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Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#351

Post by bcrosby95 »

kangaroozach wrote: post #275
DrBazza wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Piracy is competition to bad content behavior I really wish we had the bandwidth we have now, back in the Napster-era. Napster, and others forced, persuaded and cajoled the music industry to consolidate, whether they liked it or not, on Spotify, and iTunes. If we'd had easy free sharing of movies, it's not hard to envisage something similar to what we see now in the music industry forced on the movie companies. Now…

We have not yet approached the pre-streaming willingness to pay (WTP). People used to pay $150 to $200 plus onDemand for the whole package with their cable provider. Today you can have YouTubeTV, HBO, Netflix, Prime, AppleTV+, Disney+, and Spotify for less than that. So perhaps the average will hover around $100 with many paying closer to $200 a month. We are creeping back up to those numbers because people will pay.

I've never paid more than around $150/month for internet+tv.

I switched back to cable TV a few years ago. It's just cheaper for me now. The price of streaming has risen, and the price of cable has fallen.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#352

Post by metalliqaz »

dawnerd wrote: post #329
dalbasal wrote: post #300

The meaninglessness of $8.45b relative to amazon's scale is mind boggling. It represents 0.5% of their market cap, 20% of their cash-on-hand, nevermind their borrowing capacity @ near 0%. If a problem is worth the Jeff/Andy's personal attention, it's worth spending $8bn on. I'm a broken record but, current equity prices and financial climate generally makes massive consolidation very likely. Antitrust, or fear of is…

They could increase wages for their non-tech workers to start

"lol" -Google/Apple/Amazon/etc CEOs

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#353

Post by thakoppno »

dcolkitt wrote: post #102
mivade wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is simple: NBC was (and still is) free to watch if you have a television and an antenna.

Broadcast NBC was only "free" in the strictest sense. Every hour of content requires the viewer to sit through 22 minutes of mind-numbing commercials. At a labor value of $50/hour, watching ten hours of content a week imposes an economic cost on the viewer of $825/month. By comparison subscribing to all the major streaming platforms would cost about $100/month. Let's not even get into issues of higher quality content…

> sit through 22 minutes of mind-numbing commercials

Commercial detection and skipping has worked well for me via MythTV for nearly twenty years at this point.

Seems like there’s a free startup idea in there somewhere. $100 worth of equipment and a webapp and now your parents can watch network TV, local news, sports, and weather without ads.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#355

Post by alexfromapex »

All they need now is a house building company and they can sell people everything they need for their entire life (the grocery store, entertainment, health, news, movies, music, goods). Then they can start selling Gatorade for plants to their customers.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#357

Post by reaperducer »

tguedes wrote: post #160
wut42 wrote: post #16

> The deal can be viewed as a doubling down on business strategy that Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, articulated at a conference in 2016: “When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes,” he had said, referring to Amazon's diverse business divisions. This part is a real nugget.

From https://stratechery.com/2021/distribution-and-demand/ : `I do get the argument that Prime Video is a waste of money for Amazon; Brad Stone notes in his new book Amazon Unbound that “there was little evidence of a connection between viewing and purchasing behavior” and that “any correlation was also obfuscated by the fact that Prime was growing rapidly on its own.”` Is that nugget actually true or is Bezos just o…

Is that nugget actually true or is Bezos just obsessed with the glamor of Hollywood?

I'd trust the words of someone who actually has access to Amazon's financials over the word of a blogger on the outside.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#358

Post by ryanmarsh »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #23

So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.

> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution

Why though? I wasn’t aware these laws exist(ed). Why are they needed?

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#359

Post by waynesonfire »

divs1210 wrote: post #225
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It's a meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and other anti-consumer practices.

THIS. Forcing consumers to sign up to 10 platforms to watch 10 movies will no doubt lead to a shift back to torrents. YouTube is pretty good in this regard, as it allows paying for renting a single movie for a weekend for a reasonable price.

I wish we had the data on this but I suspect a customer only selects a one or two video platforms and _MAYBE_ juggles a third when a hot show like GoT shows up, which is rare. There is a limited number of attention hours, it doesn't make sense to be on 10 platforms.

Regardless, the end game of these streaming services is probably going to be consolidation or partners, if it makes since because the market is too diluted. We're coming off, wha, $60-100 a month cable bills? The streaming providers are still siphoning this value before we start seeing consolidation of the losers with the winners.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#360

Post by minusSeven »

johnchristopher wrote: post #267
DrBazza wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Piracy is competition to bad content behavior I really wish we had the bandwidth we have now, back in the Napster-era. Napster, and others forced, persuaded and cajoled the music industry to consolidate, whether they liked it or not, on Spotify, and iTunes. If we'd had easy free sharing of movies, it's not hard to envisage something similar to what we see now in the music industry forced on the movie companies. Now…

> Frankly, I'm glad I have a waning interest in modern movies as I get older, and I'm actually more interested in watching old black and white movies that are "free to air" in my country. My mother recently gave me a sub-account to Netflix and while I was thrilled to rewatch some shows I liked (like the OA or good old star trek) I was quickly submerged by the sheer amount of YA novels adapted in TV shows or movies th…

Well Netflix formula is throw a bunch of stones in the ocean and see what sticks and then make more of it. Its a bad strategy because users waste time watching content they would rather not watch. HBO imo is the only platform that focus on quality rather than the number of shows.
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