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Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#401

Post by ghaff »

llampx wrote: post #336
kangaroozach wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 have a hard time believing that that was the average monthly cost of a cable subscription. Mine was never more than $30-40 when I needed cable for the internet.

I saved about $120/month starting late last year when I dropped cable TV and landline from my cable package. (This is in NE US.)

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#403

Post by dalbasal »

magicalhippo wrote: post #363
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…

> The meaninglessness of $8.45b relative to amazon's scale is mind boggling. My coworked compared it to the Dogecoin marketcap of $44b... kinda puts things in perspective.

You know, at least crypto is obviously/intentionally arbitrary. The current market cap of GME is exactly 2X this acquisition.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#404

Post by cacois »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #66
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. Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It's a meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and other anti-consumer practices.

So wait, your solution is to encourage all consumers to break the law and put themselves at legal risk, rather than have reasonable legislation focused on consumer welfare and encouraging competition?

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#405

Post by bigwavedave »

bovermyer wrote: post #236
ACS_Solver wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SG-1 is a great show. It holds up surprisingly well for its age. Strikes a great balance between serious and light-hearted, and the self-contained episodes often have interesting ethical or social issues. I'm also fond on how the early episodes emphasize that humans are new to interplanetary travel and are still figuring things out. There are several episodes where SG-1 travels to another planet and actually messes t…

I haven't finished Atlantis or Universe yet. They're on my to-watch list. As for franchising into other media... there's a brand new tabletop role-playing game that'll be launching later this year. I wonder how the Amazon deal will affect it.

> I haven't finished Atlantis or Universe yet. They're on my to-watch list.

Ooh, I _really_ enjoyed SGU. Granted, it was the kind of show that I had to try watching once, give up on, then rewatch years later during to really appreciate. It's fairly different from SG1 and SGA, but in my (humble) opinion, it's really good and I'm sad that it ended so quickly. It reminds me a bit of Lost In Space (the movie, not the relatively new tv series- I've only seen half the pilot so I can't make a comparison) but in the Stargate universe.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#406

Post by gentleman11 »

wiz21c wrote: post #88

> It was overturned by new legislation in 2020. Interestingly, there are some guys powerful enough to push that kind of legislation... I don't like Musk but sometimes I'd really love to leave for Mars :-)

You would basically be property of the corporation in that scenario. Musk is not known for treating his dependents or employees or fans well, he’s more popular to outsiders looking in. Market manipulation, Bitcoin pump and dump, a wife who left him, working conditions at Tesla, quality control issues, dishonest marketing for self driving features... nobody should go live on his colonies if he gets that far

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#407

Post by somethingwitty1 »

llampx wrote: post #336
kangaroozach wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 have a hard time believing that that was the average monthly cost of a cable subscription. Mine was never more than $30-40 when I needed cable for the internet.

My current monthly cable subscription is $135 (plus "fees"). And when people say, "cable", they generally mean TV service. For many, that may mean a pricey satellite TV service (very expensive back in the day). Basic cable is likely what you are getting, but many people want to watch sports or movies, which requires premium subscriptions and it adds up quickly.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#408

Post by jjulius »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #331
divs1210 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the USA, they came down hard of torrents. My neighbor got busted a few years back by Xfinity, and it was a big deal.

>... and it was a big deal.

It's my understanding that Xfinity sends a few warning notices, just a little slap on the wrist, before they end up terminating your account or something (though a quick cursory Google brings up a Reddit thread where someone claiming to have worked for Cumcrust said they never saw any accounts terminated for that). I know I received one letter like 7 years ago for downloading 'Christmas Vacation' and nothing else ever happened. Speaking from experience, if you use a VPN to torrent then they'll leave you alone.

I'd be curious how much - and what - your neighbor was doing to have made it a big deal, and what Xfinity's response/reaction was.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#409

Post by asperous »

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 actually are doing pretty large buybacks though:

https://www.barrons.com/articles/tech-giants-have-ramped-up-...

Apple recently $77B in buybacks, Alphabet $8.5B, Facebook $3.9B

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#410

Post by mynameisash »

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…

>> “When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes,”

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

Could it be more an idea of goodwill[0] ("the intangible value attributable solely to the efforts of or reputation of an owner of the business")? What I mean to say is, having Golden Globes or running a valued streaming service, even if it's not directly correlated with increased retail sales, makes customers generally regard Amazon more highly, more chic?

For all of its faults (and I am very critical of the company), I don't know anyone who derides the company in the same manner that Walmart is derided[1], for example.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_(accounting)

[1] http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/

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