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Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#391

Post by refracture »

trsohmers wrote: post #313
refracture wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents watched a lot of sci fi TV when I was kid, SG-1 is the only show that I ever actually sat down and watched more than the occasional episode of. I remember being struck by a scene that was (I believe?) pretty early in the series where Sam's about to fight some guy hand to hand; Jack protests this (but not in a way that makes it clear whether he thinks a woman shouldn't do it or if he's just unsure of her fi…

S1E3 Emancipation... one of the most disliked episodes by most fans but I agree that the scene was handled well... but the rest of the episode is not good. The writer of the episode (Katharyn Powers, who only worked on SG1 in season 1) was also the writer of the Star Trek TNG first season episode "Code Of Honor", which is frequently considered in the bottom 3 episodes of any Star Trek series, and many find very racis…

I now regret having read the plot summary to refresh my memory. It's terrible!

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#392

Post by DrBazza »

margaretdouglas wrote: post #278
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…

Why do you need cable/satellite if you're playing the a la carte game of streaming? I feel like the world where you have cable and streaming services is ending and you either live in a world with cable and maybe or two streaming services; similar to paying extra for HBO and Cinemax with your cable service in the past, or you cut the cord and manage bundling the "networks" yourself. Netflix+Hulu+HBOMax+Sports/Local Ne…

In the UK at least, it's Sky (satellite) or Virgin (cable), and they both bundle internet access with the service. Often it's more expensive to get the internet service on its own (Virgin) than getting the 'bundle' (tv+internet).

Also, the free-to-air reception in some parts of the UK is still so poor, you need cable or satellite to watch any TV at all.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#394

Post by proto-n »

muxator wrote: post #376
dalbasal wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, that'd be increasing their expenses rather than capital investment. They could also, in theory, build schools in central africa. They could even pay their taxes. I think acquisitions are more likely though.

What's the most appropriate word for this? There could be many, but I am a bit tired of justifications. For me it's greediness, distillated.

Capitalism?

Greed is a very human emotion, corporations are like very powerful sociopaths. No-emotion machines that optimize for a single end goal (shareholder money) within the given ruleset: the law.

(Or more realistically whatever they can get away with while still turning profit, ie profit is greater than whatever the repercussions cost).

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#396

Post by ghaff »

minusSeven wrote: post #348
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…

My rule of thumb regarding watching content is: if its only 1 movie or tv show I want to watch just pirate it, if its more than one on a streaming platform subscribe to it. I subscribe to netflix just once a year to watch everything I want to watch and then don't bother subscribing again for a year. I guess eventually I will do the same to other platforms if they have enough content in them. I can't fathom how someon…

>I can't fathom

A lot of people just can't be bothered tracking their usage over time of a bunch of services and keeping track of what lives where. I don't have a lot of services so it's not worth optimizing to save $10/month or something like that.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#397

Post by watwatinthewat »

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.

That's a good point, though I think the time/generational factor may cause it to trend downward. My parents unhappily paid cable prices their whole life. I've never once paid for cable TV and never will be willing to pay that much for subscription entertainment, but I'm willing to pay for one streaming service and have considered a second at times. Anecdotally reading places like here, I don't think I'm an uncommon case. Again to your point, even though there's fuss every time a streaming provider raises the cost (especially Netflix being one of the larger players and who has been around long enough to have increased prices more than once), it seems each service is viewed as cheap and well under what people are willing to pay.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#398

Post by [deleted] »

hnbad wrote: post #286
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about something legal instead?

How about we make the platform exclusives illegal instead? What is and isn't legal is not an unchangeable property of the universe. These things can change. Piracy for personal use was (and still is) legal in many places before the RIAA/MPAA started exerting political pressure. Heck, piracy was the primary selling point of VHS recorders and tape decks. Only recently have we shifted to read-only media that's hard to c…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#399

Post by keyboardCowBoy »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #270
paganel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could fall back to watching movies made from the ‘30s to the ‘50s, that’s what I have been doing for more than half a year now and it has been wonderful for my mental well-being (they really knew how to make comedies back then, even after the Hayes code).

I love old movies, especially around the 50's-70's, but I'll admit that you're not gonna see a whole lot of diversity in that era. I'm not meaning to moralize. It's just hard to find movies that say, have an Asian character that isn't a horrible racist caricature.

Awe yes diversity. Can't go a day with out reading this ever lasting buzzword.

Is that really your determining factor while deciding to watch a movie? It isn't mine. I watch a movie because its a good movie, I don't go searching for diversity, I like watching a movie because of its entertainment value. You should try it.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#400

Post by hrktb »

simias wrote: post #311
tguedes wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I find it hard to believe as well, although of course if you subscribe to prime for movies and TV you're probably more likely to use it for free deliveries as well. But if the plan is to make Prime more popular there seem to be many, many simpler and probably cheaper ways to do that. It's as if McDonalds started a movie studio in order to sell Movie + Big Mac bundles.

In France McDonalds partnered with a book publisher to create a whole new collection to bundle books with Happy Meals.

Small steps yet, but they could be getting there.

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