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

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

#51

Post by basch » Sat, Oct 19, 2019, 8:41 PM UTC

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…

>Now we're going to have to pay more AND switch between nine different apps with broken UIs.

Roku, Fire, Apple all make it easy to search and browse for a show and then deep link into the correct app. It's not perfect, and I hope it will get better, but you are not currently forced to open the apps. Fire goes a step further and lets you play videos you are licensed to right out of the fire interface, without the app firing up. It's easy to subscribe to hbo, cbs ets and have the content you are licensed to see show up right with your other stuff. (The Fire interface being not so pleasant to use is another story entirely.)

>Disney needs to be broken up. They own 90% of American pop culture.

Has a company ever been broken up for its library of content?

>build services like Spotify that have everything and merely pay the rights holders.

These platforms above are the single aggregator you are looking for. Comcast and DirecTV were these, but without the option for a la cart.

>pay way less than cable.

You have the option to make it cheaper if you want to rotate your subscriptions and not hold them all at the same time. I see that as a net gain vs the previous status quo of the TV Provider bundle era.

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

#52

Post by solipsism » Sat, Oct 19, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #32

solipsism wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

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.

Oh come on. Are you really claiming that if you can talk with your friends about Stranger Things, but not Game of Thrones because you don't have HBO, then you face some kind of serious impediment to participating in society? That strikes me as completely ridiculous.

Customers don't like a big monolithic bundle because the single bill is too expensive.

Customers also don't like a la carte content (which is available on any number of platforms, including Google and Amazon and Apple) because each individual bill is too expensive.

Customers also don't like medium sized bundlings, because when things get split up across different bundles then people feel left out, and everyone feels the need to watch everything.

So what's your proposal? It's not like the market isn't trying to cater to customers here. Do you propose we pass laws that restrict companies from creating exclusive content? Or should we pass laws that restrict content from costing more than a specific amount? Will we also have to pass laws to keep the quality up in that case? Why? Just because customers insatiably want and want and want?

There are lots of real problems in the world for us to solve. This is not one of them.

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

#53

Post by kjksf » Sat, Oct 19, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #38

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.

While late is better than never, Disney is too little too late.

I'm not saying they will fail. Of established players they are the strongest and making the boldest moves so they have a chance at being a no 2.

But they launch when Netflix has 150 million subscribers. They almost saturated the US market and are quickly devouring international.

Taking market share from a dominant competitor is almost impossible.

If Bob Iger wasn't asleep at the wheel, just like the rest of the industry, Disney would have launched a competitor when Netflix had 10 million US-only customers.

They had a chance then but not now, competing against Netflix's 150 million subscribers and asymmetrical warfare from Amazon.

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

#54

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Oct 19, 2019, 8:44 PM UTC

skinnymuch wrote: post #45

scarface74 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Disney is hit driven in that all their things are mostly either for entire families or four quadrant sort of mainstream hit-style media. Which is most of their historical content library. Netflix actually has a lot of quality original shows. All modern as they are all from this decade. People want hits though, so that isn’t helping Netflix enough.

I’m not making a value judgment on the “quality” of Netflix’s content vs Disney’s. I’m only talking about business models. Netflix’s business model isn’t competitive by any objective measure.

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

#55

Post by wolco » Sat, Oct 19, 2019, 8:48 PM UTC

I'm surprised by how little content will be offered for the price point that will increase shortly. The Simpsons and a new star wars show plus 500 movie titles. Max 50 titles by 2024.

People may pick it up to try it but if there is nothing to keep them watching many will drop them.

Surprised they are only spending a billion in new content per year and spending 150 million for 10 star wars episodes.

Surprised they are going in-house for the most part. The level of quality they are demanding is high. High movie ticket prices use to cover those costs and generate record profits. Under this new model they will start losing money until they reach peak subscriber if those targets are slower than expected that will put pressure to reduce the amount of new content and live off of their back catalogue.

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

#56

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Oct 19, 2019, 8:49 PM UTC

kjksf wrote: post #53

scarface74 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While late is better than never, Disney is too little too late. I'm not saying they will fail. Of established players they are the strongest and making the boldest moves so they have a chance at being a no 2. But they launch when Netflix has 150 million subscribers. They almost saturated the US market and are quickly devouring international. Taking market share from a dominant competitor is almost impossible. If Bob…

Disney’s definition of success and Netflix’s definition of success is completely different. Disney doesn’t have to depend on subscription revenue to fund its streaming content. It’s already made money on most of its content by the time it gets to Disney+. It’s just an additional revenue stream.

Netflix lives or dies by being able to create or license content at one price and sell it via subscription revenue at a higher price - it has never been able to do that. It gets it more debt every year trying to keep up.

In the words of Steve Jobs related to Dropbox. Streaming services are now a feature not a product.

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

#57

Post by basch » Sat, Oct 19, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

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...

CBS/Viacom/Paramount/Nickelodeon/Showtime. Sony.

Disney/Hulu/ESPN count as one, though you can buy smaller packages.

ViacomCBS, NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia, and Disney will still be the big 4 of all the ones you listed. Amazon, Apple, and Netflix have minuscule content libraries by comparison. After people binge through new shows, the big 4 will be the ones holding all the old content. Netflix cant afford to produce content fast enough to backfill all their soon to expire licenses. Warner/Turner, Disney/ESPN, NBCSports also own a lot of sports coverage (CBS has a play as well) while Amazon, Apple, and Netflix barely have any coverage.

People are underestimating the play ViacomCBS will be able to make against NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia, and Disney now that they are united. CBS All Access and Pluto will be a killer combo, if they so choose to venture that route AND they own Philo to compete with Sling, Vue, ATT, Hulu, Youtube. CBSAA/Pluto/Philo is absolutely a threat to Disney/ESPN/Hulu's attempt at dominance; NBCUniversal(XfinityComcast), WarnerMedia(DirecTV/ATT/HBO whatever its named this week) wont go down with a fight either.

Discovery, Sinclair, AMC Networks all still exist as well. Verizon is making a bad play not gobbling up whats left.

At some point there will be a race to the bottom on price, and ad supported Pluto(CBS)/Hulu(Disney) like products will be dirt cheat to get people in the door. The extra money will come from people not wanting to watch ads.

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

#58

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Oct 19, 2019, 8:58 PM UTC

wolco wrote: post #55

I'm surprised by how little content will be offered for the price point that will increase shortly. The Simpsons and a new star wars show plus 500 movie titles. Max 50 titles by 2024. People may pick it up to try it but if there is nothing to keep them watching many will drop them. Surprised they are only spending a billion in new content per year and spending 150 million for 10 star wars episodes. Surprised they are…

Disney has to wait for a lot of content deals to expire before they can bring more to Disney+

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

#59

Post by cortesoft » Sat, Oct 19, 2019, 9:01 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #56

kjksf wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While late is better than never, Disney is too little too late. I'm not saying they will fail. Of established players they are the strongest and making the boldest moves so they have a chance at being a no 2. But they launch when Netflix has 150 million subscribers. They almost saturated the US market and are quickly devouring international. Taking market share from a dominant competitor is almost impossible. If Bob…

Disney’s definition of success and Netflix’s definition of success is completely different. Disney doesn’t have to depend on subscription revenue to fund its streaming content. It’s already made money on most of its content by the time it gets to Disney+. It’s just an additional revenue stream. Netflix lives or dies by being able to create or license content at one price and sell it via subscription revenue at a high…

Except we are still expected to pay for each one as if they were a product... the only one that is really treated like a feature is amazon prime streaming... it is one part of being a prime member.

All the others are sold as stand alone products you have to individually pay for.

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

#60

Post by cortesoft » Sat, Oct 19, 2019, 9:04 PM UTC

shantly wrote: post #6

dmos62 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my understanding, it's widely considered that The Simpsons have not been a veritable satire (in the spirit of the first seasons) for the past 20+ years. With success it quickly became what it started out ridiculing; so Disney endorsing Simpsons is normal.

The Dead Homer Society's take on it is basically exactly that—the show became what it was satirizing. Throw in a little TV-embraces-criticism-and-makes-it-the-new-normal (cf. David Foster Wallace) and everything else got more like The Simpsons, too. It looks a little ranty at first glance but ends up being pretty damn thorough and convincing. By season 8 or 9 the show was transitioning away from its old self, and pas…

> TV-embraces-criticism-and-makes-it-the-new-normal

That was the most chilling and realistic part of the black mirror episode from the first season... where the guy goes on this passionate rant against the reality show culture... and the reality show responds by saying how much they love that fire and passion, so they give him a reality show.