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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

#101

Post by dudul »

talkingtab wrote: post #51

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 hav…

Amazon ads is also the last straw for me. I was already putting up with their previews at the beginning of a show, but ads are a big no.

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

#102

Post by ugjka »

oblio wrote: post #85
ugjka wrote: post #53

In Europe every country has their own competing streaming services, a lot of them very successful because of local content. But everyone pretty much has Netflix as well

Many of these are propped up by local sports. Once the big American companies start branching out, many of these local streaming services will be acquired or wiped out.

If the EU will allow for the big guns to step in and monopolize the market, also every country individually have their own regulatory powers

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

#103

Post by RandomLensman »

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…

Maybe Disney just needs to start charging Netflix prices?

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

#104

Post by fzeroracer »

londons_explore wrote: post #11
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…

I want to say this as kindly as possible, but if you wonder why consumers desire new content then I'd have to wonder how varied is your film and TV taste.

Times change, genres evolve and twist and become something new. Spaghetti Westerns blew up and had a mass craze, then died off. Weird westerns gained momentum and survived to this day. Film depictions of what the future looks like will be vastly different in the 60s/70s versus how it is today. Modern shows like Andor show that aspect of retrofuturism mixed with modern designs. Animation was mostly restricted to childrens work in comparison to today where you have things like Scavanger's Reign.

This is without talking about the change in attitudes towards various minority groups.

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

#105

Post by steveBK123 »

fullshark wrote: post #67
HDThoreaun wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Netflix basically created a better cable TV, endless trash but there's those few shows you enjoy watching or classic sitcoms as comfort food you like to put on and shut your brain off for. The content isn't king, at least not like the media conglomerates believe.

Even if content IS king, the conglomerates have risk-aversely optimized on churning out bad but expensive content. The proliferation of sequel/prequel/spinoff/reboot/riff content on top of marquee brands has been overkill. It's like the late 90s move to "reality TV" except without the cost controls.

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

#106

Post by alephnerd »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #44
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…

Netflix’s foreign content is quite good. Especially the Korean stuff is pretty high quality and way cheaper to produce, seems like a good idea to me.

> the Korean stuff is pretty high quality

It's part of their Asia pivot. Netflix invests in fairly high quality Asian TV to try and compete for market share within Asia.

Amazon Prime is doing a similar pivot (fairly successfully I might add) in India.

Disney has dropped out of the Asian market because they just couldn't compete Asian competitors or Amazon+Netflix.

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

#107

Post by jncfhnb »

We should not allow distribution of media and software to be a cornerstone of society.

If we passed some regulation to force it to be leased to wanting distributors at equal cost we could kill exclusivity and the middle man margins and just get on with it with a nice, basically free option like SFlix.

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

#108

Post by dom96 »

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…

> The majority of people who buy streaming, I suspect, are interested mainly in the conveyor belt of diverse and engaging content.

I'd love to see this backed up by sources. I for one recall seeing streaming stats from Disney+ and old series like X Files are up there as some of the most streamed.

Anecdotally, I watch and rewatch a lot of old series. Like I'm rewatching Breaking Bad on Netflix right now.

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

#109

Post by graphe »

bluepizza wrote: post #77
graphe wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Wringing the life is a pretty mean way to put it. Corporations don't have feelings. It is okay to be mean to multi billion dollar corporations.

Corporations don't have hands to wring either. I don't love Disney, either IP or their agenda but they didn't wring it. Factually.

They bought an IP to add onto it. If any company wringed anything it was Google buying Motorola for patents and then spitting out the bones to resell.

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

#110

Post by no_wizard »

akritrime wrote: post #26
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #8

It wasn’t all for naught, some hidden pearls came out of the low interest orgy thad made everyone and their dog open a streaming service. For instance, AMC+‘s „The North Water“ or Starzplay’s (yes, really) „Counterpart“. Any more recommendations?

Didn't they cancel Counterpart? I watched the first season but never watched the second one when I learnt that it was canceled.

Yes, which I never understood. A plot with infinite potential (re: seasons) and Starz kills it.

They seem to only want to produce the "Power" series with regularity at this point, and really low effort soft core adult TV series

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