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Disney, Warner, Comcast, and Paramount are contemplating cuts, possible mergers

arstechnica.com

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Re: Disney, Warner, Comcast, and Paramount are contemplating cuts, possible mergers

#11

Post by londons_explore »

zpeti wrote: post #7

Is it just me or has the quality of streaming content gone massively downhill? We are in the era of the McDonald’s of streaming. Everything is low quality mass market crap. At this point I’m only watching pre 2016 content or foreign stuff. It’s just so bad. And this is the stuff writers went striking over. I mean I’m not surprised they are threatened by AI, it’s not hard to copy American films and tv at this point. I…

I have to wonder why consumers so desire new content. Old films and TV shows have much the same entertainment value, and are vastly cheaper to stick through some AI to turn to HD and strip out the no-longer-politically-acceptable jokes.

There is also a wealth of content from other countries and languages, which could be translated with a little AI assistance to do lip sync etc.

With far more content than anyone could reasonably watch in a lifetime, I really don't see why anyone is investing big money into making new stuff.

Re: Disney, Warner, Comcast, and Paramount are contemplating cuts, possible mergers

#12

Post by ethanbond »

zpeti wrote: post #7

Is it just me or has the quality of streaming content gone massively downhill? We are in the era of the McDonald’s of streaming. Everything is low quality mass market crap. At this point I’m only watching pre 2016 content or foreign stuff. It’s just so bad. And this is the stuff writers went striking over. I mean I’m not surprised they are threatened by AI, it’s not hard to copy American films and tv at this point. I…

No not everything is bad. Severance, The Bear, Succession off the top of my head are totally worth watching.

Re: Disney, Warner, Comcast, and Paramount are contemplating cuts, possible mergers

#13

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

The one that surprised me the most to be struggling is Disney+. I thought they would have the strongest streaming story since they have so much of the prime IP: Star Wars, Marvel, Disney Animation, Pixar, etc, whereas Netflix is still heavily dependent on licensed IP.

Re: Disney, Warner, Comcast, and Paramount are contemplating cuts, possible mergers

#14

Post by graphe »

Tim Dillon talked about this recently. He said they want to be too big to fail, merge and get bailouts and handouts like sports get, since they own lots of revenue streams. He mentioned it's dead too, this article says the same thing. Once it's too big to fail this happens, they can push any agenda they want, not be any "good" and when people wonder how are they still around making nothing but pushing agendas in not all subtle way it's because nobody is responsible for content anymore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility

https://youtu.be/iIRZNlacGMI (second half)

>But no deals emerged, leading some investors to conclude there is little appetite among private equity or tech companies for acquiring legacy businesses.

Definitely dead.

Re: Disney, Warner, Comcast, and Paramount are contemplating cuts, possible mergers

#15

Post by s0l1dsnak3123 »

The answer to this nonsense is quite clear to me: we need to build a federated media platform instead of building silos that create negative outcomes for the customer and perverse incentives for the distributors and producers. We need to homogonise the pricing just like cable bundles do, but without locking the customer into products they don't care about. Spotify, while having many issues of their own, have more or less managed to do this - you don't pay extra for categories of media you don't care about, like you do with cable TV.

The problem is and always was the so-called "rights holders", who are just another form of landlord, looking to milk their licenses for as much as we can bare. Their power needs to be diminished. Whoever cracks that nut will revolutionise the media industry in my opinion.

Re: Disney, Warner, Comcast, and Paramount are contemplating cuts, possible mergers

#16

Post by JKCalhoun »

zpeti wrote: post #7

Is it just me or has the quality of streaming content gone massively downhill? We are in the era of the McDonald’s of streaming. Everything is low quality mass market crap. At this point I’m only watching pre 2016 content or foreign stuff. It’s just so bad. And this is the stuff writers went striking over. I mean I’m not surprised they are threatened by AI, it’s not hard to copy American films and tv at this point. I…

It probably started with cable TV and the need for filler for things like the Disney Channel.

Myself, I'm catching up on all the films made before 1980.

Re: Disney, Warner, Comcast, and Paramount are contemplating cuts, possible mergers

#17

Post by graphe »

zpeti wrote: post #7

Is it just me or has the quality of streaming content gone massively downhill? We are in the era of the McDonald’s of streaming. Everything is low quality mass market crap. At this point I’m only watching pre 2016 content or foreign stuff. It’s just so bad. And this is the stuff writers went striking over. I mean I’m not surprised they are threatened by AI, it’s not hard to copy American films and tv at this point. I…

I stream YouTube daily. Ted lasso is pretty good when I heard it in the background I started to watch it.

Re: Disney, Warner, Comcast, and Paramount are contemplating cuts, possible mergers

#18

Post by selcuka »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #13

The one that surprised me the most to be struggling is Disney+. I thought they would have the strongest streaming story since they have so much of the prime IP: Star Wars, Marvel, Disney Animation, Pixar, etc, whereas Netflix is still heavily dependent on licensed IP.

> The one that surprised me the most to be struggling is Disney+.

Smells like Hollywood accounting [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

Re: Disney, Warner, Comcast, and Paramount are contemplating cuts, possible mergers

#19

Post by tomjen3 »

zpeti wrote: post #7

Is it just me or has the quality of streaming content gone massively downhill? We are in the era of the McDonald’s of streaming. Everything is low quality mass market crap. At this point I’m only watching pre 2016 content or foreign stuff. It’s just so bad. And this is the stuff writers went striking over. I mean I’m not surprised they are threatened by AI, it’s not hard to copy American films and tv at this point. I…

When you broadcast a TV series you get Nilson ratings.

When you run the a streaming service you get data on when people go and take a toilet break.

This is not very useful for already existing catalog, but when you write new content there will be pressure to adapt the material to the data and so all the new stuff ends up being bland and boring ("we get 3% more viewership if the leading lady is blond with shoulder length hair", means that every tv show will be blond festival).

Re: Disney, Warner, Comcast, and Paramount are contemplating cuts, possible mergers

#20

Post by graphe »

apwell23 wrote: post #3

stock seems to be up 160% from its low in 2022. So this piece of information is irrelevant to the future of the company ? website seems to be down. I read this link instead https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2023/12/28/shakeout-has-...

First sentence

>The world’s largest traditional entertainment companies face a reckoning in 2024 after losing more than $5 billion in the past year from the streaming services they built to compete with Netflix.

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