Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AT&T’s Troubling Plan to Change HBO

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 111 posts

Re: AT&T’s Troubling Plan to Change HBO

#61

Post by sk5t »

greedo wrote: post #57
tptacek wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might be why you subscribe (and I like Silicon Valley, too) but they're not why customers in general subscribe. True Blood had something like 6x as many viewers as Silicon Valley (this is what I mean when I say HBO's business isn't really "quality" so much as stickiness); for Game of Thrones, it's more like 12x. But also, you can't look at those shows in isolation. Compare them to Netflix's properties. Stranger…

The Wire. Arguably one of the best dramas ever created. The Sopranos. Deadwood. Carnivale. You're avoiding some incredible shows.

Not only is OITNB on Netflix, but it has, in the manner of all Jenji Kohan efforts, turned _quite awful_.

Re: AT&T’s Troubling Plan to Change HBO

#62

Post by watertom »

Netflix is as agile as they come.

AT&T needs a crooked FCC to pass laws in order to make their exiting business model viable, and they have something everyone needs Internet and Cell phone, and they are basically only 1 of 4 players.

Re: AT&T’s Troubling Plan to Change HBO

#63

Post by MBCook »

zeusk wrote: post #21
s2g wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You wouldn’t buy Nintendo and order them to make a console more powerful than the XBox One X. That’s not what they do. Except Nintendo could do that and be fine. Probably not, but if the third party is strong. This is more like telling them to start shoving out a mario game twice a year.

> Except Nintendo could do that and be fine. I believe otherwise. Most of Nintendo's marketing and appeal is based around gameplay and nostalgia; not graphical prowess. A Nintendo more powerful than one X would cost more since Microsoft amortizes some of the cost over Live services and in-store purchases whereas Nintendo focuses on 1st party games with no recurring revenue. Price elasticity is perhaps most visible in…

Right. If they did that they wouldn’t be Nintendo.

Sure they could get all the multi-platform AAA games, but then they would just be another MS. There wouldn’t be anything to distinguish them.

Except their terrible online services.

Their games would have to get better (graphically) to fit on the console as best-of-breed, which would dramatically increase their development cost. So we wouldn’t see the wonderful variety and depth of first party releases from them anymore.

And as history has shown both Microsoft and Sony have HUGE budgets and can afford to lose a few generations to stay in the game. Nintendo can’t.

David go from special player on this side who’s doing great to a nobody. Does anyone really think a lot of parents are going to spend $600 to buy their kids the next Mario game?

Re: AT&T’s Troubling Plan to Change HBO

#65

Post by MBCook »

tptacek wrote: post #52
stcredzero wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the argument is that level of hit-making is unsustainable? Would Apple's practice of coming out with market-defining new products be another example of this hit-making practice? Perhaps the strategy to "reliably keep a Game Of Thrones or True Blood in the pipeline" isn't viable long term? Eventually, everyone is going to miss a beat then go bankrupt.

I don't think it's unsustainable at all. But HBO used to have buffers for this stuff: a captive audience of cross-subsidized cable subscribers that were paying for HBO as a part of their TV package, and a competitive status as basically the king of the hill for prestige scripted television. They could take flyers on John From Cincinnati and Carnivale and wait for the next tentpole --- the next Game of Thrones or Sopr…

HBO is powerful enough right now that I think they might be able to continue to do big series, drop the price, and get rid of a lot of the expensive movies they license. If they did that they may be able to sell themselves quite well to people. It’s much easier to pay $8 dollars a month for a couple fantastic serious than $15 a month for a couple fantastic series and tons of also ran movies.

But paying $10 a month for a “throw stuff at the wall“ approach of TV? Why not just subscribe to Hulu.

Re: AT&T’s Troubling Plan to Change HBO

#66

Post by forapurpose »

throwawaymath wrote: post #19
forapurpose wrote: post #13

I've wondered about HBO's future. I see a few problems: First, it used to be the only source for intelligent programming. Now I can get as good or better content from Netflix, Amazon, and smaller arthouse-oriented channels. HBO doesn't stand out to me. Second, streaming channels are a la carte, not bundled, and I'd have to pay cable TV-sized bills to subscribe to 100 channels. HBO doesn't seem to offer enough to be w…

I guess this is a matter of opinion, but I’ll bite anyway. What content do you watch from Netflix or Amazon that you find to be comparable to HBO’s tentpole programming? To be honest with you, I find Amazon’s content to be...well, bad. On the other hand Netflix has a few good shows, but the company is clearly prioritizing quantity over quality. Not only does its content not have the awards or acclaim HBO’s garners, b…

It's interesting that everyone is talking about the newly produced original series on HBO and competitors. I wasn't thinking of those; Netflix and Amazon between them have many of the great films ever made in any country, plus many 3rd party series that are great (nobody has mentioned Broad City, the best comedy TV in history, and there are shows like (EDIT: Man in the High Castle,) The Americans and Transparent, which many people love though I haven't watched them). It takes some digging to find them, but that's ok; my Netflix and Amazon queues are filled with films better than any HBO series IMHO, except The Wire, and are so large that I won't live long enough to watch them all.

Re: AT&T’s Troubling Plan to Change HBO

#67

Post by brisance »

Interesting that neither the article nor a single comment mentioned AT&T's efforts to undermine net neutrality. That would be their ace up the sleeve. And they can get away with it because this administration is corrupt to the core.

Re: AT&T’s Troubling Plan to Change HBO

#68

Post by siidooloo »

greedo wrote: post #57
tptacek wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might be why you subscribe (and I like Silicon Valley, too) but they're not why customers in general subscribe. True Blood had something like 6x as many viewers as Silicon Valley (this is what I mean when I say HBO's business isn't really "quality" so much as stickiness); for Game of Thrones, it's more like 12x. But also, you can't look at those shows in isolation. Compare them to Netflix's properties. Stranger…

The Wire. Arguably one of the best dramas ever created. The Sopranos. Deadwood. Carnivale. You're avoiding some incredible shows.

People arn’t going to continue subscribing to HBO because they had a bunch of shows they liked 10 years ago. They subscribe because of new things they want to watch.

At any one time HBO has about 3 to 5 shows a year that I like. Netflix seems to have about the same ratio. Netflix’s firehose seems to ensure they have at least a few shows most people like. Without the cable TV lock-in HBO is going to have to do something to convince people to keep payng more for less.

Re: AT&T’s Troubling Plan to Change HBO

#69

Post by tptacek »

akira2501 wrote: post #41
tptacek wrote: post #25

I don't buy the logic here, and I'm not sure David Sims does either; this strikes me as one of those headlines that was written by an editor, independently of the article. For as much as anybody here likes HBO, the diagnosis Stankey (and, I think, Sims) has of it seems apt. HBO has a sterling reputation. But so what? Even today, they're no longer distinctively good; in fact, there are basic cable channels (AMC and FX…

> Netflix introduces new programs like Google introduces new chat programs. Yea, and they both have equivalent staying power.

* Stranger Things

* Mindhunter

* Making a Murderer

* Orange is the New Black

* House of Cards

* Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

* BoJack Horseman

For better or worse, all of these shows have as much staying power as the median HBO show, and most of them have more cultural currency. However good Barry might have been, TV critics weren't burning multiple columns talking about it.

And again, the idea that HBO just needs to compete with Netflix isn't my whole argument. Neither HBO nor Netflix picked up The Americans. HBO got outbid for a prestige show last year --- by Apple. The problem is that the prestige TV space is crowded.

Re: AT&T’s Troubling Plan to Change HBO

#70

Post by tptacek »

MBCook wrote: post #65
tptacek wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's unsustainable at all. But HBO used to have buffers for this stuff: a captive audience of cross-subsidized cable subscribers that were paying for HBO as a part of their TV package, and a competitive status as basically the king of the hill for prestige scripted television. They could take flyers on John From Cincinnati and Carnivale and wait for the next tentpole --- the next Game of Thrones or Sopr…

HBO is powerful enough right now that I think they might be able to continue to do big series, drop the price, and get rid of a lot of the expensive movies they license. If they did that they may be able to sell themselves quite well to people. It’s much easier to pay $8 dollars a month for a couple fantastic serious than $15 a month for a couple fantastic series and tons of also ran movies. But paying $10 a month fo…

What power does HBO have? Make a list of the 10 most important TV dramas in the past 4-5 years. How many of them were HBO shows? Answer: not many.

Meanwhile: if "throw stuff at the wall" is Netflix's model, go look at Netflix's numbers. They're not hurting. Their model works; they stand on their own two feet. We actually don't know if HBO's model works: they're cross-subsidized not just by cable companies, but also by their corporate owners. They were one of the most important players in the old TV model. It remains to be seen how important they'll be in the new model.

I think it would be hard to argue that Netflix was less important than HBO in the modern TV marketplace.

Post reply on HN