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Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

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Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#761

Post by wonderwonder »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #656
jodrellblank wrote: post #626

Off topic, but I am boggled that Larry Ellison came back to “richest man in the world” this year. For all the enormous Reach of Facebook adverts, Apple, Microsoft breadth of products, Tesla and SpaceX and Twitter, Amazon’s massive cloud dominance, the AI boom for nVidia… Oracle?! “ On September 10, 2025, Ellison was briefly the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$393 billion. In June 202…

In addition to Oracle, he owns 1.5% of Tesla and 77% of Skydance/Paramount but those are <10% of the value of his Oracle stake.

That's interesting, from his Wikipedia page:

"Ellison was married to Barbara Boothe from 1983 to 1986.[92] Boothe was a former receptionist at Oracle (RSI at the time).[93] They had two children, David and Megan, who were (as of 2024) film producers at Skydance Media and Annapurna Pictures, respectively"

So he bought studios so his kids could make movies

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#762

Post by phartenfeller »

yibg wrote: post #702
phartenfeller wrote: post #52

I don't like this. Netflix rarely creates excellent content; instead, it frequently produces mediocre or worse content. Will the same happen for Warner? Are cinemas now second behind streaming? Edit: I agree Netflix has good Originals. But most are from the early days when they favored quality over quantity. It is sad to see that they reversed that. They have much funding power and should give it to great art that re…

I think such is the reality of serving a large customer base on something subjective like movies and TV. Most people would find most content not that appealing, and a small subset they like. The problem is everyone's small subject are different. It's like having a restaurant that serves 300 million people. You can try to offer every type of food there is, but most people may not like most of them. Which is fine, as l…

I think you are true to a point. But great movies get almost universal praise with scores of 9/10 on IMDb or near 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The same goes for food; there are things that are quite controversial, but who says no to fantastic ice cream or bread?

But most importantly for movies, it is not the micro-genre that decides. People who are not into fantasy or astrology still love Lord of the Rings or Interstellar because they are particularly highly produced, where all crafts making up that movie are treated highly instead of strategizing and optimizing.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#763

Post by xp84 »

phartenfeller wrote: post #52

I don't like this. Netflix rarely creates excellent content; instead, it frequently produces mediocre or worse content. Will the same happen for Warner? Are cinemas now second behind streaming? Edit: I agree Netflix has good Originals. But most are from the early days when they favored quality over quantity. It is sad to see that they reversed that. They have much funding power and should give it to great art that re…

I think Netflix's incentives, especially now that they have an ad tier, have changed.

With a subscription service 10 years ago, you just need to have enough must-see content:

- Original scripted TV series that become mainstream known and/or seen as prestige TV, like "The Crown," "Mindhunter," "Bridgerton," "Stranger Things" etc.

- "Crown Jewel" reruns with huge fanbases such as The Office, Friends, Seinfeld, Modern Family, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Arrested Development, etc.

- Unscripted TV series that become buzzy - like Love Is Blind, Tiger King, etc.

Having those categories all well-stocked ensures that only a fool would cancel their Netflix subscription as they'll be out of the loop when the new season of a 'zeitgeisty' show drops. You don't really need all your viewers to watch more hours to get more money every year, you can grow revenue with a combo of new viewers and price increases as long as users just watch regularly.

I think present-day Netflix sees incentives:

- to get as many people on the ad tier as possible so they can scale revenue with watch time

- to increase watch time which is a solved problem via psychological manipulation if you have good ML like they do

- more watch time without spending more money points pretty obviously to lowering cost per show as much as you can, which manifests as worse quality, more reality, more imported dubbed shows, etc. and drastically curtailing giving huge checks to the Matthew Weiners, David Benioffs, and Vince Gilligans of the world to bet on a massive superhit.

So they will want to focus heavily on the unscripted category plus whatever they can slap together cheaply, then autoplay and optimize their way to growth.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#765

Post by Frost1x »

PearlRiver wrote: post #244
jmkd wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cinema is indeed second behind streaming. The theatrical window is now so short (~40) days that audiences are happy to wait for the increased benefits and reduced cost of watching at home.

This was inevitable. Technology was bound to catch up. Hollywood actually panicked in the 1960s. But those screens were tiny. Nobody wants to see the Godfather on a cheap 1974 Panasonic. But TV today is at least 55 inch and in crisp 4k resolution. A modern TV is good enough for most content. It is not Netflix that killed the movieplex. They were just the first to utilise the new tools. The movie theater became the st…

I would argue not good enough but better. A home cinema depending on viewing distance can have superb visual qualify. Comfort is going to be impossible to beat to being at home. A lot of theater projectors top out at 4k just like home TVs and they’re not as bright. Also information density is lower (it’s 4k spread over a huge wall).

The only shortcoming now really is if you want to view with several people and socialize after, it may be difficult for someone to accommodate a large party with good viewing in their home without a theater setup. And of course audio, audio is where theaters can still stand out. It’s a pain in the ass for most homes to setup a good sound system, you really often do want a dedicated theater area which most aren’t going to have. A soundbar helps. You can Jerry rig some surround speakers into any space but it’s often a pain. So that’s really the last barrier: cheap low latency sound that can beat a theater.

For me comfort trumps the slightly degraded sound. Plus some baby crying or random person chatting during the movie can break that as well.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#767

Post by jjfoooo4 »

snarkyturtle wrote: post #122
JeremyNT wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it actually worse than the status quo though? I'm not so sure. I hate this era of consolidation but Warner and HBO have already degraded, so this may be the least bad outcome here.

Warner Bros has had their best summer in years (Sinners, Superman, etc). HBO still makes highly regarded prestige TV series (The Last Of Us, Task, etc). This is just false.

That video game/superhero IP adaptations are considered "prestige TV" says more about diminished creative expectations than HBO continuing to uphold it's traditional high standards.

Nothing against people who like them, to each his own. But the throughput of quality programming out of HBO has dropped off a cliff through it's multiple changes in ownership.

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#768

Post by xp84 »

pests wrote: post #714
softwaredoug wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The branding debacle around HBO streaming service was malpractice HBO Go and HBO Now - simultaneously, for some reason Then HBO Max Then Max Now back to HBO Max How many committee meetings did it take to get this strategy? It's frankly amazing WB Studio and HBO quality has survived this insanity. Time-Warner and its incarnations is whatever the opposite of synergy is (the parts are worse because of the whole)

IIRC the Go / Now switch was due to Go being the app if you already paid for cable and wanted to watch HBO by logging into your cable provider account. Now was the pure streaming option those without cable could purchase. Took a bit to consolidate I think.

That was the given reason, and I'm sure they knew it was ridiculous and fixed it as soon as they could get all their ducks in a row, but it sure was comically bad from the outside perspective of ordinary users. Even if there had to be 2 apps for some contractual reasons I think most people would have been more tolerant if they had identical functionality and appearance after login, and were just titled "HBO Go for Cable" and "HBO Go Streaming."

Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

#769

Post by xp84 »

alt227 wrote: post #506
vel0city wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is that cable was a paid premium service, unlike broadcast TV, which was free and littered with ads. The reality is, most cable channels had ads from day one. Less ads than most broadcast stations (which made up most of the channels you had on cable at the start anyways) but still a lot of the first cable-only channels had ads from the start. WTBS had ads on cable in 1976. MSG/USA had ads on cable start…

I dont think I have ever seen a completely ad free cable channel?

Disney Channel in the 90s didn't have any ads. And they would show whole Disney movies uninterrupted by anything. For this reason it was a paid add-on to your cable package though, like HBO -- never included in the basic cable package.

In the '00s they still had no real ads, only promo spots for mostly other Disney shows on the channel, and the occasional tie-in with some other Disney property. I think today they have some normal ads but I'm not sure.

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