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Most media productions -- almost all -- are not profitable. They don't attract enough viewers to make back their production costs. A few productions are immense
by pjlegato 4y ago
Most media productions -- almost all -- are not profitable. They don't attract enough viewers to make back their production costs. A few productions are immensely popular and make back many times their production costs.
It's not possible to predict in advance what media will become popular with consumers (and thus profitable.)
Moreover, popularity/profitability does not correlate with production quality at medium and high quality levels. (That is, bad production quality rarely becomes popular. Medium and high quality may or may not become popular, and becoming popular is uncorrelated with production quality.)
Since a) most productions are unprofitable; b) you can't predict which ones will be popular; and c) as long as you're at "medium quality" or above, adding more quality does not improve your chances of being profitable, the optimal strategy for content at scale is to invest in making as many medium-quality productions as possible. The risk involved in making a few high quality productions is much greater.
- amichail 4y agoBut won't subscribers be annoyed with having to look through so much content to find something they like?
- pjlegato 4y agoYes, a bit. Then they'll eventually be happy when they find something they do like. The recommendation algorithms help. If it was only a few high quality productions, the chances a consumer ever finds something they like at all is much lower.
- pmontra 4y agoWatching what got good reviews. It worked for movies for some one hundred years.
- DamnYuppie 4y agoThere were A LOT fewer movies/shows each year to consume. We had 3rd parties doing reviews of the movies both in print and television. There were no centrally controlled entities telling you what was popular near you as a recommendation. Also it was not uncommon to just "go to the movies" and then ask the clerk what they recommended, this was how I ended up seeing several great films.
- tempnow987 4y agoDoes netflix allow reviews? I'm a big user of reviews, both good and bad, but some of these platforms have stopped showing reviews so it makes it really hard to evaluate if something might be worth watching. I don't not watch because a bad review necessarily because I look to see if the complaint is about something I care a lot about
- skinnymuch 4y agoWhich platforms have reviews?
- pmontra 4y agoFinding reviews is easy even when the service is not collaborative. I went to the Netflix home page. They don't list any of their content there. False start. I googled Netflix series. The first item Google lists in Popular shows on Netflix is All of Us Are Dead. I tap on the picture. It's 7.6 on IMDB and 83% on Rotten Tomatoes. I tap the latter and get about 30 reviews from critics and audience and the synopsis of the episodes. I know it's a series about zombies. I can choose to read the reviews now.