While his position is [partly] accurate, it's not exactly revelatory. People, notably internet pirates, were saying this 20 years ago.
People are going to get fed up if they've got to pay for dozens of streaming services to get all the shows that they want. On top of that, a lot of these platforms are still shoving ads in our faces. If streaming manages to become worse than cable, people might just spend less time watching all that crap... which is a good thing anyway.
> People are going to get fed up if they've got to pay for dozens of streaming services to get all the shows that they wa
I agree. You start paying $70 for internet, $15 to Netflix, $15 to Disney, $10 to Hulu and really you're back to where you were with cable. I think having a couple offerings in the universe is great for competition reasons, but I will not spend the equivalent of a cable bill to get most of what I want to watch from mutually exclusive services.
I'm not saying I'll pirate the shows I can't get, but it certainly makes a good case for that.
I think we are close to seeing the "true cost" for TV show production and distribution. I have a feeling that before the Internet, advertisers couldn't measure the return on their investment, and so were paying too much for TV ads, making TV cheap for the end user. In addition, people were forced to buy channels they didn't watch, subsidizing them for people that did. Now we are close to paying the true cost. I think that's better for the companies involved and for the consumer; the only incentive is to produce TV that they want to watch. You don't like it, you stop paying them, they go out of business. That is the most fair of all business models.
If there are only a couple of different offerings, it makes sense to think "I'm going to subscribe to 1-3 of these every month".
I think with a more fragmented streaming services, it's easier to get into the mindset of "Which shows do I want to watch? I want to watch these shows in 2-3 months by subscribing to these". PITA compared to having one or two streaming services which have almost everything; but, cheaper than "subscribe just in case there's something to watch".
I don't mind watching shows way after they release, though.
The thing is Disney's content is special enough to merit being one of the two or three services everyone gets.
Kids viewing habits are so special I've shown Frozen many times more than any other show. I'm sure there are families who'd pay just to see Cars or similar over and over again.
Amazon, Apple, Disney, HBO Max, Hulu, Peacock, ..., oh, and Netflix. How many monthly memberships are people going to want to pay for, especially when there is already a huge library of free content on YouTube? Interesting times...
Streaming in the 2010s was a breath of fresh air. You could find everything on one platform, watch it at your leisure, and pay way less than cable.
Now we're going to have to pay more AND switch between nine different apps with broken UIs.
This is god awful. All of this because of greed and a lack of regulation.
We need to campaign for limited copyright (20 years), and build services like Spotify that have everything and merely pay the rights holders.
Disney needs to be broken up. They own 90% of American pop culture. They're going to begin protection racketing theaters and dumbing down everything to appease the masses (and foreign governments).
Agreed, and people forget that you are not locked into contracts for any of them. That's the killer. Alternate them as you see fit, don't need to have them all at once. And since they all allow you to watch what you want when you want it, it's more like choosing a show to watch every month and paying only for that by subscribing for that service only for that month.
That's not legal in California since 2018. From SB 313, which requires that a subscription that was initially started online shall be cancelable online as well:
a consumer who accepts an automatic renewal or continuous service offer online shall be allowed to terminate the automatic renewal or continuous service exclusively online
I don't know if I'd go as far to say it's worse. Cable forced one's hand into paying for things they didn't necessarily want. At least with this model, we the consumer have the ability to pick and choose exactly what we want to pay for.
If a network has shows that look appealing to you, subscribe for a couple months. If there's only one show that looks appealing, buy it on iTunes.
We're never going to have an affordable, legal, pay-once-for-everything model.
How can you have access to all content while keeping it affordable? Cable was “everything” but it wasn’t affordable. Movie and TV Content is expensive to produce, can’t have it all for $10/month.
> How can you have access to all content while keeping it affordable?
For the same total amount of content produced, they could give everyone access to all of it for the same total revenue they receive now and the only thing that would change is that everyone would have access to all of it.
You don't make more money by having only 20% of the customers even if it means you don't have to share the revenue with four other studios. You make less, because having access to some of the content isn't worth as much as having access to all of the content, so the industry as a whole is providing less value and consequently doing less business.
The marginal cost of watching something is neglible. The only reasonable outcome is everyone being able to access everything, anything else is a huge market failure.
>Now we're going to have to pay more AND switch between nine different apps with broken UIs.
Roku, Fire, Apple all make it easy to search and browse for a show and then deep link into the correct app. It's not perfect, and I hope it will get better, but you are not currently forced to open the apps. Fire goes a step further and lets you play videos you are licensed to right out of the fire interface, without the app firing up. It's easy to subscribe to hbo, cbs ets and have the content you are licensed to see show up right with your other stuff. (The Fire interface being not so pleasant to use is another story entirely.)
>Disney needs to be broken up. They own 90% of American pop culture.
Has a company ever been broken up for its library of content?
>build services like Spotify that have everything and merely pay the rights holders.
These platforms above are the single aggregator you are looking for. Comcast and DirecTV were these, but without the option for a la cart.
>pay way less than cable.
You have the option to make it cheaper if you want to rotate your subscriptions and not hold them all at the same time. I see that as a net gain vs the previous status quo of the TV Provider bundle era.
Yet another post on HN about a company that needs to be broken up because they are big in some made up market. Now are we going to define a monopoly as the “Pop Culture” market.
Would you also like the government to “build a market” so that everyone can have all the software they want and have the government decide what a fair amount for software is?
Disney films are generic, cookie cutter formulas designed for mass appeal and ROI. They buy everything they can and then force theaters to show their films in the most desirable weekend spots. They're soaking up all the money and pushing the smaller players out.
They're now trying to eat Netflix.
Not to mention that they follow Beijing's content directives.
We should take a serious look at balancing the scales.
If we expired Star Wars' copyright after 20 years, others could use the license and develop their own take. Disney would be forced to innovate and pursue new IP creation. It would be good for competition.
This is just my own thought on the matter. Maybe it's wrong. I happen to think it would improve the status quo and actually result in market growth as you'd need new to hire more creatives. Novel content in turn results in more interest.
Every commercial product is designed for maximum ROI.
They buy everything they can and then force theaters to show their films in the most desirable weekend spots.
You really think movie theaters would rather show movies that don’t fill it?
They're soaking up all the money and pushing the smaller players out.
Ever heard of Blumhouse? Their entire business model is to make low budget movies that cost under $10 million and they usually have a higher ROI than Disney movies.
If we expired Star Wars' copyright after 20 years, others could use the license and develop their own take. Disney would be forced to innovate and pursue new IP creation. It would be good for competition.
Why not force other people to innovate instead of building on top of Star Wars?
> Every commercial product is designed for maximum ROI.
Not true with art.
> You really think movie theaters would rather show movies that don’t fill it?
Disney takes a larger cut per screen, so the theater actually makes less money on Disney films. If they don't show Disney films on their best screens, they'll lose the right to show any Disney films. It's extortion. [1] [2]
> Ever heard of Blumhouse? Their entire business model is to make low budget movies that cost under $10 million and they usually have a higher ROI than Disney movies.
These are horror films. That genre has always been cheap to film. Blumhouse is a great businessman. I don't think this model fits for every genre, eg. period pieces and art house cinema.
> Why not force other people to innovate instead of building on top of Star Wars?
I'm not saying that they shouldn't. Disney should start innovating instead of stretching its licenses over and over. Pixar has become garbage since Disney took over. They're not going to make risky films like Logan with their IP, either.
I'm doing everything I can to get into this market, and I'm terrified of having to compete with this juggernaut. If they're going to play hard ball with their IP, I'm going to lobby for looser IP protections. It's good for consumers and creatives anyway.
Disney takes a larger cut per screen, so the theater actually makes less money on Disney films. If they don't show Disney films on their best screens, they'll lose the right to show any Disney films. It's extortion. [1] [2]
Movie theaters have never made most of their money from ticket sales. They make money from concessions.
> Movie theaters have never made most of their money from ticket sales. They make money from concessions.
We're getting nitpicky here.
Theaters still make money through ticket sales, though the studios take most of the revenue [1]. Sometimes theaters earn over 50% of revenue. It depends on the film. Disney takes more than anyone, leaving barely anything for theaters. Better not sneak in any snacks to their films or you'll be stiffing the theater!
But the bottom line is that Disney dictates what gets shown and when. If theaters don't give up as many screens as Disney wants, they'll lose their rights to Disney films outright. And that isn't fair.
So now we are going to charge higher taxes to subsidize software developers.
Are we also going to have a centralized “5 Year Plan” for the economy? How has this worked for China and Russia. They realized decades ago that this didn’t work.
> So now we are going to charge higher taxes to subsidize software developers.
What's wrong with "subsidizing", aka paying, software developers?
> Are we also going to have a centralized “5 Year Plan” for the economy? How has this worked for China and Russia. They realized decades ago that this didn’t work.
The lack of creativity on a website supposedly populated by engineers keeps astounding me. Hell, you don't even need creativity to be aware that public broadcasters exist.
Or to recognize that computing and communication technology has somewhat improved in the past 30 years. Considering that the planners of the eastern block had to greatly simplify their plans and still weren't able to finish their calculations within 5 years, the state capitalist economy worked remarkably well.
Public broadcasting isn’t exactly producing great content. Do you really want broadcasting to be controlled by the government? What happens when the “other party” is in power?
China didn’t “work” until they started allowing private ownership and profit.
If the “public” is funding broadcasting and the elected officials are holding the purse strings, do you really think they are going to be overly critical of the government?
China had an economy but resources weren’t properly allocated and people were starving in one region while the other region was producing things that no one needed.
> If the “public” is funding broadcasting [...] do you really think they are going to be overly critical of the government?
This is not a hypothetical question, public broadcasters do exist and do criticize their governments. Will your next question be if public healthcare can work better than what the USA is doing?
> If the “public” is funding broadcasting and the elected officials are holding the purse strings
Then whoever drafted that law didn't do their job which would have included researching how public broadcasters around the world are organized. Or they're British and think limiting the power of Parliament is for Europeans, Colonials and other wimps anyway.
> China had an economy but resources weren’t properly allocated and people were starving in one region while the other region was producing things that no one needed.
Thanks for telling me things that I already know. I didn't write "Considering that the planners of the eastern block had to greatly simplify their plans and still weren't able to finish their calculations within 5 years," for decoration.
Not trying to be rude: I’m not sure you really know what “marginal cost” means and it’s relation to a product’s economic impact. Twice, so far, you’ve used it here in the wrong context.
It seems you keep referencing: marginal cost == value. That’s very untrue. Indeed marginal cost is a factor in value, but is most certainly not directly relational.
Simply put, value is ascertained by a product’s measure of overall impact. An example would be a simple script that tally’s an employee’s hours from clock in and clock out times. Say a task that once took a bookkeeper an hour to do, with the script takes .1 seconds.
Let’s say the script cost $5 to create but zero dollars to duplicate. It doesn’t mean it’s value is zero. It’s value is equivalently equal to the hour of bookkeeping time that person saved multiplied by however many times the task is used in any given time frame.
Marginal Cost is 0. But the value is far from it. A similar exercise is done to evaluate the value of entertainment. Different factors, but same idea.
You don't have to do anything. You just feel the need to watch everything that can be watched. If you don't want to pay for every service, you should just reset your expectations.
For one, it's the age-old anticonsumer situation, but a fully distributed edition. People value movies and shows by title, not by distributor. Platforms aggregate orthogonally to that. The end result is, even if you ranked all the movies/shows by how much you wanted to that and restricted yourself to top 10, you'll likely end up having to subscribe to all the mainstream platforms to get them.
Secondly, wrt. not having to watch anything, you sort-of do. Popular entertainment becomes popular culture, and if you want to participate in the society and build relationships with other people, you kind of have to be at least aware of some of the current offerings of that popular culture.
Popular entertainment becomes popular culture, and if you want to participate in the society and build relationships with other people, you kind of have to be at least aware of some of the current offerings of that popular culture.
Oh come on. Are you really claiming that if you can talk with your friends about Stranger Things, but not Game of Thrones because you don't have HBO, then you face some kind of serious impediment to participating in society? That strikes me as completely ridiculous.
Customers don't like a big monolithic bundle because the single bill is too expensive.
Customers also don't like a la carte content (which is available on any number of platforms, including Google and Amazon and Apple) because each individual bill is too expensive.
Customers also don't like medium sized bundlings, because when things get split up across different bundles then people feel left out, and everyone feels the need to watch everything.
So what's your proposal? It's not like the market isn't trying to cater to customers here. Do you propose we pass laws that restrict companies from creating exclusive content? Or should we pass laws that restrict content from costing more than a specific amount? Will we also have to pass laws to keep the quality up in that case? Why? Just because customers insatiably want and want and want?
There are lots of real problems in the world for us to solve. This is not one of them.
> Oh come on. Are you really claiming that if you can talk with your friends about Stranger Things, but not Game of Thrones because you don't have HBO, then you face some kind of serious impediment to participating in society? That strikes me as completely ridiculous.
Perhaps not serious, but an impediment, yes. Stranger Things is not for everyone, but Game of Thrones actually was the #1 topic in the office at previous workplace for almost the entire time I've been there. But I have an even better example: Chernobyl. My wife and I were to Chernobyl, so we didn't feel in a particular hurry to watch the TV portrayal. But once everyone on our Facebook feeds - and I mean everyone, including people who can't spell "nuclear" half the time - started talking about the show, and started bringing it up in meatspace meetings, we kind of felt left out, so we sat down and just watched it.
That's how the popular culture rolls. You can't be in sync with it all the time, but you have to stay in sync with hit some of the time, if you want to participate in group conversations.
> Customers don't like a big monolithic bundle because the single bill is too expensive.
> Customers also don't like a la carte content (...) because each individual bill is too expensive.
You've just identified the problem with these two options :). Remember that video is one of few cases when people are just being nice by offering to subscribe to these streaming services. They always have the option of getting that content for free, or at a fraction of the price.
> So what's your proposal? It's not like the market isn't trying to cater to customers here.
I believe it isn't. The market is trying to gouge customers, and currently is in the state of balkanizing.
> Do you propose we pass laws that restrict companies from creating exclusive content?
That would be a start. But the emphasis is on "exclusive", not "creating" - an equivalent way of putting is would be a law restricting companies from exclusively licensing the content. So for starters, streaming services should get unbundled from the shows they carry and compete on the actual value they provide - UI and curation (i.e. categorization, sorting order; though honestly, that should be a separate, orthogonal service).
(You'll note I'm only talking about exclusivity here, not IP ownership. The money for streaming, say, GoT would still go to HBO regardless of where they were streamed, but HBO shouldn't be able to refuse to license other platforms to steal it.)
> Or should we pass laws that restrict content from costing more than a specific amount?
Nah, competition - actual competition - between streaming platforms would do the rest. Movies and TV shows are non-substitutable goods, so exclusive deals prevent competition from happening.
> Why? Just because customers insatiably want and want and want?
So the industry spends billions on brainwashing[0] people into wanting more and more, plays off the FOMO, and you're surprised "customers insatiably want and want and want"? Maybe they should stop hooking them on hard drugs. With companies telling people to consume more and more, giving them more and more stuff to consume, and with politicians and economists saying this is good, because our economy needs to grow exponentially - I find it funny... no, disingenuous, to see customers being blamed.
--
[0] - I'm past calling marketing and advertising anything less than that.
You'll note I'm only talking about exclusivity here, not IP ownership. The money for streaming, say, GoT would still go to HBO regardless of where they were streamed, but HBO shouldn't be able to refuse to license other platforms to steal it.
Let’s talk software, should developers who write GPL software be forced to allow on the iOS App Store? Should GPL 3 software not be allowed to ban TiVo from using it? What If I have a SASS offering and I don’t want it to be used in a Confederate Memorabilia store. Should that right be taken away from me? What if I have a Christian movie, Pornhub opened a digital video store and I decided not to license it to them, is that not my right?
Right now, Mongo’s license doesn’t allow AWS to host a managed offering even though you can download the same software and host it on an EC2 instance for free. Should that not be allowed either?
Who's talking about cultural works that people can't access?
What we're talking about is how much money they can access them for, and how many services they have to sign up to access them, and whether every single person needs access to every single work.
Your analysis is way too simplistic for this conversation.
Entertainment is not really pop culture and is diverse enough these days, thanks to the internet, that you can easily not find a single tv show or a movie to talk about with someone.
With a someone, yes. But the role of pop culture has always been to facilitate conversations in group settings, especially groups when not all participants know each other well.
90%? Disney doesn't really own a lot. They have huge brands in some niches but overall not much % wise. They refuse to touch anything adult in nature and that is the vast majority of content.
Disney created Touchstone for this purpose in the 1980s. Disney bought Miramax in the 1990s and as far as I know, they never used Miramax to release a Disney Studios-originated property. I could be wrong.
Disney owns ESPN, a controlling stake in Hulu, Marvel, Lucas Films, Pixar, Disney Animation, and 20th century fox (FX, fox searchlight, many classic movie franchises, X-Men, Fantastic 4, etc). I'm probably missing something. I imagine that Disney will eventually sell a mega subscription service that bundles all of their media.
HBO Max will have all HBO content (obviously), all Warner Bros content, the CW (you know all of those teen dramas people love to watch on netflix like Riverdale, Supernatural, the Flash), Cartoon Network and a bunch of other subsidiaries that I can't name off the top of my head.
Amazon people will have prime subscriptions which gives them access for free.
I don't know why anyone would keep a lifetime subscription for any of the rest. Maybe only subscribe when your favorite shows are on?
Anyway, I think the future of streaming will be interesting to watch. I've made a fairly large bet on Disney stock and I would have bought Warner bros stock if it wasn't owned by ATT (I like Warner bros, I don't like the rest of their business).
Disney controls 100% of Hulu now and can own the entire stake by 2024 when their deal with Comcast comes up for decision.
Disney is already doing a bundle for ESPN+, Hulu, Disney+. The Hulu is the lower priced ad one, but still, they’re already mostly there with an ultimate streaming bundle.
I will pay for several, lets just keep it under $40 a month.
right now we have netflix, hulu, amazon prime and will get disney+ in our home. This along with youtube keeps us satisfied with almost anything we want to watch.
Disney/Hulu/ESPN count as one, though you can buy smaller packages.
ViacomCBS, NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia, and Disney will still be the big 4 of all the ones you listed. Amazon, Apple, and Netflix have minuscule content libraries by comparison. After people binge through new shows, the big 4 will be the ones holding all the old content. Netflix cant afford to produce content fast enough to backfill all their soon to expire licenses. Warner/Turner, Disney/ESPN, NBCSports also own a lot of sports coverage (CBS has a play as well) while Amazon, Apple, and Netflix barely have any coverage.
People are underestimating the play ViacomCBS will be able to make against NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia, and Disney now that they are united. CBS All Access and Pluto will be a killer combo, if they so choose to venture that route AND they own Philo to compete with Sling, Vue, ATT, Hulu, Youtube. CBSAA/Pluto/Philo is absolutely a threat to Disney/ESPN/Hulu's attempt at dominance; NBCUniversal(XfinityComcast), WarnerMedia(DirecTV/ATT/HBO whatever its named this week) wont go down with a fight either.
Discovery, Sinclair, AMC Networks all still exist as well. Verizon is making a bad play not gobbling up whats left.
At some point there will be a race to the bottom on price, and ad supported Pluto(CBS)/Hulu(Disney) like products will be dirt cheat to get people in the door. The extra money will come from people not wanting to watch ads.
The only streaming services that really matter are the ones that are global. Prime, Netflix, Disney.
Netflix has a huge headstart. I believe almost 60 % of their subscribers are outside usa. They make local originals in every region they are. Just look at the amount of Spanish language originals that came out this year. Spanish, Dutch, Turkish, Korean, Italian, ... originals. It’s their ‘secret’ weapon.
I don’t disagree I just think it’s naive. The biggest grossing programs are still American, so the question is if the future is in blockbusters like Marvel / Game of Thrones or if the better play is smaller niche plays.
American shows have global audiences, as the rights are sold worldwide. For example, I stayed in Austria last night and watched Game of Thrones in German on something other than HBO.
> The extra money will come from people not wanting to watch ads.
Having both an ad-supported and paid ad-free versions of the same product is likely an unstable equilibrium— Customers with disposable income will gravitate towards the ad-free product, and those are the people that advertisers are really paying for access to.
I think that's opposite, whenever I see studies of ad-free and ad-supported it seems like most customers went for ad-supported solutions. Maybe though other forms of online content are different than video.
Also I'm not sure if disposable income is the only factor that advertisers aim for, I mean a lot of advertisers aim for the youth market which sure have some disposable income but more importantly have disposable time.
Why would a streaming provider not offer the customer an equal cost to not be advertised to, that the advertisers are paying to advertise to?
Plus, I would still expect ad free to allow an ad before the show starts, although its often an ad for other content, a la Disney Channel only playing ads for other Disney channel shows.
It’s tricky to nail down how much revenue loss each switch to ad-free will cost because you’re splitting your demographics. If you’re playing ads in the paid version, it’s by definition not ad-free; it’s some kind of hybrid that I haven’t thought enough about to address.
If enough viewers that actually buy things move over to your ad-free product, you tank the value per impression that advertisers are willing to pay. Thus you lose not only the impressions of people who pay, but also the lower the value of each ad you’re still showing.
I suspect that this will cause most providers to be either primarily subscription or primarily advertising, to the extent that the less-popular choice doesn’t have enough customers to be worth keeping around.
How will there be a race to the bottom on price, when companies like Netflix are barely cashflow positive right now?
Will subscribers really decide to pay $5 a month for a subscription with a bunch of shows they don’t want to watch instead of $10 a month for a subscription with a few shows they really want to see?
How are these companies going to deliver more video ad value per viewer than someone like Google does with YouTube? They may have all of the big brand advertisers lined up, but will they ever even reach parity the revenue per user of Google and Facebook?
These companies will treat streaming like they treat all other markets dominated by networking effects and mindshare - dig into their vast scrooge mcduck money pits they have been accumulating (mostly internationally) for the last 10 years to sell the services below cost to try to attrition out the competition so they can reign alone as the last corporation standing.
>How will there be a race to the bottom on price, when companies like Netflix are barely cashflow positive right now?
I think netflix is in a bind cash wise, it costs cash to make content and they down own decades of library paid for in the past. The big 4 I mentioned are the ones that can race to the bottom. Disney might want to raise prices in 3 years but itll be right as ViacomCBS and NBCUniversal go into full swing.
> Verizon is making a bad play not gobbling up whats left.
they're the phone company, they don't have to care. The content companies will gobble their knobs now to be allowed access to the pipes they must have. They'll take what they're given and say "thank you."
I hope thats just cynicism and it isn't that way really. Look at how they behave.
Like the "catalog" section of the old rental places, it surely would be interesting to watch an "old" movie sometimes (which by today's measure could be something like >3yrs)
arent Friends and The Office some of the most streamed shows?
I have to think Disneys back catalog of shows and movies will be a bigger draw short term than their new content. Are people buying it to watch The Mandalorian and the new Lady and the Tramp, or are they buying it so their kids can watch every disney movie ever made? Dont get me wrong, having a bunch of Marvel mini-series as their launch content is a brilliant move to make it not "just the old stuff."
Amazon Prime Video is not the same as Amazon Prime and Amazon Prime has nowhere near 62% (since 101m is less than 1/3 of the US population). If we're talking "households", that doesn't pan out either since the average US household has 2.6 people, right now. I would be willing to say these numbers aren't concrete, but they are closer to the ballpark of reality than a 62% market penetration when I can ask all my coworkers at a well-known company and 25% have Amazon Prime...and these are people with disposable income that allows for it as opposed to people working out of an airport in Minnesota.
Everyone who had Amazon Prime has Amazon Prime video. Should we base how many people who have Amazon Prime on your anecdotal experience at “the company you work for”? Do you have a better citation?
We also don’t have to guess the number of households in the US. We have the Census.
This isn't the point OP was making, but I don't think Amazon counts. Not because "everyone has prime", but because you can pay them extra money to add content to their platform. For example, you can pay to add British content, CBS, or HBO. Amazon is doing streaming right.
I don’t think that’s a good reason. HBO will likely not be an add-on in near future. Hulu allows you to add Showtime too.
CBS or Showtime have a good chance of not remaining with both products. Once CBS merges with Viacom [again]. Showtime and CBS’s new parent company will have to decide what to do about their streaming future.
Edit: Hulu has add-one for HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, and Starz. Hulu obviously counts so then Amazon should count too.
You are paying for it with Amazon just bundled into the overall price. Probably 10% more.
That's why cable costs so much the bundling of various properties adds up. For now streaming inventors are eating the cost but they expect that to change by 2024.
It’s easy to put a nominal value on Amazon Prime Video. Amazon sells it separately for $6.99 a month. Whether it’s worth that is an exercise for the reader.
I'm surprised by how little content will be offered for the price point that will increase shortly. The Simpsons and a new star wars show plus 500 movie titles. Max 50 titles by 2024.
People may pick it up to try it but if there is nothing to keep them watching many will drop them.
Surprised they are only spending a billion in new content per year and spending 150 million for 10 star wars episodes.
Surprised they are going in-house for the most part. The level of quality they are demanding is high. High movie ticket prices use to cover those costs and generate record profits. Under this new model they will start losing money until they reach peak subscriber if those targets are slower than expected that will put pressure to reduce the amount of new content and live off of their back catalogue.
Maybe people with kids will pick it up? Which, granted, it's a pretty big market, but even so I think you are correct on your assessment when it comes to the very few titles they'll have available.
And to be honest I don't know how much they'll be able to milk the Star Wars brand, it starts looking very, very stale. Even Pixar has started losing a big part of its attractiveness since it has been acquired by Disney, which I didn't think possible at the time of the acquisition.
My daughter just started getting into Winnie the Pooh shorts and movies, which we're happy to let her watch and rewatch and rewatch, mostly because they don't annoy us. I have no doubt we'll be buying in to disney+ for her to have access to higher quality cartoons.
The Mandelorian is only the first Star Wars series. There's another based on Cassian Andor (from Rogue One, Diego Luna's character) and Obi Wan with Ewan McGreggor. I am excited for all of them!
Never thought I'd see the day when a Disney service would air the Simpsons. The idea of the simpsons airing on the disney channel back in the day would have been ridiculous. Seems so strange to go from being considered one of the most notorious shows around to being carried by Disney. The very antithesis of what it was when it started. Not sure what that says more about though, Disney or the Simpsons.
I still remember growing up as a kid, my parents would constantly monitor the CRT to make sure I wasn't watching the Simpsons because it was "not for kids" :)
I haven't been following much of the show but it could also be the writers toned down the content as the show progressed through the years to the point where Disney wouldn't mind airing it? It could also just be them recognizing the pull the Simpson has on viewers and they're using it as the initial bait to attract subscribers but have it pulled once they have enough customers? Who knows, but either way I do agree this combination was one I would've never imagined as a kid.
It may be that the sway of the “Moral Majority” has lost its clout. When Ellen first came out as gay on her show it was a big deal in the 90s and Murphy Brown having a child out of wedlock was a talking point by the Vice President.
Now even cartoons aimed at kids show same sex couples (I can’t remember the name of the cartoon) and Disney and most corporations are ignoring them - including protest about an interracial couple.
You also have cartoons on Netflix and Hulu with full frontal nudity and graphic violence (decapitation, disembowelment, etc.)
I think what happened was the kids who weren’t allowed to watch The Simpsons, grew up, and realized the entire thing was silly, and they are the ones with kids now.
They've been displaced by a new moral majority. For example, the producers have decided to erase the Michael Jackson episode of The Simpsons from history. Now that the Right People are burning books, book burning is A-OK with the Simpsons crew.
The counter argument offered by the producers to this point is there’s a difference when the author(s) decide to make an edit. If you believe the accusations against Jackson it doesn’t seem unreasonable that living people may want to dissociate from him
Disney is not just Disney+. It's Disney+, ESPN+, Hulu, ABC and many other delivery channels and insane amount of franchise. They can merge or create more channels over time. Whatever maximizes the profit.
They are even producing Black Mirror trough Endemol Shine (House of Tomorrow). Netflix just has the distribution rights.
To my understanding, it's widely considered that The Simpsons have not been a veritable satire (in the spirit of the first seasons) for the past 20+ years. With success it quickly became what it started out ridiculing; so Disney endorsing Simpsons is normal.
The Dead Homer Society's take on it is basically exactly that—the show became what it was satirizing. Throw in a little TV-embraces-criticism-and-makes-it-the-new-normal (cf. David Foster Wallace) and everything else got more like The Simpsons, too.
It looks a little ranty at first glance but ends up being pretty damn thorough and convincing. By season 8 or 9 the show was transitioning away from its old self, and past that it's not really delivering the same thing it was in seasons 1-7 at all, so if you were really into that the later seasons may not scratch the same itch (or itchy the same scratchy?).
That was the most chilling and realistic part of the black mirror episode from the first season... where the guy goes on this passionate rant against the reality show culture... and the reality show responds by saying how much they love that fire and passion, so they give him a reality show.
I'm not sure if it was that one or not, I tried looking through it and couldn't find it, but I remember there was a good comparison between the joke setup and execution of old style simpsons and the later seasons that really put the difference between the two into perspective. I just remember it summing up all the things I disliked about the new Simpsons in a single joke that I'd never really been able to notice in detail until it was laid out like that.
The Simpsons was never really that controversial was it? It's fairly family-friendly. Didn't have any bad language, almost zero sexuality, zero nudity, any violence is very cartoon, its satire is pretty gentle, plot-lines are usually wholesome in the end.
It totally was controversial in the beginning. It was considered worse than South Park or Family Guy are today. George H.W. Bush (the father) even made a statement that the American family should be "more like The Waltons and less like The Simpsons." ("The Waltons" was a series about a wholesome family in Virginia surviving the Great Depression)
To echo that it was the 90's, Bart Simpson says "Hell" in one of the earlier episodes - not even interesting these days, but there was a huge uproar over such indecent profanity, in a cartoon to boot! Also keep in mind that back then, cartoons were the purview of kids - (the thinking went) no self-respecting adult would watch cartoons. Thus, Simpsons had to pave the way for cartoons being aimed at mature audiences, and not just the Saturday morning kids slot.
> cartoons were the purview of kids - (the thinking went) no self-respecting adult would watch cartoons ... Simpsons had to pave the way for cartoons being aimed at mature audiences, and not just the Saturday morning kids slot.
This just isn't true - the Flintstones was prime-time back in 1960, shown at 8:30pm, exactly the same slot as the Simpsons. Fred and Wilma were shown in bed together. That was almost thirty years before the Simpsons.
> Bart Simpson says "Hell" in one of the earlier episodes
And Wilma said 'bollocks' in a Flintstones episode!
It's not now but is was 1990. The Simpsons and Married With Children were pretty much unlike anything else on TV at the time. The Cosby Show was pretty popular if that gives you a contrast.
I guess what people like Bush didn't like about it was that Homer was seen as stupid (and traditionally the father figure on shows was wise and could give good advice to his children) and that Bart was a troublemaker.
What parents didn't like about it was it dealt with grown up themes, had grown up jokes, and covered grown up problems, but it was a cartoon, one of the first of it's kind on regular tv aimed at adults. It was a show for adults. Just because the show was probably clean enough to air on tv doesn't mean kids should be watching it.
On top of that all the characters are mildly annoying when their catch phrases are repeated ad nauseam by little kids.
It was at a time when cartoons that came even remotely close to dealing with serious subject matter was deemed to be an adult cartoon. It was a big deal at the time and a lot of the tropes and stuff in the Simpsons that seem tame and trope like today were originally from the Simpsons.
I think Disney+ will be more successful than anyone can imagine. I don't know how Netflix will survive when the competition of Disney+ and HBO Max will have 95% of the best tv shows and movies.
Netflix’s issue is not the quality of content - it’s their business model. They are borrowing billions to create content with the only way to recoup the cost is mostly by subscription revenue. Their initial rationale was that they were building a content library that would have value. But, they admitted during the last conference call that subscriber growth was slow expectations because they didn’t have any new big releases. No one is going to are about “House of Cards” in five years.
Compare that to Disney’s library. People still care about Disney’s animated movies from the 30s and even adults are nostalgic about the 90s X-men animated TV show and the original Star Wars from the 70s.
Besides, Disney makes billions from their content from theatrical releases, video on demand, network and cable TV, theme parks, toy sales, etc.
I think what you're describing is squarely in the realm of content quality. They're spending large amounts of money and getting content that's largely junk, and even when it's good, it's buried under so much junk that it's hard to find. HBO spends 1/7th of what they do and has better shows. Netflix has spent billions trying to get one Game of Thrones and failed miserably.
That's what's killing subscriber growth. Lack of quality content. HBO has about the same number of subscribers, at a 50% higher subscription cost. The revenue is there to be had for someone with good enough content.
Despite spending $10b a year, Netflix's biggest shows are still ones it licenses (Friends, The Office, etc.) and they're losing them one by one. They've shown that for whatever reason, quality content isn't a problem you can solve by spending alone.
I don't think that's correct. I mean nobody can predict it with 100% accuracy. but as I pointed out, Netflix spends 10 times the amount HBO does on content and gets less from it.
HBO is batting at least .700, and Netflix is not even batting .100. That's not randomness. I don't know nearly enough about the industry to know why.
but what I do know is that Netflix has probably spent more money on content in The last two years then HBO has spent in its entire history, and HBO's library is significantly more valuable.
I was in the valley during the time the music industry was being gangbanges by technology and I have a good guess as to why. Tech people often make the mistake of thinking non-tech people are stupid. Pure speculation on my part, but I would guess that Netflix thought they could solve the problem by throwing money and technology at it, and the people who have been making good content for 20 years were just better.
>Netflix’s issue is not the quality of content - it’s their business model. They are borrowing billions to create content with the only way to recoup the cost is mostly by subscription revenue. Their initial rationale was that they were building a content library that would have value. But, they admitted during the last conference call that subscriber growth was slow expectations because they didn’t have any new big releases. No one is going to are about “House of Cards” in five years.
I think you are contradicting yourself here. If the quality was good they wouldn't have mentioned not having big releases as being the reason why their subscriber growth was slow.
>Compare that to Disney’s library. People still care about Disney’s animated movies from the 30s and even adults are nostalgic about the 90s X-men animated TV show and the original Star Wars from the 70s.
I think you are arguing in favor of what I was saying?
>Besides, Disney makes billions from their content from theatrical releases, video on demand, network and cable TV, theme parks, toy sales, etc.
Yes, and for some strange reason Disney trades at 2x the market cap of netflix with 17x p/e while netflix trades at 88x p/e. Either Disney is severely undervalued or Netflix is severely overvalued (or both).
I think you are contradicting yourself here. If the quality was good they wouldn't have mentioned not having big releases as being the reason why their subscriber growth was slow.
No, I’m saying that Disney’s library content has value and doesn’t have to be hit driven to be successful. If Netflix’s only way of gaining customers is by keep getting in debt to fund new content, it has an unsustainably high customer acquisition cost. If customers don’t care enough to stick around to have access to its library content, the lifetime value of a customer is low.
Either Disney is severely undervalued or Netflix is severely overvalued (or both).
Why does Uber and Lyft have any value at all when they are losing billions and have no hope of having profits that justify their value? Dropbox should also be valued at zero. Market cap is not a substitute for sound business fundamentals like actually having a profitable business model.
I think we both agree, I don't what statement I made you are arguing against.
The interesting part of the streaming space is that the incumbents actually have an advantage over the upstart technology company. They are joining the party almost 8 years after netflix and will probably succeed just because of the massive repository of content they have accrued over the past 60 to 70 years.
Disney is hit driven in that all their things are mostly either for entire families or four quadrant sort of mainstream hit-style media. Which is most of their historical content library.
Netflix actually has a lot of quality original shows. All modern as they are all from this decade.
People want hits though, so that isn’t helping Netflix enough.
I’m not making a value judgment on the “quality” of Netflix’s content vs Disney’s. I’m only talking about business models. Netflix’s business model isn’t competitive by any objective measure.
Four quadrant media/tent-pole media isn’t what all hits are, but it is true for a lot of them. I was assuming quality in that regard.
I don’t see any media company including Comcast’s media companies being close to Disney and runner up Warner in terms of content. Which is basically business model at this point. Netflix can’t compare to Disney, but all the other media companies can’t either. They are going to have to do something as well.
I agree with this analysis. Netflix-created content is hit-or-miss, and generally miss IMO. I honestly keep the subscription alive today for the same reason I started it in the first place, all those years ago - to have on-demand access to old Star Trek TV shows (TNG-ENT). If they drop those shows, I'll drop them.
All content everywhere is hit or miss. With Disney, I didn't care for Solo or Star Wars Resistance. I enjoyed Star Wars Rebels and Rogue One. The Last Jedi had mixed reviews at best. I haven't been interested in a Pixar movie in several vears. It's not like Disney content is amazing all the time. It has winners and losers like everyone else.
Netflix has some of the best shows I've seen in a long time. It also has some is the worst. Just like Disney.
The Last Jedi might have had “mixed reviews”, but it grossed 1.333 Billion.
As far as Pixar movies, it doesn’t matter what you are interested in, look at their box office, home video, video on demand results and related merchandise sells and theme park attractions.
Loads of young people wouldn't care about Star Wars, Marvel, ... if they didn't release high budget movies regularly. How many kids under 20 care about the biggest franchises from the 80s like Indiana Jones, Beverly Hills Cop, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters or ET ? How many adults would still rewatch them ?
I think old content is overrated. People subscribe for the new stuff. If they watch old stuff, it's mostly to fill the time before a new show comes out.
> People still care about Disney’s animated movies from the 30s and even adults are nostalgic about the 90s X-men animated TV show and the original Star Wars from the 70s.
Come one. Saying people is a cop out? Everyone, no way. So how many people, because that is what matters.
Early hype for the Mouse House’s upcoming streaming service, Disney+, appears to be building, with 24% of Americans saying they’re “extremely likely” to subscribe once it’s available in November, according to a Tuesday survey from UBS. That would come out to about 30.2 million U.S households. Another 19% said they’re “somewhat likely” to subscribe, which, if grabbed by Disney, would add another 24.2 million U.S. households to its fold. Disney execs, on the other hand, have projected Disney+ will pull in up to 30 million subscribers by the end of 2024
Hopefully Netflix survives. They’ve created so many quality original shows or continued them in the past 5+ years. It’s nice to have that as a difference to the other major companies. From traditional media, HBO, FX, and AMC don’t make that many shows. Though their general quality is there with Netflix (Netflix having more miss and niche things since it has so much more new original content).
Netflix hasn’t produced anything as a company. They don’t have an internal culture or system to produce content like Pixar. They just pay production companies for exclusives. Any other players could pay the same studios and producers.
Maybe. It’s not really comparable to such a specific studio like Pixar though. There’s plenty of talk before that talent likes Netflix. And not just because of the money being given out either. The culture of financiers is going to matter in some capacity. No other company is doing or has done what Netflix is doing either. Netflix is spending the most alongside Disney. But Netflix was already branching off with their original content years ago when their budget was at least not as enormous as it is now. Like all their foreign language originals.
Pixar is amazing. But it isn’t without warts either. The Cars franchise and releasing two movies in one year with The Good Dinosaur bombing as a result.
The Cars franchise does suck, but that’s not the point. Cars made its money back and allows Disney to market toys, theme park attractions, home video, and now gives it more content for Disney+.
That’s one of Disney’s corporate strengths. Yes it’s sad.
isn't that inevitable? physical media has be dying for a decade now. streaming was something that was assumed to be on the horizon since early days of the consumer internet.
> For those films that are released in theaters, Disney doesn't plan on changing any windows to bring them sooner to Disney+, which means there will be around a seven-month wait for titles like the upcoming Frozen 2 and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker to hit the service (Toy Story 4 should become available in early 2020)
Betting the company. Thank god Iger found some time off from his book tour.
“Entertainment Company Releases Content on Well-Established Medium”
If they keep this up people might suspect that they want people to watch that content and pay for it. Maybe next the Hollywood Reporter will break the story on how they “bet it all” on theatrical releases, network television, VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray and other things that people pay to watch.
Bob Iger definitely knows how to buy good press. Hollywood Reporter is owned by Guggenheim partners and has deep ties with Disney, including acting as an advisor to the Disney-Fox acquisition.
It’s not easy for a company to give up short term profits like licensing content to other providers, start a money losing service that may take years to make up the difference. Business have failed to adapt to changing technology for decades. That is the entire thesis of the “Innovator’s Dilemma”. He could have not taken the risk, retired with millions and let the next CEO figure it out.
While late is better than never, Disney is too little too late.
I'm not saying they will fail. Of established players they are the strongest and making the boldest moves so they have a chance at being a no 2.
But they launch when Netflix has 150 million subscribers. They almost saturated the US market and are quickly devouring international.
Taking market share from a dominant competitor is almost impossible.
If Bob Iger wasn't asleep at the wheel, just like the rest of the industry, Disney would have launched a competitor when Netflix had 10 million US-only customers.
They had a chance then but not now, competing against Netflix's 150 million subscribers and asymmetrical warfare from Amazon.
Disney’s definition of success and Netflix’s definition of success is completely different. Disney doesn’t have to depend on subscription revenue to fund its streaming content. It’s already made money on most of its content by the time it gets to Disney+. It’s just an additional revenue stream.
Netflix lives or dies by being able to create or license content at one price and sell it via subscription revenue at a higher price - it has never been able to do that. It gets it more debt every year trying to keep up.
In the words of Steve Jobs related to Dropbox. Streaming services are now a feature not a product.
Except we are still expected to pay for each one as if they were a product... the only one that is really treated like a feature is amazon prime streaming... it is one part of being a prime member.
All the others are sold as stand alone products you have to individually pay for.
In the case of Dropbox - the alternative OneDrive is a feature. For the price of Dropbox’s 1TB of storage, you can get a complete O365 subscription for six users and a combined 6TB of storage.
But it’s almost impossible to have a sustainable business when your larger competitors can price your “product” at just above break even as a bundled offering and a platform play.
Dear Disney. Instead of streaming, why not build a nationwide Disney network? 3-6 Subchannels of Disney 24/7. I'll watch that with my kids, ads and all. But were not paying for your streaming stuff.
What? You'd show ads to your kids? And would watch on Disney's schedule, not on demand? You can do your thing, but that sounds like exactly the opposite of what I want.
People are going to get fed up if they've got to pay for dozens of streaming services to get all the shows that they want. On top of that, a lot of these platforms are still shoving ads in our faces. If streaming manages to become worse than cable, people might just spend less time watching all that crap... which is a good thing anyway.