Looking for funding for my startup called Crackerstream /s
Comments like this have no business on HN, so we've banned the account.
Afrostream is shutting down
21–30 of 59 posts
Re: Afrostream is shutting down
#22> "Diversity is a business opportunity" No it's not, few people care about what skin colour the characters in a work of entertainment have, unless it is fundamental to the plot or an aspect of the source material. At very least, they do not care enough to self-segregate and bear separately the cost of producing an entirely different set of works of entertainment which are of competitive quality. No untainted mind wat…
> No it's not, few people care about what skin colour the characters in a work of entertainment have, unless it is fundamental to the plot or an aspect of the source material. At very least, they do not care enough to self-segregate and bear separately the cost of producing an entirely different set of works of entertainment which are of competitive quality.
Do you have any evidence to support this ridiculous claim? Two of the largest movies of the year (Get Out and Girls Trip) are predominantly black produced. The issue is getting Hollywood to fund such ventures, not demand for them.
> No untainted mind watches Game of Thrones and thinks "You know, it's weird that this fiction styled after old Europe is full of white people.".
Actually, people do say this. It's a completely fictional universe, and even if it wasn't written into the source material, the show creators could have made an effort to ensure that it wasn't so eurocentric, at least by casting. No such luck. The main representations of people of color that I remember—the sand vipers—were hands down the worst part of the entire show so far. You think people don't notice this shit? What kind of bubble do you live in? People care that they see people who look and talk like them on TV. Everyone else in game of thrones speaks with out of place ethnic accents; way to screw over everyone but the danes and the brits.
Finally, I'd just like to point out that diversity increases the strength of TV shows. If you watch Friends, it's like they were living in this tiny bubble that only existed in NYC coffee shops. Their world is nearly unrecognizable to me despite having lived in the same city about the same age. Had they had any diversity on the show, maybe it would stand the test of time better. Now it just looks dated and white as fuck—way whiter than you'll ever find in NYC.
Re: Afrostream is shutting down
#23The mission behind a company like this is admirable, but I can't help but feel like it is the wrong approach to diversity. It reminds me of BET... why would we want to segregate content to one specific channel or network? It feels backwards to me. True diversity would be having this content everywhere. A service like this is almost like a specialty kitchen item. My fiancée is a stickler for this stuff and it is somet…
As a black person, sometimes I just want to watch a sitcom about regular black people, doing regular things. You'd think I'd be able to find this on streaming services. We have Atlanta and Insecure and Blackish now, but those are all tokens of their networks. BET and other Afro-centric networks/streaming services cater to that need for black people to escape from the constant bombardment of white lives and white issu…
Question from non-american: do you perceive there being difference between show about regular black people doing regular things and show about regular white people doing things? What is different? Besides skin color and hair style.
Re: Afrostream is shutting down
#24> "Diversity is a business opportunity" No it's not, few people care about what skin colour the characters in a work of entertainment have, unless it is fundamental to the plot or an aspect of the source material. At very least, they do not care enough to self-segregate and bear separately the cost of producing an entirely different set of works of entertainment which are of competitive quality. No untainted mind wat…
> No it's not, few people care about what skin colour the characters in a work of entertainment Said like someone who sees people that look like them in damn-near 100% of the media they consume
> Said like someone who sees people that look like them in damn-near 100% of the media they consume
What media do you assume I consume? Can you contain yourself for a moment instead of attempting to assassinate and beat down what I'm saying with an off-handed remark?
Re: Afrostream is shutting down
#25I've always wondered whether VOD is an inherently unsustainable business model. The big daddy in the space charges $8-12 per month yet people regularly watch upwards of 10 movies per month on the service. That's less than $1 per movie?! Also, this forces anyone doing a similar business to charge even less than that to break into the market, so there reaches a point where we're talking fractions of pennies per movie o…
It's expensive to do VOD right, because videos are such huge pieces of data. Plus, the "user experience bar" that Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube have set are pretty high and actually require a fair bit of engineering. There's no "15 minute blog demo" for VOD. The last company I worked for started out in that space, but had to pivot to doing linear television because the market just wasn't there. They built some of the same infrastructure that cable companies now use to do their on-demand services.
The only VOD services with healthy profits are actually content creators themselves. All of the services I just mentioned in the other paragraph have their own original content, and at least Hulu & Netflix are pretty successful at that. This original content keeps people on their service, generating more ad revenue, which is how they make money. Basically, if you're a major studio and have billions of dollars to throw away, VOD is pretty easy ;-)
Source: I worked for a failing VOD/broadcast video company for a couple years.
Re: Afrostream is shutting down
#26> "Diversity is a business opportunity" No it's not, few people care about what skin colour the characters in a work of entertainment have, unless it is fundamental to the plot or an aspect of the source material. At very least, they do not care enough to self-segregate and bear separately the cost of producing an entirely different set of works of entertainment which are of competitive quality. No untainted mind wat…
I remember an LA Times story where they compared the top 10 shows black people watched versus ones white people watched, and they were very different (60 Minutes and Friends, not so much). So there might be opportunity in a better-curated VOD service.
Yeah, I just figure having completely separate streaming services and content for separate ethnic groups is probably lower return than the equivalent for different genders; and neither sounds like it would have all that much to offer.
It would also be supremely easy to compete them out of existence for any establish VOD provider, because all they have to do is add some categories or a survey; and put some tags on their content. If they have a lot of customers in a demographic and they know they want stratified content, they can just commission it.
Re: Afrostream is shutting down
#27> "Diversity is a business opportunity" No it's not, few people care about what skin colour the characters in a work of entertainment have, unless it is fundamental to the plot or an aspect of the source material. At very least, they do not care enough to self-segregate and bear separately the cost of producing an entirely different set of works of entertainment which are of competitive quality. No untainted mind wat…
> No it's not, few people care about what skin colour the characters in a work of entertainment have, unless it is fundamental to the plot or an aspect of the source material. At very least, they do not care enough to self-segregate and bear separately the cost of producing an entirely different set of works of entertainment which are of competitive quality. Do you have any evidence to support this ridiculous claim?…
> Do you have any evidence to support this ridiculous claim? Two of the largest movies of the year (Get Out and Girls Trip) are predominantly black produced.
It's a bit silly to say that Get Out was successful because it was "black produced"; it was clearly well written and produced, it stands on its own merits.
> Had they had any diversity on the show, maybe it would stand the test of time better. Now it just looks dated and white as fuck—way whiter than you'll ever find in NYC.
Who cares? I live in Toronto, and my Panjabi, Mumbaikar, and southeast Chinese flatmates are thoroughly entertained when they put on Friends.
They're of clear mind, so they're not thinking "what's with all these white people?", they're thinking "LoL, that definitely wouldn't cure a hangover, so it's funny that they depict it as doing so; LoL, Joey is factually oblivious but really has his finger to the pulse when it comes to people, how charming!".
When I watch a Japanese or Korean drama with a friend, or a Hindi movie with my flatmates, I'm not thinking "what's with all these coloureds on my TV?".
Re: Afrostream is shutting down
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a black person, sometimes I just want to watch a sitcom about regular black people, doing regular things. You'd think I'd be able to find this on streaming services. We have Atlanta and Insecure and Blackish now, but those are all tokens of their networks. BET and other Afro-centric networks/streaming services cater to that need for black people to escape from the constant bombardment of white lives and white issu…
Question from non-american: do you perceive there being difference between show about regular black people doing regular things and show about regular white people doing things? What is different? Besides skin color and hair style.
Sometimes nothing. Sister Sister and That's So Raven starring white people bould have been the exact same show.
Sometimes small things. Bharlie Murphy's true Hollywood stories (particularly the episode about Rick James) might've resonated more with people who were his fans in the 80s or grew up with their parents playing his music on the radio.
Sometimes big things. Insecure has a recurring bharacter that ban't use the letter 'c' in a word because he's a member of the blood gang. If you grew up around gang members -- or wannabes -- you'll laugh at the pointed jab at their taboos.
Oftentimes its not about wanting to see your race, its about wanting to see your bulture.
Re: Afrostream is shutting down
#29> "Diversity is a business opportunity" No it's not, few people care about what skin colour the characters in a work of entertainment have, unless it is fundamental to the plot or an aspect of the source material. At very least, they do not care enough to self-segregate and bear separately the cost of producing an entirely different set of works of entertainment which are of competitive quality. No untainted mind wat…
> No it's not, few people care about what skin colour the characters in a work of entertainment have, unless it is fundamental to the plot or an aspect of the source material. At very least, they do not care enough to self-segregate and bear separately the cost of producing an entirely different set of works of entertainment which are of competitive quality. Do you have any evidence to support this ridiculous claim?…
[deleted]
Re: Afrostream is shutting down
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a black person, sometimes I just want to watch a sitcom about regular black people, doing regular things. You'd think I'd be able to find this on streaming services. We have Atlanta and Insecure and Blackish now, but those are all tokens of their networks. BET and other Afro-centric networks/streaming services cater to that need for black people to escape from the constant bombardment of white lives and white issu…
Question from non-american: do you perceive there being difference between show about regular black people doing regular things and show about regular white people doing things? What is different? Besides skin color and hair style.
Question from non-american to non-american: What do you find different from American shows to shows from your country? Apart from the funny words?