37 ms·

It ought to be. The whole problem right now is that broadcasters and content producers are the same thing. Content is almost 100% siloed now, and culture will f

It ought to be. The whole problem right now is that broadcasters and content producers are the same thing. Content is almost 100% siloed now, and culture will fracture because of it. Content streaming should not require you to be a content producer. That isn't a competitive marketplace. Who wants to have Neflix, Amazon Prime, Paramount+, HBOMax, Disney+, Hulu, CBS Whatevertheycallit, Peacock (NBC), etc., etc., etc., until you're paying $500/mo.? They'd love for that to happen, but there's no way. Nobody is going to do that. Every content producer want 100% control and 100% profits. They're just going to kill the golden goose.

dasil003 5y ago
Culture has already fractured, and it's mostly due to YouTube/Twitch/TikTok, and not so much about the siloing. I'm not sure I agree that it's not a competitive marketplace though, just look at all the players! What I would agree with is that it's not consumer friendly, and I agree no one will pay $500/mo, but a lot of people have been paying $100-$150 for cable for decades, and for that budget you can still get a lot of good stuff without needing to get everything. All that said though, the vertical integration is pretty interesting because this is how the movies studios were set up in the first half of the twentieth century. They owned the production (including actors as highly paid indentured servants) and the theaters. It was only in 1948 that anti-trust action was taken to force them to divest theaters. That's super interesting because it's hard to imagine that type of anti-trust action today.
watwut 5y ago
That sounds like a competitive marketplace. Syndication on the other hand sounds like uniformity
- saltminer 5y ago
  No, it's not. Or rather, it's not the good kind of competitive (i.e. doesn't benefit the consumer). When the producer is also the broadcaster, they no longer have an incentive to license it to a competing broadcaster unless they think it'll earn them more money than remaining the exclusive broadcaster. With TV, it makes more sense to syndicate after the show has run its course - the "first run" channels would have more new content that would be better suited to the prime-time slots than the stuff they have previously broadcasted. You have a limited number of timeslots to fill, do you really think advertisers will put in their biggest bids if they know they're going to be shown during re-runs? No, it is more profitable to get some new content that'll attract more eyeballs. But with streaming, it's all VOD (video on demand). It doesn't matter when the content was produced because if you're the only one in town with show X, people have to subscribe to you to get show X (or pirate it, but most people prefer legal means). You don't have the limitation of filling timeslots on a TV channel and getting advertisers to out-bid each other anymore, because advertisers aren't even in the picture (or rather, they're doing product placement in your shows instead of also paying for airtime). Syndication means you are no longer the exclusive source of show X - and if you don't have a large pool of exclusive content, you will not get many customers. In the past, you were just 1 of 100+ channels in a cable bundle. You needed to give consumers a reason to tune in, and you could only show one thing at a time. Now, you are 1 of (probably) less than 20 streaming services, and you can serve your entire library at the exact same time to anyone across the globe (pending licensing restrictions) - what's your pitch for why anyone should subscribe to you if they can get all your content elsewhere? If others have exclusives and you don't, you're going to lose. And not creating a streaming platform when everyone else has means you're earning less than you could - investors want returns, and they're going to start asking "ok so when do we get a bigger slice of the streaming pie?" All this to say that we are in a competitive marketplace...just, one that competes on content and nothing else. You don't need to provide a better customer experience if you have something a lot of people want. It's like how YouTube has no incentive to improve because of the network effect relegating their former competitors to niches they have no incentive to pursue. This marketplace sucks for consumers - if you want to watch Disney content (or any of the non-Disney content they've gobbled up), you have one option. Star Trek? AMC+ or Paramount+. Rinse and repeat for just about every other show. I remember when people would complain about having to buy a cable bundle for just a handful of channels, especially when you only watched a few shows that weren't in the basic cable package. Then Netflix came around, and at its peak, it had 99% of what my mom and I wanted, and what was left, we were ok with just not watching or waiting until it ended up at the DVD rental store. Now, the shows my mom and I (legally) watch only take a little bit less than what we were paying for cable (and the lone DVD rental place left in town has become a CBD store with a couple shelves of disks gathering dust).
- da_chicken 5y ago
  Exclusive products are essentially the polar opposite of a competitive marketplace. They're a vertical monopoly. Imagine that you could only go to AMC theatres to watch Spider-man. No other theatres could carry it. Imagine that you could only buy Coke from 7-11. No other stores could carry it. Imagine that you could only buy an iPhone from Verizon. No other carriers could sell it. Imagine that you could only buy a computer with Windows pre-installed. There was no way to get a computer without giving money to Microsoft. When the product being sold is captured by a single storefront or service, that actively harms consumers. They cannot choose the location with better service without choosing a different product. They cannot chose a better product without choosing a different service. Exclusives rob the customer of choice by making every choice an all-or-nothing offer.
  - watwut 5y ago
    And syndication means that all theaters are playing exactly same movies all the time. And those movies are so similar to each other, that they are virtually unindinstinguishable. And then there is separate group of movies, lets call them indy, that are special and you wont ever fined about them. Oh, and the whole business is super dependent on who you know in that one center and if you piss that one powerful person, no other studio will take you. Ripe for abuse. That was movie production for decades. Same script, same characters, same ending all the time, to the point that suspension does not exists.
    - setr 5y ago
      That doesn’t seem to me inevitable from syndication. If all movies are competing simultaneously, there’s pretty good incentive to not be derivative of one another. And if all theaters play all movies, there’s pretty good incentive for the business not to be dependent on one person. And with indies, that don’t fall into “all movies” categories, there’s a pretty good incentive for a theater to optionally try them out anyways, as a differentiator beyond service. The fact that Hollywood managed to do anyways I think is despite the incentives being against them. Whereas in the current system, Disney and Netflix need to make the exact same movie twice so they can both have it in their catalog, to meet whatever checkbox. Or ape each other’s unique movies to avoid the “you need 5 subscriptions to see everything” problem
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Who wants to have Neflix, Amazon Prime, Paramount+, HBOMax, Disney+, Hulu, CBS Whatevertheycallit Uh, the CBS one is called “Paramount+”. Hulu and Disney+, I expect, will eventually merge since they are both fully-owned by Disney now. And there's more consolidation in progress.
- philliphaydon 5y ago
  I think Hulu will have to merge into Disney+ at some point, because Hulu originals are not available outside of the US. Missing out on viewers by limiting Hulu and not merging.
throw10920 5y ago
> Content is almost 100% siloed now, and culture will fracture because of it. Culture that fractures when electronic entertainment content produced by a tiny number of companies is siloed is not a culture that was worth preserving in the first place.

dasil003 5y ago

Culture has already fractured, and it's mostly due to YouTube/Twitch/TikTok, and not so much about the siloing. I'm not sure I agree that it's not a competitive marketplace though, just look at all the players! What I would agree with is that it's not consumer friendly, and I agree no one will pay $500/mo, but a lot of people have been paying $100-$150 for cable for decades, and for that budget you can still get a lot of good stuff without needing to get everything. All that said though, the vertical integration is pretty interesting because this is how the movies studios were set up in the first half of the twentieth century. They owned the production (including actors as highly paid indentured servants) and the theaters. It was only in 1948 that anti-trust action was taken to force them to divest theaters. That's super interesting because it's hard to imagine that type of anti-trust action today.

watwut 5y ago

That sounds like a competitive marketplace. Syndication on the other hand sounds like uniformity

saltminer 5y ago
No, it's not. Or rather, it's not the good kind of competitive (i.e. doesn't benefit the consumer). When the producer is also the broadcaster, they no longer have an incentive to license it to a competing broadcaster unless they think it'll earn them more money than remaining the exclusive broadcaster. With TV, it makes more sense to syndicate after the show has run its course - the "first run" channels would have more new content that would be better suited to the prime-time slots than the stuff they have previously broadcasted. You have a limited number of timeslots to fill, do you really think advertisers will put in their biggest bids if they know they're going to be shown during re-runs? No, it is more profitable to get some new content that'll attract more eyeballs. But with streaming, it's all VOD (video on demand). It doesn't matter when the content was produced because if you're the only one in town with show X, people have to subscribe to you to get show X (or pirate it, but most people prefer legal means). You don't have the limitation of filling timeslots on a TV channel and getting advertisers to out-bid each other anymore, because advertisers aren't even in the picture (or rather, they're doing product placement in your shows instead of also paying for airtime). Syndication means you are no longer the exclusive source of show X - and if you don't have a large pool of exclusive content, you will not get many customers. In the past, you were just 1 of 100+ channels in a cable bundle. You needed to give consumers a reason to tune in, and you could only show one thing at a time. Now, you are 1 of (probably) less than 20 streaming services, and you can serve your entire library at the exact same time to anyone across the globe (pending licensing restrictions) - what's your pitch for why anyone should subscribe to you if they can get all your content elsewhere? If others have exclusives and you don't, you're going to lose. And not creating a streaming platform when everyone else has means you're earning less than you could - investors want returns, and they're going to start asking "ok so when do we get a bigger slice of the streaming pie?" All this to say that we are in a competitive marketplace...just, one that competes on content and nothing else. You don't need to provide a better customer experience if you have something a lot of people want. It's like how YouTube has no incentive to improve because of the network effect relegating their former competitors to niches they have no incentive to pursue. This marketplace sucks for consumers - if you want to watch Disney content (or any of the non-Disney content they've gobbled up), you have one option. Star Trek? AMC+ or Paramount+. Rinse and repeat for just about every other show. I remember when people would complain about having to buy a cable bundle for just a handful of channels, especially when you only watched a few shows that weren't in the basic cable package. Then Netflix came around, and at its peak, it had 99% of what my mom and I wanted, and what was left, we were ok with just not watching or waiting until it ended up at the DVD rental store. Now, the shows my mom and I (legally) watch only take a little bit less than what we were paying for cable (and the lone DVD rental place left in town has become a CBD store with a couple shelves of disks gathering dust).
da_chicken 5y ago
Exclusive products are essentially the polar opposite of a competitive marketplace. They're a vertical monopoly. Imagine that you could only go to AMC theatres to watch Spider-man. No other theatres could carry it. Imagine that you could only buy Coke from 7-11. No other stores could carry it. Imagine that you could only buy an iPhone from Verizon. No other carriers could sell it. Imagine that you could only buy a computer with Windows pre-installed. There was no way to get a computer without giving money to Microsoft. When the product being sold is captured by a single storefront or service, that actively harms consumers. They cannot choose the location with better service without choosing a different product. They cannot chose a better product without choosing a different service. Exclusives rob the customer of choice by making every choice an all-or-nothing offer.
- watwut 5y ago
  And syndication means that all theaters are playing exactly same movies all the time. And those movies are so similar to each other, that they are virtually unindinstinguishable. And then there is separate group of movies, lets call them indy, that are special and you wont ever fined about them. Oh, and the whole business is super dependent on who you know in that one center and if you piss that one powerful person, no other studio will take you. Ripe for abuse. That was movie production for decades. Same script, same characters, same ending all the time, to the point that suspension does not exists.
  - setr 5y ago
    That doesn’t seem to me inevitable from syndication. If all movies are competing simultaneously, there’s pretty good incentive to not be derivative of one another. And if all theaters play all movies, there’s pretty good incentive for the business not to be dependent on one person. And with indies, that don’t fall into “all movies” categories, there’s a pretty good incentive for a theater to optionally try them out anyways, as a differentiator beyond service. The fact that Hollywood managed to do anyways I think is despite the incentives being against them. Whereas in the current system, Disney and Netflix need to make the exact same movie twice so they can both have it in their catalog, to meet whatever checkbox. Or ape each other’s unique movies to avoid the “you need 5 subscriptions to see everything” problem

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Who wants to have Neflix, Amazon Prime, Paramount+, HBOMax, Disney+, Hulu, CBS Whatevertheycallit Uh, the CBS one is called “Paramount+”. Hulu and Disney+, I expect, will eventually merge since they are both fully-owned by Disney now. And there's more consolidation in progress.

philliphaydon 5y ago
I think Hulu will have to merge into Disney+ at some point, because Hulu originals are not available outside of the US. Missing out on viewers by limiting Hulu and not merging.

throw10920 5y ago

> Content is almost 100% siloed now, and culture will fracture because of it. Culture that fractures when electronic entertainment content produced by a tiny number of companies is siloed is not a culture that was worth preserving in the first place.