this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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Certain irony in these companies splitting their content and now considering merging it back.
I'm glad I could contribute to their lack of profit by simply not paying any of them.
Arr. Well done me matey.
Ahoy!
It seems pointless, but in practice what this is going to lead to is inovators getting absorbed by established media conglomerates.
They would still control it more than they did in Netflix, so it's still upside in their eyes.
Who’s splitting their content? All these studios have done is merge and monopolize. Now they want to merge further. It’s entirely the wrong strategy.
Dude, you want more streaming services?
No. I want the studios forbidden from owning channels. Make them sell their content to independent broadcasters. Similar to how theaters couldn’t be owned by movie studios. Places like Netflix and Hulu would thrive again, and you wouldn’t have nonsense like Zaslav shoving content into the garbage for a tax write off.
Hulu is owned by studios. It was a joint venture between ABC, NBC, and Fox. After Disney(ABC) bought Fox, Comcast(NBC) sold its share to Disney.
Channels are TV Programmers have. Studios technically can be independent of the programmer channel since the programmer orders the rv show production from the studio. The distribution platform was cable or broadcast (over the air). What folks seem to want is a cable package all over again, just cheaper and without hardware fees and without ads. Not sure how you can have all 3 of those things though. If you cut ads, it probably looks just as expensive if not more expensive than cable. The economics of ESPN worked due to it being bundled in every basic cable package. If you go a la carte I don't think the sports fans will like the price that is no longer subsidized by all the bundles of folks that don't watch sports.
The only workable long term strategy is for these companies to compete over service instead of content just like Spotify, YouTube music, Apple music, Pandora, Tidal, etc. If they continue on their current path, everything will wind up being owned by the 2-3 companies with the deepest pockets and we'll be back to the cable TV model.
It's basically the cable TV model just with more steps
Need like 5+ services you pay $5-20 a month to instead of one you pay $75 to (numbers made up)
$75 is really borderline coming from the pricepoint we have now. Assuming you could watch nearly everything in one place, it might be a success, but who knows. I believe this is around what YouTube TV and Hulu & Live TV cost.
Except the problem is that cable isn't there to subsidize the content.
The reason all the studios moved to streaming was because Netflix, Amazon, and Apple weren't going to cover their total costs.
Implying that these companies are entitled to earn billions just for existing?
I'm not implying that at all.
All I'm saying is that the industry made a certain amount of money per year based on cable and broadcast and it isn't going to moving forward. Because of this, I see the so called golden age of television ending because there is no one to pay for the development of new shows and movies, even if those costs were inflated by studios.
We can pirate what was already made, but I don't see the new stuff getting made for anywhere near the budget current shows were being made at.
I don't know how old you are but if you're close to 40 or older, you may remember the '90s when music studios were in the same position and completely controlled production and distribution, forcing us to pay $20-$30 per CD (in 1990s dollars) for 13 tracks of mostly filler music. Once MP3s and broadband internet became common, the entire industry was decimated, yet there is more music produced now than ever before.
You're seeing the same thing happen with tv/movies today. I think it will once again be the studios that suffer not the content.
More music gets made now, but the market is completely different.
Bands have generally switched to individual artists with production more handled by others. A majority of a famous singer's earnings now comes from ticket sales, causing a spike in ticket prices. There is also the chase for virality, seen a lot in both ring tone rap at the nadir of the industry and songs today based mainly on their TikTok hooks.
TV shows and movies have already lost their "tour" with an overall decline in theatre and we are already seeing a lot of the middle ground of movies that were made 20+ years ago no longer get made.
Content will still get made, and probably at a similar quantity. However, I expect the industry to continue its trend to either micro budget work or something gigantic with no middle ground, just like with music today.
See 10 years ago it was ALL in Netflix and everyone was happy. Studios got to get passive income and we only needed one service. Then the business bros got greedy and decided they needed more money and exclusivity while spending millions to stand up their own inferior services.
Netflix 10 years ago also got amazing deals because most studio executives didn't understand streaming and just saw it as some additional money on top of broadcast, DVD, and syndication. Those revenue streams are mostly gone.
It's so good when executives and investors don't get new stuff, so they don't come along to squeeze every single penny out of it and choke it to death.
Maybe, but I still want good new stuff.
And it isn't like executives and investors won't still get rich on making new stuff, they will just cheaper and shittier new stuff.
These folks don't get satisfied simply making a lot of money, they want to always make more money than before, and that inevitably leads them to sabotage whatever was good about the products they make.
That’s part of my point. They don’t have to lift a finger. Just let Netflix pay for the storage, the data centers, the bandwidth. Studios will get something out of it for doing literally nothing. But they got greedy and broke the model.
For their old stuff, sure.
But I'm thinking of new movies and TV shows. What kinds of movies can be made a decade from now?
That model may also be dead. Nobody really sees movies anymore, not like before, and nobody wants to wait 6 months for the season to end. That’s very much a 1950s - 2010 model. Not sure what will replace it, but some combination of games and informal content like YouTube/TikTok etc might be where we end up.
Yeah, and that is what I'm concerned about.
Is that good?
There will be something new and we’ll all become Gen Alpha’s boomers.
Being serious, however, who can predict? We’ll have to be patient and see what happens.
I'm not judging Gen Alpha, I'm judging the world we are creating for them to grow up in.
Yup. Netflix was icing on the cake that was cable. Now streaming is becoming the cake. The cost or revenue of the cake needs to be the same for the biz to run.
I’m referring specifically to older content. Is there really a reason that Star Trek the Next Generation shouldn’t be in Netflix, for example? Paramount isn’t enough of an offer so they may be losing out on a great deal of passive income.
Boo fucking hoo. Nothing of value would be lost.