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.
Going forward, I'm expecting cheaper content, greater restrictions, higher prices, a proliferation of tiered subscription plans, and pervasive advertisement.
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.
> We're going to look back on the era of prestige TV fondly.
I don't think prestige TV is necesirely expensive though.
The wire, breaking bad, Andor, the bear, severance all can achieve incredible results without hollywood budgets.
If anything big budgets have not translated into quality, see GoT, Rings of Power, Stranger Things all getting worse the more moeny thrown at them.
prestigue tv is about talent, and having longer story lines, it just allows for more character work than a movie, but not because of that does it have to cost exponentially more.
> I wonder what kind of person these shows pander to.
An absolutely massive audience that just wants to switch off at the end of the day rather than engage in a deep drama or similar. I'm not exactly defending it but don't underestimate the size of that audience.
James Cameron said something to the effect of "a ticket to a movie is a promise to give something 100% of your attention for 2 hours" -- and most of the time I'm NOT willing to do that.
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.
The metric to look at is
viewers per dollar. If Foundation or The Expanse drew in viewers for the millions per episode spent on them, that would be one thing. But if you spend a tiny budget of a couple hundred thousand dollars, max to make an episode of, say, Naked and Afraid, and got commensurate viewership, if not higher, what would you choose, if you're running a business. Combine it with the fact that reality tv contestants don't receive residuals, there are no union writers to pay, it's obvious which direction the American TV business is headed because reality tv is a ridiculously better deal for them. Get the theme song recorded as a work for hire as well and it's pure profit for Discovery.
It's not great for the industry but culturally, we're not supportive of strikes worker rights, especially if the media tells us it's okay to hate those workers for being "rich" Hollywood folk (most writers are struggling), and doesn't point out we're supporting scabs by watching reality tv.
We may all want to watch Ballers or some other a tv show starring The Rock but he's the highest paid actor in Hollywood and is able to command a share of the revenue from the show. It's not publicly known for him, but the TV show friends had their actors earning a million dollars per episode by the end of it, and they get paid residuals for every time the episode gets watched. Meanwhile in a race to the bottom, reality tv show contestants are often (sometimes literally!) fighting for table scraps from the tv studio. A one time appearance fee $25,000 or lower - and the beauty of it being a contest is you pay the losers even less,
if at all! Hell, some of them do if for the exposure and the experience and go home with nothing other than being able to advertise for their restaurant with that claim to fame for their restaurant.
All of this makes complete sense, it just felt shocking because HBO has such greater cultural cachet and prestige than Discovery, which I didn’t even know owns an empire of reality shows aside the ones on its channel. Guess that really illustrates how what is seen as good TV is increasingly decoupled from what is actually watched on TV. There was a recent meme about how the “little-known” ABC drama The Good Doctor was obscure to the Twitterati but is, in reality, a long-running series with viewership that dwarfs the Succession set.
And on the subject of reality TV, this is a good retrospective of how many cable channels from MTV to Bravo have drifted from their once lofty, even high-brow identities into domination by reality television. It really is a ubiquitous trend.
I wonder what genre will succeed reality television. Maybe they’ll find a way to adapt Twitch streaming or vlogging for television, and then they will have to pay even fewer people.
> We may all want to watch Ballers or some other a tv show starring The Rock
As an aside, apparently not, judging by what happened to Young Rock. :p
Pretty much everyone. You might not seek it out, but if someone else is watching you’ll probably be suckered into some kind of emotional response. A lot of cynics watch and say it’s dumb and fake and vain and overdone; and it is. But it doesn’t take long for them to fall into the trap of exclaiming how dumb a character is, or what have they should have done, or why someone deserved a punishment and then bang. They got you. You felt a glimmer of empathy for the folks on the screen, even if it’s contempt.
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.
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 exceptions like Foundation and parts of Ted Lasso season 3. Severance, for example, is good enough on its own for me to pay for the whole subscription.
Making entertaining and thought-provoking original content, without calling their audience sexists or racists when the writing or casting misses the mark, will be profitable and that profit will fund the next wave of prestige tv.
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.
I watched "Air" with Matt Damon in the theater, and noticed it was an amazonstudios movie.
It was kind of ok, but wow it really lacked the polish that many hollywood movies have. It could have just been so much better.
I think nickle-and-diming movies will just lead to the sort of thing amazon is famous for. Lots of product, all of it cheaply made, with very little to differentiate it or make it memorable.
Personally I think there is also money in excellence.
Yes, indeed. MUBI is the only one that, even though it’s kinda the costliest, doesn’t not make sense. I somehow like for its nature and the way it has so far stuck to it. “Good” cinema and no gimmicks and just for its target audience. Not sure whether they’re making money.
Supposedly Bezos liked being a part of Hollywood, meeting the celebrities, being at the parties, and potentially meeting women.
I always took the last part to be an exaggeration, but it did sound like he cut the division a lot of slack on spending because he liked the idea of it.
Part of a VERY long history of non-media companies buying studios and regretting it later. It’s sexy and sounds good until you get into the actual business part, which is terrible.
>it did sound like he cut the division a lot of slack on spending because he liked the idea of it.
My understanding is that Bezos approved Amazon taking over the airing of the canceled The Expanse because he likes the book series the show is based on.
As someone in the UK, I can buy a subscription to Amazon Prime Video, or not, I can buy a subscription to Netflix, or not. I can pay for a BBC licence so I can watch iPlayer, or not.
I can watch free TV on ITVx or Channel 4 switching a subscription for adverts.
That's not strictly true, there are plenty of streaming services that come out of the UK but they are tailored for the UK market; BritBox being the most prominent.
The parent was making a jibe at the TV License which is mandatory if you own a tv or "streaming capable device" (because the BBC can stream now.. sigh).
High costs for studios seems to be something experienced by everyone in Hollywood; the difference for Amazon is that the studios sell their product on a pay-per-view basis upon launch whereas Amazon gives it away for free to everyone with Prime (at least for now... maybe Prime will start doing PPV on initial release adn then free for Prime members later?).
I've had Prime for years and wish the service was bifurcated such that I only get the shipping benefits -- I don't really care for the streaming media part of it.
I’d rather an explanation why so many expensive shows suck.
Citadel is terrible. As though the show runners have no idea what makes a show like that good. Keep in mind that you’re asking people to suspend disbelief. Don’t continually challenge that disbelief. I tried the show, said meh, tried again and turned it off in disgust. Compare to John wick (same target) doesn’t have a great story, but they ask you to suspend disbelief once and then never challenge you again. It’s got character, pathos. Not magical fucking skis.
Rings of power sucked terribly. I remember being repeatedly amazed at how such a high production value show could grab me not at all. The first fight scene was mind blowing. And yet I didn’t care. The ship they sail in the (second?) episode. Gorgeous, wonderful, compelling. I remember thinking. You built this whole unique wooden ship, and actually learned to sail it just to convince me of the authenticity of the scene. Only to throw it away five min later. The story and dialogue? Utter crap. Don’t even get me started on the narration. Bro. Go back to your notes from your first creative writing class. A quarter of the way down the first page you’ll see something that says “Show, don’t tell.” You need to actually sit down and figure out what that means.
What to know how they get maximum bang for their buck? They need someone on each project (with veto rights) who actually knows how to tell a story.
The thing they’re lacking isn’t expensive, but it does take a bit of rigor and someone with the courage and power to say no.
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.
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.
Internally, there's been a lot of hate towards financing these big spends in the era of layoffs. Lots of rumors say that we were saddled with Rings of Power because Bezos wanted his own Game of Thrones.
It’s about time that tech companies go in and clean up Hollywood. There needs to be a year of efficiency imposed on these spendthrifts. The Hollywood elite needs to be held accountable, if they are not delivering ROI and maximizing shareholder value.
It should not cost so much for a TV show or movie. YouTubers with more views are producing hit after hit with nothing more than an iPhone these days. Directors should streamline their operations with AI, and on-screen talent and team members should be paid an hourly wage that is only time they are actually in front of a camera, delivering value. If they really believe in a project, they can choose to give up cash compensation for the privilege of purchasing options of a TV show. This helps align incentives and optimize risk to capital and stakeholders to do more and deliver faster with less.
Amazon and others should think about relocating production to areas outside of California where the costs are out of control and in a locale where the regulatory environment is optimized for business returns. TV shows and movies need to be evaluated on a quarterly basis and KPI’s should be enforced at all levels. To minimize risk, investment into AI that can be trained to emulate consumer watching behavior is needed and production should be run in a data-driven agile process.
If a show can’t be monetized, it isn’t worth being produced. Entertainment needs to be in the service of moving ad inventory, growing or retaining paying subscribers, or improving conversion of existing profit centers.
Wow, this is really on the line, I can't quite tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
For the sake of it not being sarcasm; obviously it's my belief that not everything (especially entertainment of all things) should be seen through the lens of purely making money. I am quite sure there are dozens and dozens of people who will disagree with me -- but it's always been my belief that Art that covers it's own costs and leaves its mark on humanity and history is a much greater success than making money hand-over-fist.
The game industry is really straddling the line with this and has been for quite a substantial amount of time, it's a war between MBAs and creatives, though even Sony recognises the need for creative freedom and does not expect a substantial profit on their games. (though I suppose their incentives are different, great games boost sales of the consoles which gives them greater market share)
> The article also noted that a minority of the viewers who started The Rings of Power, Amazon’s most expensive project ever, finished the series.
It’s funny how something is so bad people won’t even watch it for free.
I don’t think this is a completely correct assumption, but since Amazon doesn’t give viewership numbers (or Netflix or Hulu or hbo) it’s hard to know if a show is successful or popular or profitable.
I’d like to see old fashioned Nielsen rating numbers so you can tell if 1M households watched something and could compare shows.
I’m sure some people watch an episode because the marginal cost is $0 so it’s probably equivalent to an old prime time show on ABC/CBS/NBC that would have high ratings in the beginning and then low ratings in the end. Broadcast tv was free too.
It reminds me of how friends wouldn’t even watch a movie or show on torrents and that would help me understand if a movie is good or bad (with a torrenting crowd) because people won’t even download Justice League and watch it for free.
Anyway, I’ve been surprised at how bad Amazon’s shows are considering their spend. They seem like the anti-AppleTV. AppleTV seems to spend a lot as well, but make much higher quality stuff.
I suspect it’s because AppleTV has a direct cost and budget and want to attract people to watch. And prime video is lumped into Prime membership that is probably pure profit to Amazon and just customers on auto charge year after year, so most don’t even watch video yet they have revenue from 152M US prime members [0] so Amazon is getting $21B/year and may not care about viewership, they just need to spend money.
I haven't watched it as the reviews indicate it's likely not worth it, but Amazon's Citadel does seem kinda absurd in terms of money spent compared to the result. There are certainly series where you can see the money they spent, that kind of quality might not get you a mainstream audience anyway but even if it is not a commcercial success you can still understand why it was expensive.
It doesn't seem surprising that a very expensive series that doesn't look expensive and at the same time fails to attract a mainstream audience would trigger some scrutiny.
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 cancelled it early on. Hulu, Peacock and the rest of the services have nothing for me.
The only quality content is HBO that I'm willing to pay $15/month for. I also pay for Youtube premium because no matter how much I try to force the issue, my kids watch Youtube the way I watch TV, so I'd rather get rid of all the ads. Everything else, I will pirate without guilt.
I suspect your view is going to be unpopular but I agree with you. It's fine to find today's selection of streaming TV awful. Just don't watch it. "I'm going to watch this awful thing, I'm just not going to pay for it" isn't really all that defensible as a viewpoint.
Declining streaming revenue means the expensive, good shows will get cancelled and replaced by shitty, cheap to make reality TV. And then people will moan about how all the good TV they used to pirate got cancelled.
Plenty of good shows get cancelled even without piracy, though. One wonders what’s the best way to signal to the suits that a show is in hot demand. Maybe by buying it directly or by being a Nielsen viewer.
When it comes to streaming content, the suits have all the data. It comes down to the simple formula of does this show keep and attract subscribers in sufficient numbers to make its production costs worthwhile.
They might have all the data but they still might make questionable decisions. As often pointed out, Netflix’s strategy of cancelling shows after a season or two has prevented them from fostering productions that could have benefited from gaining a foothold both narratively and with an audience, leading to a negative reputation from viewers.
It would be interesting if in the age of “interactive” audiences who freely choose content, if streaming services could try to mix up the relationship. Somehow charge die-hard fans a commitment to a show by serving them ads, perhaps. Something like the ransom model:
In any case, streamers looking at short-term numbers cause them to axe promising shows and cult classics before they have a chance to prove themselves. Which is something network TV has always done, see FOX in the 2000s, but you’d think with interactive technology and evolving formats they would experiment with new ways of going about it. There’s more to running a network than a simple cost-benefit formula.
My problem is that I get treated like a criminal despite being a paying customer. For example:
* Purchasing a show on Google grants me a license to stream it from their servers using their clients. If they ever lose the license, I lose access to my content. For some reason I can't just download an mkv file with the movie I purchased.
* If I stream Netflix, I am limited to 720p on linux (drm)
* Netflix only works at 1080p on my 4k TV because it doesn't support the latest form of DRM
In all of these cases I am being given a sub-par experience despite trying to legally acquire the content, and for what gain? The content is still getting pirated..
I don't mind paying for content. You made a thing I enjoy, so I will compensate you for it.
However, I am not a pawn to be jerked around. Content comes to me, I don't go to it. I'm not going to search a dozen streaming sites for the thing I want. I'm not going to follow you to another streaming site because you wanted to segregate New Star Trek and old Star Trek into different platforms.
I have paid accounts with streaming sites. If your content isn't on it, that's on you for opting out of being paid.
> Content comes to me, I don't go to it. I'm not going to search a dozen streaming sites for the thing I want. I'm not going to follow you to another streaming site because you wanted to segregate New Star Trek and old Star Trek into different platforms.
I can’t think of any industry that works like that. I can’t buy a new Toyota at a Chevrolet dealership. If my local Target doesn’t carry something, I have to go to another store. Even Amazon, as expansive as their selection is, doesn’t carry everything.
If I subscribe to National Geographic, it doesn’t mean I can grab this weeks copy of Newsweek from the local news stand gratis.
You could do that if you go to the library instead of the newsstand. So really the solution to balkanized streaming isn’t to pirate, but to patronize libraries.
(One wonders if the the first sale doctrine which allows public libraries to check out e-books can also be applied to streaming media- perhaps Apple or Amazon can cut a deal with libraries for them to buy up episodes of shows which then can be borrowed by cardholders!)
I couldn’t agree more! Libraries are so underutilized and underrated. Best of all, they are completely legal. Most of them also offer digital media, DVDs, and video games to borrow as well.
> 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.
Yes the tech industry is built on intellectual property but the movie/TV industry is built on false scarcity.
The music industry used to follow this model until the advent of Spotify.
We had a brief time at the advent of streaming where it looked like Movie/TV was going this way, but they reversed course.
I have a Netflix subscription, if you want a cut of that subscription, by all means show your content on Netflix and I'll watch it there. Add it to prime or whatever too, but I'm not maintaining ten subscriptions.
This makes no sense. The entire software industry is also built on false scarcity (that is how it has managed to offer so many high paying jobs). Your same argument could be rewritten for software in the same way.
I have a <Microsoft 365> subscription, if you want a cut of that subscription, by all means show your <software> on <Microsoft 365> and I'll <use> it there. Add it to <Google workspace> or whatever too, but I'm not maintaining ten subscriptions.
I associate “false scarcity” with the case where one company or a cartel dominates an industry and limits output as a way to raise prices (control supply).
However, when it comes to movies a TV, that’s not the case. There are many studios around the world and they want to have a direct-to-consumer relationship (for various reasons), vs having no consumer relationship.
Put differently, it isn’t that there’s scarcity of output (in fact, many people complain there’s too much so it is hard to find something great to watch), it is that you (and others) want to have a one stop shop to satisfy all your TV and movie watching needs. But how would that work? Force all content producers to not be able to distribute their work or to have direct to consumer relationships? And then have 1 (several?) companies limited to distribution (and they aren’t allowed to also be studios, must it be country specific or must it be global and what regulatory body would govern that)? Etc.
They're limiting output to their own platform as a way to force you to use it. Instead of raised prices they're squeezing a subscription out of you.
Instead of complaining about piracy, put your content on all platforms. There's a clear correlation between the return of exclusives and increased piracy. Drop prices/make it more available and you'll displace piracy (there'll be a structural level of piracy always, they can't change that but this is beside the point).
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.
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".
If I'm not paying anyway I don't see the problem. I'm totally fine with people using my work without paying if they were never going to pay anyway. In fact i encourage it.
> The entire tech industry is built on intellectual property.
The entire tech industry is built on free proyects, open source and collaboration. Modern tech is all about walled gardens and patent rent seeking because most modern tech leaders are awful.
We cut the sub on Netflix last year when they hiked the price. We've re-subbed a single month since then, during the holidays, and we didn't even fill up the month with enough to watch. I'm not sure if that's a discoverability problem, but my sense is that it is a quality problem.
We've now moved to a carousel of rotating subscriptions between Hulu, Disney, HBO, Peacock, etc. It's much cheaper although annoying to manage.
The only streaming services we haven't cancelled have been Prime and Apple TV+, mostly because they are free as part of bundles.
Apple TV+ has had the highest number of favorite shows for us, and has easily been the best value. (Prehistoric Planet, Tiny World, Severance, Silo, Black Bird, For All Mankind, and many others).
> 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?
For one thing, there is all of the material getting removed by streaming services either for controversial content or simply because it is no longer profitable for the services to host them.
My plex server is probably 90% things that are over 10 years old. I relatively recently finished Columbo. I don't really have much of a problem pirating something where most of the people who were involved are dead or in a nursing home.
The biggest winner in all this will be Netflix. They’re the only profitable streaming service and we’ll see all these streamers consolidate and either sell their catalogs again or cut down on spending
More companies need to utilize different brand names when launching vastly different products. If there was a service called “Comcast (Stream / Video / Watch / Play),” the numbers would be in the toilet; but they brand their streaming platform as “Peacock” and it’s quite respectable.
Had Amazon named their service something unique, and announced it as some sort of bonus subscription you get as part of Prime (or something you can subscribe to separately), I wonder if more people would watch. It would also help separate the streaming platform from the concept of “Purchase a movie through Amazon.”
Absolutely. Branding and what space things take in your head is very important. I associate Amazon with mostly generic stuff which I can get a good price on and it will get delivered fast and a huge amount of Chinese knockoffs which are super over priced compared to Ali express (aka Ali express with better English copy). Prime is also associated with that and by extension so is Prime video.
Interesting. I always thought of Prime Video and Amazon Studios as loss leaders. Also they were investing so much into the studio as to become the dominant leader in 20 yrs as they streamline the process and pump out IP more efficiently (similar to AWS).
Seems like they are going backwards or current CEO doesn’t have the backbone to make it happen.
A lot of the decisions made by our CEO lately have been justified with "not invented here" logic. Announcements for both RTO and layoffs have been justified with "other leaders are doing it" statements. Unpopular decisions (like RTO) are made days after a public forum where our CEO could have announced it.
> It seems like lately a lot of our CEO's decisions lack backbone or conviction. It seems like he go the role of CEO by yes-maning Bezos
For sake of argument, I’m assuming Jeff Bezos decided who to succeed him.
Your observation would imply that you think Jeff Bezos made a poor decision. He is often lauded for his insights and good decision-making, but of course that doesn’t mean one is infallible.
Do you think his choice was wrong and he made a mistake?
this is amazon culture since beginning. decision making federated to director level or VP organization and s-team only step in on bigger goal.
rto not even top 3 company problem though. main issue is fast pace culture that had its own problem with retention now turned into lazy, cancerous zombie.
-performance bar lowered at all levels.
-management layers overrun by hires from failing companies.
i left after 10 years. tech stopped hiring innovators. it simply h1b wagon..people who do exactly as told because they afraid of PIP and having to move back to india. the other class of worker is a politician from some company like ibm. from ibm, they bring EXTREME culture of politics and empire building.
my theory that amazon leadership know this biggest business risk. any rto policy to get these people to quit without severance. amazon leadership know problem so bad they will risk strong talent.
Datacenters and cloud services are commodities. TV shows are not. Anyone that thinks you could apply the same strategy to very different types of products would be successful only by luck.
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.
Going forward, I'm expecting cheaper content, greater restrictions, higher prices, a proliferation of tiered subscription plans, and pervasive advertisement.
Completely predictable.