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Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

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Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#31

Post by bluedevil2k »

timmg wrote: post #2

I assume they get "monetization" from Youtube and they don't need to worry about hosting or discovery. Probably better than doing nothing with these films.

The only 2 companies that made money during the “streaming wars” were Netflix, which had the infrastructure in place already and didn’t need to build anything from scratch, and Sony, which decided not to build any streaming service and just license all its content out. Seems WBD is following the lead of a winner.

* https://www.yahoo.com/tech/sony-succeeded-becoming-powerful-...

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#33

Post by tombert »

boohoo123 wrote: post #10

My guess would be offloading storage space while adding monetization revenue.

Is storage space for this significant?

I doubt they're deleting the master copies or the master renders or anything, so the only thing that would be offloaded would be the "consumer" renders. A Blu-ray movie with no additional compression added is between 15-40 gigs.

A consumer like me has a 300 terabyte storage array, presumably Warner Bros has even more than that (and certainly could afford more than that), so it feels like 40 gigs per movie is basically nothing.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#34

Post by andix »

Free money?

It's probably zero effort to upload them to YouTube. People watch them. YouTube generates ad revenue and pays out Warner Brothers.

They probably choose the movies nobody wants to pay for any more on VoD/DVD and nobody views on paid streaming services.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#35

Post by akovaski »

jerf wrote: post #23

For your searching convenience, they do seem to have all their full movies in a playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5Y4rNBCLaU&list=PL7Eup7JXSc... That will pop up to The 11th Hour but the playlist has them all.

A link to just the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5h...

From IMDb:

  The 11th Hour (2007, Documentary, 7.2)
  The Wind and the Lion (1975, Adventure Epic, 6.8)
  Mr. Nice Guy (1997, Martial Arts Dark Comedy, 6.2)
  City Heat (1984, Buddy Cop, 5.5)
  Michael Collins (1996, Docudrama, 7.1)
  The Adventures Of Pluto Nash (2002, Space Sci-Fi Comedy, 3.9)
  Chaos Theory (2007, Comedy Drama Romance, 6.6)
  Mutiny on the Bounty (1962, Historical Globetrotting Adventure, 7.2)
  Dungeons & Dragons (2000, Adventure Fantasy, 3.7)
  Return Of The Living Dead Part II (1988, Zombie Horror Comedy, 5.7)
  The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990, Dark Comedy, 5.6)
  The Accidental Tourist (1988, Comedy Drama Romance, 6.7)
  Critters 4 (1992, Horror Sci-Fi, 4.1)
  Murder in the First (1995, Legal Thriller, 7.3)
  The Year of Living Dangerously (1982, Drama Romance War, 7.1)
  December Boys (2007, Drama Romance, 6.5)
  Waiting for Guffman (1996, Satire, 7.4)
  Lionheart (1987, Adventure Drama, 5.1)
  Oh, God! (1977, Comedy Fantasy, 6.6)
  Crossing Delancey (1988, Comedy Romance, 6.9)
  Price of Glory (2000, Drama Sport, 6.1)
  Flight of the Living Dead (2007, Horror, 5.1)
  Deal of the Century (1983, Dark Comedy Satire Crime, 4.6)
  Deathtrap (1982, Dark Comedy Suspense Mystery, 7.0)
  The Mission (1986, Historical Epic Jungle Adventure, 7.4)
  SubUrbia (1996, Comedy Drama, 6.7)
  Hot To Trot (1988, Comedy Fantasy, 4.5)
  True Stories (1986, Comedy Musical, 7.2)
  The Science of Sleep (2006, Quirky Comedy Drama Romance, 7.2)
  The Big Tease (1999, Comedy, 6.1)

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#36

Post by jerf »

browningstreet wrote: post #7
timmg wrote: post #2

I assume they get "monetization" from Youtube and they don't need to worry about hosting or discovery. Probably better than doing nothing with these films.

I'm a little surprised there isn't more of this. Building a streaming service is pretty expensive.. a lot of the platforms lost money doing so and really only made it back when they merged into an umbrella of other services. I'm also a little surprised no one has yet (AFAIK) done the "viral indie release to Youtube" path. I feel like it's sitting there waiting to be exploited.

"I'm also a little surprised no one has yet (AFAIK) done the "viral indie release to Youtube" path. I feel like it's sitting there waiting to be exploited."

There's a lot of "indies releasing things to YouTube directly". However, they're limited both by the algorithm and by the amount of money they can generate by that, so you get a fairly restricted set of genres that this can work with, like sketch comedy or (perhaps a bit surprisingly to me) science documentaries, like Veritasium or Practical Engineering.

These are basically indie filmmakers doing a very indie thing that doesn't fit anywhere else.

Movies are, after all, as affected by their release technology as anything else. There's a reason they're all 80-130 minutes, and they have their own genre restrictions as a result of it, especially if you think of it in terms not just of binary possibility but how popular things are. It isn't reasonable to expect a very different distribution method to result in "movies" you'd recognize from the cinema any more than it is reasonable to expect that television would only ever have run "movies" and never developed its own genres that don't work in cinema. Taking into account the need for the content to match its distribution there's a ton of indie stuff on YouTube. What I would say you are really seeing is the restrictiveness of "The Algorithm", and that is an interesting question to ponder on its own.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#37

Post by browningstreet »

jerf wrote: post #36
browningstreet wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little surprised there isn't more of this. Building a streaming service is pretty expensive.. a lot of the platforms lost money doing so and really only made it back when they merged into an umbrella of other services. I'm also a little surprised no one has yet (AFAIK) done the "viral indie release to Youtube" path. I feel like it's sitting there waiting to be exploited.

"I'm also a little surprised no one has yet (AFAIK) done the "viral indie release to Youtube" path. I feel like it's sitting there waiting to be exploited." There's a lot of "indies releasing things to YouTube directly". However, they're limited both by the algorithm and by the amount of money they can generate by that, so you get a fairly restricted set of genres that this can work with, like sketch comedy or (perha…

Got some recommendations?

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#38

Post by marinmania »

ninth_ant wrote: post #8
softwaredoug wrote: post #3

These are movies nobody is lining up to syndicate, for a company desperate for cash. Why not dump them on YouTube and get a bit of ad revenue? It’s low effort relative to the income it generates. Even if it’s unlikely to make much money.

The why not is because it potentially devalues the prestige of the individual work’s IP, and the brand in general. This is short-term optimization, par for the course with the new Disovery-owned Warner Bros.

I thought that at first, but if you look at the movies its hard to say any have much prestige? And you could probably make the case that getting more eyeballs on it will, if anything, make them a bit more valuable in 10 years. I still remember watching the same shitty movies on cable over and over as a kid just because they were available, and I imagine those movies have a higher place in the collective memory now because they were available.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5h...

Though I would imagine if you were Tom Hanks or Ryan Reynolds you may be upset some of your least popular work is now the most accessible.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#39

Post by HighChaparral »

It’s Zaslav-era WB so there’s probably some kind of weird tqx write-off happening, or some contractual agreement that they’re living up to in the cheapest way possible.

Some good stuff on there - shout out to The Mission, which includes one of Morricone’s greatest scores.

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