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Disney: Bob Iger bets the company (and Hollywood's future) on streaming

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Re: Disney: Bob Iger bets the company (and Hollywood's future) on streaming

#31

Post by wolco »

echelon wrote: post #21
whyenot wrote: post #11

Amazon, Apple, Disney, HBO Max, Hulu, Peacock, ..., oh, and Netflix. How many monthly memberships are people going to want to pay for, especially when there is already a huge library of free content on YouTube? Interesting times...

This is strictly worse than cable. Streaming in the 2010s was a breath of fresh air. You could find everything on one platform, watch it at your leisure, and pay way less than cable. Now we're going to have to pay more AND switch between nine different apps with broken UIs. This is god awful. All of this because of greed and a lack of regulation. We need to campaign for limited copyright (20 years), and build service…

90%? Disney doesn't really own a lot. They have huge brands in some niches but overall not much % wise. They refuse to touch anything adult in nature and that is the vast majority of content.

Re: Disney: Bob Iger bets the company (and Hollywood's future) on streaming

#32

Post by TeMPOraL »

solipsism wrote: post #25
echelon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is strictly worse than cable. Streaming in the 2010s was a breath of fresh air. You could find everything on one platform, watch it at your leisure, and pay way less than cable. Now we're going to have to pay more AND switch between nine different apps with broken UIs. This is god awful. All of this because of greed and a lack of regulation. We need to campaign for limited copyright (20 years), and build service…

You don't have to do anything. You just feel the need to watch everything that can be watched. If you don't want to pay for every service, you should just reset your expectations.

That's not how it works.

For one, it's the age-old anticonsumer situation, but a fully distributed edition. People value movies and shows by title, not by distributor. Platforms aggregate orthogonally to that. The end result is, even if you ranked all the movies/shows by how much you wanted to that and restricted yourself to top 10, you'll likely end up having to subscribe to all the mainstream platforms to get them.

Secondly, wrt. not having to watch anything, you sort-of do. Popular entertainment becomes popular culture, and if you want to participate in the society and build relationships with other people, you kind of have to be at least aware of some of the current offerings of that popular culture.

Re: Disney: Bob Iger bets the company (and Hollywood's future) on streaming

#33

Post by TeMPOraL »

barkerja wrote: post #27
echelon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is strictly worse than cable. Streaming in the 2010s was a breath of fresh air. You could find everything on one platform, watch it at your leisure, and pay way less than cable. Now we're going to have to pay more AND switch between nine different apps with broken UIs. This is god awful. All of this because of greed and a lack of regulation. We need to campaign for limited copyright (20 years), and build service…

I don't know if I'd go as far to say it's worse. Cable forced one's hand into paying for things they didn't necessarily want. At least with this model, we the consumer have the ability to pick and choose exactly what we want to pay for. If a network has shows that look appealing to you, subscribe for a couple months. If there's only one show that looks appealing, buy it on iTunes. We're never going to have an afforda…

> We're never going to have an affordable, legal, pay-once-for-everything model.

That possibility is a huge market failure. The demand is there.

Re: Disney: Bob Iger bets the company (and Hollywood's future) on streaming

#34

Post by skinnymuch »

Skunkleton wrote: post #22
aarpmcgee wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that it doesn’t count because you assume everyone has a Prime subscription?

This isn't the point OP was making, but I don't think Amazon counts. Not because "everyone has prime", but because you can pay them extra money to add content to their platform. For example, you can pay to add British content, CBS, or HBO. Amazon is doing streaming right.

I don’t think that’s a good reason. HBO will likely not be an add-on in near future. Hulu allows you to add Showtime too.

CBS or Showtime have a good chance of not remaining with both products. Once CBS merges with Viacom [again]. Showtime and CBS’s new parent company will have to decide what to do about their streaming future.

Edit: Hulu has add-one for HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, and Starz. Hulu obviously counts so then Amazon should count too.

Re: Disney: Bob Iger bets the company (and Hollywood's future) on streaming

#35

Post by nostromo »

echelon wrote: post #21
whyenot wrote: post #11

Amazon, Apple, Disney, HBO Max, Hulu, Peacock, ..., oh, and Netflix. How many monthly memberships are people going to want to pay for, especially when there is already a huge library of free content on YouTube? Interesting times...

This is strictly worse than cable. Streaming in the 2010s was a breath of fresh air. You could find everything on one platform, watch it at your leisure, and pay way less than cable. Now we're going to have to pay more AND switch between nine different apps with broken UIs. This is god awful. All of this because of greed and a lack of regulation. We need to campaign for limited copyright (20 years), and build service…

No, it’s much better than cable.

Most people don’t watch that much TV and won’t need more than one or two services. Those people are saving a ton of money.

And a few people that are glued to their TVs will pay more. As they should.

I’m particularly happy that I no longer have to subsidize sports, which I never watched, to the tune of $20 a month or so.

Re: Disney: Bob Iger bets the company (and Hollywood's future) on streaming

#36

Post by friedman23 »

scarface74 wrote: post #29
friedman23 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Netflix’s issue is not the quality of content - it’s their business model. They are borrowing billions to create content with the only way to recoup the cost is mostly by subscription revenue. Their initial rationale was that they were building a content library that would have value. But, they admitted during the last conference call that subscriber growth was slow expectations because they didn’t have any new big…

I think you are contradicting yourself here. If the quality was good they wouldn't have mentioned not having big releases as being the reason why their subscriber growth was slow. No, I’m saying that Disney’s library content has value and doesn’t have to be hit driven to be successful. If Netflix’s only way of gaining customers is by keep getting in debt to fund new content, it has an unsustainably high customer acqu…

I think we both agree, I don't what statement I made you are arguing against.

The interesting part of the streaming space is that the incumbents actually have an advantage over the upstart technology company. They are joining the party almost 8 years after netflix and will probably succeed just because of the massive repository of content they have accrued over the past 60 to 70 years.

Re: Disney: Bob Iger bets the company (and Hollywood's future) on streaming

#37

Post by [deleted] »

friedman23 wrote: post #19
whyenot wrote: post #11

Amazon, Apple, Disney, HBO Max, Hulu, Peacock, ..., oh, and Netflix. How many monthly memberships are people going to want to pay for, especially when there is already a huge library of free content on YouTube? Interesting times...

Disney owns ESPN, a controlling stake in Hulu, Marvel, Lucas Films, Pixar, Disney Animation, and 20th century fox (FX, fox searchlight, many classic movie franchises, X-Men, Fantastic 4, etc). I'm probably missing something. I imagine that Disney will eventually sell a mega subscription service that bundles all of their media. HBO Max will have all HBO content (obviously), all Warner Bros content, the CW (you know al…

[deleted]

Re: Disney: Bob Iger bets the company (and Hollywood's future) on streaming

#38

Post by scarface74 »

gatherhunterer wrote: post #24

“Entertainment Company Releases Content on Well-Established Medium” If they keep this up people might suspect that they want people to watch that content and pay for it. Maybe next the Hollywood Reporter will break the story on how they “bet it all” on theatrical releases, network television, VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray and other things that people pay to watch. Bob Iger definitely knows how to buy good press. Hollywood Report…

It’s not easy for a company to give up short term profits like licensing content to other providers, start a money losing service that may take years to make up the difference. Business have failed to adapt to changing technology for decades. That is the entire thesis of the “Innovator’s Dilemma”. He could have not taken the risk, retired with millions and let the next CEO figure it out.

Re: Disney: Bob Iger bets the company (and Hollywood's future) on streaming

#39

Post by scarface74 »

wolco wrote: post #28
brogrammernot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon doesn’t really count as it’s an added benefit of Prime. However, all of those you listed are cheaper than adding cable to my bill. I pay for Netflix, Hulu and YoutubeTV. It’s cheaper than adding cable to my bill & that’s just absurd to me.

You are paying for it with Amazon just bundled into the overall price. Probably 10% more. That's why cable costs so much the bundling of various properties adds up. For now streaming inventors are eating the cost but they expect that to change by 2024.

It’s easy to put a nominal value on Amazon Prime Video. Amazon sells it separately for $6.99 a month. Whether it’s worth that is an exercise for the reader.

Re: Disney: Bob Iger bets the company (and Hollywood's future) on streaming

#40

Post by scarface74 »

aarpmcgee wrote: post #17
brogrammernot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon doesn’t really count as it’s an added benefit of Prime. However, all of those you listed are cheaper than adding cable to my bill. I pay for Netflix, Hulu and YoutubeTV. It’s cheaper than adding cable to my bill & that’s just absurd to me.

Are you suggesting that it doesn’t count because you assume everyone has a Prime subscription?

It’s estimated that 62% of households in the US have Prime subscriptions.

https://www.geekwire.com/2019/new-survey-estimates-amazon-pr...

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