wrote: post #75

Netflix is just getting more expensive and less interesting to me. With all of the content I like being taken off to be hosted on network exclusive streaming platforms that I refuse to pay for - I'll probably eventually just cancel Netflix as well going back to the tried and true method of just buying bluray box-sets of the content I want to watch. Or piracy. I think the critical mistake that all these megacorps are…

Of course people would rather pay $10 a month to access everything, but that's just not sustainable. Look at Netflix's own financials. They got into content creation and they're now deep in debt despite their massive subscriber base. I also don't get why everyone is clamoring for one company to control all video entertainment distribution. Isn't that what we hated about cable? Didn't we beg for the ability to pick an…

> I also don't get why everyone is clamoring for one company to control all video entertainment distribution.

Sounds like a perfect case for publicly funded infrastructure to me.

> Now we finally have that

We don't. We still have the one or two things we want packaged in with a ton of stuff we don't.

It's actually worse. Each package (subscription platform) has one or two things we want distributed accross all of them, which a bunch of stuff we don't want packaged in.

Not seeing how this is a good system.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#164

Post by ianai » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 10:48 PM UTC

afiori wrote: post #132

thatguy0900 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the only thing that would work that way would be product placement. The problem would be one person cutting out ads and reuploading it, there'd be no reason to watch the original

except if you publish it properly yourself, a company that would embrace torrents as distribution method and took care of putting it on the relevant site would effectively solve the trust problem that is inherent in choosing a torrent between many.

Why not just edit the video codecs to support calling out to advertisements? Maybe offer people the option to watch the ads at start, end, or usual positioning, too. There would be abuse, but if it were done correctly the abuse wouldn’t be more than current.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#165

Post by stefan_ » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 10:49 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #63

hyencomper wrote: post #7

I think Netflix has lost touch with their consumer base, with most changes such as removal of the rating system being universally criticized. I cancelled my subscription recently as I realized that while Netflix has a lot of shows, there is a dearth of quality content and the search function is not useful. With shows like Friends and Office leaving, there is not much to draw people who like leaving it on in the backg…

I hate the auto-playing trailers too, but in the spirit of the kind of analysis HN is actually good at: auto-playing trailers seems like an extraordinarily straightforward feature to collect and analyze metrics on, and Netflix does not strike me as the kind of company that is utterly ambivalent about metrics, so "hating the auto-playing trailers" might not be the strong indication of loss-of-touch that it seems; like…

That's exactly the problem? Auto-playing trailers are a trivially obvious way to explode your minutes played metrics into the sky. Also utterly meaningless unless you have hooked into the camera to show the users eyes focusing on that content, instead of, as is overwhelmingly likely, playing into the void.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#166

Post by cyborgx7 » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 10:50 PM UTC

praxulus wrote: post #151

TallGuyShort wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because the corporations aren't really interested in providing a better service to the viewer, they're interested in providing a better service to their advertisers. That said, the idea of embedding the advertising freely is an interesting one, and I wonder if it's been seriously considered by the networks. Probably harder to convince the cheque-writers of the value they're getting, though.

Netflix and HBO don't have advertisers (well, except as providers, but not as customers).

That is just wrong. The amount of product placement in Netflix original content is staggering.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#167

Post by ilikepi » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 10:53 PM UTC

noelsusman wrote: post #147

archey1 wrote: post #75

Netflix is just getting more expensive and less interesting to me. With all of the content I like being taken off to be hosted on network exclusive streaming platforms that I refuse to pay for - I'll probably eventually just cancel Netflix as well going back to the tried and true method of just buying bluray box-sets of the content I want to watch. Or piracy. I think the critical mistake that all these megacorps are…

Of course people would rather pay $10 a month to access everything, but that's just not sustainable. Look at Netflix's own financials. They got into content creation and they're now deep in debt despite their massive subscriber base. I also don't get why everyone is clamoring for one company to control all video entertainment distribution. Isn't that what we hated about cable? Didn't we beg for the ability to pick an…

> I also don't get why everyone is clamoring for one company to control all video entertainment distribution. Isn't that what we hated about cable? Didn't we beg for the ability to pick and choose what we actually want to pay for? Now we finally have that and people instantly want to go back? Why?

Well, that's only half of it. The other half is that people became fed up with their bills, not realizing that everyone has a unique subset of channels they liked, and paying for the full bundle was a way to subsidize all the other channels.

Sadly it's rather difficult to balance these two issues.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#168

Post by atombender » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 10:54 PM UTC

noelsusman wrote: post #147

archey1 wrote: post #75

Netflix is just getting more expensive and less interesting to me. With all of the content I like being taken off to be hosted on network exclusive streaming platforms that I refuse to pay for - I'll probably eventually just cancel Netflix as well going back to the tried and true method of just buying bluray box-sets of the content I want to watch. Or piracy. I think the critical mistake that all these megacorps are…

Of course people would rather pay $10 a month to access everything, but that's just not sustainable. Look at Netflix's own financials. They got into content creation and they're now deep in debt despite their massive subscriber base. I also don't get why everyone is clamoring for one company to control all video entertainment distribution. Isn't that what we hated about cable? Didn't we beg for the ability to pick an…

People aren't asking for a single distribution channel in the sense of a single monolithic company owning all the IP. They do want (1) convenient apps that aggregate, such as Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video, and (2) a way to get all the content without having to pay lots of individual companies (I'm subscribing to around 5 streaming services myself).

Why can't video be like music? Spotify and Apple Music aggregate pretty much all the music in the world now. You don't have to sign up Warner and Sony and a thousand other labels to play music. There are stragglers, of course, but they're getting fewer. If this model works for Spotify et al, why can't it work for movies and TV?

Moreover, all the music is licensed through a single IP rights licensing system. It's what allows music to be played on the radio and so on. I know very little about how it works technically, but it seems to work just fine.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#169

Post by mplanchard » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 10:54 PM UTC

tedsanders wrote: post #122

There's something I don't understand, but I'd like to. Most of the criticisms of Netflix I see fall into two buckets: One common criticism is that Netflix is worse than regular TV, because having to actively choose a Netflix show is more stressful than regular TV, where you can just turn it on, sit back, and relax. The second common criticism I read is that Netflix is annoying, because as soon as you turn it on, it s…

That’s an interesting comparison that I hadn’t thought of.

To me, the difference is in the degree to which the browsing experience is distracting and aggravating. Neither myself nor, I think, most people are going to “turn it on, sit back, and relax” with broadcast TV. Instead, you generally go to the menu and scroll around looking for something to watch. I will often mute the TV while doing this, but even if you don’t, it generally doesn’t start playing video and audio from a channel as soon as you hover over it. Instead it continues playing the channel you’re currently on until you’ve chosen to switch. That is a fine browsing experience.

I think the other difference is that if you’re flipping channels, you’re tuning into what the channel is actually playing, not an endlessly repeating ad for the channel. It’s getting you to the experience you care about as quickly as possible.

Netflix, on the other hand, the minute you stop scrolling, starts loading a preview. This makes the UI less responsive if you want to start scrolling again, which you often do, but oops, you let it sit on a title for just a millisecond too long. If you stick around, you immediately start in on the preview, at full volume. This combination makes the browsing experience super distracting and frustrating. Sometimes I want to discuss with my wife whether to watch a show, but I can’t, because there’s a full volume trailer playing. So I have to mute the TV. It’s so frustrating to not be able to go into a “thinking” state when the experience of browsing is fundamentally a thoughtful one. And 99% of the time if I stop for a second on something, I don’t want to watch a preview. I want to read the description, maybe, and then move on.

Anyway, I appreciate that interesting analogy you gave, and I could see how the two things seem similar. I don’t think they are, but even if they were, most of us preferred Netflix because it was not like broadcast TV!

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#170

Post by indziektor » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 10:54 PM UTC

tedsanders wrote: post #122

There's something I don't understand, but I'd like to. Most of the criticisms of Netflix I see fall into two buckets: One common criticism is that Netflix is worse than regular TV, because having to actively choose a Netflix show is more stressful than regular TV, where you can just turn it on, sit back, and relax. The second common criticism I read is that Netflix is annoying, because as soon as you turn it on, it s…

It's a difference in expectations for me. When I was browsing the Netflix catalogue, I wanted to be in control and find something myself that's interesting. When some video starts auto-playing, then it feels like some kind of obnoxious banner ad for some show I may or may not even remotely care about, and it's distracting me from my task.

Then again, I'm not currently a customer, but that's my recollection of it. For regular TV, I couldn't especially say, since I mostly only ever get a chance to watch it in hotels nowadays, but I don't ever recall something distracting you from channel surfing or using the guide channel and breaking you out of your zone.

As far as regular TV being more relaxing, I suppose there's maybe something meditative about going through all the channels, but I wouldn't say it was a better experience. It's just easier to settle with something mediocre when you're sure you've seen all your choices (assuming no commercials were playing at the time).