Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

marketwatch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 417 posts

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

#271

Post by zaroth »

pessimizer wrote: post #191
thebigspacefuck wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resell it for $100 and you paid $20 for a week of binge watching. Buy it used for $100 and resell it for $100 and you watched for free.

There's a antagonism towards resale amongst content producers that makes this difficult and the resale prices low.

Whatever the resale price is, if you buy and sell used then you shouldn’t care, right?

I think the problem is the likelihood of not being able to resell what you bought (because it was pirated in the first place) is high, the likelihood of getting bad feedback is high, the likelihood of getting your reseller account canceled is high, and the likelihood of the item taking forever to resell is high.... all adding up to “a small chance of recouping your cost with a reasonable level of frustration.”

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

#272

Post by rahulsom »

Nielsen's unable to offer value to streaming services. Their technology and service only work with traditional broadcast television. They would like to see streaming services to send them their data so they can sell it back to them. Streaming services don't benefit from such an agreement. Netflix has been in the streaming business for 10+ years, as has Hulu. For Nielsen to say they can tell these services how streaming customers behave is a bit too presumptuous. Keep in mind, some of these new customers have never subscribed to broadcast television. There's possibly even a generational gap in their behavior.

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

#273

Post by Consultant32452 »

addicted wrote: post #190
Alupis wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They got into content creation and they're now deep in debt despite their massive subscriber base. I've found that while Netflix has some decent original content - the overwhelming majority of it is garbage and totally uninteresting. Sometimes I feel some of the Netflix Originals where mothballed from normal venues, so Netflix picked it up, failing to realize why nobody else wanted to produce it in the first place.…

The best Netflix originals are the British shows they've rebranded as Netflix originals in the US. The actual Netflix created ones have largely missed the mark for me.

I enjoy the standup specials. I remember when Comedy Central used to have stand up comedy. But I also remember when MTV was mostly music.

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

#274

Post by alexashka »

Alupis wrote: post #229
b_tterc_p wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the overwhelming majority of it is garbage and totally uninteresting. This is true of pretty much all tv. Because most people want that.

If I'm going to search through a bunch of listings, and select a show that's part of a series, all just to have something on while eating a 20 minute meal, I feel like I need to have something good on that I'm committing too. On the other hand, if I turn on my cable box and Dog the Bounty Hunter happens to be on and halfway through an episode, I'll watch it until I'm done eating and be done with it. I don't actually…

A 'random offering' button or channels based on a theme that mimic traditional tv channels would be trivial to add to Netflix, and something they should seriously consider :)

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

#275

Post by Pfhreak »

leftyted wrote: post #270

I don't understand why Netflix doesn't open up the website to everyone, build out the search tools (they suck), and let people pay per episode, per season, or per movie. I bet they'd make more money. I also wonder if Netflix missed an opportunity by not thinking of their product as a streaming platform a couple years ago.

I suspect Netflix has, in fact, considered exactly this model and decided against it because:

a) It would make them less money b) They don't have rights agreements that would permit it

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

#276

Post by homerhomer »

It's a quality vs quantity issue. Netflix removed the ratings from their hosted content and I feel that I've TRIED to watch to many shows that were not worth my time. Eveytime I go to Netflix I can't find anything that seems good. I know there's good show and they claim so many thousands of shows but why I'am I seeing the same 100 shows everywhere I turn?

Ugh

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

#277

Post by crystalmeph »

cyborgx7 wrote: post #163
noelsusman wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

>> 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.

Why would it be a case for publicly funded infrastructure? We’re talking about entertainment, not highways or clean water.

As a consumer, yes, I would prefer an option to pay only for the shows I want to watch, but I don’t see why your tax dollars should fund my preferred method of entertainment.

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

#278

Post by jillesvangurp »

They raised their prices and shut down several popular series early. I cancelled my subscription last week because I was finding it hard to find something good to watch that I hadn't seen yet. I'm now catching up on a few things on Amazon Prime like the Expanse season 3, American Gods, Good Omens and a few other things. I will probably switch back in a few months when Netflix has added a few things that I might want to see. They do have a few series that they haven't killed yet that I would want to see. Apparently, they keep your profile and settings for 10 months. This suggests that I'm not the only one shopping around.

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

#279

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #186
atombender wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

> Why can't video be like music? Music is still fighting being “like music”. > Spotify and Apple Music aggregate pretty much all the music in the world now. There have been a number of recent media reports about how exclusives, which never were absent from streaming music, are playing a bigger role now. > You don't have to sign up Warner and Sony and a thousand other labels to play music. Well, yeah, we haven't gotte…

[deleted]

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

#280

Post by nickv »

atombender wrote: post #168
noelsusman wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

Because Music isn't TV or film. The vast majority of revenue for most artists come from live performances.

It's not like the cast of Stranger Things can go and tour the world and perform a live Stranger Things inside stadiums. It doesn't work that way.

Additionally, Spotify, especially, has done wonders for obscure discoverablity with Discover Weekly which incentivize smaller bands to support it (because again they make their money from tours). Discoverablity is much easier tho when it requires a 4 minutes time commitment while commuting with headphones as opposed to a multi hour commitment of film or TV.

They're not at all even remotely the same beast.

Post reply on HN