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Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

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Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#191

Post by astrange »

lupire wrote: post #140
nverno wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, milking shows usually ruins them. On the other hand, if they are great shows that last a long time you can gain a loyal audience. This seems to be how HBO has found so much success- Sopranos (never lost quality, even by the end), Curb, the Wire, etc. Although, GOT got milked out terribly. I think the hard part is just deciding which shows to drag on- and being based on a story that already has an ending help…

GOT wasn't milked. It outran the unfinished source materials and then the director/producers D&D "phoned it in" because they started working on Star Wars. And seasons are so short that even the bad seasons weren't a lot of TV.

It does seem like they had an outline for GRRM’s planned ending, but I doubt he was just going to have all the characters join forces and become a zombie fighting show.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#192

Post by femiagbabiaka »

411111111111111 wrote: post #166
afavour wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that Netflix is failing because of identity politics is just ridiculous and doesn’t hold up to even the slightest examination. It’s just another reactionary talking point that feels right enough for people to not examine it.

I know multiple people which complained about it and made them unsubscribe (none from the USA, so these topics are neither interesting nor on topic for any of us) It was definitely a contributing factory that's for sure.

The number of people who care about this kind of stuff is very low. Most people just want to watch movies, laugh, cry. They don’t even know about the culture war. That’s only relevant in the bubble of malcontent that is mostly made up of twitter users.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#193

Post by dragontamer »

tomnipotent wrote: post #153
dragontamer wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix has lost 200,000 and expects to lose ~2-million over the next few months under its current guidance. Does it make sense, from an accounting point of view, to have "paid" for Bright in 2017 dollars and its 2017 cash-flow? Or does it make sense to pay for "Bright" with 2022 dollars? Its all accounting. But next year, when Netflix is down by 2.2 million customers, Netflix's 10k statement is going to be "paying"…

> Does it make sense, from an accounting point of view Yes, that's the entire point of accounting. They use ASC 920 and 926 accounting standards, so that anyone familiar with GAAP can understand what they're looking at. > Disney+ or Disney loses 90% of their value in the 1st year, so Disney's accounting will only be paying for "Turning Red" this year and next year. Disney+ also amortizes, and expects 80% over four ye…

> Yes, that's the entire point of accounting. They use ASC 920 and 926 accounting standards, so that anyone familiar with GAAP can understand what they're looking at.

Things like depreciation curves are not standardized. It may all be GAAP, but there's a huge difference in how Disney's Coco was depreciated vs how Netflix's Bright depreciated in their respective accounting books.

The question is whether the 18-month schedule for Coco makes more sense than the 5-year schedule of Netflix's Bright.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#194

Post by anothernewdude »

bumper_crop wrote: post #35
harha wrote: post #28

Netflix really had a value proposition a few years ago before all the other players came in. A good selection of rotating movies and shows, sharing accounts with a good model (# of simultaneously running screens). This was way better than cable TV and more convenient than torrent. Now it’s mostly quite mediocre content across services that easily cost $100+ a month, so we’re back to the old cable days in terms of cos…

>The consumers just aren’t complete idiots. The consumers kinda are the idiots here. They know what they like, but they have no idea why the content is getting worse. Why shows are being pulled. Companies that had their content on Netflix realized they were facing an existential crisis. Ever played Settlers of Catan and find out another player had 9/10 victory points? Everyone does everything in their power to not tr…

If only there was a way to what whatever soap 2 day you wanted.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#195

Post by astrange »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #77
daenz wrote: post #53

>Its stock price collapsed by more than 35 percent Wednesday, erasing more than $50 billion in value in a single day. For people who want to be able to tax unrealized gains like stock, what is the plan for these kinds of events? Would stockholders receive a credit from the IRS when the valuation dips?

I don't understand why this is so often presented as such a difficult to understand concept. People pay property taxes every year on assets that change in value without selling (ie unrealized gains). Nobody seems perplexed by that. But can't seem to figure out how it works for stocks. Regardless of if you agree or disagree with doing it (which I'm not pushing for or against here), it's not a complex concept.

Property taxes certainly have issues; they tax building improvements, but we want those, so we shouldn’t be incentivizing people to not improve their buildings.

Land value tax is the proper way to go, questions of how to value land aside.

The issue with a wealth tax is it’s inflationary - most taxes are deflationary but a wealth tax forces you to sell assets to get their cash from them. It does encourage rich people to mark up their assets less, which might reduce apparent income inequality aka make poor people less jealous of them…

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#196

Post by colinmhayes »

chii wrote: post #169
ramraj07 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is a valid point, Id argue that Netflix could have survived this - they had billions of dollars to create original content, and then they did create it, but some how screwed it all up. There’s at best 1 or 2 good show and no good movie Netflix has made in years. And anything half decent they cancel mercilessly without giving it a chance. This is not just in the US. The comparison of original content quality…

> they had billions of dollars to create original content they had the wrong idea that original content is their strong point. It's not. It's disney's strong point. Netflix should've used their dominant position to lobby for new rules to the game - prevent exclusivity of content! They should've lobbied gov't to mandate that studio productions of content be permanently untied to a streaming service, and be available t…

No chance that would've worked. Netflix saw themselves as a content creation company because they realized that having great content is the only way to keep growing.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#197

Post by skippedtoc »

tomcam wrote: post #179

> “Two hundred million was a fairly easy climb,” one industry vet who works at a streamer told me Wednesday. Yeah fuck you. I am a Netflix subscriber with little to no love for the company. The algorithm fails for me and I detest the user interface. If Netflix disappeared tomorrow my life would be barely affected. But getting 200 million subscribers to anything, much less a paid service, is a massive achievement. If…

200 million "was" easy climb (for Netflix). I don't think it meant its easy in general. More of Netflix made it look like it's easy, (for Netflix). Now we see reaching 500 is not easy for them.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#198

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

“Content is King” We all know this, Netflix knows this. And yet for some reason for years they have been aiming for quantity and not quality.

Money is not enough in this department and baseball metaphors don’t do justice illustrating just how hard it is to put together a team that has that special thing going on. Some would argue it’s impossible - teams like the one behind Better Call Saul are just extremely rare and can’t be rushed. The traditional system has sort of known this for a long time, I think.

Netflix tried rushing. I’ve personally worked on a failed series season made by the company and it was a chaotic clusterfuck. So are their efforts in ordering and buying content haphazardly to stuff their library with something. Now they’re probably going to have to learn the slow quality development and bring back many of the traditional practices they threw out the window.

This is a good thing for audiences though. I think we’re going to be seeing Netflix settle as one of many big content delivery platforms in the long term.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#199

Post by colinmhayes »

sjtindell wrote: post #120
ramraj07 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is a valid point, Id argue that Netflix could have survived this - they had billions of dollars to create original content, and then they did create it, but some how screwed it all up. There’s at best 1 or 2 good show and no good movie Netflix has made in years. And anything half decent they cancel mercilessly without giving it a chance. This is not just in the US. The comparison of original content quality…

I mean I don’t know about screwed it up. You can’t expect any artist to just consistently produce pure hits. The creativity seems to come and go, the zeitgeist and the cultural context matter so much. Nobody (except, I would argue, Marvel) is able to be really consistent with their art. They were always doomed to fail producing their own content.

HBO releases multiple good seasons every year. Many years they have a good show on every quarter.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#200

Post by 55555 »

I’m bored of Netflix. They have simply gone the assembly line direction instead of the direction of art, at least for some big niches. For example, every True Crime docuseries on Netflix is the same crap. Once you’ve seen three, you’ve seen them all. They get each cop involved in a big empty room, sit them on a solitary chair, put a dramatic light above them, and shoot them in 4k. Then they direct it at a pace to bore the hell out of you.

My business produces storytelling videos for e-commerce and we almost got into the television/entertainment business at one point, as it is simply so cheap to pump out middling quality documentaries. Stock photography and interviews and cheap-but-good editing. You’ll notice solo YouTubers are making great documentaries. I don’t know how they are spending so much money considering the quality of much of the crap they make. High schooler YouTubers make similar quality with their iPhones.

There must be thousands of talented directors who haven’t been given their big break yet who have artistic ideas and would almost work for free to be given a chance to make a name for themselves. Give them resources and a chance and see who has what it takes.

This is only one relevant factor, ofcourse.

Unrelated: I’m currently trying out CuriosityStream so I feel less guilty for the time I spend watching TV. At least I’ll be learning something.

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