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Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

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Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#221
post #28

Netflix really had a value proposition a few years ago before all the other players came in. A good selection of rotating movies and shows, sharing accounts with a good model (# of simultaneously running screens). This was way better than cable TV and more convenient than torrent. Now it’s mostly quite mediocre content across services that easily cost $100+ a month, so we’re back to the old cable days in terms of cos…

I keep hearing this $100+ argument all the time, but do you really need all the services simultaneously? As you point out, there isn't that much to watch. So just unsubscribe for a few months, let the new content build up and safe money in the meantime.

While that makes a lot of sense, that's a difficult sell when you have multiple people in a household.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm seeing that a lot too. Netflix killed piracy with price and more importantly convenience. But the extreme fragmentation of the streaming market is driving people back to the torrents. They don't want to sign up somewhere for every new show that they hear about. The industry is killing itself this way. Netflix is just the first to take the hit because they have the largest market saturation.

Soon there will be some service that bundles up all the streaming services into one service. They might even call it cable :p

> They might even call it cable

Don’t go back that far. Newsnet is far superior.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#223
post #179

> “Two hundred million was a fairly easy climb,” one industry vet who works at a streamer told me Wednesday. Yeah fuck you. I am a Netflix subscriber with little to no love for the company. The algorithm fails for me and I detest the user interface. If Netflix disappeared tomorrow my life would be barely affected. But getting 200 million subscribers to anything, much less a paid service, is a massive achievement. If…

The article makes some good arguments elsewhere, but this is one of its weaker points. There's no explanation of why 200 million is "fairly easy" while 300 million is "hard". If Netflix was at 300 million today, the magic "hard" number would be 400 million, and 300 would have been the "easy" number.

My point exactly

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#224
Interesting that this analysis seems to attribute Holland's defenestration as a response to an anticipated loss of Netflix subscribers. I read another analysis which had the causal relationship the other way: Holland's replacement by Bajaria more or less led directly to the loss of subscribers. I'm not sure what to think, but from an outside perspective, it feels like Holland was done dirty by her boss like that. It couldn't have been a smoother, more empathetic transition?

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#225
I quit because I didn't like how all of their shows pushed an ideological message. I'm quite left leaning on most issues, but Netflix writers appear to believe that preaching progressive messages is all that's required to make a compelling narrative. If they had the compelling narrative too it might be more tolerable, but they don't.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#226

“Content is King” We all know this, Netflix knows this. And yet for some reason for years they have been aiming for quantity and not quality. Money is not enough in this department and baseball metaphors don’t do justice illustrating just how hard it is to put together a team that has that special thing going on. Some would argue it’s impossible - teams like the one behind Better Call Saul are just extremely rare and…

They were probably fooled by metrics. People were watching the crap, so it looked like crap was good enough (until it wasn’t).

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Euphoria? Excellent show.

Reservation Dogs? Excellent show.

Dear White People? Woke Garbage.

Kill Bill? Excellent movie.

Captain Marvel? Woke Garbage.

You're demonstrating nothing but your own hyper-fixation on superficial identity characteristics by failing to recognize that there are plenty of "women, LGBT, PoC, etc" in all kinds of media beloved by those who are sick and tired of woke media. You think that these characteristics are sufficient for people to dislike this media, whereas the precise inverse seems to be true, wherein pro-woke people seem to be perfectly happy accepting garbage as media so long as these identity groups and messages are present.

I'm not interested in continuing this conversation by taking some kind of boomer position on wokeness, I just think that you're willfully arguing in bad faith, but you already know that.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#228
post #179

> “Two hundred million was a fairly easy climb,” one industry vet who works at a streamer told me Wednesday. Yeah fuck you. I am a Netflix subscriber with little to no love for the company. The algorithm fails for me and I detest the user interface. If Netflix disappeared tomorrow my life would be barely affected. But getting 200 million subscribers to anything, much less a paid service, is a massive achievement. If…

200 million "was" easy climb (for Netflix). I don't think it meant its easy in general. More of Netflix made it look like it's easy, (for Netflix). Now we see reaching 500 is not easy for them.

Not sure why you are simply rephrasing what the article said. And I am telling you, acquiring customers is hard.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#229
Bubbling customers in one or two genres of content with the addition of some "trending" original series that Netflix is pushing at the time. Their support suggests creating multiple profiles to avoid bubbling. You can't even delete/replace/reset main profile - just need to skip it all the time.

Most of original content is just crap produced to fill the library. Netflix creates more and more titles, not watching material. They are cancelling their own shows with such pace that I started avoiding investing time in their new content, assuming they will promptly fuck it up.

Abundance of unnecessary sex scenes. It's almost like watching bad porn: -Ma'am, have you called about cable TV not working? (oh, they're gonna bang now); -Oh, I'm stuck with my head in the washing machine (he's gonna bang her now); -Teacher asks student to stay after class? (banging in 3.. 2...); Opening Netflix (ridiculous, out-of-place sex scenes no matter the content). Just create "soft porn" category already and let people choose.

Production aiming at 100% engagement, giving viewer no time to think. Whatever the genre, every movie or show is unnecessarily action-packed like "Speed" (1994) or "Crank" (2006) making watching feel like work, not relax. Refreshing, thought-welcoming productions like Apple's "Severance" have little place on Netflix platform.

> "This show was so good I couldn't stop watching. But would I watch it again? Hey, this wasn't good at all, I got played"

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The consumers just aren’t complete idiots. The consumers kinda are the idiots here. They know what they like, but they have no idea why the content is getting worse. Why shows are being pulled. Companies that had their content on Netflix realized they were facing an existential crisis. Ever played Settlers of Catan and find out another player had 9/10 victory points? Everyone does everything in their power to not tr…

While it is a valid point, Id argue that Netflix could have survived this - they had billions of dollars to create original content, and then they did create it, but some how screwed it all up. There’s at best 1 or 2 good show and no good movie Netflix has made in years. And anything half decent they cancel mercilessly without giving it a chance. This is not just in the US. The comparison of original content quality…

Netflix could have bought a few of the legacy companies. Amazon bought MGM, Netflix could have bought cbs/paramount, or ABC, for the cost of a series of the crown.
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