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Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

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

#31

Post by theonlybutlet »

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.

Yes the tech industry is built on intellectual property but the movie/TV industry is built on false scarcity. The music industry used to follow this model until the advent of Spotify. We had a brief time at the advent of streaming where it looked like Movie/TV was going this way, but they reversed course. I have a Netflix subscription, if you want a cut of that subscription, by all means show your content on Netflix and I'll watch it there. Add it to prime or whatever too, but I'm not maintaining ten subscriptions.

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

#32

Post by TradingPlaces »

danpalmer wrote: post #23
tiffanyh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Part of a VERY long history of non-media companies buying studios and regretting it later. It’s sexy and sounds good until you get into the actual business part, which is terrible.

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

#33

Post by Tagbert »

bobthepanda wrote: post #10
mikece wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything else, I will pirate without guilt. I ask this without irony: is there even anything worth sourcing from the high seas these days? Entertainment has largely turned to crap in my opinion.

It depends on what you like, but there is stuff out there. And the pirating is easier because good content is spread so thinly across platforms. Personally, I enjoy comedies and cooking, and those have done right. I’m kind of over the dramatic HBO-style experience.

Comedies and Cooking are pretty cheap to produce so they are under less pressure.

Hmmm.... I wonder if a comedy series about cooking would bring in viewers? :-)

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

#34

Post by andsoitis »

malfist wrote: post #12
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.

Full disclosure: disgruntled amazon employee It seems like lately a lot of our CEO's decisions lack backbone or conviction. It seems like he go the role of CEO by yes-maning Bezos (See brain double quote here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/andy-jassy-ama... ) A lot of the decisions made by our CEO lately have been justified with "not invented here" logic. Announcements for both RTO and layoffs have be…

> It seems like lately a lot of our CEO's decisions lack backbone or conviction. It seems like he go the role of CEO by yes-maning Bezos

For sake of argument, I’m assuming Jeff Bezos decided who to succeed him.

Your observation would imply that you think Jeff Bezos made a poor decision. He is often lauded for his insights and good decision-making, but of course that doesn’t mean one is infallible.

Do you think his choice was wrong and he made a mistake?

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

#35

Post by afavour »

nullindividual wrote: post #28
afavour wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> I wonder what kind of person these shows pander to.

An absolutely massive audience that just wants to switch off at the end of the day rather than engage in a deep drama or similar. I'm not exactly defending it but don't underestimate the size of that audience.

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

#36

Post by Arkhaine_kupo »

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.

> We're going to look back on the era of prestige TV fondly.

I don't think prestige TV is necesirely expensive though.

The wire, breaking bad, Andor, the bear, severance all can achieve incredible results without hollywood budgets.

If anything big budgets have not translated into quality, see GoT, Rings of Power, Stranger Things all getting worse the more moeny thrown at them.

prestigue tv is about talent, and having longer story lines, it just allows for more character work than a movie, but not because of that does it have to cost exponentially more.

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

#37

Post by andsoitis »

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…

> 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.

If you don’t watch anymore, like you say, then why have a subscription at all?

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

#38

Post by explorigin »

mikece wrote: post #5

High costs for studios seems to be something experienced by everyone in Hollywood; the difference for Amazon is that the studios sell their product on a pay-per-view basis upon launch whereas Amazon gives it away for free to everyone with Prime (at least for now... maybe Prime will start doing PPV on initial release adn then free for Prime members later?). I've had Prime for years and wish the service was bifurcated…

Amazon runs advertisements with its shows now...it just does so under the channel name "FreeVee".

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

#40

Post by hgdfhgfdhgdf »

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…

Fortunately, capitalism ensures you will have other choices besides Amazon.
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