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Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#711

Post by vel0city »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #631
jandrese wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I had cable the $30 plan was the "just the stuff you can get OTA plus some shopping channels" plan. If you wanted actual cable channels you had the choice of: 1. "Basic" bundle, $60 + $20 in fees + $8-15 per set to rent the box. Got you ESPN, Food Network, SciFi, Cartoon Network, USA 2. "Complete" bundle, $100 + $20 in fees + $8-15 per set to rent the box. Got you BBC, a bunch of foreign language channels, Starz…

> and the streaming services don't have ads. Yet. IIRC, when cable started, it didn't have ads either. It was its selling point. Advertising is a cancer on society that infects and poisons every communication medium available. It has already metastasized to streaming platforms, though it's not conspicuous yet. You don't have to watch interstitial ads between episodes of your favorite show on Netflix, but if that show…

When cable started, it had ads. Cable was just a bunch of broadcast stations pushed over a coax wire to your house so you could get stations that were pretty much impossible with an antenna from your location in pretty much perfect signal quality for the time. There weren't even "only cable" kind of channels when people started paying for their television to come over wires to their homes.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#712

Post by charwalker »

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.

If it isn't legal, and normal democratic processes won't make it legal in the short term, then it isn't viable competition.

DMCA/etc vastly favors content owners who also lobby hard to maintain their ownership by extending copyright and similar protections.

Anti-competitive behavior must be countered but unless it's well funded and focused will end up like the IRS and DMCA today, going after small fish due to lack of resources to challenge those that can afford to fight like players as big as Amazon and MGM.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#713

Post by dragonwriter »

WillDaSilva wrote: post #709
dragonwriter wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No end-of-episode cliffhangers Well, except for the season finale/openers from Season 3 on; but, yes, TV in general (even before streaming, DS9-VOY-ENT all show this trend within thr Trek franchise) has become less episodic since the TNG era.

I believe you mean more serialized. Episodic, defined as "containing or consisting of a series of loosely connected parts or events", is the opposite of what you mean.

> I believe you mean more serialized.

Yeah (I think the actual intent was “less episodic”, and I’ve corrected it to that, but same thing.)

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#714

Post by totalZero »

dalbasal wrote: post #430
asperous wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

True, but I don't think buybacks are likely to be scaled sufficiently to solve the "problem." Apple, maybe. They do have a dividend paying history and they don't like to spread. The Alphabet & FB buybacks represent about 5% of those companies' cash reserves... not enough to change anything. Apple have $200bn, though I'm not sure if this is net or gross of the buyback. I think of these buybacks more as supporting evid…

Apple does the largest buyback in the equity markets. Their derivative-based ASR is larger than the entire buyback program of many major companies.

https://s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_financials/2021/q2/...

At $77B, that buyback program amounts to a $300m bid for Apple stock every trading day....much to the delight of executives whose compensation is tied to share price performance.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/apple-ceo-tim-cook-receives-...

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#715

Post by TeMPOraL »

dkarp wrote: post #248
xixixao wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started watching SG1 again (I saw it incomplete as a kid). It’s incredibly good. It pushes rationalism and feminism in a sane way that I’m not sure would happen in today’s environment. It’s incredibly rich in historical references and concepts. It’s rarely dumb and often preempts cliches. It’s still worth watching imho (and is much less known that Star Trek in US).

I just started doing the same last week (weird to suddenly see this thread after not much mention of SG1 for a long time...) and agree it is great. It is nice to watch as a series instead of the random odd episode I saw as a kid watching cable TV in the 90s. There is so much more of it than I remembered. I've almost finished season 1, so it's going to tide me over for a good long while!

It only gets better!

I envy you, I wish I could forget everything about the show, so that I could experience it fresh again. Having watched it end-to-end 3+ times over the past decade, it's burned hard into my brain.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#716

Post by TeMPOraL »

wayoutthere wrote: post #254
xixixao wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started watching SG1 again (I saw it incomplete as a kid). It’s incredibly good. It pushes rationalism and feminism in a sane way that I’m not sure would happen in today’s environment. It’s incredibly rich in historical references and concepts. It’s rarely dumb and often preempts cliches. It’s still worth watching imho (and is much less known that Star Trek in US).

I recently finished a rewatch of it. It has held up far better than it has any right to. One thing that’s really stood out to me is the insane amount of technology change that happened over SG-1 — the show ran from 1996 to 2004. It went from laughable 3D CG on a Showtime budget, CRTs and landlines to heavy CG on a SciFi Channel budget, flatscreens and tiny cell phones. It does have its dumb moments though. Basically…

> flatscreens and tiny cell phones

That one surprised me (positively) when I noticed it. Particularly when I binge-watched it end-to-end and saw how the cellphones evolve across the show.

> Basically anything involving real-world weapons or explosives

You're telling me that P90 is not the weapon to save the galaxy?

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#717

Post by throwitaway1235 »

shard wrote: post #641
enterdev wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you spend time watching bad movies?

Have you ever watched MST3K? I think I have several dozen MST3K movies in my collection.

Yes. Used to watch with my father when it ran on scifi channel.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#718

Post by totalZero »

archie_diak wrote: post #522
rhino369 wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto "market cap" isn't really comparable to the market cap of companies. Nobody would (or could) ever buy Dogecoin for 44b. But companies are usually purchased for more than market cap.

Er, yes they would. Thousands of people already have, that's why its 44bn. It's a market cap not a paper valuation. Are you suggesting that if someone wanted to buy Doge outright they could pay less than it's market cap?

Think about the total basis in Dogecoin. Compare that number to the takeout valuation for a public company, which would be the basis of the acquirer. That's the point GP is trying to make, in a roundabout way.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#719

Post by TeMPOraL »

extr wrote: post #467
wayoutthere wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The show is weird because the source material is kind of schlocky and the show improves it significantly. I think season 4 is so hard to watch because book 4 is a self-contained story so they couldn’t blend characters and scenarios like in the previous book. The book characters are all a little too one-dimensional and the show does an excellent job condensing them into well-rounded characters. I had to stop reading h…

Jesus, if the show significantly improves on the books in that regard then I can't imagine what the books are like. I'm mid-way through S2 of the show right now. I like the realistic portrayal of what space travel/interplanetary colonies might look like. All the political stuff. But some of the dialogue and characterization is still embarrassingly cliched.

I don't know. People keep complaining about Cibola Burn (book 4), but I liked it. I genuinely consider it one of the better ones.

That's perhaps because it's the first, and to date the most detailed, exploration of the aliens and their technology, which to me is the most interesting part (after Earth-Mars politics).

But then, I'm the weird guy who thinks character development is overrated, and reads sci-fi for the ideas.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#720

Post by listenallyall »

bogwog wrote: post #628
edgyquant wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I can agree about Microsoft. I’ve come to not hate them in the last decade but they definitely have been buying up the developer scene too. They aren’t as brazen as Google I’ll agree (likely because of the antitrust issues) but they are still setting themselves up as a monopoly over the long term.

The other day I was helping my brother setup Python on his Windows 10 computer. So I went to python.org and installed it as usual, then why I typed "python" in the console, it launched the Microsoft Store app and took me to the download page for their distribution of Python. Apparently, it's some kind of alias "feature" they added to Windows at some point. What legitimate reason is there for that if not to try and tr…

Holy shit, you typed "python" in a console window so the OS looked for an existing install, didn't find one, so it tried to help you! How evil and awful! Burn M$$$$ down! unknown command 'python' is the only proper way to respond!
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