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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

#51

Post by talkingtab »

It is surprising to me that the article does not mention Amazon. Starting in January Amazon is going to "feature" ads unless you pay more. I for one am sick of ads in everything and so finally have good motivation to quit prime.

It seems to me this is a continuing example of fantasy businesses. We will deliver products the next day for free. Oops the next three days. Oops a week later. Oops, not for free. We will have free movies. We will make money by producing a constant stream of quality movies. Oops, pablum movies. Oops we have to put ads in the movies.

A business is a thing that provides value to customers which the customers are willing to pay for. If you give your product away, or have get money from other sources to provide for your customers, then you are not a business. Lock in and other anti-customer practices do not make something into a business. Massive tax fraud does not make a business. And yes, I realize Amazon, Microsoft and Apple make money. At least for now.

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

#52

Post by HDThoreaun »

steveBK123 wrote: post #41

As all these competitors launched, I thought maybe NFLX's days were numbered. Basically NFLX was first mover, but now you have a mix of niche targeting streamers in play. If you have kids or want Star Wars you get Disney+, if you care about sports/live then you pick one of the competitors with that, if you want more highbrow you get HBO/Max, if you want Star Trek you get Paramount+. Now watching them all burn cash an…

Disney really fucked up here. As Netflix has figured out the number one quality a streaming service needs is endless content so that no one opens the app without at least scrolling for a while. Every single person has some sort of guilty pleasure show that can be produced cheaply, and Netflix figured out they can make everyone’s guilty pleasure show by just green lighting everything they come across

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

#54

Post by sobellian »

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.

Maybe prime in the sense that they push out a lot of content, but let's face it - Star Wars and Marvel, they ain't Hemingway.

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

#55

Post by graphe »

sethd wrote: post #38
tom_walters wrote: post #29

I think this primarily comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of where the value in streaming services lies from the perspective of old world media giants. The majority of people who buy streaming, I suspect, are interested mainly in the conveyor belt of diverse and engaging content. Sure I whack an episode of Rick and Morty on via Netflix once a month, but 90% of viewing is of new serialized content. Disney na…

> and leveraged cross-country content like no old-world provider ever has. Mixing in a lot of foreign language content to make their library seem larger is a sad joke and one of the main reasons I no longer subscribe to Netflix. Edit for clarity: I’m fine with foreign language content in general, as long as it’s categorized as such. The problem is how Netflix mixes it in with everything else in a deceptive manor. I c…

Why is it a problem for you? Don't like reading subs when doing stuff in the background? It's my main reason I don't like foreign, I'm either reading or watching.

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

#56

Post by kranke155 »

graphe wrote: post #37
tom_walters wrote: post #29

I think this primarily comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of where the value in streaming services lies from the perspective of old world media giants. The majority of people who buy streaming, I suspect, are interested mainly in the conveyor belt of diverse and engaging content. Sure I whack an episode of Rick and Morty on via Netflix once a month, but 90% of viewing is of new serialized content. Disney na…

> Disney naively thought they could just serve up old classics while wringing the life out of Marvel and Star Wars IP and people would happily continue to pay. Wringing the life is a pretty mean way to put it. They tried to use the IP to make money. Their movies and shows sound like propaganda with Twitter quips and they aren't good. Marvel and star wars peaked under Disney the same way that Apple peaked from Tim Coo…

Marvel and Star Wars are managed in radically different ways, by completely different "PM"s.

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

#57

Post by edgyquant »

jmyeet wrote: post #48

I remember groaning when all the "me too" streaming platforms were announced. Netflix was good when it had what I called "remnant content" like full ad-free seasons of TV that I could finally catch up on. And at $8 (or even $10/month) I basically kept it forever even if I didn't watch it for a few months. But now all these services are rapidly pushing towards $20/month. My usage pattern is to sign up for Netflix abou…

I’ve definitely noticed that there seems to be ~5 people who do all the dubs on Netflix. For instance there’s obviously one guy who does all the main character voices, one guy who does all of the black guy voices, etc

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

#58

Post by HDThoreaun »

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.

Streaming services need to continually pump out new content. Disneys release schedule is too slow and they don’t have enough original ip, all their stuff is the same few brands. Their strategy works better for destination content like movies when streaming is a binge based platform.

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

#59

Post by avidiax »

s0l1dsnak3123 wrote: post #15

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…

I think what the industry needs is a fixed royalties regime like recorded music has.

Spotify has the whole catalog, and the rights holders can't stop them. But Spotify does have to pay a certain industry fixed royalty per play.

The trick will be that movies & TV have wildly different production costs and replay value vs. music singles, so the scheme would have to account for this in a way that is fair.

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

#60

Post by sethd »

graphe wrote: post #55
sethd wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and leveraged cross-country content like no old-world provider ever has. Mixing in a lot of foreign language content to make their library seem larger is a sad joke and one of the main reasons I no longer subscribe to Netflix. Edit for clarity: I’m fine with foreign language content in general, as long as it’s categorized as such. The problem is how Netflix mixes it in with everything else in a deceptive manor. I c…

Why is it a problem for you? Don't like reading subs when doing stuff in the background? It's my main reason I don't like foreign, I'm either reading or watching.

Edited post to make my reason more clear
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