Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 330 posts

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

#181

Post by ta_1138 »

jonplackett wrote: post #156
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…

It’s funny how crap the other streamers apps still are compared to Netflix. Little things matter. Netflix always picks up the exact second you left a show. Apple, Disney and prime sometimes jump back 5 minutes or even more. Netflix app opens super fast even in my crap old smart TV. Apple, Disney, prime take ages. Even when open the UI is very sloppy. Netflix adjusts the streaming quality depending on your connection.…

Netflix spends a lot more on per developer, and has been working on the UI for longer: See, for instance, how a big percentage of manpower at Disney has been spent going from two completely different UIs between D+ and Hulu into a single one, so every feature didn't have to be made multiple times. Those kind of projects, with a quantity-over-quality approach to hiring, tend to take forever.

Netflix also has an advantage in cost management, also due to better engineers that are also better paid, and have been managing their system for far longer. The AWS bill for D+ is not the kind you get when you have good chances to be profitable. I bet a lot of engineering in the next year or two will be used just more efficient use of compute and storage. I bet many teams there are spending far more on servers than on people.

And if D+ could be doing better, and is still unprofitable, imagine the situation in other competitors that are even newer. The total cost of the infrastructure, without even counting the licensing or the marketing, might cost the more than people are paying.

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

#182

Post by e40 »

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…

I got the Amazon email yesterday and called them. No way to get a prorated refund so I turned off auto renew on Prime. I had a nice conversation with the lady and said the only thing that would prevent the lapse of Prime would be no ads for the base price.

If people cancel in droves they reconsider their position.

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

#184

Post by xivzgrev »

ta_1138 wrote: post #163
ren_engineer wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody wanted to control the entire pie, when in reality almost all of them would have been better off just licensing their content to Netflix and not worrying about streaming distribution

If we didn't have at least 3 major services, ultimately said services would have made contracts that would have taken most of the value of the deal: That's basically what Netflix was doing when they were the only game in town. We have too many streaming services now, but a monopolist with sensible prices was never the way it was going to end.

It would’ve been interesting if the major studios made their own Netflix.

Assuming they could execute technically on it, then a consumer would have just one subscription to get a ton of great content, and honestly would probably be compelling to have that AND Netflix (all the long tail stuff).

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

#185

Post by alephnerd »

blackoil wrote: post #177
alephnerd wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Disney is big in India through Hotstar and Star India which they acquired along with Fox. Edit: Seems, I wasn't up to date, they are planning to exit India also. Thanks, alephnerd

Disney is selling Hotstar and Star India to Reliance.

It's part of their larger pivot away from Asia and towards building a competitive American streaming presence

https://inc42.com/buzz/reliance-to-acquire-walt-disney-india...

https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2023/06/15/disney-shuts-down...

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

#187

Post by vehemenz »

jncfhnb wrote: post #171
vehemenz wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Gaslighting" has an old etymology, but its usage as a pop psychology term is recent and mostly a Zoomer phenomenon. Applying it to the history of television strikes me as presentism.

Describing old things with old terminology is just confusing.

Only if the new terminology is better and actually adds something. Does adopting half-baked concepts from TikTokers really add anything here?

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

#188

Post by toxican »

e40 wrote: post #182
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…

I got the Amazon email yesterday and called them. No way to get a prorated refund so I turned off auto renew on Prime. I had a nice conversation with the lady and said the only thing that would prevent the lapse of Prime would be no ads for the base price. If people cancel in droves they reconsider their position.

>No way to get a prorated refund

Maybe this is an annual payment thing? Because I paid monthly and cancelled the other day online and it offered to refund me back $2 and some change left in my current month.

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

#189

Post by skydhash »

ta_1138 wrote: post #170
bluepizza wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You can be mean to people too! However, if you want to model the corporations correctly, you'll not go very far by thinking they are soulless machines. Most of the reasons corporations fail is people making awful decisions than help themselves personally, and harm long term corporate value. As for low-quality content, I work with people that have made very bad entertainment. Nobody starts out thinking they'll make so…

> That was Disney's problem this year. A lot of content was super expensive

The streaming model requires a conveyor belt of content to work. And movies are expensive to produce, consume a lot of bandwidth, and not really replayable. The constraints tend to give bad content. It’s the whole cheap, fast, and good triangle.

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

#190

Post by toxican »

e40 wrote: post #186

Last I looked HBO had $53B in debt. Yep: https://the-media-leader.com/just-how-big-is-warner-bros-dis... The money bugs won’t let this continue and big shakeups are coming.

No it's fine! They'll just continue to merge with shitty media companies until the previously good HBO name is entirely worthless and the debt is some other overpaid executive's problem!
Post reply on HN