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Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

hollywoodreporter.com

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Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

#101

Post by tedsanders »

autoexec wrote: post #63
omegalulw wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about other people, but finding something to watch on Netflix is frustrating, there's so much poor quality shows. The recommendations are not good (tbf that's most streaming services) and there's no option for granular filtering. For example, I hate dubs, I would like to pick shows where the original audio is some particular language, I don't get why that isn't there? In contrast, on HBO Max / Disney+, u…

I agree, netflix might be too embarrassed by their catalogue to show people a simple A-Z listing of everything they have, but I'd absolutely watch netflix more often if they did. Scrolling through the same shows I'm not interested in over and over across their multiple random/useless categories takes up way too much time. Every so often I'll go to search and enter random 2-3 letter combinations because I usually find…

They already have simple A-Z listings.

All TV shows A-Z: https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/83?so=az

All movies A-Z: https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/34399?so=az

You can find it in the web UI by clicking a TV or movie page, and then choosing Sort A-Z. The reason it's so buried is that it's pretty useless. Most people don't want to scroll through a hundred mostly bad shows starting with punctuation symbols and numbers.

Agree with you that it would be lovely if Netflix had more fine-grained controls.

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

#102

Post by mgh2 »

clpm4j wrote: post #98

Can this really be classified as a "crash"? They're a 20+ year old company, a hugely successful business, and likely to continue to be a major player in both entertainment & tech for the next decade+. Perpetual high growth is a fantasy.

It is a crash because the stock tumbled far below pre-pandemic to 2017 levels, with still more bad news to come...

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

#103

Post by hammock »

sytelus wrote: post #34

This is great insider reporting! Most people have no clue how shows gets selected and blame “wokness” for troubles at Netflix. In reality, the cost-cutting high-volume risk-averse leadership took over initial leadership of opposite nature. Transition from “ gut-driven, risktaking, maverick culture” to “prudent and frequently indecisive” is exactly the story of many other areas. Well put.

If you like this stuff here's another one

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/he-makes-you-fe...

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

#104

Post by subsubzero »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #64
sytelus wrote: post #34

This is great insider reporting! Most people have no clue how shows gets selected and blame “wokness” for troubles at Netflix. In reality, the cost-cutting high-volume risk-averse leadership took over initial leadership of opposite nature. Transition from “ gut-driven, risktaking, maverick culture” to “prudent and frequently indecisive” is exactly the story of many other areas. Well put.

This isn't "insider reporting". If you don't how the media works, when the article says "Sources close to Holland" or a "Holland loyalist"...it is Holland (usually journalists will make an effort to disguise that, but the precise events being "quoted anonymously" here make obvious that the main source for the story was one person i.e. when the "anonymous" source quotes a conversation that occurred with two people in…

Agree with this assessment, Cindy Holland is bitter she was pushed out and reached out through "channels" to deliver her own take on events. Its not really reporting just highlighting a power struggle from an individuals viewpoint(Cindy).

If the events mentioned in the story are in fact a cause of NFLX's decline is another story. People were forced inside(globally) during the pandemic and consumed alot more media than ever before in history. The quality of shows at NFLX has gone down considerably the past 2 years. NFLX pushed a show that alienated alot of people with Cuties. Friends and other hit shows left NFLX. Inflation has hit a 40 year high and gas and food are expensive, people are cutting costs and NFLX seems like an easy cut.

Would Cindy have stopped all of the above events? Maybe the quality issue but costs(under her) seemed steep, who can say? I think no matter who is at the top NFLX would have suffered in some way. If Ted had chose Cindy instead of Bela Bajaria we would have a similar article talking about Bela's sources and how Cindy's excessive spending and smaller show lineups are killing NFLX.

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

#105

Post by dont__panic »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #69
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #53

If anyone from netflix is reading, the reason I don't watch as much as I used to is because of the automatic previews. I used to just leave netflix open all day and randomly pick things when I felt like watching. I can't do that anymore. Though I do really appreciate how easy it is to suspend/cancel. I'll be back for stranger things, but who knows how long I'll stay.

I have to agree on that - it seems like forcing a show/movie to a user even if that does not align with their mood or historic picks. I am not interested at all in shows like Inventing Anna or Tinder Swindler or Selling Sunset but I have to still cope with them showing that moving banner ad like that covering so much real estate. What I would like to see is, semantic search where I could elaborate the shows/movies I'…

It is very similar to how Spotify tanked their platform for my use -- at some point, I'm a paying customer, and I get annoyed when you constantly shove your original content down my through regardless of how much it matches my preferences.

You just can't start a service with recommendations as part of your sell... and then bastardize those recommendations into advertisements or original content-pushers. Paying customers eventually lose patience.

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

#106

Post by skrbjc »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #40
ghaff wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I loved The Queen's Gambit and thought the format was perfect too. However, I can easily see why a producer might have passed on a pitch.

I dislike this format because it makes a 4 hour story into an 8 hour story where 4 hours of it is showing the character in some type of inebriated state. I think flight attendant did this too, and the only reason I can think of is to pad their statistics and it being cheap to film those sequences. But it just ends up boring me. And all the content producers are doing it. I tried Severance on Apple TV+, and I had to s…

LOL, I just saw a category on Netflix "90 minute movies from the 2000s" and your post reminded me of that. In the moment, I was like, "this is exactly what I wanted" and ended up watching a movie from the list.

I find that I often don't want to commit to another long series nor do I want to watch some movie that is exceptionally long. I hope this sort of shorter content comes back as an alternative to the very long movies we see today.

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

#107

Post by mtnygard »

Bekwnn wrote: post #76
gordon_freeman wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree on that - it seems like forcing a show/movie to a user even if that does not align with their mood or historic picks. I am not interested at all in shows like Inventing Anna or Tinder Swindler or Selling Sunset but I have to still cope with them showing that moving banner ad like that covering so much real estate. What I would like to see is, semantic search where I could elaborate the shows/movies I'…

I'm just interested in something like a "not interested" button distinct from the thumbs down button. Netflix insists on suggesting the same shows I've never clicked for months or even years of them showing on my front page. I'd like to say, "Hey, stop suggesting this." I don't feel like Netflix lacks things to watch, I just feel it does a terrible job keeping its suggestions fresh.

I'd really like to be able to say "I like this _kind_ of thing, just not this specific one." You know, just because I don't like "Valerian", I still enjoy sci-fi.

Thumbs-down on a video seems to remove the whole category.

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

#108

Post by Thorrez »

ghaff wrote: post #6

This chart [1] was making the rounds a while back. Whether you totally agree with its methodology or not, it certainly suggests that many people consider a huge swath of Netflix' content average at best. And for someone like me who doesn't watch a huge amount of video, that's not a great look. Tastes differ of course but my tastes aren't that out of the mainstream. And I'd rather a streaming service had a modest numb…

Funny that Netflix's top "original" (in fact, the top show in the entire graph), Cobra Kai, was actually a YouTube Original for the first 2 seasons.

Disclosure: I work at Google, but no on anything related to this.

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

#109

Post by skrbjc »

InitialLastName wrote: post #20
brimble wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people are watching a lot more video in general. There are multiple generations, at this point, that mostly wouldn't pay for cable or even bother with rabbit ears even if TV & movie streaming services didn't exist, but do pay for a streaming service or three. I don't think YouTube's going to beat that entire market, unless they shift tactics pretty substantially. I think they expanded the market, though, grab…

> I think people are watching a lot more video in general My parents, their parents, and many of their peers have TVs on in the background during virtually every waking moment they spend at home, and have done so since at least the 90s. People are watching video differently, but I'm not sure it's "a lot more".

My parents and my in-laws (all in their 70s) do this, too, and I'm astounded by it. The TV is just on and playing in the background all the time, even when we visit and are sitting down and talking. It's not enjoyable to me.

Come to think of it, my wife often does this as well (she's in her 30s). She'll put something on and then do something completely different, just the other day I came into the room to find her with netflix running on screen, a youtube video playing on another screen and her staring at her phone looking at something else.

But I find myself, if I'm going to watch something, sit down and focus on it completely, to the point that I often pause and rewind if I didn't quite catch the phrasing of something.

I guess it's just that certain people don't mind passive viewing and can have a lot more inputs without being bothered by it.

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

#110

Post by moomin »

drewg123 wrote: post #92
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #53

If anyone from netflix is reading, the reason I don't watch as much as I used to is because of the automatic previews. I used to just leave netflix open all day and randomly pick things when I felt like watching. I can't do that anymore. Though I do really appreciate how easy it is to suspend/cancel. I'll be back for stranger things, but who knows how long I'll stay.

On a web browser, go to https://www.netflix.com/settings/playback/ You can disable autoplay of previews, and you can disable autoplay of the next episode in a series.

A spectacularly dark pattern to have the setting only available on the device you never use the service on.
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