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Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

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Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#71

Post by mwcremer »

andsoitis wrote: post #37
purpleblue wrote: post #4

I'm at the precipice of getting rid of most of my streaming services. I only keep Amazon video around is because it's free. The only show I watch on that is The Boys. I'm waiting for Netflix to ask me to purchase a second account for my sibling who I share my Netflix account with, and when that happens I'll immediately cancel it. There's nothing there I watch anymore. Disney+ has a slew of failed Marvel shows and I c…

> I'm waiting for Netflix to ask me to purchase a second account for my sibling who I share my Netflix account with, and when that happens I'll immediately cancel it. There's nothing there I watch anymore. If you don’t watch anymore, like you say, then why have a subscription at all?

Sounds like their sibling still uses it.

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#72

Post by HDThoreaun »

lockhouse wrote: post #8
purpleblue wrote: post #4

I'm at the precipice of getting rid of most of my streaming services. I only keep Amazon video around is because it's free. The only show I watch on that is The Boys. I'm waiting for Netflix to ask me to purchase a second account for my sibling who I share my Netflix account with, and when that happens I'll immediately cancel it. There's nothing there I watch anymore. Disney+ has a slew of failed Marvel shows and I c…

> Everything else, I will pirate without guilt. Are you unwilling or unable to pay for the remaining content you plan to consume? I’ve never understood how flippant HN is about piracy. The entire tech industry is built on intellectual property.

Personally I'm unwilling to reward streaming services for continuing down the path of making their product worse and worse while raising prices. Make no mistake, if subscriptions nosedive they will go back on the multiple household stuff.

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#73

Post by dbg31415 »

I feel like Amazon shows spend money on actors and sets, but not nearly enough on writing. And that just sort of underscores how important writers are. You can have a cool concept, but if you can't build a good story out of it... or you don't give writers time to explore... you end up with a story that doesn't capture audiences. I feel like Amazon is probably the least forgiving with deadlines, and that's going to lead to shittier scripts going into production. Over time... that dooms a series.

Most Amazon shows seem like cool concepts. But the writing, at times, just seems really "basic cable-y" -- and it's a shame since it's clear Amazon is spending a mint on these shows. But the end result just feels like someone wearing a $12k suit and flip flips. Something just seems off.

Also, Amazon doesn't do nearly enough to advertise shows. They need to get more hype, more people talking about their shows -- they seem to think that ads inside of Amazon are enough. I feel like their efforts are probably stifled since many news outlets are tied to their own entertainment streaming services. "Let's only talk about Disney+ shows..." But like Reddit, and social media in general... they need to do more to get the word out about their shows.

A friend (who is also in his 40s) put it really well when we were talking about the problem with Amazon shows... "They are Showtime when they want to be HBO." They certainly are spending the money to be HBO... but it's not all about money, sometimes it's about time and giving up control to the artists so the artists can do their best work.

Lastly, holy hell this can't be underscored enough, I hate using Amazon Prime Video since they don't have a way to turn off the "buy now" buttons. Like, if I want to have kids or elderly parents on that account... I just want them to see shows that don't cost me money to watch, and Amazon does nothing but layer in ads for shows and services that I have to buy. Among all the streaming services, Amazon is THE WORST at this. And as a result, I don't even want to install it on my parent's TVs for the simple fact that Dad will complain if there are shows on there he has to pay for, and he'll flip out if he gets an unexpected bill -- like to the point he won't feel comfortable using that TV at all, even another app, if he feels it'll bill him. I bet a lot of older folks are in this boat.

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#74

Post by screye »

cs702 wrote: post #2

For a while, before Jassy became CEO, people at the company would sometimes jokingly refer to Amazon Studios as "the loss leader for Bezos's sex life." Now that subscriber growth is slowing down at most streaming services, the end of the "golden age of TV" is at hand. Welcome to the "bean-counting age of TV," in which streaming services try to milk subscribers for as much as possible without pissing them off too much…

Is there anything wrong with that ?

Their 'Infinite resources and big property given to random nobodies'(LOTR) or 'big creators given infinite resources to create a no-name property'(Woody Allen - Miley Cyrus show) both failed. Their big hits have been episode-1-viral TV shows like The-Boys that they could fun risk free or established brain-dead guaranteed hits like The-Grand-Tour.

Netflix & Prime need to start learning from HBO. Running a sustainable subscription business is a tried-and-tested model. But, their obsession with establishing monopoly through loss-leaders means they will never reach monetary-sustainability as long as they're in their 'growth' phase.

This is peak "uber vs lyft" where everyone was getting hyper-subsidized rides while both were bleeding money by the million.

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#75

Post by Apocryphon »

nullindividual wrote: post #28
afavour wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Going forward, I'm expecting cheaper content Netflix's proliferation of reality TV (Love is Blind etc) felt absolutely jarring to me at first but it's just the tip of the iceberg. We're going to look back on the era of prestige TV fondly.

> Netflix's proliferation of reality TV (Love is Blind etc) felt absolutely jarring to me at first but it's just the tip of the iceberg. This should be seen as a death-kneel for any channel/service, yet those cable channels keep going after decades of truly terrible TV. I wonder what kind of person these shows pander to.

I haven’t looked into the numbers myself, but after reading the great comment below about how mobile game studios essentially bought AAA game publishers instead of the other way around, it’s made me reflect on the recent Discovery acquisition of HBO in a new light. Maybe an empire of cheap and disposable reality TV is far more profitable than expensive, smaller audience-appealing, prestige television. In much the same way that disposable F2P mobile gaming is far more ubiquitous, casual, and profitable than expensive, hobbyist, AAA console and PC gaming.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36230784

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#76

Post by lockhouse »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #72
lockhouse wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything else, I will pirate without guilt. Are you unwilling or unable to pay for the remaining content you plan to consume? I’ve never understood how flippant HN is about piracy. The entire tech industry is built on intellectual property.

Personally I'm unwilling to reward streaming services for continuing down the path of making their product worse and worse while raising prices. Make no mistake, if subscriptions nosedive they will go back on the multiple household stuff.

Then simply don’t watch it. It’s a very entitled attitude to feel that you are entitled to their content without paying for it.

In your own profession, are the customers entitled to the fruits of your labor free of charge if they don’t feel like paying you for it?

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#77

Post by thmsths »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #61
cs702 wrote: post #2

For a while, before Jassy became CEO, people at the company would sometimes jokingly refer to Amazon Studios as "the loss leader for Bezos's sex life." Now that subscriber growth is slowing down at most streaming services, the end of the "golden age of TV" is at hand. Welcome to the "bean-counting age of TV," in which streaming services try to milk subscribers for as much as possible without pissing them off too much…

I have the opposite perspective: studios will stop looking for ways to give audiences what they don’t want (and stop calling them toxic for not wanting it). People are voting with their wallets. Hollywood in the 90s was much better at entertaining people and therefore much better at getting their money. Studios will start making shows with good writing again. Apple TV often already is, with some glaringly bad excepti…

Foundation is an interesting case because while the parts they adapted from the books are atrocious, the original story line about the three emperors is pretty good. It feels like the writers simply wanted to do their own show but were constrained by the producers.

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#78

Post by dbg31415 »

dbg31415 wrote: post #73

I feel like Amazon shows spend money on actors and sets, but not nearly enough on writing. And that just sort of underscores how important writers are. You can have a cool concept, but if you can't build a good story out of it... or you don't give writers time to explore... you end up with a story that doesn't capture audiences. I feel like Amazon is probably the least forgiving with deadlines, and that's going to le…

An example of where the show's writers just really missed the mark...

I wanted to like "A League of Their Own" -- I loved the movie. But I can't watch the TV show.

It seems like they have spent a lot to make the world feel like it's WW2-era. Except when anyone speaks. All the dialogue and idioms seem pulled from the present.

And, for me, it doesn't seem intentional. It just seems sloppy. And that makes it impossible for me to get lost in the story. Like it feels like all the actors know it's 2023 and could at any minute bust out a cell phone and take a selfie.

Like, "Mad Men" was a great period piece. "Halt and Catch Fire" was also a great period piece. And even "A Knights Tale", or even "Norsemen" was a good sort of modern spin on antiquity. But ALOTO just feels sort of unintentionally lost between the two.

I can only guess the dialogue gets improvised (I can see this being the case given the casting choices and how one of the creators is also one of the actors), or the writers don't have a shared style guide for consistency, or the story editor (or whatever role) is pressed for time.

But the end result is a show that portrayed a world that had no real conflict (since the actors all sort of seem to know it's 2023) and so it just sort of felt like a predictable outcome where everyone just sort of says things that imply, "I know where society is headed!" And I quickly lost interest.

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#79

Post by lockhouse »

rglullis wrote: post #55
lockhouse wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything else, I will pirate without guilt. Are you unwilling or unable to pay for the remaining content you plan to consume? I’ve never understood how flippant HN is about piracy. The entire tech industry is built on intellectual property.

> The entire tech industry is built on intellectual property. That's absolute bullshit. Companies used to provide detailed schematics. Source code was shared freely by manufacturers. Micro-soft (when they had the hyphen) was one of the first to push for this change and responsible for making things "closed", writing letters to people asking them to stop making unlicensed copies of their Basic compiler.

The hardware companies still made heavy use of intellectual property. IBM mainframes were heavily patented. The manuals they shipped with were copyrighted. The software was just mostly seen as an implementation detail and its value independent of hardware hadn’t occurred to most people yet.

Also, like it not, companies like Microsoft drove the tech industry forward during the eighties and nineties because of them creating an industry where software has its own monetary value independent of the hardware it ships with.

Even open source as we know it would not exist without intellectual property laws. The GPL and similar licenses are only enforceable because of copyright.

Re: Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending

#80

Post by 72deluxe »

lockhouse wrote: post #76
HDThoreaun wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm unwilling to reward streaming services for continuing down the path of making their product worse and worse while raising prices. Make no mistake, if subscriptions nosedive they will go back on the multiple household stuff.

Then simply don’t watch it. It’s a very entitled attitude to feel that you are entitled to their content without paying for it. In your own profession, are the customers entitled to the fruits of your labor free of charge if they don’t feel like paying you for it?

Absolutely spot on. We'd all get very peeved if software we wrote (for sale) was being used without pay because the user felt it "wasn't worth paying for".
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