Definitely not great, but at least that means Ellison won't amass even more media control (for now). That is maybe the silver lining.
The Ellison trying to buy WB was the younger one.
It’s all based on elder Ellison’s power and money.
Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros
891–900 of 1001 posts
Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros
#892Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers. But at least it wasn’t bought by Larry Ellison, as was considered very likely (assuming this merger gets approved, in the current administration you never know). From a Hacker News perspective, I wonder what this means for engineers working on HBO Max. Netflix says they’re keeping the company separate but surely you’d be looking to move them to Netflix…
> Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers This is a very common narrative to this news. But coming into this news, I think the most common narrative against streaming was essentially "There is not enough consolidation." People were happy when Netflix was the streaming service, but then everyone pulled their content and have their own (Disney, Paramount, etc.)
That crazy thing is that a knee jerk reaction can still be right
This IS bad for consumers - we are slowly inching towards the pre streaming world of only a handful of studios who run Hollywood, except now it’s pretentious tech companies
Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros
#893I had to stop watching Netflix. Every few minutes, I felt I was taken out of the story by some agenda-pushing content. It's so sad because they are very good at storytelling. I hope they won't enshittify Warner Bros. content too
Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros
#894Commenters here seem to be missing the larger David vs. Goliath story... Netflix was a silicon valley start-up with a tech founder (Reed) who teamed up with an LA movie buff (Ted). They tried to solve a problem: it was too hard to watch movies at home, and Hollywood seemed to hate new tech. The movie industry titans alternated between fighting Netflix and making deals. They fought Netflix's ability to bulk purchase a…
It’s nice to see business that rewarded customers with convenience win in the end. Well, except for Netflix refusing their catalogue to be indexed in the TV app on macOS and iOS. I won’t pay for Netflix until they drop that anti customer practice. If you want me to buy the video content you’re selling, it better be searchable in the TV app. And if not, there should be a better reason than you want to keep people trap…
That is super lame. I always assumed the TV app is the one that sucks on its own.
Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros
#895Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers This is a very common narrative to this news. But coming into this news, I think the most common narrative against streaming was essentially "There is not enough consolidation." People were happy when Netflix was the streaming service, but then everyone pulled their content and have their own (Disney, Paramount, etc.)
I want a separation between the streaming platform companies and the content making companies, so that the streaming companies can compete on making a better platform/service and the content companies compete on making better content. I don't want one company that owns everything, I want several companies that are able to license whatever content they want. And ideally the customer can choose between a subscription t…
This feels very much like "United Stats vs Paramount Pictures: The Sequel"[1].
Vertical integration was the key problem back then. Major studios owned major cinema chains. They made it hard for independent cinemas to show the films people wanted, and they made it very hard for independent filmmakers to get their films shown anywhere. It was highly anti-competitive.
I wouldn't expect the U.S. government to step in this time around though. It's very clear that competition and benefiting consumers are no longer priorities.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros
#896I cancelled all my content subscriptions and I'm back to torrenting. I barely watch anything made my Netflix regardless. I think either Dark or the 3rd season of Stranger Things was the last time. Snyder's SciFi movie wasn't much good either. By now the streaming services are en route to become as terrible as whatever they were set out to replace. Once one of them started heavily advertising their own productions eve…
I do the following:
www.yandex.com
MOVIENAME direct streaming
And that is it... I have prime + netflix + hulu and such, but I use "yandex.com" as it does not have ads - even if sometimes it takes a bit to load and rarely it gets stuck for a second, it is less time than the stupid ads.
Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros
#897Damn, 2 months ago I got a job offer from them but turned it down for another, seems I made the right choice!
Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros
#898Earlier quoted context omitted.
My blood always boils a little whenever I read about Netflix's "Not second-screen enough" business model. What shitty point we've enshittified to, where we prioritise passive slop consumption over active enriching one. All of this is a result of the algorithmic media addiction people have been engineered into, in my opinion. Every moment you're not consuming something is a moment you're wasting, and a moment you have…
To be fair people used to have their tv (or even radio) on all the time. I’m not sure this is that much different. If anything the quality has gone up in the sense that maybe you have a bit more choice about what you put on in the background
Except that both the number of commercial minutes and the number product plugs in each hour have quadrupled in my recent memory, which is not even so good anymore since the Dumont network vanished and Ed Murrow took that government job.
Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros
#899To my eye, there are exactly two effective ways of dealing with the state of media distribution today:
1. Piracy 2. Just say no, recognizing that none of this stuff is necessary to live.
The alternative of jumping through the ever-changing set of hoops necessary to watch particular content is entirely unappealing.
Re: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros
#900Earlier quoted context omitted.
More like how did these companies drop the ball so bad. Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers. They owned a movie studio and record label. They also have in house expertise with cloud content distribution via PlayStation. Unfortunately for them around the time of Netflix's ascent they were embroiled with all kinds of financial issues but still the mind boggles
> Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers. The answer to that one is simple: they were bad at software. Apple and then Android killed the market for all those hardware devices and physical media.
Maybe but they were still good enough to in house a whole bunch of dev - console OS, games, mobile OS, various forms of content distribution...