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Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

bloomberg.com

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Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#21

Post by oflannabhra »

purpleblue wrote: post #4

I'm at the precipice of getting rid of most of my streaming services. I only keep Amazon video around is because it's free. The only show I watch on that is The Boys. I'm waiting for Netflix to ask me to purchase a second account for my sibling who I share my Netflix account with, and when that happens I'll immediately cancel it. There's nothing there I watch anymore. Disney+ has a slew of failed Marvel shows and I c…

We cut the sub on Netflix last year when they hiked the price. We've re-subbed a single month since then, during the holidays, and we didn't even fill up the month with enough to watch. I'm not sure if that's a discoverability problem, but my sense is that it is a quality problem.

We've now moved to a carousel of rotating subscriptions between Hulu, Disney, HBO, Peacock, etc. It's much cheaper although annoying to manage.

The only streaming services we haven't cancelled have been Prime and Apple TV+, mostly because they are free as part of bundles.

Apple TV+ has had the highest number of favorite shows for us, and has easily been the best value. (Prehistoric Planet, Tiny World, Severance, Silo, Black Bird, For All Mankind, and many others).

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#22

Post by rglullis »

xyst wrote: post #6

Interesting. I always thought of Prime Video and Amazon Studios as loss leaders. Also they were investing so much into the studio as to become the dominant leader in 20 yrs as they streamline the process and pump out IP more efficiently (similar to AWS). Seems like they are going backwards or current CEO doesn’t have the backbone to make it happen.

Datacenters and cloud services are commodities. TV shows are not. Anyone that thinks you could apply the same strategy to very different types of products would be successful only by luck.

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#23

Post by danpalmer »

tiffanyh wrote: post #20
cs702 wrote: post #2

For a while, before Jassy became CEO, people at the company would sometimes jokingly refer to Amazon Studios as "the loss leader for Bezos's sex life." Now that subscriber growth is slowing down at most streaming services, the end of the "golden age of TV" is at hand. Welcome to the "bean-counting age of TV," in which streaming services try to milk subscribers for as much as possible without pissing them off too much…

Can you explain more your "loss leader" comment. What's the background on why that comment was being made?

Supposedly Bezos liked being a part of Hollywood, meeting the celebrities, being at the parties, and potentially meeting women.

I always took the last part to be an exaggeration, but it did sound like he cut the division a lot of slack on spending because he liked the idea of it.

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#24

Post by bojan »

purpleblue wrote: post #4

I'm at the precipice of getting rid of most of my streaming services. I only keep Amazon video around is because it's free. The only show I watch on that is The Boys. I'm waiting for Netflix to ask me to purchase a second account for my sibling who I share my Netflix account with, and when that happens I'll immediately cancel it. There's nothing there I watch anymore. Disney+ has a slew of failed Marvel shows and I c…

Recently I only get real value from Sky Showtime, because Star Trek Strange New Worlds is on it.

And considering the way they canceled Prodigy, I do wonder how long SNW will last.

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#25

Post by Apocryphon »

afavour wrote: post #11
lockhouse wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything else, I will pirate without guilt. Are you unwilling or unable to pay for the remaining content you plan to consume? I’ve never understood how flippant HN is about piracy. The entire tech industry is built on intellectual property.

I suspect your view is going to be unpopular but I agree with you. It's fine to find today's selection of streaming TV awful. Just don't watch it. "I'm going to watch this awful thing, I'm just not going to pay for it" isn't really all that defensible as a viewpoint. Declining streaming revenue means the expensive, good shows will get cancelled and replaced by shitty, cheap to make reality TV. And then people will mo…

Plenty of good shows get cancelled even without piracy, though. One wonders what’s the best way to signal to the suits that a show is in hot demand. Maybe by buying it directly or by being a Nielsen viewer.

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#26

Post by cowsup »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #13

Unfortunately the place where I buy toilet paper from is not the first place I think of when I want to be entertained. Unfortunately it's a culture and branding problem which I don't think Amazon can fix.

More companies need to utilize different brand names when launching vastly different products. If there was a service called “Comcast (Stream / Video / Watch / Play),” the numbers would be in the toilet; but they brand their streaming platform as “Peacock” and it’s quite respectable.

Had Amazon named their service something unique, and announced it as some sort of bonus subscription you get as part of Prime (or something you can subscribe to separately), I wonder if more people would watch. It would also help separate the streaming platform from the concept of “Purchase a movie through Amazon.”

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#28

Post by nullindividual »

afavour wrote: post #9
cs702 wrote: post #2

For a while, before Jassy became CEO, people at the company would sometimes jokingly refer to Amazon Studios as "the loss leader for Bezos's sex life." Now that subscriber growth is slowing down at most streaming services, the end of the "golden age of TV" is at hand. Welcome to the "bean-counting age of TV," in which streaming services try to milk subscribers for as much as possible without pissing them off too much…

> Going forward, I'm expecting cheaper content Netflix's proliferation of reality TV (Love is Blind etc) felt absolutely jarring to me at first but it's just the tip of the iceberg. We're going to look back on the era of prestige TV fondly.

> Netflix's proliferation of reality TV (Love is Blind etc) felt absolutely jarring to me at first but it's just the tip of the iceberg.

This should be seen as a death-kneel for any channel/service, yet those cable channels keep going after decades of truly terrible TV.

I wonder what kind of person these shows pander to.

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#29

Post by thebooktocome »

lockhouse wrote: post #8
purpleblue wrote: post #4

I'm at the precipice of getting rid of most of my streaming services. I only keep Amazon video around is because it's free. The only show I watch on that is The Boys. I'm waiting for Netflix to ask me to purchase a second account for my sibling who I share my Netflix account with, and when that happens I'll immediately cancel it. There's nothing there I watch anymore. Disney+ has a slew of failed Marvel shows and I c…

> Everything else, I will pirate without guilt. Are you unwilling or unable to pay for the remaining content you plan to consume? I’ve never understood how flippant HN is about piracy. The entire tech industry is built on intellectual property.

Software intellectual property is (for better or worse) primarily enshrined in patents, which have a limited exclusive lifetime.

The content industry’s intellectual property is primarily enshrined in copyright, whose exclusive lifetime greatly outstrips most human lifespans.

It’s not contradictory to be for the first and against the second.

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#30

Post by whatshisface »

Apocryphon wrote: post #25
afavour wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect your view is going to be unpopular but I agree with you. It's fine to find today's selection of streaming TV awful. Just don't watch it. "I'm going to watch this awful thing, I'm just not going to pay for it" isn't really all that defensible as a viewpoint. Declining streaming revenue means the expensive, good shows will get cancelled and replaced by shitty, cheap to make reality TV. And then people will mo…

Plenty of good shows get cancelled even without piracy, though. One wonders what’s the best way to signal to the suits that a show is in hot demand. Maybe by buying it directly or by being a Nielsen viewer.

The best way to support a show you like is by being a million people. :-)
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