27 ms·

The Slow Death of Hollywood

• SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  "...Netflix’s strategy is straightforward market power exploitation. The company is cancelling shows that subscribers like, so it won’t have to pay creators the amount they would otherwise be able to get for making good commercially successful art. In other words, Netflix is subtly raising prices on subscribers and paying creators less for their work." I wonder if this means in the future, the price for a first and second season labor will be higher, thereby locking out new competition to new original series.
  • mc32 7y ago
    Not sure if the reasons are same or different, but from an American POV, it appears many British TV shows have few seasons, with a few exceptions like ‘The Office’.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • cmiles74 7y ago
    It's hard to guess at the reason that Netflix is canceling these shows, but many shows simply have too many seasons. I suspect it's because the way the networks estimate their viewership (things like Nielsen households or telephone surveys) are less reliable than the detailed metrics that Netflix can track. While everyone misses their favorite show when it's canceled, it could be as simple as viewership has dropped below some bar Netflix has established for that particular show. I don't think it needs to be as nefarious as large scale plan to depress the earnings of those who work on these shows. Certainly it looks like it now makes sense to plan for a show running no more than two seasons and then negotiating appropriately.
    • iscrewyou 7y ago
      I have this gripe that shows DO NOT need to run for 10 seasons. Breaking bad was a great example of a show that didn’t drag on, caught itself when it was starting to and pivoted and finished it strong. Now it’s a classic. Should there still be shows with 10 seasons? Sure. But most of them should be like 3-4-5 seasons. People lose interest. But if they knew that the only need to pay attention for 3-4 seasons, i think the shows could be more successful (for viewer attention span and for creators to work within a certain time frame and constraints).
      • cmiles74 7y ago
        "The West Wing" is the one that hurt me in my heart place. I stopped watching when the meteor was hurtling towards the planet and I was relieved I wasn't still watching the show when they started to bring in musical guests. In my opinion, most shows would do better with far fewer seasons.
        • js2 7y ago
          I just started watching it this year. The writing is fantastic. I'm mid-way through Season 4. I hear it drops off after that with Sorkin's departure. Should I just pretend seasons 5-7 don't exist?
          • praneshp 7y ago
            I suggest braving through season 5, I personally enjoyed the remaining seasons, especially the last one. They never reach 1-4 levels though.
      • celticmusic 7y ago
        I agree completely, I even wish seasons were shorter. Very often the start and end to a season is strong, but the middle is filler.
        • filoleg 7y ago
  • AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > I wonder if this means in the future, the price for a first and second season labor will be higher, thereby locking out new competition to new original series. It could be a consequence of the whole industry going the other way. It used to be that if you were Tom Hanks or Meryl Streep or Julia Roberts or Harrison Ford then you could write your own ticket because the star power would put butts in seats for anything you were in, which was a highly valuable commodity. Now there are a zillion new shows, half of them with complete unknowns in them, and people figure out which shows are good based on Rotten Tomatoes and social media rather than by who is in it. Then you get a cast who thinks their star power is worth more than it is anymore and they threaten to stop producing the show if they don't get more money, but Netflix calls their bluff because there are a thousand aspiring actors and writers behind them who are happy to make a different show that produces the same revenue for half as much money.
  • jonknee 7y ago
    It could also just not be true? No one but Netflix knows what shows their subscribers like and they're currently spending money like a drunken sailor so I'm hard pressed to believe any argument about paying less for their work. The author is not in the industry and has no access to what Netflix viewers are watching, how much Netflix pays or how much competitors of Netflix pay. What we do know is more shows are being made which means more jobs. I bet it's more like Netflix realized what viewers have: the first few seasons are almost always the best. Perhaps it's not "straightforward market power exploitation" and it's just that later seasons from legacy players were renewed out of habit, time slots and pre sold ad sales and not because of quality?
• buryYourChild 7y ago
  I can’t wait for the economy to crash and fucking burn in the worst fucking ways. You can’t make me spend money. You can’t make me work for a living. I can kill myself faster than you can extract emotions other than apathy from me. Nothing will motivate me anymore. And I’m not alone. I pollute. I choke the world with garbage and smog. I hope all your children are poisoned and defective from birth. Impossible to manage with mental disorders, you’ll spend a lifetime in debt, medicating them until they seem passable as humans and not animals. I don’t give a fuck about your streaming service or TV show. Rot in hell. Watch me die.
• apo 7y ago
  > ... it’s simply impossible to compete making better goods and services if your competitor can lose money indefinitely. This is yet another consequence of the Federal Reserve's forever bailout of the US stock market: a repeatable business model in which a company can operate at a loss indefinitely while it furiously tries to build an uncrossable moat around itself.
• mamon 7y ago
  Cancelling show after two seasons is a blessing: original idea has usually already ran its course by then, and the story becomes more and more convoluted and boring. Very few shows remain high quality in third or subsequent seasons.
  • jandrese 7y ago
    I'd argue that a lot of shows have fairly rough first seasons, good to excellent second and third seasons, and then start running out of ideas in the fourth season. Four seasons is a good length for a TV show. Two is too few most of the time. This is a very rough metric of course. Some shows peak in their first season and go downhill from there. A few manage to reinvent themselves enough each season to avoid going stale, but in general four and done is good.
    • cmiles74 7y ago
      I don't have any data to back this up, but I have been watching TV for many, many years. It seems to me that we have two types of television series... 1) A show that was carefully written over the course of several years and had a pretty large budget when the first season of the show was finally made. These have a good first season and maybe an okay second season but often flounder in their second season. 2) A series that maybe had a good idea and a decently written pilot but not much more on the books in terms of time investment, often having a smaller budget. These shows might have a pretty poor first season with some good episodes here and there, perhaps the cast starts to show some real chemistry as their characters begin to get fleshed out towards the end of that season. The second season only gets better as everyone has a better handle on what is working. It could be argued in both cases that more seasons are worth the gamble. In practice, though, more shows just get worse. I can't fault Netflix for leaning towards early cancellation, that seems like the obvious safe bet.
      • jandrese 7y ago
        It's an obvious safe bet until you cancel Firefly after one season. :(
• dade_ 7y ago
  Or the slow death of both. After Mad Men and House of Cards, I just kept Netflix around but not usually impressed since anything I found that was any good got cancelled on the second season. I had no idea this was intentional until reading this article. So I cancelled when they raised the price and shared an account with a friend since I rarely used it. They raised the price again and he cancelled, but I don't miss it. Amazon Prime has enough content for me.
  • softwaredoug 7y ago
    I remember when SyFy got a bad reputation for canceling their best shows. Seems a bold assumption that a paying customer base wouldn’t notice...
  • thirdsun 7y ago
    That's my problem with Netflix - they don't seem to strive for excellence in their content. I understand that a popular, good enough series that runs for 2 seasons is financially worthwhile but it doesn't lead to masterpieces like The Wire, The Sopranos or Mad Men. It's natural that the very best content is rare, but by now I'd have expected Netflix to come up with their own contribution to that league of shows. Then again, they seem to do fine regardless.
• cmiles74 7y ago
  > The centralization of power in a few studios and chains is global. In 2015, the U.S.-China Security Review Commission noted that Hollywood now obeys Chinese censors pretty much for all films, even those made and distributed solely in the West. Unless this system is restructured, it is unlikely we will see any critical depictions of Chinese government actors again, which has its parallels to the Studio System in the 1930s pandering to Nazi Germany. > ... > In other words, we should aim to restore open markets for content again. This means separating out the industry into production, distribution, and retailing. We should probably ban predatory pricing so Netflix isn’t dumping into the market. And we should probably begin a radical decentralization of chains and studios. There's some interesting stuff in this article and I'm glad that I read it. But at the end of the piece, aren't we talking about the same thing we're seeing in all US industries? As the players getting larger and more wealthy and become more powerful they do their best to freeze out competitors until we end up with a weird and dysfunctional closed system. A lot of these criticisms pre-date Netflix and Amazon: summer movies started to become an all-or-nothing bet (and thus more homogenous, dull, and less risky intellectually) when it was just the studios. I don't know what the solution might be, I struggle to keep a positive frame of mind in this regard. I do think it's unlikely that the government will step in an break these companies up, especially when they have so much money under their control.
  • scarface74 7y ago
    History is littered with studios that tried to do something “innovative” and more risky and went bust on one film. The audience has spoken. Studios will produce what works.
  • mrkurt 7y ago
    > I don't know what the solution might be, I struggle to keep a positive frame of mind in this regard. I do think it's unlikely that the government will step in an break these companies up, especially when they have so much money under their control. I'm not usually optimistic about it, but there's some political noise about actually enforcing the Sherman Act again. We're not _that_ far removed from a DoJ that blocked Microsoft mergers, and there's hopefully enough political pressure to staff the FTC/DoJ some people with spines instead of rubber stamps.
• sleepysysadmin 7y ago
  The rapid changing from VCR -> DVD -> Blueray -> digital meant their industry was able to resell their product over and over. This produced a golden age and created a ridiculous amount of money. Their golden age is over. In the very near future what used to be the movie/tv industry will be significantly smaller.
  • erikpukinskis 7y ago
    Obviously it’s a bit of a Rorschach but I see it differently: Industrialists took control of the production apparatus and stopped funding anything that didn’t fit into “proven” parameters. This produces a lot of money for owners, in a very efficient way. Very little money is wasted, there are clearly lost opportunities on risks not taken, but as long as there is enough work to keep the top management busy at full capacity, there’s no incentive to chase those risks. This model displaced a lot of content creators who didn’t fit the formula. Some small number of passionate people made work anyway, fumbling through with PayPal and DVDs and Amazon sales and whatever else. That small pool of dedicated creators was enough of a market to build an alternate production apparatus. CDBaby, YouTube, digital cameras, cheap video editing rigs, Twitter, even email... all of these tools emerged to help independents survive. Then, it was a classic “Innovators Dilemma” tipping point: suddenly a TV show could be produced for an order of magnitude less money and there was a generation of established creators that the establishment had written off. It was just waiting for someone to start writing small-for-networks but big-for-indie-filmmakers checks. Netflix did it. Now there are a new set of proven formulas. The networks are on the ropes, but they could come back easily. At the end of the day this business has nothing to do with technology. Viewing experiences will change but it’s still just people in dimly lit rooms watching screens and advertising.
    • sleepysysadmin 7y ago
      Maybe my perspective is a bit skewed as a Canadian, our government requires X% of content on tv to be Canadian made. Which was fine because tons of stuff is made in vancouver and toronto but it never pushed the little guy out. We still have all the small time crap like ice road truckers or trailer park boys. >At the end of the day this business has nothing to do with technology I disagree that technology isnt involved. As I said, changing formats but then you bring up all the technologies which were developed which changed things. Youtube/Netflix itself is technology.
• goldcd 7y ago
  I'm actually OK with the cancellations. Maybe I'd have liked more Santa Clarita Diet - but had given up watching Orange is the New Black and the Marvel stuff. I'd loved them, liked them, then maybe was watching out of a "sense of duty".. There's only so much TV I can/should ever watch, so if there's going to be anything new, they've got to stop making something old.
  • ravenstine 7y ago
    I loved Santa Clarita Diet, but I'm also fine with them having cancelled it. I'd prefer shows just stick around for a few good seasons than get long in the tooth. I hope they develop more shows like it, though.
  • mrkurt 7y ago
    You might be, but the people it really hurts are the creators. Orange is the New Black went 6 seasons. The creators likely made all their money in seasons 3+, because they proved its worth in seasons 1 and 2 and had leverage to negotiate higher compensation. The problem isn't so much cancelling mediocre series after two seasons, it's when they cancel things with a huge following because they've managed to disconnect what people pay from the quality of the content.
• efa 7y ago
  Correction: the terrorists in Back to the Future gave Doc Brown weapons-grade plutonium, not uranium!
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• WarDores 7y ago
  I'm typically a "when in doubt, free markets" type, but the three tier system (production, distribution, and retailing) has numerous advantages. The craft beer boom, for example, would never have happened in the absence of a legally-mandated 3 tier system. Not only did this result in greater consumer choice, but it also allowed small businesses to thrive in a sector where there are significant economies of scale. I think similar benefits would be realized in the art world, with similar exceptions for very small studios that usually don't have access to the same distribution channels.
  • zajd 7y ago
    There is no such thing as a free market. The sooner Americans accept this maybe we can move forward towards a society where we don't allow businesses to engage in predatory practices under the guise of "free market ideology". Like Uber/Lyft price dumping for the past decade. We're ruining the taxi industry for what exactly? So a bunch of millionaires can lose money for 20 years because they are selling billionaires on the idea of having a monopoly.
    • magduf 7y ago
      They "ruined" the taxi industry because it was anti-consumer and absolutely horrible. That's why it was so easy for them to "ruin" it (read: make it so much better). Seriously, you think it's "ruining" an industry to have a convenient smartphone app instead of having to call someone on a phone and hope a driver shows up within 2 hours? And then have a driver that doesn't use a taximeter, drives around in circles, and just makes up a price on the spot? Maybe you never tried using cabs in the suburbs before the invention of Uber/Lyft.
    • Mountain_Skies 7y ago
      The taxi industry ruined itself long before anyone conceived of Uber or Lyft. There was nothing stopping the taxi industry from creating Uber. They had the regulatory capture to make it happen much easier than how Uber and Lyft built themselves. Even without Uber or Lyft the taxi industry was busy pushing their customers into purchasing private automobiles because taxi service was so awful.
• holy_city 7y ago
  I just wanted to disagree with the author's assertion : >[Netflix has] "slowly reconstructed the old vertically integrated studio system. The company is an integrated production and streaming service." Netflix is probably the least integrated business in Hollywood when it comes to production. To use an analogy, think of content as sausage. Netflix doesn't make the sausage and they don't care about how it's made. They pay people a lot of money to do it, and that's about it. They're in the business of distributing the sausage. They also buy a lot of bulk sausage that they found at a sausage festival, meaning they had no stake before it was made. (some) Traditional studios do care a lot about the making of the sausage. To make sausage for them, you have to buy their spices, use their casings, and go to a meat supplier that they recommend and might have a co-ownership stake in with other sausage distributors. That's not a bad thing, making sausage is complicated with a lot of people involved - the studios give you a good deal by removing that complexity, and helps keep your costs down before you get to see a profit.
  • jpalomaki 7y ago
    Netflix also has lots of detailed data about what kind of ingredients people want in their sausage. Would make sense for them to start being quite specific with the suppliers what they want to get. This is not just on high level. You could track on individual episodes and even inside episodes (for example do you pause, switch to another app).
    • holy_city 7y ago
      The "ingredients" in this analogy are mostly human capital/contractors and locations used in pre/production/post. For example, Netflix doesn't really have the ability to see how much the choice of caterer on set influences their churn. That's contrived, but I hope it illustrates the point. There are dozens to hundreds of these contractors who work on serious productions, and some studios are more integrated than others when it comes to hiring them for different phases of the process. And the sheer amount of real estate and personnel involved in these ecosystems is beyond what Netflix is capable of exploiting today. And while Netflix is uniquely capable of collecting some extremely useful data (which they guard like the crown jewels), I'm not aware of them getting granular with production pipelines to see how changes influence their revenue. And if they were, I'd be skeptical given the amount of variance, since every production is different despite massive efforts to standardize the process. It's a very human problem domain.
• scarface74 7y ago
  This entire article is flawed because of the premise that Netflix is a monopoly. There were 495 active scripted shows in 2018 - 146 more than in 2013 (https://gazette.com/arts-entertainment/the-number-of-scripted-tv-shows-that-aired-in-is/article_52b9bb92-ff11-11e8-944e-0f47faebceff.html https://gazette.com/arts-entertainment/the-number-of-scripte...). There are also more avenues than ever to shop around a scripted show including five networks - as opposed to three four decades ago and many cable channels. In the 80s and 90s, most cable channels were just showing reruns of network shows. You also have multiple streaming services backed by companies with far more money than Netflix either already on the market or coming within the next year. Including Disney, WarnerMedia, Apple, Sony, etc. My dad was an avid movie goer for decades. Since we got him a Roku TV, he goes to the movies a lot less frequently. There may be a near monopoly on movie screens, but there are a lot more outlets and large screen TVs are incredibly cheap.
  • smacktoward 7y ago
    I suspect that Peak Netflix is already behind us. They've been quite frank that in their current incarnation they're aiming to become the next HBO (see https://gizmodo.com/netflix-the-goal-is-to-become-hbo-faster-than-hbo-can-5980103 https://gizmodo.com/netflix-the-goal-is-to-become-hbo-faster...), and while HBO was definitely the "gold standard" of prestige TV, it was never anywhere near crowding out its many rivals. The big question mark hanging over this plan is that they are burning tons of borrowed money to achieve it. Do those investors think they're buying into HBO 2.0, or do they think they're buying into a future monopoly? The sheer amount of money they've been able to raise suggests the latter, which means those investors are going to be unpleasantly surprised at some point down the road.
    • Retric 7y ago
      Calculating Netflix profitability over the short term is hard because it’s difficult to value the residuals from their IP. If for example stranger things is still being watched in 20 years that’s less content they then need to pay for over time. I don’t think they are creating a lot of valuable content right now. But, that’s more option than fact.
• JansjoFromIkea 7y ago
  Honestly I'm expecting the whole industry to crash hugely. I've received so many free cinema tickets to mainstream cinemas in the past 3 years that I haven't once actually paid to see anything by a major studio in that time, and I'm someone who goes to the cinema once a week on average. Much like MoviePass I assume _someone_ is paying for all those trips I go on for free, and when they stop paying I'm not going to go anywhere near 90% of those films. Meanwhile the specified prices of cinema tickets have grown and grown to the point that I'm honestly appalled when I hear how much people go to see such and such a new blockbuster on release day. And on the TV side of things Netflix seem focused on making consumable content over anything that endures. I can't think of any shows of theirs that're going to age as well as HBOs finest have and I can see that being an issue in the long term when they don't have these kind of pillars to fall back on. It all seems focused on hyping people up into subscribing and then hoping that they forget about the subscription cost indefinitely.
  • chipperyman573 7y ago
    Wow, what mailing lists are you on that give you weekly tickets to mainstream cinemas? I'd love to get on that.
    • JansjoFromIkea 7y ago
      The main one is my health insurance, which consistently gives me a free cinema ticket ever fortnight (was every week) for walking distances I'd've walked anyway. Mubi gives me free cinema tickets each week to a designated film. My phone network gave free ones occasionally for a while too, have switched networks since but I believe they still do.
      • boudin 7y ago
        Those tickets are all paid through the services you are mentioning though. The health insurance, the phone network and Mubi don't get those tickets for free. You do pay a fraction of the tickets through those subscriptions, and a lot of people are paying this fraction too but whithout taking advantage of those tickets, so actualy spending money on movie theatre tickets not even knowing it :)
• sek 7y ago
  I think it's a combination of things, but primarily we are in a low interest environment. Money is looking desperately for something to invest in and the problem of Hollywood and cable companies was that they made too much money. Netflix was a distributor who figured that out and was creating a low subscription model for content. When the content producers realised this Netflix was exposed, they knew they would not renew their contracts and as a defensive measure just started producing content like mad. They had all this leverage because the market is flooded with money and they have a pretty stable revenue stream. Netflix is what Napster was for music, because movies were always too big to pirate it took a little longer. Now it's too late, people don't buy a CD with one song for $12 dollars and they won't pay $100 for a cable subscription any longer.
  • smogcutter 7y ago
    The lower cost vs cable is a mirage. Once TV is finished balkanizing into separate streaming services, expect the cost of signing up for everything you had on cable to add up to about the cost of a cable subscription.
    • true_religion 7y ago
      The problem with cable is that the lowest subscription amount was highly priced. Even with Balkanization, you can now simply choose to get less and pay less.
    • dougmwne 7y ago
      Most people I know cycle through the streaming services instead of subscribing to everything on the market. Streaming video is a very different product than cable. A single service gives you more on-demand content than you could ever watch. There's no particular rush to see a series since every season of a show is usually available. With cable you need the hundreds of channels to have any chance of finding something to watch, and if you miss it when it's live then too bad. So people keep repeating that we're going to end up paying $100 a month for our subscription services, but I am going to happily keep paying about $12 a month. A quick google found an article from 2015 that Netflix is estimated to have about 35k hours of content. Another article claimed that Netflix adds an additional 3k hours of content each year. Do you really need to subscribe to 2x, 3x or 5x that amount all at once?
• pier25 7y ago
  Very few shows are good after the first couple of seasons. Breaking Bad is probably the only TV show I know longer than 2-3 seasons that maintains its quality from beginning to end. The Americans is also pretty good. Even Game of Thrones went downhill on its last seasons. Stranger Things has also gone down the hill. I watched the first 3 episodes of the new season and I'm done with it. It has gone from a sci-fi show to a teenager drama.
• jstutzman 7y ago
  [Netflix] now routinely ends shows after their second season, even when they’re still popular. Netflix has learned that the first two seasons of a show are key to bringing in subscribers—but the third and later seasons don’t do much to retain or win new subscribers. - That's crazy and smart all at the same time. Definitely not user-centered design.
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  • ravenstine 7y ago
    I don't particularly mind this. All the shows that I love usually peak within their first 3 seasons. I'd much rather a show end while it's good than for it to drag its feet for 7+ seasons and die with a whimper. Most viewers just follow trends and are fickle. This is Netflix's way of allowing shows to have fans but also stay viable(cool, hip, new, and full of zazz) for the general audience.
  • B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago
    Hey, HBO gets a show to season 8, and boom, https://www.reddit.com/r/freefolk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/freefolk/
  • magduf 7y ago
    Two seasons seems a little short; maybe 3 would be better? Just look at The Expanse; that one I thought did well with keeping me engaged, but they ended it (by design) after 3 seasons, and it seemed to be just the right length for the overall story arc they were going for. Whereas Game of Thrones stayed interesting for a long time (6 seasons to be exact), but after that started faltering and in season 8 really became disappointing, mainly because the books they were basing it on had run out and they were now making things up as they went along.
• ravenstine 7y ago
  Hollywood is hanging itself by its own velvet rope. Remakes are seen as an excellent investment because, so long as they are properly stylized and full of dazzle, they are low-risk and have reasonable returns. Usually. This won't work for them forever, and I think everyday people are catching on to the fact that they're just being resold the same stuff they've already bought. The other day, my cousin's 11 year old son was over and we were trying to figure out what movie to go see. We asked him if he wanted to go see the live-action Aladdin remake. He told us he didn't want to see it because they(Disney) were just taking a 2D movie that he'd already seen and are just doing the same thing again with actors to make more money. I gave him a fist-bump. He's not even a cynical kid, either. We ended up not even going to the movies because everything that was out was either a remake or n-th sequel, ridiculous looking, or rated R. If kids who weren't even around when Aladdin or The Lion King first came out are catching on to the fact that corporations are just recycling their parent's generation's culture, it's a sign that Hollywood has gotten completely full of itself and is in early-stage apoptosis.
  • goto11 7y ago
    > everyday people are catching on to the fact that they're just being resold the same stuff they've already bought. But Hollywood have always done this - recycling old ideas in new wrapping. And Hollywood have always been criticized for being vapid entertainment, empty spectacle etc. "catching on to the fact" suggest that this is some secret insight which undermines the enjoyment of the movie. But I'm pretty sure most people who goes to the Disney remakes go because it is remakes of movies they already know and love. They want to see the same thing in a new way. According to Wikipedia, Aladdin grossed "$923.7 million, against a production budget of $183 million". So despite you and your nephew, Disney seem to manage OK. Hollywood does have problem, but it is not due to lack of originality. Hollywood produces plenty of original stories still, but it is the remakes and franchises which grosses the most. Because the consumers likes this stuff.
    • magduf 7y ago
      >But Hollywood have always done this - recycling old ideas in new wrapping. Yes, but I think it's safe to say that there were a lot more original movies a few decades ago than there are now. Hollywood used to take more risks. >According to Wikipedia, Aladdin grossed "$923.7 million, against a production budget of $183 million". So despite you and your nephew, Disney seem to manage OK. Exactly. People are bemoaning the current state of Hollywood, but it's extremely profitable, and that's all that really matters to them. There's no shortage of paying customers willing to see the latest sequel/prequel/remake/reboot. Sure, they might lose a few ticket sales from people like me and this OP and his nephew, but it's more than made up for by countless others who just don't care and want entertainment. And yes, they might make more profit on a really great original movie (like the original Star Wars in 1977), but that's also a big risk and it might flop and be a giant loss, so they tend to shy away from such things now and make safer movies that have an almost guaranteed profit, even if it isn't as much.
• Buetol 7y ago
  I have another guess: Rising inequalities in the U.S. means fewer and fewer people can have access to high quality movies. This means the internal market, which is the fuel of Hollywood, is dying and that's why Hollywood is dying. It's just an intuition and a guess. EDIT: Also, it could mean that the concentration of money inside a few hands in Hollywood mean they try to make fewer movies so they get more return on investment. For example, if you produce 20 movies per month or 10 movies per month, and you have a monopoly, then it's cheaper and almost as profitable to 10 movies a month. Only an healthy competition or subsidies like in France can make you want to produce more movies. EDIT 2: I confess that I'm an Armchair Economist https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Armchair%20Economist https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Armchair%20E...
  • codingslave 7y ago
    Inequality is rising, but so are the lowest rungs of american society. They have seen huge increases in standard of living.
    • deleted 7y ago
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      • icebraining 7y ago
        How is the US in peak poverty? That graph clearly shows the poverty rate being way lower than in '59-65, and lower than at many points since then.
        • deleted 7y ago
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        • Buetol 7y ago
          Sorry, I mixed up raw number of people in poverty and percentage, so I removed my comment. Here's the graph for context (for other people reading): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Number_in_Poverty_and_Poverty_Rate%2C_1959_to_2017.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Number_i...
• thrusong 7y ago
  I love going to the cinema, but I avoid Cineplex here in Canada like the plague. They lack basic showmanship like dimming the lights (every showing I've been at in the past seven years they just flicked the lights off and started playing the movie and then the credits roll and BAM, full brightness). Couple that with Cineplex being an "extract-every-penny and don't re-invest" business. The top reviews for their biggest theatre in town include comments such as "the carpet smells like corpse." Honestly, if bad content will lead to the demise of this company, I say bring it on. Hopefully Landmark will escape largely unscathed.
• jpalomaki 7y ago
  One thing Netflix has not yet cracked is how to keep me constantly hooked and to stop me from quitting once in a while. As I can just catch up with the missed episodes later, I don’t see problem canceling the subscription.
  • lkrubner 7y ago
    Very much the same for me. I try not to waste too much time watching movies, but also I want to keep up with the culture. But I find if I binge one month a year, I end up seeing almost everything that people are talking about.
  • mrkurt 7y ago
    You're unique. Most people just keep paying for it.
  • goatlover 7y ago
    It's only a problem to be cracked if the number of people cancelling once in a while is significant. Anecdotes aren't statistics.
• freerootkit 7y ago
  Price of 1 movie ticket: $15 Price of small popcorn: $8 Price of small drink: $8 Price of small candy: $5 Total: $36 Time it took to drive to theater: 10 mins Time it took to wait in line for food: 10 mins Time it took to watch trailers: 25 mins Total: 45 mins Buying the movie and watching it my house costs no more than $20 (when it first comes out) and I can make whatever I want to eat and don't have to drive anywhere. So I save money and time. Oh and I almost forgot, no children or people next to me coughing if I stay home.
  • praneshp 7y ago
    Added advantage for me : no one making irritating sounds eating their $8 small popcorn or unwrapping their $5 candy.
    • kleer001 7y ago
      Or texting with their searchlight bright cellphone.
  • magduf 7y ago
    Watch out, you're going to have some purist chime in about how worthwhile the "theater experience" is because it's "shared" or whatever. I see these arguments all the time on /r/movies; the movie snobs really hate people who watch movies at home and don't go to the theaters and put up with rude patrons, overpriced concessions, 25 minutes of commercials, etc.
    • thirdsun 7y ago
      These days it's entirely possible for cinephiles to have a very fine home cinema setup. Depending on how you live a projector and good sound system is far from outlandish. As someone who loves films, but would have to drive at least 45 minutes to the next cinema which only shows current, popular movies in localized audio it's much more practical for me to watch whatever I want, wether it's a timeless classic or new, niche arthouse film, in my home cinema. Plus, food and drinks are way cheaper, the audience is mostly silent and I can pause/resume whenever I want.
• segmondy 7y ago
  Hollywood is dying because most of their movies are garage. There have been very few good movies made lately or perhaps I'm just getting old. I use to go to the movies once or twice a month a long time ago, now I can go a whole year without going. Besides the quality going down, it costs too much too. The remake fatigue is also real. Very few original content. It's either a remake of something from the past, another country or a sequel.
• Causality1 7y ago
  >be that person an artist or a major studio; it’s simply impossible to compete Has this guy somehow missed out on the fact that Netflix doesn't own the vast majority of the content its users watch? A major studio competing with Netflix is not terribly difficult since all it has to do is yank its own content off the platform. CBS launched a successful streaming service on the backs of one Star Trek series and a bunch of stupid sitcom reruns. HBO Now is making a profit and it's about to be making a much bigger one since Time Warner is pulling their IP off Netflix to combine into HBO Max. The Disney behemoth is also creeping steadily forward. You know, the giant company that dominates the highest grossing films of the year and has done so for several years? The one with a stranglehold on children's programming? I'm not going to pay for Disney+ but almost every friend of mine with kids is looking forward to unlimited Mickey Mouse for only $15 a month. Netflix is scrambling because it's only got a couple of years before IP holders start ripping its guts out en masse.
  • spacegod 7y ago
    What happens when the networks all have their own streaming service? I mean inevitably some of them die, right?
• henntipular 7y ago
  Redlettermedia have made a lot of 'normal' people aware of just how aweful movies and the movie-going experience is. A lot of times it's more entertaining to watch a group of friends absolutely destroy a moviethan it was to watch the film.
• drenvuk 7y ago
  nice writing, but this sentence is off: >It’s becoming increasingly clear that the only goal now in Hollywood is to become gain market power in distribution or must-have content production, and then use that monopoly power to reduce the quality of output and reduce the bargaining leverage of artists. I like the depth and history he brings into this piece.
• codingdave 7y ago
  I wasn't aware that Netflix was strategically aiming for 2 seasons show now. I kinda like that. I might like 3 better. But so many shows in the past have driven forward until they were unwatchable and cancelled. And with a timebox of 2 seasons, the writers can know exactly how big their story arc is, and can wrap everything up cleanly. As far as the impact on Hollywood that this all has... I'm not trying to be rude, but I am having a hard time caring. Actors still have jobs, as do the tech crews. We still get entertainment. Aside from wanting to maintain the status quo, which HN usually isn't concerned with... why does it matter?
  • kodz4 7y ago
    Enough "Art" and blockbuster comedies have not been produced apparently :)
• jariel 7y ago
  The primary issue is that distribution has shifted, i.e. the quality of the viewing experience at home (w/ high bandwidth great displays), makes for a great experience, competitive with the theatres. 'Netflix' is the big winner in this, but their story is secondary to the channel disruption. But - consumers will have more than $12 to spend on content and the 'fight' will be between HBO, Disney and other package providers, and AT&T/Comcast etc. who'll fight for those dollars by pushing up bandwidth prices. The other, major issue unmentioned in the article is that Hollywood is now playing to a truly global audience, not just 'America + Europe + Anglosphere'. This means the stories are ever dumber, playing to the lowest common denominator, relying more on action than even dialogue let alone acting or plot. Most importantly 'context' disappears as the nuance of, for example, the English class system, barely relevant in America to begin with is way beyond the average Brazilian viewers knowledge base, and so stories relying on such familiarity are 'out' along with everything else requiring remotely any regional knowledge. And of course, every big Hollywood film now has to have the approval of the Chinese government, if that's not the most dystopian thing that nobody ever thought could happen. 'The Fast and the Furious', 'Transformers' and Superhero movies are now effectively what Hollywood is. The cinema as we once knew it will be relegated to TV for the time being. That said, there will be some good content. The Oscars will have to update how they do awards in order to handle this new issue, because they want to remain 'prestigious' but also relevant at the same time, which will be hard.
• quibbler 7y ago
  "In fact, median wages for writers are dropping quite quickly, down 23% from 2014 to 2016, which is a similar amount as the fall in earnings for book literary authors after Amazon launched its vertically integrated kindle e-book reader." Couldn't this simply be an artefact of more authors entering the market (and filling out surveys). It doesn't seem conclusive as a scare metric. As for the general article, at the moment more art seems to be produced than ever before. No matter what endgame Netflix has in mind, I don't see how they could achieve a monopoly situation as with the Hollywood firms if the past. There is now the internet, everybody can publish. Diacoverability, maybe - so they would become the Google of movie search engines? How would they prevent for example Google becoming the Google of movie search engines? Google retains its dominance because it is also pretty good, so far.
• jpollock 7y ago
  I thought the slow burn of older movies was because of the cost of printing and managing the prints. My understanding is that it was a substantial investment for a movie, which meant that releases had to be staged - you wanted the most bang from each print [1][2]. With digital theaters, this is no longer an issue, the cost is up front with the expensive projecting equipment. [1] https://newrepublic.com/article/119431/how-digital-cinema-took-over-35mm-film https://newrepublic.com/article/119431/how-digital-cinema-to... [2] https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-xpm-2014-jan-17-la-et-ct-paramount-digital-20140117-story.html https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-xpm-2014-j...
  • rsj_hn 7y ago
    During the "golden age" of Hollywood in the 30s-40s, the studios would crank out one movie per week. Stars would often appear in 3 movies per year. Today, stars shoot a film every 3 years or so. E.g. take a look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_RKO_Pictures_films#1940 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_RKO_Pictures_films#194... In 1940, RKO released 55 films, of which they produced 39. That's basically a film per week. And these were feature films. For the individual stars, take a look at Humphrey Bogart, who starred in 3 films in 1941: The Maltese Falcon, The Wagons Roll at Night, High Sierra. I don't think there was a year in the 40s up to the mod 50s when Bogart didn't star in at least 2 releases per year. In 1951 he was in The African Queen, Sirocco, and The Enforcer. Today, take a major studio, say Paramount Pictures. It released 11 films in all of 2018. What happened was JAWS created the 'blockbuster' phenomena, in which the studios made huge money on a small number of very expensive films with huge marketing budgets compared to previous eras. That totally changed the dynamic. It also made actor pay shoot up. But it has nothing to do with the cost of the prints -- just strategy of whether you want to make a small number of films with tons of marketing spend like in the post JAWS era or a large number of cheaper to produce films with small marketing budgets like the pre-JAWS era. In many ways, what is happening with TV and Netflix is akin to a return to the studio model but for episodes, where Netflix seems to be able to crank out a large number of relatively cheap but decent quality episodes, and this of course corresponds to lower actor pay per episode.
• jedberg 7y ago
  Netflix would like nothing more than to have the government force production and distribution to be separate. Their core business was using data to buy better content for cheaper and then figuring out what you want to watch better than anyone else. If production and distribution were separate, everyone would want to be distributed by Netflix because they have the largest global reach. And they could get out of the huge money sink that is making content. They only make content because they saw this consolidation coming.
• jedberg 7y ago
  > There’s much less of a market, and much less information circulating, even though we have the internet and much better mechanisms for moving information to one another. I think it is because of the internet and better moving information that there is a lack of a market and the "slow roll" doesn't work anymore. If a movie is bad, most people will know after the first day. Also, back in the day you'd just show up at the theater and pick a movie after dinner, because it was a pain to look that stuff up ahead of time. Then you'd pick a movie that maybe you'd seen an ad for and watch it. Now, you'll pull out your cell phone at dinner, see what movie starts next, check the reviews and tweets, and then pick another one if it's bad. Before you ever get to the theater. And if there is nothing good, you'll do something else. You can't get away with making a bad movie anymore like you could in the 80s. I saw a lot of bad movies in the 80s and 90s. I don't see bad movies anymore because it's so easy to avoid them.
  • softwaredoug 7y ago
    Gotten to the point where the research has gotten too stressful. Feels like there’s a lot of pressure choosing the best movie to invest 2 hrs of my life! Now I find it more relaxing to go based on just the trailers and enjoy the bad ones when they happen.
  • mango7283 7y ago
    This applies to a lot of things. I actually feel like the constraints on supply in my childhood enabled me to experience a wider range of media than I otherwise might have. Sure, I read a lot of crappy books and terrible TV ( or good stuff that is outside my immediate interests) back then because there wasn't anything else but that in of itself was an experience. That's lost when I can pick anything and just drop anything that doesn't have the right genre and is 5 star on whatever rating service I used.
• gpayan 7y ago
  Interesting read, but I tend to disagree with the author on many levels. I do believe we are still in a golden age for content producers and audiences. The amount of money going into content production, the number of shows being produced and the number of streaming services being launched offer a variety of options for people to finance, distribute and consume video content. Content creators are looking essentially for 3 things: telling great stories, reaching large audiences and making money. They make an informed decision based on those 3 factors when choosing to work with Netflix, Amazon or other studios/streaming services. If it becomes obvious that Netflix will cancel their show after 2 seasons or will not expose their content to large audiences, content creators will stop pitching their shows to Netflix and turn to other distribution providers such as Amazon, Warner Media, Disney, NBC, Facebook, CBS, YouTube etc. And if audiences like their content, they will follow it and subscribe/spend time on other platforms. I’m also unsure about Netflix’s “lock-in” power. Netflix is not Spotify where I spend time creating and organizing playlists. I see it only working if Netflix’s recommendation engine is so well trained with my data that moving to another streaming service will force me to spend much more time looking for relevant content to watch. Otherwise, I watch Friends on Netflix. I can easily switch next year to watch it on HBO Max. It is true that the old days of “Friends” and “Seinfeld”, where a hit show would generate billions of dollars for its creators, are gone. Netflix and other streaming platforms are now acquiring global content rights for shows and production companies are becoming more like “work for hire” studios – where ownership is transferred to the streaming platform and no future residual revenues can be expected from re-runs (syndication deals). That being said, the median wage of writers dropping seems to be more the result of talent agencies’ “packaging practices” than Netflix. And by the way, “Where are the great comedies?” the author asks. Blockbuster movies – because of their high production costs – look for global appeal. Car crashes (aka “action movies”) are understood across the world. It’s not necessarily the case for jokes (aka “comedies”) that might not cross oceans as easily.
• cs702 7y ago
  Highly recommended reading! Don't let the catchy title fool you. This passage, in particular, stuck with me: > "But there’s no reason we have to build a highly concentrated storytelling industry on top of the internet, which used to be the most decentralized communications technology ever imagined in human history. The answer to the question of whether Hollywood can be saved is, a resounding YES. Fundamentally streaming is a commodity service; Netflix isn’t anything special, it’s just a good infrastructure service which has morphed into a monster attempting to control our access to content. Disney is just trying to become a monopoly studio of branded must-have content, and reproduce Netflix’s power. Movie chains are too big. And so on and so forth. These are all just political choices. In other words, we should aim to restore open markets for content again. This means separating out the industry into production, distribution, and retailing." The article makes a persuasive case, I think, that market structure is indeed a political choice.
• unnouinceput 7y ago
  Quote: "One could quibble about creativity, but it’s generally thought in Hollywood that the last great comedy franchise to launch was The Hangover, created in 2009. There have been a few others, like Pitch Perfect and 21 Jump Street, but those both came out around the same time, in 2012. There effectively have been no comedy smash hits in for nearly a decade."</endquote> Are you kidding me? Last great comedy was The Hangover? Does the author of the article ever heard of Toy Story 4 (now in theaters), Secret life of pets 1 & 2, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Zootopia etc etc? Granted, they are animated movies versus live action like The Hangover but they are movies, big ones, made by Hollywood, with a plethora of A list actors voicing the characters. The fact that they are animated is irrelevant, because the taste of the public always evolves. That's why action flicks of the '80s are no longer enough to entertain us, and they seem a cliche instead. We, the consumers, became more sophisticated, our taste evolved and demanding better quality for our money. Therefore the creativity went where was required, where the public demand it, not to be stuck in the same style of movies. Otherwise John Wayne's style of Western movies would still roll on big screen. Tell me, when was the last time such a Western made it big on box office? I tell you instead that HBO's Westworld is very much a Western style show that I deeply enjoy. That's where the creativity went! To be in the same pace as our modern, more subtle, taste.
  • mercer 7y ago
    > the last great comedy franchise to launch
• PaulHoule 7y ago
  I don't like the "all you can eat" model. I think it killed cable because people paid for stations even if they didn't watch them, so there was no feedback loop to reward better stations. It devalues content wherever it has been tried from music to video games.
• slowhadoken 7y ago
  Yeah Wim Wenders made a documentary back in 1982 about this. It’s a series of interviews with world famous directors of the time talking about the direction of the movie industry.
• softwaredoug 7y ago
  Great article. To me the weak part in this argument is arguing this all involves “lock in”. Specifically: > The story is that users will buy Netflix streaming services and it will be too much trouble to switch to a different service, which is a variant of a phenomenon called “lock-in.” And because of this they can get away with building bad content and losing money. I don’t agree users won’t easily switch or leave if quality drops. Netflix is becoming a premium channel like HBO (or vice versa). It’s trivial to cancel the service like it is to cancel any premium channel (think HBO after GoT) and look at other options. If anything, eventually my credit card expires and I revisit all my subscriptions... This does seem to be a problem in the case of a duopoly or monopoly, which is perhaps the real threat the author means to describe.
• sytelus 7y ago
  There have been counter arguments that Netflix and Prime Video has in fact saved Hollywood. If you want to make a movie in hollywood, you have to know people who will fund you. You need big connections, close friendships, strong referrals. Even then terms are often not favorable to artists, budget cuts could happen at whims and non-established artists have little freedom. It's like a startup scene but how things used to be done before YC. With Netflix, I think what has happened is that humanity has collectively handed over $10B to one company to create entertainment for them. The budgets are deterministic and not at whims of few people. Artists can take risks because you don't have to count tickets sold. You can create artistic content that has expense and income numbers that don't make sense because eventually it balances out in the larger pool. Suddenly there is lot more money for artists and lot more freedom. It's still not quite like YC where you show up with idea for your movie and instantly get funded but its getting closer to that model.
  • keithwhor 7y ago
    > It's like a startup scene but how things used to be done before YC. Jeebus. Things aren't better or worse after YC, they're just different. YC is the same kind of content farm as Netflix. It's not that YC can't produce great startups, it's that so many "dumb money" investors rely heavily on YC as an initial signal that it's (1) more difficult to succeed if you're not YC and (2) if you are YC and fail (statistically likely), you are blackmarked in a pretty terrible way. Many businesses take multiple iterations to succeed. YC was great when it had 30 great founders in the same way Netflix was great when it first aired Black Mirror. We have to find more robust funding models for promising teams (in all verticals) that don't get compromised by immediate cashflow requirements. Or else we end up with a Miley Cyrus Disney-Ending Black Mirror episode that... we... liked... but what happened to the dystopian horrors we thought we were paying for?
    • sytelus 7y ago
      I think you are missing my point. YC model hasn't changed probabilities of success for startups too much. It has, however, democratized who can do startups. I don't have to have friends in VC circles, I don't need to visit dozens of VC offices, I don't get term sheets that takes away 20% of my company, I don't have board members who dictates and vetos over my vision. This is a big deal and huge improvement over older model - it's not just "different".
• Merrill 7y ago
  "How many films are released each year?" https://stephenfollows.com/how-many-films-are-released-each-year/ https://stephenfollows.com/how-many-films-are-released-each-... The graph shows "Hollywood Wide Releases" at about 100/year for 1995 to 2016. The rate is almost constant. "All Other Releases" go from about 170/year in 1995 to 640/year in 2016. The increase is roughly linear, with a major dip during the great recession of 2008-9. Other graphs show that theater admissions are roughly constant over the period.
• ilaksh 7y ago
  With decentralized technologies we can have the large networks/platforms without the monopolies. Just imagine that Ethereum 2.0 comes out supporting many transactions. Then create a dapp that integrates video somehow, maybe with something like BitTorrent.
• kingkawn 7y ago
  A friend teaches English in south east Asia. His younger students refuse to watch any movies from before ~2010, saying they are too old and slow. I think the focus on remakes is an attempt to capture this market that would otherwise not bother watching older content.
  • asdff 7y ago
    The poorly aged CGI didn't help. That and shitty sound is what stopped me from watching many older movies as a kid.
    • kingkawn 7y ago
      Aw man there’s such deep beautiful feeling in some old movies. I sorta feel like it’s a huge oversight to believe that movies are watched for their technical achievements, rather than the people and ideas in them. But my dad was into cinema so showed me tons of old film when I was a kid. Charlie Chaplin is still hilarious.
• shmerl 7y ago
  > This means separating out the industry into production, distribution, and retailing. I'd welcome that, less exclusives - better for the end user. Except retailing is obsolete in this context. In the digital world, it's only production and distribution. And films should be available to buy digitally DRM-free, not just rented, Netflix-like.
• dawhizkid 7y ago
  Hollywood is doing fine. Disney's stock is at an all time high.
• RickJWagner 7y ago
  Yes, Hollywood has long ago gone stale. Too many movies today rely on reboots or sequels. The system itself is terribly corupt, ala Weinstein. The fame business has raised a pack of entitled, self-important cry babies. More power to Amazon and Netflix. We deserve better.
• beezle 7y ago
  Movie -> tv adaptation -> musical -> movie remake depending the subject, there may also be a cartoon tv series as well.
• ars 7y ago
  How do you write this article without mentioning youtube? I watch far more youtube, than traditional Hollywood. And I don't mean random clips, but high quality content. He's worried that Hollywood won't criticize China, or the military. Instead you'll find that on youtube.
• raxxorrax 7y ago
  Hollywood has often claimed to be in the process of dying. While I think the current content is mostly boring, it still generates profit. Predictable scripts but the industry demands it like this. Remakes are popular because they have a somewhat predictable return of investment because they provide a fanbase from the start. If engagement suffers further, movies are going to change again. But on the other hand rehashed content is always new content for new generations.
• wowandflutter 7y ago
  Seems to me the same kind of thing is happening to the music industry. Streaming is great, however having “too many choices” sometimes feels overwhelming. Corporations want to make a profit, so naturally they will seek out the next big streaming hit and market it to their end users. How do they do this? Algorithms, popularity, number of plays, demographics, etc. Eventually, a few big names get most of the attention. And the user base with the highest number of (paying) listeners is catered to above everything else.
• robomartin 7y ago
  Want the formula for every single Hollywood movie? Google “the hero’s journey” and compare the formula to every movie you have seen.
  • orf 7y ago
    Doesn’t fit with many films. Memento for example.
    • robomartin 7y ago
      Of course, I should have said “most”. This is a formula used by a huge percentage of US movies and TV shows. People are so used to it they don’t even think about the fact that the fundamental storyline is the same on a good percentage of what they watch.
• axilmar 7y ago
  Holywood is certainly not dying economically, but it certainly died a long time ago when it comes to actual entertainment and art. And it's not a matter of age. I like films older than me, there are genuine diamonds amongst them. Today's movies are shitty for the most part with few notable exceptions. Thank God there are tons of great movies outside Holywood.