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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

#221

Post by cpuguy83 »

fzeroracer wrote: post #86
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…

Ultimately yeah, it's this. Netflix wins because it understands hanging your hat on one series or IP is business suicide. They churn out a bunch of shows, from higher budget big IPs to a bunch of lower budget series and animations. David Zaslav and other media execs wanted to try and force the old media philosophy in the streaming environment, which also meant executing a bunch of mid-budget and lower-budget series t…

Except when the "higher budget" is really just paying for an A-list actor with mediocre at best content. There is so much of this in recent years and I think Netflix may be the biggest offender.

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

#222

Post by dazc »

dudul wrote: post #101
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.

Ads for other shows you have already seen or decided never to watch are annoying at best. I wonder what the question was when this was suggested as a solution?

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

#223

Post by lprd »

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 has. I was just having this conversation with a friend the other day. Despite Netflix having all their analytics/viewership data, they consistently crank out garbage. You might get one or two releases a year that are good, but that's it. I know its subjective, but the few shows that I enjoyed were cancelled or just shelved.

They weren’t perfect, but I want normal Hollywood studios to come back. There was a lot more on the line when it came to creating movies/series and a lot more effort went into creating them. It took actual talent to make something great, not data.

The same is happening in the music industry. I know pop music has more or less sounded the same throughout time...but these days its almost indistinguishable. Studios just pick a public figure to sing a generated song, it goes viral for a few months, rinse repeat. I have a hard time telling the difference between artists these days. Their vocal range/tone is almost identical in some cases.

We have an over abundance of choice when it comes to media and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. Its now a chore to sort through the garbage and find actual talent.

Sorry for the rant!

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

#224

Post by lkjdsklf »

aqfamnzc wrote: post #151
maxerickson wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney also has Hulu and ESPN+. (They rolled up Hulu after acquiring a majority share with the purchase of Fox)

Oh, interesting. I'm surprised they haven't merged them / moved people over / shut down Hulu.

They're merging the two apps right now.

As of the last couple of months, much of hulu's content is available under the disney app. Seems only a matter of time before the hulu app is completely deprecated.

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

#225

Post by doctorpangloss »

geraldwhen wrote: post #88
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 could have done that and I would have paid. But they don’t make shows people want to watch any more. Live action Mulan could have been awesome! But they destroyed the themes of family honor and removed the music and comedy. Pander fatigue is real. I’ve got kids but I’m letting my Disney sub lapse. Anime is way better than the schlock Disney puts out.

The streamers make some shows that some people want to watch.

Netflix’s report, first of its kind, showed 20 titles that you will have never heard of unless you use TikTok.

Most people are watching the shows most other people are watching, it’s memetic. People want to feel like they’re a part of something; that is they’re are willing to pay $20/mo in Fear of Missing Out.

Nobody has FOMO for old Disney content. The largest expense for Netflix is creating content, all the shows in that report were from 2022 and 2023.

The kicker is that it’s the opposite of the top of the Steam charts, indicating how bad of a business the streamers are in. Those games are most free and have been around for a long time, sometimes decades.

Both games and TV/movies were threatened by piracy. Yet the result for TV/movies was wildly undercharging for the stuff people were pirating - giving away the old catalogue content on the premise they were competing with $0, simultaneously ceasing to monetize their pay to play audience. Huge mistake: they should have wildly increased enforcement, which would have been much much cheaper and effective. TV/movies just do not have enough secular ways to innovate like games do to completely supplant piracy from a technological and social perspective.

Two takeaways: (1) the pay to watch model model was much more sustainable, because most content makes way more sense to sell for those payers, it was non-FOMO content, it was good content. (2) in order to make most of the highly engaged streaming content sustainable, streamers must innovate in monetization, and it’s not obvious if ads will be enough.

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

#226

Post by erellsworth »

graphe wrote: post #154
erellsworth wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wringing the life is a pretty mean way to put it. They tried to use the IP to make money. Mean or not, I'd say it's also accurate. They tried to use the IP to make money... by wringing the life out of it. There are so many Marvel/Star Wars movies/tv shows now you need a freaking spreadsheet to keep track.

Religions don't wring up other religions by making more media of other religions.

WTF does religion have to do with this? I have no idea what you're trying to say.

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

#227

Post by nebula8804 »

mrj wrote: post #194
jonplackett wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Oh it's so much worse than opening speed. Paramount+ is straight unusable on every platform I tried, the Android reviews show I'm not the only one. It crashes, fails to load, kicks your dog, you name it. Can't be used. Peacock has no way to remember I want to see my local news channel live. I have to scroll the entire list of all of the channels across the nation and find mine. It's somewhere near the bottom. Peacock…

I had this problem with Peacock when trying to rewatch the Office. I kept having to dig through their search to get to it and for some reason it wouldn't add it to my recents. In the end I bookmarked the show page and just use that.

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

#228

Post by acuozzo »

jncfhnb wrote: post #192
vehemenz wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I feel like you’re trying to gaslight me into thinking this term is from TikTok.

"gaslight" != "trick"

You can trick someone without deliberately working to make them doubt their own sanity.

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

#229

Post by game_the0ry »

graphe wrote: post #14

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…

> He said they want to be too big to fail, merge and get bailouts and handouts like sports get

That is observation I can agree with. Same can be said with finance and airlines - both business models cant stand on their own with out help from the tax payer.

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

Probably also a product of increasing interest rates - risky investors (PE, VC, etc) can't pencil deals, the economics no longer work.

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

#230

Post by procrastitron »

apwell23 wrote: post #137
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…

> 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. > Meanwhile Netflix has built some of the most sophisticated production tooling in the world, and leveraged cross-country content like no old-world provider ever has. If it was so fundamental and obvious like you state wouldn't you have been super rich by…

Any argument of the form “if you knew that all along you’d be rich by now from playing the stock market” is fundamentally flawed because it overlooks one of the most well known dangers of the stock market:

    “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”
It absolutely was obvious ahead of time that most of the competing streaming services would fail because they couldn’t possibly recreate the infrastructure of Netflix, but it was not possible to predict when they would fail.

For a concrete example, before Paramount+ launched I predicted that it would be dead in less than a year.

Clearly I was wrong because it’s still going 2 years later. I still think it will die relatively soon, but predicting exactly when is virtually impossible.

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