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Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#371

Post by MajorBee »

ryandrake wrote: post #252
eldaisfish wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

piracy and the subsequent success of platforms like steam and spotify prove time and again that it boils down to a delivery issue, not a human desire for illegal sourcing. Same issue with sports streaming. Why pay six different services to watch a 720p legal stream when i can watch a stream from Russia in 1080p with questionable ads?

Yes. A single service, with a single bill, that makes available every movie, TV show, or album ever produced. That's it. If you can provide this you can have my money. This is not a technical problem anymore. It's a business problem. The company who can make these nebulous "licensing problems" and "distribution rights issues" go away can make a fortune. I don't care that Company A can't distribute the digital version…

> Yes. A single service, with a single bill, that makes available every movie, TV show, or album ever produced. That's it. If you can provide this you can have my money.

For this, don’t expect to get this kind of service for 10 or 20 bucks a month; be prepared to shell out at least $100 or even more. Would you be willing to do that? How many people would be willing to do that?

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#372

Post by syshum »

kangaroozach wrote: post #275
DrBazza wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Piracy is competition to bad content behavior I really wish we had the bandwidth we have now, back in the Napster-era. Napster, and others forced, persuaded and cajoled the music industry to consolidate, whether they liked it or not, on Spotify, and iTunes. If we'd had easy free sharing of movies, it's not hard to envisage something similar to what we see now in the music industry forced on the movie companies. Now…

We have not yet approached the pre-streaming willingness to pay (WTP). People used to pay $150 to $200 plus onDemand for the whole package with their cable provider. Today you can have YouTubeTV, HBO, Netflix, Prime, AppleTV+, Disney+, and Spotify for less than that. So perhaps the average will hover around $100 with many paying closer to $200 a month. We are creeping back up to those numbers because people will pay.

I know a few people that pay $200+ for cable, PLUS all of the streaming services...

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#373

Post by libertine »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #100
athenot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like they want to bring cable TV back to the internet, and you had massive bills just for channels subscriptions. Basically, yes. More precisely we have a handful of companies who worked to "disrupt" the cable TV business only to realize that in fact, they could become the new cable TV.

The defining part of cable TV is that you had to deal with the company who owned the wire coming into your house, or the 2 satellite companies available in the US, assuming you could put satellite dishes on your residence. And you could not watch on any of your devices at any time and subscribe and cancel at your whim. None of that applies anymore. Content was always going to be owned and sold by someone. What other…

It's still a matter of distribution.

You won't have to deal with the company that owned the wire or the satellite service, but you'll have to deal with one of the few companies that are purchasing IPs left and right (Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Disney).

In the end it's just different people controlling the distribution.

The difference was that the content owners still had the choice to have their content available in other media formats, now it's the distributors that own the content and will (probably) limit it to their distribution channels.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#374

Post by seanicus »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #23

So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.

Worth mentioning that the studios have been screwing theaters more an more for a long time. Theaters used to be run on ticket sales, now your popcorn costs $18 because Disney is taking 60% of all ticket sales. It really seems like at some point in the future the only way you're seeing a new Marvel movie is by going to a Disney theater.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#375

Post by thayne »

margaretdouglas wrote: post #278
DrBazza wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Piracy is competition to bad content behavior I really wish we had the bandwidth we have now, back in the Napster-era. Napster, and others forced, persuaded and cajoled the music industry to consolidate, whether they liked it or not, on Spotify, and iTunes. If we'd had easy free sharing of movies, it's not hard to envisage something similar to what we see now in the music industry forced on the movie companies. Now…

Why do you need cable/satellite if you're playing the a la carte game of streaming? I feel like the world where you have cable and streaming services is ending and you either live in a world with cable and maybe or two streaming services; similar to paying extra for HBO and Cinemax with your cable service in the past, or you cut the cord and manage bundling the "networks" yourself. Netflix+Hulu+HBOMax+Sports/Local Ne…

For many people in the states it is difficult or impossible to get internet without cable bundled in.

And your argument assumes that the shows you want are clustered into one of the providers. But what if you like one show from Netflix, one from Hulu, one from HBOMax, etc. You still have to pay for all the shows you don't care about from each of those providers. The different streaming services is roughly equivalent to the different channel bundles that cable companies offered before.

Sure, the streaming situation isn't any worse than cable was, but it could still be a lot better. Imagine if streaming services had to compete on the quality of the service itself instead of the content available on the network. If you are ok with ads if you get a lower price, use one service. If you are willing to pay more for 4K content for everything, use a different service, etc.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#376

Post by muxator »

dalbasal wrote: post #349
dawnerd wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could increase wages for their non-tech workers to start

Technically, that'd be increasing their expenses rather than capital investment. They could also, in theory, build schools in central africa. They could even pay their taxes. I think acquisitions are more likely though.

What's the most appropriate word for this? There could be many, but I am a bit tired of justifications. For me it's greediness, distillated.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#377

Post by tguedes »

reaperducer wrote: post #357
tguedes wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://stratechery.com/2021/distribution-and-demand/ : `I do get the argument that Prime Video is a waste of money for Amazon; Brad Stone notes in his new book Amazon Unbound that “there was little evidence of a connection between viewing and purchasing behavior” and that “any correlation was also obfuscated by the fact that Prime was growing rapidly on its own.”` Is that nugget actually true or is Bezos just o…

Is that nugget actually true or is Bezos just obsessed with the glamor of Hollywood? I'd trust the words of someone who actually has access to Amazon's financials over the word of a blogger on the outside.

1. It's Brad Stone, probably the person who has the most connections to people inside Amazon than anyone else, not just a random blogger.

2. You would blindly trust the words of someone who has to justify spending billions of dollars to shareholders?

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#378

Post by gentleman11 »

DrBazza wrote: post #244
paganel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could fall back to watching movies made from the ‘30s to the ‘50s, that’s what I have been doing for more than half a year now and it has been wonderful for my mental well-being (they really knew how to make comedies back then, even after the Hayes code).

I've just made this comment myself. It's amazing how much casual violence there is in modern films that you just don't notice because it's everywhere. I've watched more black and white classics in the last 15 months than I have in the last 20 years. Particularly the old sci-fi, horror, and slapstick films. Harold Lloyd, The Three Stooges, and Chaplin. Plus all the old St Trinians, and Sherlock Holmes. Abbot and Coste…

Almost every episode of every show now has somebody vomit. Watch for it, it cannot be unseen, you wouldn’t notice it until you can’t stop noticing it

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#379

Post by JohnWhigham »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #23

So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.

The laws are there, it's our lawmakers that have been failing us the past ~30 years as big tech has run roughshod over the entire fucking planet doing whatever it wants with extremely minimal consequences.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#380

Post by syshum »

GistNoesis wrote: post #365
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It's a meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and other anti-consumer practices.

Piracy doesn't solve the more dangerous underlying problem of influencing opinions. For example all Apple TV shows are full of Apple product placement every minute or so. It's not something new, Disney creates most of their characters with merchandising in mind. Look at baby Yoda. But it also goes deeper, when it aims to spread ideologies and behaviors. Now that a James Bond villain write the show, I wonder who the b…

>>Disney creates most of their characters with merchandising in mind. Look at baby Yoda.

They may try for that, but recent star wars is a merchandising disaster. Baby Yoda is the only real success with Cara Dune coming in second before they nuked that.

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