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

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

#381

Post by atombender »

gambiting wrote: post #370
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? Because with music I literally don't care what I'm listening to. If famous artists left Spotify I couldn't care any less - I just want a playlist with "music" and that's good enough for me. With video, I don't want random TV shows - I want specific ones that interest me, and either they are available on Netflix or they aren't, the fact that there is 10k other shows does nothing to jus…

Most people care about what music they listen to; Spotify's main mode of function isn't "random" like live TV. Moreover, while you might consider music to be a "random" experience by design, streaming movies/TV doesn't have to be. I was talking about the licensing model, not the consumption model.

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

#382

Post by atombender »

ctack wrote: post #338
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…

The way I understand it, the aggregators don’t pay at all well. Bands and producers make their money playing gigs these days and try to make it big where there is mega money in everything including the aggregator exclusives. Generally the aggregators pay badly, but do mean exposure. TV shows can’t work like that, they have much higher overhead and actually need to be paid.

And yet you can get a wealth of TVs and movies from various streaming services today at around $10/mo each.

If studios all pooled their IP in a single marketplace under a compulsory, fair licensing scheme, the calculation would be about the same, because currently most streaming services don't overlap much (though in some cases you can find movies on both iTunes and Google Play, for example).

What would change is that the current aggregators' revenue would shrink and their ability to have exclusive content would disappear. A company like Netflix would become just another content provider competing for views in a single marketplace.

Perhaps a better analogy is the movie theater business. Movie theaters generally show movies from all rights holders (though I'm sure studios also compete for the best screens for tentpole launches). Theaters share revenue with studios. In principle, anyone can go to any theater to see a movie of their choice, and theaters can show the movies they want as long as they license them. It's not on-demand, but that's pretty irrelevant. Also, I can start a movie theater and start showing movies, as long as I abide by the licensing rules.

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

#384

Post by alecco »

autokad wrote: post #313
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 think streaming is incredibly worth it. if you watch anything with advertisements, that's typically 1/3 of your time watching commercials, thus if you make 50 an hour, you pay for your streaming service in just 1 hour. 10 hours if you make a 10th that, which its still paid for in a week for most people. its a fair argument that I spent about a year of my childhood watching commercials. thats 3240$ in netflix subscr…

> Netflix has also been extremely liberal politically, and that's a recipe to divide your customer base by 2, something with their extreme debt loads is problematic.

I'd say it divides by more than half. I don't want any politics with my entertainment as many other people do. Even if the politics are aligned to my own. It becomes annoying as "preaching to the choir".

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

#385

Post by dreamcompiler »

ljm wrote: post #261
addicted wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And a lot of 'Netflix originals' over in the EU are essentially localised variations of a theme. The theme is usually the end of the world, zombies, or the dead coming back to life. Or some horrible phenomena at the edge of a forest, and the once peaceful town is under attack from the supernatural. What makes it worse is that Netflix now dubs foreign content by default to make it all look English. And they do their b…

You can still watch it in the original language with subtitles. It's just a setting.

But yeah, why is everything about "horror forests" nowadays? It's been done to death.

Maybe because so many people nowadays have never seen a tree?

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

#386

Post by dreamcompiler »

jrnichols wrote: post #303
ljm wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a lot of 'Netflix originals' over in the EU are essentially localised variations of a theme. The theme is usually the end of the world, zombies, or the dead coming back to life. Or some horrible phenomena at the edge of a forest, and the once peaceful town is under attack from the supernatural. What makes it worse is that Netflix now dubs foreign content by default to make it all look English. And they do their b…

what's frustrated me about Netflix originals is the same thing that drove me away from a lot of traditional TV - some awesome shows being cancelled after 2-3 seasons. I had hoped that Netflix would at least give their own shows a good story arc, but nope. they're doing the same thing Fox/CBS/NBC do. i still much prefer shows without commercials, though.

Somebody wrote about this during the last week (can't remember where): Netflix purposely only produces two seasons of shows, because that's the right amount to convert new subscribers without alienating old ones enough to quit.

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

#387

Post by dreamcompiler »

Beldin wrote: post #341
Consultant32452 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Remark that that past evolution (of niche formats) does not bode well for the future of streaming video. Case in point: I expect ads to arrive (within a decade) to streaming videos, much like they did for cable. (Cable's main advantage in the early days was the lack of ads - or so I'm led to believe)

True. In the early days of cable networks there were no ads. But slowly they came back when they realized people would tolerate them.

Now cable seems like mostly ads with a little bit of ghost hunting sprinkled in.

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

#388

Post by dreamcompiler »

b_tterc_p wrote: post #209
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 overwhelming majority of it is garbage and totally uninteresting. This is true of pretty much all tv. Because most people want that.

Sturgeon's law applies.

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

#389

Post by eutropia »

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…

I hate the autotrailers. Please let me disable them. I used to really enjoy taking my time exploring the catalog, even if I saw many choices I wasn't in the mood for at that moment, I would go ' oh cool I didn't know they had that' and would sometimes go looking for them later, but now I avoid browsing at all costs because I feel like one of Skinner's rats being shocked into taking action, which is an especially poignant feeling whenever see black mirror in the list and think of 'million merits'.

Please make it optional. Please.

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

#390

Post by sfink »

krisroadruck wrote: post #85

Is it that people don't know what they want to watch? Or is it that what they want to watch isn't in the netflix catalog. 9/10 times I have a specific movie or show in mind that I want to watch and I search for it on netflix it tells me it is only available to be shipped via DVD or bluray and its not available in their online catalog. Maybe if they spent less money on trying to develop their own content and more mone…

I suspect that isn't netflix's decision to make. Everyone is trying to get into the streaming market these days, and the only way to capture subscribers is to offer up content that other services don't have, which means they're willing to burn huge piles of investor money to lock up exclusive rights.

Yes, it defeats the whole point of streaming subscriptions. Yes, it'll drive a large segment of the subscriber base back to piracy. But it's a classic prisoner's dilemma.

As long as I'm speculating about shit i know nothing about, I'll follow up by predicting that the next wave - after things get bad enough - is cross-licensing deals between the bigger surviving players. That'll improve the value proposition to subscribers (great for us!) and also raise barriers to entry, so next will be the price gouging. Oh, and somewhere in there will be the contracts that prevent content creators/distributors from licensing new stuff to anyone else (unless they are one of the surviving streaming services.)

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