271–280 of 343 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Um. That's already a part of the television culture in some places. Norway has slow tv. I don't watch it, but some folks out there do. https://www.visitnorway.com/media/news-from-norway/finally-t...
Ideal place for Test cricket ! For those who do not know it is a sport played over 5 days , 7 hours of play each day.
This sort of thing is the reason there are so many Canadian channels on satellite radio in North America, and also why there are so many Canadian-produced shows on pay TV channels like HGTV and Food Network. It's also why the version of Dire Straits' Money For Nothing that plays on most SiriusXM stations is the sanitized, politically correct Canadian version, not the real version that was played on American radio in…
Generally, the higher-budget shows are shot in the US. Largely, because the cast members on higher budget shows are less willing to move to Canada for half of the year. Compare, e.g., Suits and other USA shows (ironically, now all filmed in Canada) with Better Caul Saul/AMC shows or Mayans MC/FX shows (generally, filmed on location).
> The proposals will require that streaming services give over at least 30% of their on-demand catalogues to original productions made in each EU country where a service is provided (individual EU Member States could choose to set the content bar even higher, at 40%) 30% for each country seems really high to me. As usual for regulation, there will likely be high unintended consequences. While in the US and elsewhere…
This is about all the other streaming services, like Amazon, Hulu, Disney, etc., which produce almost no shows outside of North America. The EU is trying to force them to play ball.
And they'll succeed...in getting all of those services to add token local crap to the catalog. Expect to see a lot of very low-budget teen dramas and single-set movies if this passes. The EU believes that this will increase funding for EU "cultural" productions, but the more likely result is an entire generation of Uwe Bolls filling up EU's streaming services with utter crap. (Uwe Boll, for those who do not know, was a German filmmaker who took advantage of EU/German film incentives to convince major studios to let him make a number of very bad films, like Postal and the Dungeon Siege movie. Germany eliminated those incentives after a few years almost entirely because of him, and Uwe Boll hasn't managed to make a film since.)
> The proposals will require that streaming services give over at least 30% of their on-demand catalogues to original productions made in each EU country where a service is provided (individual EU Member States could choose to set the content bar even higher, at 40%) 30% for each country seems really high to me. As usual for regulation, there will likely be high unintended consequences. While in the US and elsewhere…
This isn't about Netflix. Of the major streaming services, Netflix is the only one that actually meets or exceeds the 30% threshold. This is about all the other streaming services, like Amazon, Hulu, Disney, etc., which produce almost no shows outside of North America. The EU is trying to force them to play ball. And they'll succeed...in getting all of those services to add token local crap to the catalog. Expect to…
This is the side of the EU that foreigners usually don't see. This is the reason there are movements for quitting in every member state (with varying levels of success). The isolationism EU is beginning to display is starting to worry even me and the alternative is a bunch of UKIP-like nationalist which I am not really a big fan of.
I'm not sure it's entirely wrong when you have a heavyweight like the US/Hollywood that dominates the global entertainment industry. I don't know about you but the content coming out of Hollywood is depressingly dumb. This may be a hamfisted attempt at addressing that but the problem remains. The loudest voice in the room is US/Hollywood. Entertainment is often our "first contact" with ideas beyond our normal areas o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Australia has similar laws for showing a certain amount of Australian content on TV and on Radio. This has certainly been a good thing and means that many local talents are discovered and content is shown where it might not be shown otherwise.
I don't see much value in using protectionist policy to prop up entertainment that can't compete on its own. Is this content even any good? It's not like content can't come from Australia that can compete on its own, like AC/DC and The Crocodile Hunter. If anything this policy is probably holding back such greats from happening because it's easier to just meet the lower bar of participating in the Australian content…
That argument is so silly and reductionist that, to me, it invalidates the rest of the opinions expressed in this article.
Furthermore, this does not solve the problem of having strong EU contenders to Netflix, Hulu and whatever else is out there. It is better for the EU to fund something that can fight on its own two feet rather than using these punitive measures that prevent people from watching things that they _paid_ for and _want_ to watch.
Protectionism is bad in all its forms. Content providers want to capture the local market and should include local productions -- if that's what the subscribers want. Mandating a quota is backwards. If a state wants to sponsor work and make it available at low costs I'm sure content services would jump to provide it. All this does is either increase cost or reduce available selection in the affected markets. If the s…
Protectionism is bad in all its forms. I read a book once that made an interesting point: 1. English-language films make more money than French-language films because there are more English speakers than French speakers. 2. Because of this, an English-language film can profitably have a bigger budget, allowing better production values. 3. Once a film has been produced, the rights will get sold in every foreign market…
If you cannot compete on budget, perhaps you can compete on plot and story lines. One has to remember that the salaries that you have to pay Hollywood actors are much higher than what people in most other countries would make.
> The proposals will require that streaming services give over at least 30% of their on-demand catalogues to original productions made in each EU country where a service is provided (individual EU Member States could choose to set the content bar even higher, at 40%) 30% for each country seems really high to me. As usual for regulation, there will likely be high unintended consequences. While in the US and elsewhere…
Notably, those accidentally local films would probably have appeared in the catalogue anyways.
In similar fashion, the US gov is required to give a chunk of its business to minority run companies, and so you now have companies whose sole value is having a disabled alaskan female at the head, to land the contract, and then immediately contract out the entire thing to an 'actual' business to handle.
So I expect that it wouldn't be merely as bad as reducing netflix's catalogue. It will entirely cripple each countries local film industries (at least, if they are, or were going to be, dependent on streaming services for income). This can only be good for countries that already have a strong film industry.