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Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

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Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#151
post #2

Here in India, Netflix costs ₹500/mo. Amazon Prime costs ₹999 for the whole year. Both are much pricier compared to regular cable TV, which gives you hundreds of channels for a few hundred rupees per month. So there's a saturation point to at least some of their international expansion unless incomes start rising more broadly... Also, anecdotally, I only have so much time for 'prestige' TV. They cover Delhi and Youtu…

Also, for India, people miss the broadband cost. Because to consume Netflix, Prime you have to take into account the broadband. While as alternate media it is fine. It still can't replace cable TV. Not at this moment. It is still costly to replace all media consumption through data at this point. Once the broadband penetration and price fall further it will be different story.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#152

An interesting question for me is whether Netflix will also experience a wave of talent departures as an additional result of this stock plunge. Netflix is competing for talent as a FAANG outfit, and as such much of the value they provide to their employees depends on their RSUs. This works great as long as stock price is on a steep rise, as has generally been the case for FAANG over the past several years. Now that…

As others have pointed out, even with this plunge the stock is still up 24% in the last 90 days alone.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#153
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't blame them. Netflix had 2 options: 1. Continue licensing content and be subject to the whims of the content creators who can destroy their margin by increasing fees. The content creators can also start their own streaming services like disney is planning on doing eating into that market of streaming. 2. Create their own content eliminating the 2 main risks in option 1. Option 2 is really the only viable optio…

Creating good content is harder than leasing it. Option 2 has it's risks, and honestly they seem higher. Why would Disney or Comcast want Netflix to fail when it's a boon for them currently? Sure, they'll aggressively negotiate the best deals for themselves, sure they'll plan for a backup in the event Netflix would ever stop leasing their content, but why kick a cash cow in the teeth? It's bad business. If anything,…

Disney is already working on their streaming service. Disney only wants Netflix around for as long as it takes for Disney to build a competing service made up of only Disney content that you have to pay a premium for. Even from Netflix's stratified perspective, Disney is a juggernaut, and Netflix's bargaining power goes away as soon as Disney has its own service running.

Netflix needs to give subscribers a reason to keep their subscriptions going and if licensed content goes away they're going to need compelling original content to keep their subs interested.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another anecdote: I’d have cancelled Netflix a while ago if my family wasn’t using it. Their UX has been on a steady decline for me: - Audio previews make it so I never want to browse for what to watch next. I hate having to fumble with my tv/home theatre remote because of this. - If you leave it hanging, the previews count towards a watch! Wow. God help you if you wanna make some popcorn. - Their sorts are always sh…

Audio previews! Holy shit! Terrible experience. And auto-play for episodes. I know it gets people hooked to watch, but still annoying. There are so few configurable items in their Netflix menu.

What's going to happen when Originals directors realise and make the first 10 minutes much more compelling than the rest, by making it unrepresentative of what the show actually is? Hmm, I might already have experienced that...

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get your complaint, season-long plots have always been common (outside of comedy shows). That's why the cliffhanger trope worked!

Season-long plots are awesome, I personally much prefer shows with a long story arc than ones in which episodes can be watched in any order. The complaint here is different though. Netflix-made shows seem to be deliberately designed so that all plot subpoints get dragged through the entire season. Each episode will introduce something, later episodes will occasionally remind you of it, but you have to wait 'till the…

What shows are you thinking of?

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays every media company wants their own streaming service. That means Netflix has to scramble for content. And when starting out they were careful in selecting projects. But once they got a taste for success they have been green-lighting projects left and right. But, they are not going to select winners every time. Stuff like Bright, the Will Smith movie, relied solely on the star power. It will be interesting t…

> Nowadays every media company wants their own streaming service. I wonder how this will evolve. Short-term, it looks like self-destructing greed to me. People are not going to subscribe to shit ton of services because each of them has a small slice of movies they might want to watch.

It's easier to create a streaming service than a content house, apparently. So it's clear that this is the way things will go. Ultimately video streaming is a commodity technology and there are lots of engineers who can build such things. It's not like web search or AI.

The too-many-subscriptions problem could be solved in a variety of commercial ways, like simply offering charging for how much you watch rather than a flat rate.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays every media company wants their own streaming service. That means Netflix has to scramble for content. And when starting out they were careful in selecting projects. But once they got a taste for success they have been green-lighting projects left and right. But, they are not going to select winners every time. Stuff like Bright, the Will Smith movie, relied solely on the star power. It will be interesting t…

> Nowadays every media company wants their own streaming service. I wonder how this will evolve. Short-term, it looks like self-destructing greed to me. People are not going to subscribe to shit ton of services because each of them has a small slice of movies they might want to watch.

People are spending just as much time watching TV as they ever did. If they've always paid $70/month for it, why would the entertainment companies settle for people paying less now?

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Season-long plots are awesome, I personally much prefer shows with a long story arc than ones in which episodes can be watched in any order. The complaint here is different though. Netflix-made shows seem to be deliberately designed so that all plot subpoints get dragged through the entire season. Each episode will introduce something, later episodes will occasionally remind you of it, but you have to wait 'till the…

What shows are you thinking of?

"The OA" would be a stellar example.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% on the bilingual thing. For my family and I, it's kinda awkward - weird localization failure for such a large corp. Not to mention completely botched translations like the title of Money Heist (actually called The Paper House), which is the dumbest name I've ever seen.

Translations of movie titles are a pet peeve of mine. They are bad everywhere , and have been since way before the times of Internet streaming. My favourite example is Die Hard, which was translated to Polish as "Szklana Pułapka" (a glass trap). Presumably because the action took place in a skyscraper. I just wish I could have seen the faces of TV execs when they learned that Die Hard 2 came out, and was about airpla…

I always love when English movie titles are translated for the German market into different-but-still-English movie titles.

My favorite example is Zootopia, which got changed into Zoomania for the German market.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#160
post #8

Total anecdote: Kinda sucks when shows leave Netflix and don't get replaced; half the appeal of Netflix is the ability to quickly switch between Futurama and Always Sunny, and more importantly to be able to watch those shows on a platform that doesn't completely suck (FX's app has got to be one of the worst apps I've ever used). When "Parts Unknown" was about to leave Netflix, I really questioned whether it was worth…

Agreed. Recently, Netflix reminded me why ultimately, torrents are simply superior. You see, I initially subscribed to Netflix because it had most of Star Trek on it - all the TV shows + many (I think most) of the movies. The ability to watch an episode every now and then was what kept me subscribed even through the periods I couldn't find anything else interesting there. Now, recently came a time I actually wanted t…

> Torrents cause a PITA with storage management, but have this one lovely feature - once a file is on your hard drive, it stays there.

Same reason why I still buy my music on actual CDs. Sure, I rip them once and only use the files afterwards, but I can be assured that no matter what happens to my backup, I'll still have a large chunk of my music collection available in 30 years.

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