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Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

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Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#81

Post by aurareturn »

SteveNuts wrote: post #71
lxgr wrote: post #30

Old movies have been available on various "free ad-supported streaming television" for a while now, so I'm actually more surprised it took copyright holders that long to realize that Youtube also shows ads and doesn't require people to install some wonky app that might or might not be available for their platform. Of course, region-specific copyright deals are incredibly complex etc. etc., so I could imagine it was j…

I assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service, so letting Google take that hit makes a lot of sense.

I don't think it's a "hit" for Google. They'll optimize ads to always ensure they make a profit from a view. It's a win/win.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#82

Post by xhkkffbf »

HighChaparral wrote: post #39

It’s Zaslav-era WB so there’s probably some kind of weird tqx write-off happening, or some contractual agreement that they’re living up to in the cheapest way possible. Some good stuff on there - shout out to The Mission, which includes one of Morricone’s greatest scores.

This is a good point. They may lose rights if they fail to distribute for a certain amount of time. They may revert to the filmmaker or someone else. This is a way to comply contractually.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#83

Post by blackoil »

Many Indian movies are available on YouTube. Particularly old movies or dubbed from South Indian languages to Hindi. Some of them of 100s of millions of views. Considering home video market is more or less dead. YouTube is the best pay per view (via ads) available.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#84

Post by DanielHB »

vlan0 wrote: post #79
SteveNuts wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service, so letting Google take that hit makes a lot of sense.

Bandwidth is a part, but that’s an easy hurdle. But running a CDN at that scale is gonna require experience and truck load of money. The juice really has to be worth the squeeze. Similar to running on-prep vs cloud.

There are B2B SaaS services for streaming content, you upload the file they host and stream it for you with some API integrations to restrict access.

Although I imagine they cost more than youtube's cut from ad-revenue.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#85

Post by andsoitis »

browningstreet wrote: post #25
duxup wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised a lot of things aren't more accessible. So much content not making money / available ANYWHERE. I assume, that maybe the amount of difficulty in terms of getting permission is too high to bother so nobody does?

I have a list of movies you can't find anywhere, not even for pay, not even on on obscure services. I check every once in a while to see if they pop up (JustWatch.us is great for this, IMDB is copying). Example: "Amateur" by Hal Hartley, though it's easy enough to buy copies on DVD. The problem is once the rights for a title end up in a library, the accessibility considerations operate at the library level, not the t…

> browningstreet 43 minutes ago | root | parent | next [–]

I have a list of movies you can't find anywhere, not even for pay, not even on on obscure services. I check every once in a while to see if they pop up (JustWatch.us is great for this, IMDB is copying). Example: "Amateur" by Hal Hartley, though it's easy enough to buy copies on DVD.

It IS available to stream! See https://www.halhartley.com/amateur

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#86

Post by robertlagrant »

lxgr wrote: post #30

Old movies have been available on various "free ad-supported streaming television" for a while now, so I'm actually more surprised it took copyright holders that long to realize that Youtube also shows ads and doesn't require people to install some wonky app that might or might not be available for their platform. Of course, region-specific copyright deals are incredibly complex etc. etc., so I could imagine it was j…

It would be really nice if YouTube could give uploaders the ability to schedule ad slots, rather than them appearing randomly.

Unless they do this already and stuff I watch just does it badly, of course.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#87

Post by mason55 »

duxup wrote: post #15
browningstreet wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little surprised there isn't more of this. Building a streaming service is pretty expensive.. a lot of the platforms lost money doing so and really only made it back when they merged into an umbrella of other services. I'm also a little surprised no one has yet (AFAIK) done the "viral indie release to Youtube" path. I feel like it's sitting there waiting to be exploited.

I'm surprised a lot of things aren't more accessible. So much content not making money / available ANYWHERE. I assume, that maybe the amount of difficulty in terms of getting permission is too high to bother so nobody does?

Yeah there are just a lot of titles with weird rights situations that no one cares about resolving. Maybe you lost clearance on a song in the movie, or one of the actors has a clause in their contract, or some company bought the distribution rights for a certain territory and then went out of business.

Lots of situations where resolving the rights issues is going to cost more than you expect the movie to bring in, especially once you start talking about splitting the revenue with online storefronts.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#88

Post by scarab92 »

SteveNuts wrote: post #71
lxgr wrote: post #30

Old movies have been available on various "free ad-supported streaming television" for a while now, so I'm actually more surprised it took copyright holders that long to realize that Youtube also shows ads and doesn't require people to install some wonky app that might or might not be available for their platform. Of course, region-specific copyright deals are incredibly complex etc. etc., so I could imagine it was j…

I assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service, so letting Google take that hit makes a lot of sense.

Don't let the cloud providers fool you. Bandwidth is cheap, especially for Googles, Netflixes and Cloudflares of the world which peer with every ISP that matters.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#89

Post by n_plus_1_acc »

lxgr wrote: post #30

Old movies have been available on various "free ad-supported streaming television" for a while now, so I'm actually more surprised it took copyright holders that long to realize that Youtube also shows ads and doesn't require people to install some wonky app that might or might not be available for their platform. Of course, region-specific copyright deals are incredibly complex etc. etc., so I could imagine it was j…

South Park has been available on their website free to stream with ads.

Re: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

#90

Post by derektank »

browningstreet wrote: post #7
timmg wrote: post #2

I assume they get "monetization" from Youtube and they don't need to worry about hosting or discovery. Probably better than doing nothing with these films.

I'm a little surprised there isn't more of this. Building a streaming service is pretty expensive.. a lot of the platforms lost money doing so and really only made it back when they merged into an umbrella of other services. I'm also a little surprised no one has yet (AFAIK) done the "viral indie release to Youtube" path. I feel like it's sitting there waiting to be exploited.

I would argue KanePixels (Kane Parsons) is doing the Indie filmmaker thing very successfully on YouTube. He went from creating a viral hit with his interpretation of The Backrooms, signed a deal with A24, and has continued releasing his own horror short films in the interim. The format isn't the standard 90-120 minutes of most studio movies but his longest videos are nearly an hour long and with each narrative spread across several videos, stitching the whole thing together would look something like a conventional film

https://m.imdb.com/name/nm10735410/

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