Netflix shares sink 10% as subscriber take-up slows • Hacker News Board

Re: Netflix shares sink 10% as subscriber take-up slows

#71

Post by hbosch » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 3:15 AM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #30

I suspect they will also get hit by people subscribing for a month to see something specific, then unsubscribing until something new worth watching appears. Now that good content is so fragmented across services, it will likely be common to cancel often. I paid for a month of HBO mostly to watch Chernobyl, then cancelled.

In a meeting room somewhere, a young PM rubs hand sanitizer on his palms and loads up his latest deck: Okay guys, what we have here is something we’re calling Loyalty Seasons. Our recommendation is to make season 4 of Stranger Things, as well as the new Will Smith movie, available only to customers who have been subscribed for 3 or more months.

Re: Netflix shares sink 10% as subscriber take-up slows

#72

Post by sleepinseattle » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 3:18 AM UTC

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #39

As someone who recently cancelled my Netflix subscription after idly flipping through it and realising nothing here holds my interest anymore, I feel like many of the reasons people pirated TV/Film content in the past (and Netflix helped to reduce by many-fold) have now returned with a vengeance. I'm on Australian Netflix, and the selection of titles has steadily diminished from an already reduced catalogue to the sa…

Or just sign up for one service one month and a different one the next month. No one’s forcing you to keep all four subscriptions active.

Re: Netflix shares sink 10% as subscriber take-up slows

#73

Post by fouc » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 3:23 AM UTC

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #39

As someone who recently cancelled my Netflix subscription after idly flipping through it and realising nothing here holds my interest anymore, I feel like many of the reasons people pirated TV/Film content in the past (and Netflix helped to reduce by many-fold) have now returned with a vengeance. I'm on Australian Netflix, and the selection of titles has steadily diminished from an already reduced catalogue to the sa…

My biggest issue with netflix is that their entire discovery tool is built around their subscription based model, which means they've deliberately avoided features that users would strongly prefer for a better search experience.

Would be nice if there was single point of being able to buy movies & tv shows episodes at very reasonable costs. Perhaps duration based - 10 cents per 10 minutes. A 2 hour movie would be $1.20 etc.

Re: Netflix shares sink 10% as subscriber take-up slows

#74

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 3:24 AM UTC

sleepinseattle wrote: post #72

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #39

As someone who recently cancelled my Netflix subscription after idly flipping through it and realising nothing here holds my interest anymore, I feel like many of the reasons people pirated TV/Film content in the past (and Netflix helped to reduce by many-fold) have now returned with a vengeance. I'm on Australian Netflix, and the selection of titles has steadily diminished from an already reduced catalogue to the sa…

Or just sign up for one service one month and a different one the next month. No one’s forcing you to keep all four subscriptions active.

Services sometimes have terms like "Once you cancel, you can't rejoin us for six months". At least, I remember that in MoviePass' T&C. I was confused, though, since I assumed they'd want me to convert again, since they should want my money.

Re: Netflix shares sink 10% as subscriber take-up slows

#75

Post by bcassedy » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 3:24 AM UTC

dx87 wrote: post #46

ladberg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What content was too biased for you?

A lot of their stand up comedy specials are very political. You start to hear the crowd cheering a lot more than they're laughing. My wife and I watched the first episode of their new sitcom where Gabriel Iglesias is a teacher, and within the first couple of minutes it has a student saying that American history is just slavery and mistreating minorities, and the teacher makes a joke about our current president being…

The political comedy stuff is both topical and easy to write which makes it easy to see the appeal. You don't need some deep understanding or keen observation to mock cynical politicians. It's definitely lowest common denominator type stuff though.

The Rob Schneider quote is a bit much. His quote is political nonsense from the right instead of the left. He should be talking about the lack of effort or insight in those types of bits instead of harping about liberal indoctrination. But he can't go that route because he's a hack whose entire claim to fame is that he's good friends with Adam Sandler.

Re: Netflix shares sink 10% as subscriber take-up slows

#76

Post by testfoobar » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 3:25 AM UTC

neural_thing wrote: post #47

I'm not short Netflix because of subscriber count. I'm short Netflix because of their accounting. Capitalizing Stranger things season 1? Sure, makes sense, why not. But Stranger things season 3 is a lot closer to COGS. Their real income statement at this point in their growth curve (full saturation in the US) should be a lot closer to their cash flow statement, which is horrendous.

Get outta here with your old-fashioned fundamental analysis.

But seriously, 10+ years of central bank intervention has dumped so much liquidity into the market that the old saying "“The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent" might as well be "The market can stay irrational."

Re: Netflix shares sink 10% as subscriber take-up slows

#77

Post by BLKNSLVR » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 3:27 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #13

Splendor wrote: post #3

I cancelled my subscription, not because of the price increase, but because the auto-play interface made me stop using the app.

I'm about to cancel my subscription because their content selection is weak overall. They have a few native shows that are worth watching. Beyond that, their movie selection is horrible (they've obviously navigated away from that for many years now). The perpetual price increases are getting annoying. They're trying to relatively gouge the large US market to offset the fact that they're bleeding to death (on a cash g…

As an understatement of epic proportions, those figures don't look sustainable to someone un-trained in large-scale financial accounting. The fact that it's been allowed to increase to those levels, year-on-year, would indicate that there's some likelihood of being able to either pay-back loans or show some amount of return-on-investment at some point in the relatively near future.

Where is the money coming from? Why does it keep coming if their balance sheet looks that scary?

Re: Netflix shares sink 10% as subscriber take-up slows

#78

Post by spunker540 » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 3:27 AM UTC

fouc wrote: post #73

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #39

As someone who recently cancelled my Netflix subscription after idly flipping through it and realising nothing here holds my interest anymore, I feel like many of the reasons people pirated TV/Film content in the past (and Netflix helped to reduce by many-fold) have now returned with a vengeance. I'm on Australian Netflix, and the selection of titles has steadily diminished from an already reduced catalogue to the sa…

My biggest issue with netflix is that their entire discovery tool is built around their subscription based model, which means they've deliberately avoided features that users would strongly prefer for a better search experience. Would be nice if there was single point of being able to buy movies & tv shows episodes at very reasonable costs. Perhaps duration based - 10 cents per 10 minutes. A 2 hour movie would be $1.…

I think that's a really cool idea but at the same time I think about the mobile carriers and how it used to be the case that you could only pay-per-minute or pay-per-text or pay-per-GB and overall unlimited plans seem to have won out. I wonder if that trend would apply with entertainment too.

Re: Netflix shares sink 10% as subscriber take-up slows

#79

Post by hughrlomas » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 3:28 AM UTC

Splendor wrote: post #3

I cancelled my subscription, not because of the price increase, but because the auto-play interface made me stop using the app.

No option to disable auto-playing trailers was also my primary reason for cancelling.

There is just enough content to make it worth the basic subscription, but such user-hostile design choices are like nails on a chalkboard.

Re: Netflix shares sink 10% as subscriber take-up slows

#80

Post by eikenberry » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 3:29 AM UTC

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #39

As someone who recently cancelled my Netflix subscription after idly flipping through it and realising nothing here holds my interest anymore, I feel like many of the reasons people pirated TV/Film content in the past (and Netflix helped to reduce by many-fold) have now returned with a vengeance. I'm on Australian Netflix, and the selection of titles has steadily diminished from an already reduced catalogue to the sa…

We plan to start rotating. Subscribe to Netflix for a few months, then switch to Hulu and watch what they have, then switch to BritBox, then HBO, then VRV, then whatever else or back to the start. They all make it pretty easy to stop/start your subscription and I think they all/most retain all your account info between times as well. This becomes even more attractive as other new services start up. Seems like it should scale well as the longer the rotation the more new shows are there each time through.