10 ms·

Netflix lays off 300 more people – almost 3% of its staff

91 points by lxm 4y ago

sagaro 4y ago
With streaming services so fragmented now, and everyone producing their own shows which is available only in thier platform, piracy/torrents will soon become a more convenient way of consuming content. The CX of steaming is reducing with fragmentation.
jjkmk 4y ago
Valuetainment did a good break down of why Netflix are losing money so quickly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOyQzab4_Pw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOyQzab4_Pw
- CincinnatiMan 4y ago
  Thanks. Can you provide a summary of the 10 minute video?
  - ryeon 4y ago
    lol
  - Flatcircle 4y ago
    They basically blame it on all the woke messaging In The content, and say they’re one hit away from explosive growth if they make another house of cards type hit
    - pen2l 4y ago
      > They basically blame it on all the woke messaging In The content ...I'm sorry, what? Give the Gervais, Burr, Chapelle bits a watch. Even after the backlash they remain on Netflix. The guys in the youtube clip couldn't be further off the mark.
      - scoutt 4y ago
        We don't really the term "woke" but the above is basically why my wife and I decided to cancel after 6 years. It seems that every show has elements to "poke/tease/provoke" some other party, or to generate controversy. Plus the fact that every show seem to go through an obligatory theme/character "checklist", leaving little space to the authors to manouver through a good story. Being not americans, we were really tired about this, up to the point we say "ok, let's give this series a chance, but we stop at the first evident 'yankeeland move' (that how we say it)".
        pcthrowaway 4y ago
        Speaking of weird messaging, this seems as good a place as any to bring up the bizarreness of Apple producing Severance. For anyone who hasn't watched it yet, it has something to do with the lengths big corporations go to to prevent internal knowledge getting out. The premise of the show (all in the trailer) is that people get an implant so they have two separate lives at work and outside, where one is completely unaware of the other. It's an excellent show, just surprising to see Apple putting it out, since their R&D team is basically the closest real-world equivalent we have.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
DethNinja 4y ago
Netflix needs to nail development of their own tv shows but unfortunately very large quantity of their releases contain such a bad storytelling that it is almost unwatchable. Is it really that hard for a billion dollar company to find good storytellers and content producers?
- namecheapTA 4y ago
  - quacked 4y ago
    A translation of this that works for more people is that what you're calling "woke" casting is the process of turning all characters into "multi-colored Californians". Every character on screen is of different ethnic background, but they all speak and act like second-year acting students from an NYU improv class that are in LA for the summer.
    - fy20 4y ago
      TIL... I just thought "woke" was this generations "cool" or "awesome" and was feeling old.
      - krapp 4y ago
        "woke" used to have a specific meaning, and it's been around for decades, originating in the African American activist community[0]. Like a lot of leftist and progressive vernacular, it's been co-opted by the right and degenerated into a nonspecific anti-progressive slur. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
      - quacked 4y ago
        God, that's a way better usage for the term. Nah, it's just an outgroup shorthand/slur for overtly progressive messaging.
  - nkozyra 4y ago
giantrobot 4y ago
Hey don't worry, they'll just add commercials to increase viewersh...what's that? People pay for streaming to avoid ads? Oh my. Sell Mortimer, SELL!
- W-Stool 4y ago
  "Trading Places" reference noted and logged. Well done.
  - Tokkemon 4y ago
    You know perfectly well that we don't have $394 million in cash!
Spartan-S63 4y ago
Netflix is a cautionary tale of Wall Street growth-at-all-costs mixed with Silicon Valley hyperoptimization. Their tendency to cancel popular shows because they become more expensive to produce doesn't bode well for their value proposition. Compared to the other streaming services, Netflix will get dropped long before even Apple TV+ in my household. Adding ad-supported tiers is fine, they just better never add ads to the current paid tiers. Furthermore, cracking down on password sharing is reason enough to cancel - it shouldn't matter what I do with my account as long as I'm paying. They already limit the simultaneous streams and that seems fair. They shouldn't be wasting time and effort figuring out if logins are coming from different households.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  If you ran a business and it cost $10 per month and I signed up. Then shared my password to all my friends and family. People who don’t live with me. Would you be ok because it shouldn’t matter what I do with my account as long as I pay?
  - ABeeSea 4y ago
    They implicitly allowed it for well over a decade because it was good for their growth. We had a friends group with multiple Wiis using the same Netflix account when I was in college.
    - pavlov 4y ago
      Microsoft implicitly allowed pirating Windows for over a decade, and for the same reason. Eventually they switched to an activation model when there was no growth left, just squeezing more out of the same userbase. This is not a new trick.
    - tyingq 4y ago
      Even explicitly: https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712?ref_sr...
  - 4y ago
thesiniot 4y ago
It seems like there might be a periodic sine wave for media consumption, with price on the Y axis. When we sit at the trough, DRM is heavy-handed and media is expensive to purchase or rent. Piracy is the best option for most consumers. Then some enterprising people pitch the media companies on a way to implement some hurdle pricing to jumpstart their moribund sales. Presented with an easy cheap way to pay for legal access to entertainment, people jump on board. As money starts to roll in, the business types start to eye vertical integration. The upstarts see the writing on the wall and try to find a way out. Prices rise, but the content is still easy to access. Now the rightsholders start to rein in their former partners, and implement their own solutions. These are terrible and myriad. Costs spiral, while the consumers are spoiled for choice. Decision fatigue sets in. People find their niches, cut coupons, and share esclusive releases between family and friends. Eventually the fragmentation becomes exhausting, and only the most line-toeing consumers bother to jump through the hoops necessary to pay for many kinds of content. Back to square one.
- vlunkr 4y ago
  You can rent nearly any movie in existence for less than 5$, is piracy really the best option. Also, most people don’t care about DRM if they even know what it is.
  - reportgunner 4y ago
    If I want just one movie it really is.
    - vlunkr 4y ago
      There are like 6 different places where you can rent just one movie to stream for a couple of days. Big streaming packages like Netflix aren't the only option.
itqwertz 4y ago
Looks like another signal that the tech industry is going to be shedding its hyper-growth workforce. On a side note, a few months ago, I was receiving many recruiter-supplied positions for building out streaming services. These positions seemed to pay well, require a deep understanding of video streaming, and a vigorous interview processs. I wonder if these newly created positions will be the first to go as big entertainment tech consolidates its workforce.
joshgroban 4y ago
Netflix was a major producer of many shows supporting BIPOC, including Dear White People and 13 Reasons Why. This is sad news.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  Didn't "13 Reasons Why" literally lead to increased suicide rates among youth[1]? [1] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2019/release-of-13-reasons-why-associated-with-increase-in-youth-suicide-rates https://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2019/release-of-1...
- Markoff 4y ago
  "BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous, and people of color." That's really the last thing I care about from VOD service. Also judging by cast there are hardly any BIPOC people in 13 reasons why, seems pretty white to me.
- MrMan 4y ago
- mancerayder 4y ago
  A lot of people found that focus on identity a turn off, since many shows seemed to be themed around this. There's already a focus on it in day to day life, at work, and in headlines, especially during 2020. People need a break. If I never expressed any interest, it's odd to me that the recommendation engine would put it front and center, every time. I believe that is what people complaining about 'woke' Netflix shows are referring to. Not the existence of them, the feeling that they're being promoted to everyone. They're welcome to continue, and the subscription numbers can either go up or down.
friedman23 4y ago
Netflix's problem is that the people in charge have 0 taste. The best / most popular content on netflix is made by auteurs (Stranger things) or is created by other studios (Squid game, etc). You can't make television using these data scientists and ml models. You need to have actual taste. You need to understand what separates a good story from a bad one. You can't just throw money at the problem either. Just go to HBO to see the antithesis of netflix's model. It's possible to consistently put out quality, you need the right people involved. You can expect that to die soon btw since the suits at Warner fired the head of that company.
- voisin 4y ago
  I fully agree. Where’s the Steve Jobs of streaming? Too many Meg Whitmans running around.
- LanceH 4y ago
  There are a large number of good movies on Netflix. It may not turn over as quickly as HBO's content, but the number of them is probably comparable. Try scrolling through some of the major categories and keep count of the "good" movies. * The place Netflix really shines for me is the acquisition of non-US content. I particularly like political dramas from other countries. Even if some smaller countries aren't producing content that is quite as polished as we might expect here in the US, that's some of the charm, seeing how they make shows. * I can't defend the browsing of Netflix -- that's just ridiculous
  - friedman23 4y ago
    I'm talking specifically about Netflix produced content. The stuff that Netflix acquires or licenses is extremely expensive.
- deckard1 4y ago
  I've ranted at length about Netflix and how insanely useless their data analytics are. I quit Netflix earlier this year. It was obvious to me Netflix would falter when they started using that "Top 10" leaderboard as their primary recommendation engine. It was a tacit admission that they, having all the money, talent, and 20+ years of detailed subscriber data (that every studio would kill for) couldn't figure out how to use that data. I would not be surprised if Netflix pops the data analytics/ML bubble. The curtain has been pulled back and the wizard has been revealed to be nothing more than a simple list of the most watched shows. > you need the right people involved Even then it's tough. The Mandalorian was great. Then The Book of Boba Fett came out and was not only a disaster, but also made the entire two seasons of The Mandalorian pointless. Similar to season 8 of Game of Thrones killing the entire show, because who can recommend a show that sets up the central expectation in season one that is so horribly resolved in the very last season. It's now a show I'd recommend to my enemy rather than my friend. TV is tough. And I don't think streaming is kind to shows that don't nail every season. This is content that is part of a catalog. It's not something on NBC on a Thursday night. Syndication isn't just a nice windfall. It's the entire point now.
ghaff 4y ago
Netflix is a studio at this point. While delivering a decent streaming service is an expected core competency, it's absolutely not a major differentiation. Sure people can argue over whether service A has a better user experience than service B but, to a first approximation, no one cares when it comes to deciding to subscribe or not. It's about what content they have. ADDED: Certainly no one cares that you have this fancy microservices based architecture all rnuning on AWS.
ohCh6zos 4y ago
I just cancelled my Netflix account after being a subscriber since 2007. When Netflix started their streaming offering there was more content I wanted to watch than I could conceivably watch. Today there might be 4 hours of content released a month that I feel interested in. My only guess is that by chasing other audiences they lost me.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  I haven't watched anything on Netflix in years. I only keep it because they have the best childrens shows, once my kids grow up I'll cancel too (if they don't improve by then).
bobajeff 4y ago
Actually, don't think development of TV shows is their problem I think (just like every other streaming service) their recommendation system is pretty much useless. They have a lot of great content but you kind of have go out of your way to discover it yourself. If they'd fire the people that invented Auto playing shows/movies and hired some curators to classify their content in the vein of Pandora's "Music Genome Project" they'd easily have the best service.
- fullshark 4y ago
  Their recommendation system is useless because they don’t have a lot of great content actually imo. Their home page design is built around hiding this fact from the user and not letting them see how thin their corpus is. They need to merge with a traditional media company I think, paramount or Warner discovery would make sense.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Because Paramount+ has so much great content? Yes, video streaming is pretty fragmented. But I'm willing to bet that a lot of people who complain about that also complained about the $100/month cable bundle. I probably pay half that now for more choice. (I only lose out on live TV but I could have that if I were willing to pay for it.)
    - fullshark 4y ago
      Mostly because market consolidation is inevitable and has already started. It's going to be Disney and then everyone else, and merging with a traditional content creator will get them IP (for example star trek, south park, discovery shows, looney toons whatever) and content creation experts and partnerships. Netflix's last few years were a bet on being able to generate IP or business intelligence technologies to enable them to ensure people never cancel and always are satisfied and I think they are going to learn that content is king, and their off-brand versions of cable TV shows aren't sticky enough to keep people subscribed.
      - 4y ago
avl999 4y ago
What Netflix needs is pilot episodes instead of straight to series orders. Some of the shows that get greenlit and get minimum one season are so bad that if they had any kind of pilot/quality control process they'd never make it on beyond episode one (and thus release resources for multiple seasons of the shows they cancel or a good quality new shows). I watch some Netflix shows (eg Another Life/The I-Land) and wonder how they ever get made, it's like no one is paying attention. They also need to give shows some kind of ending even if they are not part of their long term plans. Having a library of shows without ending is not attractive to customers. AppleTV has been running circles around Netflix (and other streaming services when it comes to quality), what is the last critically acclaimed series on Netflix? I am not saying that your shows need to be critically acclaimed but you can't be in a state where your shows are getting panned criticlaly and on top of that not giving endings to your semi popular shows.
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  I didn’t know Apple TV was watched a lot. Anecdotally two tv addicted friends mention it. Besides Ted Lasso I don’t see it mentioned. And whatever Oscar bait they have. I watch Mythic Quest. No one else I know does. Apple TV otherwise feels superficial and fake in a way to me. Shows like For all Mankind and another one. They feel sterile. OTOH, overall. Netflix is still huge. Just when I’m on HN of Reddit this never appears to be the case.
  - akvadrako 4y ago
    Most of the people I know are watching Apple's new show Severence. Probably their biggest hit yet.
  - rntksi 4y ago
    I registered for Apple TV just for Foundation. I did the same for Amazon Prime Video because of The Expanse. Once I saw those two ended for the season, I also ended my subscription.
  - embik 4y ago
    > Apple TV otherwise feels superficial and fake in a way to me. Shows like For all Mankind and another one. They feel sterile. I never found For All Mankind or any other Apple TV+ show to be sterile (well, maybe apart from Severance, but that is deliberately done) - to me, they have an unparalleled production value. Nothing comes even close in the streaming landscape. I wonder if that is creating that feeling for you.
UberFly 4y ago
It's a smattering of different things, but ultimately too much of their content sucks and in the face of streaming competition, subscribers are going elsewhere. I think most households might subscribe to a couple things max. Disney for instance is growing while Netflix is contracting.
- teeray 4y ago
  I remember reading once (maybe it was Freakonomics?) how using public funds to build stadiums didn’t stimulate the local economy like the arguments for using those funds said they would. The reason boiled down to the fact that each family has so many entertainment dollars they’re willing to spend. All they do is shift those dollars around rather than spending a larger share of their disposable income overall on entertainment.
ProfessorLayton 4y ago
Beyond the issues netflix is facing and already being discussed, I question the multiple smaller layoffs they’re doing. Based on their hiring practices and their self-proclaimed comparison to sports leagues, this is sending exactly the wrong signals to their top talent. Companies forget that this is a two way street, and employees may be doing their own “keeper test” now that $nflx isn’t a wallstreet darling and needing to downsize.
photochemsyn 4y ago
I really think the streaming services have collectively re-created pre-Internet cable television in many respects. If you add up the cost of subscribing to the top six or so streaming services, I believe it's similar to a single cable TV subscription in the old era. Similarly, each service has a handful of quality shows scattered amidst a vast sea of low-quality B-movie type material. What's really odd is that they don't have what anyone would consider a normal searchable database of movies, they're very much into pushing recommendations using their biased AI learning models. Compared to IMDB their interfaces are all incredibly non-user-friendly.
achow 4y ago
Netflix has a passing resemblance to Yahoo. At one point in time Yahoo could not decide whether it was a media company or a technology one. Netflix for all intent and purpose is a tech company (they have engg' blog but no 'content' one), but is that the path to success?
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
  No. They also spend so much money with all that micro services nonsense. People will watch game of thrones on a potato. They should have had the content blog.
- nix23 4y ago
  >Netflix for all intent and purpose is a tech company Pretty good comparison, i see it the same way, Netflix is a CDN, specialized on delivering Movies, but pretty bad a searching ;)
jmyeet 4y ago
You cannot spend your way into scaling an original content business. Period. Every MBA wants to create predictable success with a recipe or a formula but it doesn't work that way. And if you do stumble into an an Ozark, it doesn't mean you can just create 100 Ozarks. Quibi tried to spend their way into original content. It failed spectacularly then. Many shows were cut short. Without the direct feedback loop of ratings it can be extremely difficult to know what to renew and what not to renew. The wrong metrics can lead you astray. Some shows had too much money. Others not enough. And the real big lesson in doing all this is that the economics of big budget movies completely fail without theatrical releases. You just cannot recoup production costs otherwise. There's a reason Top Gun: Maverick delayed release 2-3 years. And if you overspend the only way to recover that is by raising prices. Do that too much and it becomes a vicious cycle just like cable TV of ever-increasing price hikes to balance out the inevitable subscriber losses.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  Uncommonly known fact: the exact same issue is facing Hollywood. Ticket sales reached their peak 20 years ago [1] and have been in a steady decline since. "Record breaking [domestic] sales" refers to gross revenue and it's being driven exclusively by inflation and higher ticket prices. Ticket sales themselves are down 23% as of 2019 (to avoid the huge biases since COVID). And that's happened as the US population in the past 20 years has increased by nearly 50 million. Kind of encouraging in one way, because the natural response to the observation that movies suck today is to claim that Hollywood is just making what the "masses" want. Nope! [1] - https://www.the-numbers.com/market/ https://www.the-numbers.com/market/
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Or there's just increased competition for screen time--including from the likes of TikTok and YouTube. And screen time is, if not zero sum, at least zeroish sum; there are only so many recreational hours in the day. To be honest, I'm a bit surprised theaters seem to have actually bounced back reasonably well from COVID. I guess that a lot of people find them, among other things, a relatively low cost/low friction option to get together with friends, go on a date, get out of the house, etc.
rvz 4y ago
Netflix is now a feature compared with the likes of Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ etc and now you can see them struggling as their stock has crashed, increased prices, cancelled shows and films and are doing more layoffs. Not only they are losing subscribers and money, their competitors are still gaining users and can afford to lose them; Netflix cannot. At this point Netflix is a feature just like Dropbox, Box, DocuSign etc and cannot afford to lose a significant amount of customers for their services. It is a different story for Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+.
pyuser583 4y ago
Netflix has always been clear they are vicious about layoffs.
fileeditview 4y ago
I just cancelled Netflix a few weeks ago. The only show left that I watched was Better call Saul. I was already annoyed when they changed their shows from releasing all at once to a weekly cycle but since I don't have that much time to watch TV it still worked for me. However they also create artificial breaks now. When I realized that BCS is interrupted for many weeks before the show resumes I finally quit. I am not paying for watching nothing.
- Mindwipe 4y ago
  Better Call Saul isn't a Netflix show. It's an AMC commission made by Sony Pictures. It releases weekly because Netflix get it outside the US at the same time AMC air it on television. I think Netflix should move to a weekly model for their content but they haven't done this.
  - fileeditview 4y ago
    Ha thanks for telling me. Now that you say it I even remember that it was AMC. So I was blaming Netflix for the wrong thing.. my bad! But then there is even less left that I really want from Netflix. This also explains why this show is so much better than the other stuff on Netflix. BTW if you don't mind me asking.. why would you prefer a weekly model as a consumer? The only reason I can come up with is that people fear to read/hear spoilers from other who are "faster". Is there something else?
whydid 4y ago
Does anyone remember the horribly received Cowboy Bebop live action Netflix original? There have been so many other high budget flops on Netflix that are promoted, and then derided by critics (and customers).

91 points by lxm 4y ago

With streaming services so fragmented now, and everyone producing their own shows which is available only in thier platform, piracy/torrents will soon become a more convenient way of consuming content. The CX of steaming is reducing with fragmentation.

jjkmk 4y ago

Valuetainment did a good break down of why Netflix are losing money so quickly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOyQzab4_Pw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOyQzab4_Pw

CincinnatiMan 4y ago
Thanks. Can you provide a summary of the 10 minute video?
- ryeon 4y ago
  lol
- Flatcircle 4y ago
  They basically blame it on all the woke messaging In The content, and say they’re one hit away from explosive growth if they make another house of cards type hit
  - pen2l 4y ago
    > They basically blame it on all the woke messaging In The content ...I'm sorry, what? Give the Gervais, Burr, Chapelle bits a watch. Even after the backlash they remain on Netflix. The guys in the youtube clip couldn't be further off the mark.
    - scoutt 4y ago
      We don't really the term "woke" but the above is basically why my wife and I decided to cancel after 6 years. It seems that every show has elements to "poke/tease/provoke" some other party, or to generate controversy. Plus the fact that every show seem to go through an obligatory theme/character "checklist", leaving little space to the authors to manouver through a good story. Being not americans, we were really tired about this, up to the point we say "ok, let's give this series a chance, but we stop at the first evident 'yankeeland move' (that how we say it)".
      - pcthrowaway 4y ago
        Speaking of weird messaging, this seems as good a place as any to bring up the bizarreness of Apple producing Severance. For anyone who hasn't watched it yet, it has something to do with the lengths big corporations go to to prevent internal knowledge getting out. The premise of the show (all in the trailer) is that people get an implant so they have two separate lives at work and outside, where one is completely unaware of the other. It's an excellent show, just surprising to see Apple putting it out, since their R&D team is basically the closest real-world equivalent we have.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

DethNinja 4y ago

Netflix needs to nail development of their own tv shows but unfortunately very large quantity of their releases contain such a bad storytelling that it is almost unwatchable. Is it really that hard for a billion dollar company to find good storytellers and content producers?

namecheapTA 4y ago
- quacked 4y ago
  A translation of this that works for more people is that what you're calling "woke" casting is the process of turning all characters into "multi-colored Californians". Every character on screen is of different ethnic background, but they all speak and act like second-year acting students from an NYU improv class that are in LA for the summer.
  - fy20 4y ago
    TIL... I just thought "woke" was this generations "cool" or "awesome" and was feeling old.
    - krapp 4y ago
      "woke" used to have a specific meaning, and it's been around for decades, originating in the African American activist community[0]. Like a lot of leftist and progressive vernacular, it's been co-opted by the right and degenerated into a nonspecific anti-progressive slur. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
    - quacked 4y ago
      God, that's a way better usage for the term. Nah, it's just an outgroup shorthand/slur for overtly progressive messaging.
- nkozyra 4y ago

giantrobot 4y ago

Hey don't worry, they'll just add commercials to increase viewersh...what's that? People pay for streaming to avoid ads? Oh my. Sell Mortimer, SELL!

W-Stool 4y ago
"Trading Places" reference noted and logged. Well done.
- Tokkemon 4y ago
  You know perfectly well that we don't have $394 million in cash!

Spartan-S63 4y ago

Netflix is a cautionary tale of Wall Street growth-at-all-costs mixed with Silicon Valley hyperoptimization. Their tendency to cancel popular shows because they become more expensive to produce doesn't bode well for their value proposition. Compared to the other streaming services, Netflix will get dropped long before even Apple TV+ in my household. Adding ad-supported tiers is fine, they just better never add ads to the current paid tiers. Furthermore, cracking down on password sharing is reason enough to cancel - it shouldn't matter what I do with my account as long as I'm paying. They already limit the simultaneous streams and that seems fair. They shouldn't be wasting time and effort figuring out if logins are coming from different households.

philliphaydon 4y ago
If you ran a business and it cost $10 per month and I signed up. Then shared my password to all my friends and family. People who don’t live with me. Would you be ok because it shouldn’t matter what I do with my account as long as I pay?
- ABeeSea 4y ago
  They implicitly allowed it for well over a decade because it was good for their growth. We had a friends group with multiple Wiis using the same Netflix account when I was in college.
  - pavlov 4y ago
    Microsoft implicitly allowed pirating Windows for over a decade, and for the same reason. Eventually they switched to an activation model when there was no growth left, just squeezing more out of the same userbase. This is not a new trick.
  - tyingq 4y ago
    Even explicitly: https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712?ref_sr...
- 4y ago

thesiniot 4y ago

It seems like there might be a periodic sine wave for media consumption, with price on the Y axis. When we sit at the trough, DRM is heavy-handed and media is expensive to purchase or rent. Piracy is the best option for most consumers. Then some enterprising people pitch the media companies on a way to implement some hurdle pricing to jumpstart their moribund sales. Presented with an easy cheap way to pay for legal access to entertainment, people jump on board. As money starts to roll in, the business types start to eye vertical integration. The upstarts see the writing on the wall and try to find a way out. Prices rise, but the content is still easy to access. Now the rightsholders start to rein in their former partners, and implement their own solutions. These are terrible and myriad. Costs spiral, while the consumers are spoiled for choice. Decision fatigue sets in. People find their niches, cut coupons, and share esclusive releases between family and friends. Eventually the fragmentation becomes exhausting, and only the most line-toeing consumers bother to jump through the hoops necessary to pay for many kinds of content. Back to square one.

vlunkr 4y ago
You can rent nearly any movie in existence for less than 5$, is piracy really the best option. Also, most people don’t care about DRM if they even know what it is.
- reportgunner 4y ago
  If I want just one movie it really is.
  - vlunkr 4y ago
    There are like 6 different places where you can rent just one movie to stream for a couple of days. Big streaming packages like Netflix aren't the only option.

itqwertz 4y ago

Looks like another signal that the tech industry is going to be shedding its hyper-growth workforce. On a side note, a few months ago, I was receiving many recruiter-supplied positions for building out streaming services. These positions seemed to pay well, require a deep understanding of video streaming, and a vigorous interview processs. I wonder if these newly created positions will be the first to go as big entertainment tech consolidates its workforce.

joshgroban 4y ago

Netflix was a major producer of many shows supporting BIPOC, including Dear White People and 13 Reasons Why. This is sad news.

AlexandrB 4y ago
Didn't "13 Reasons Why" literally lead to increased suicide rates among youth[1]? [1] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2019/release-of-13-reasons-why-associated-with-increase-in-youth-suicide-rates https://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2019/release-of-1...
Markoff 4y ago
"BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous, and people of color." That's really the last thing I care about from VOD service. Also judging by cast there are hardly any BIPOC people in 13 reasons why, seems pretty white to me.
MrMan 4y ago
mancerayder 4y ago
A lot of people found that focus on identity a turn off, since many shows seemed to be themed around this. There's already a focus on it in day to day life, at work, and in headlines, especially during 2020. People need a break. If I never expressed any interest, it's odd to me that the recommendation engine would put it front and center, every time. I believe that is what people complaining about 'woke' Netflix shows are referring to. Not the existence of them, the feeling that they're being promoted to everyone. They're welcome to continue, and the subscription numbers can either go up or down.

friedman23 4y ago

Netflix's problem is that the people in charge have 0 taste. The best / most popular content on netflix is made by auteurs (Stranger things) or is created by other studios (Squid game, etc). You can't make television using these data scientists and ml models. You need to have actual taste. You need to understand what separates a good story from a bad one. You can't just throw money at the problem either. Just go to HBO to see the antithesis of netflix's model. It's possible to consistently put out quality, you need the right people involved. You can expect that to die soon btw since the suits at Warner fired the head of that company.

voisin 4y ago
I fully agree. Where’s the Steve Jobs of streaming? Too many Meg Whitmans running around.
LanceH 4y ago
There are a large number of good movies on Netflix. It may not turn over as quickly as HBO's content, but the number of them is probably comparable. Try scrolling through some of the major categories and keep count of the "good" movies. * The place Netflix really shines for me is the acquisition of non-US content. I particularly like political dramas from other countries. Even if some smaller countries aren't producing content that is quite as polished as we might expect here in the US, that's some of the charm, seeing how they make shows. * I can't defend the browsing of Netflix -- that's just ridiculous
- friedman23 4y ago
  I'm talking specifically about Netflix produced content. The stuff that Netflix acquires or licenses is extremely expensive.
deckard1 4y ago
I've ranted at length about Netflix and how insanely useless their data analytics are. I quit Netflix earlier this year. It was obvious to me Netflix would falter when they started using that "Top 10" leaderboard as their primary recommendation engine. It was a tacit admission that they, having all the money, talent, and 20+ years of detailed subscriber data (that every studio would kill for) couldn't figure out how to use that data. I would not be surprised if Netflix pops the data analytics/ML bubble. The curtain has been pulled back and the wizard has been revealed to be nothing more than a simple list of the most watched shows. > you need the right people involved Even then it's tough. The Mandalorian was great. Then The Book of Boba Fett came out and was not only a disaster, but also made the entire two seasons of The Mandalorian pointless. Similar to season 8 of Game of Thrones killing the entire show, because who can recommend a show that sets up the central expectation in season one that is so horribly resolved in the very last season. It's now a show I'd recommend to my enemy rather than my friend. TV is tough. And I don't think streaming is kind to shows that don't nail every season. This is content that is part of a catalog. It's not something on NBC on a Thursday night. Syndication isn't just a nice windfall. It's the entire point now.

ghaff 4y ago

Netflix is a studio at this point. While delivering a decent streaming service is an expected core competency, it's absolutely not a major differentiation. Sure people can argue over whether service A has a better user experience than service B but, to a first approximation, no one cares when it comes to deciding to subscribe or not. It's about what content they have. ADDED: Certainly no one cares that you have this fancy microservices based architecture all rnuning on AWS.

ohCh6zos 4y ago

I just cancelled my Netflix account after being a subscriber since 2007. When Netflix started their streaming offering there was more content I wanted to watch than I could conceivably watch. Today there might be 4 hours of content released a month that I feel interested in. My only guess is that by chasing other audiences they lost me.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
I haven't watched anything on Netflix in years. I only keep it because they have the best childrens shows, once my kids grow up I'll cancel too (if they don't improve by then).

bobajeff 4y ago

Actually, don't think development of TV shows is their problem I think (just like every other streaming service) their recommendation system is pretty much useless. They have a lot of great content but you kind of have go out of your way to discover it yourself. If they'd fire the people that invented Auto playing shows/movies and hired some curators to classify their content in the vein of Pandora's "Music Genome Project" they'd easily have the best service.

fullshark 4y ago
Their recommendation system is useless because they don’t have a lot of great content actually imo. Their home page design is built around hiding this fact from the user and not letting them see how thin their corpus is. They need to merge with a traditional media company I think, paramount or Warner discovery would make sense.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Because Paramount+ has so much great content? Yes, video streaming is pretty fragmented. But I'm willing to bet that a lot of people who complain about that also complained about the $100/month cable bundle. I probably pay half that now for more choice. (I only lose out on live TV but I could have that if I were willing to pay for it.)
  - fullshark 4y ago
    Mostly because market consolidation is inevitable and has already started. It's going to be Disney and then everyone else, and merging with a traditional content creator will get them IP (for example star trek, south park, discovery shows, looney toons whatever) and content creation experts and partnerships. Netflix's last few years were a bet on being able to generate IP or business intelligence technologies to enable them to ensure people never cancel and always are satisfied and I think they are going to learn that content is king, and their off-brand versions of cable TV shows aren't sticky enough to keep people subscribed.
    - 4y ago

avl999 4y ago

What Netflix needs is pilot episodes instead of straight to series orders. Some of the shows that get greenlit and get minimum one season are so bad that if they had any kind of pilot/quality control process they'd never make it on beyond episode one (and thus release resources for multiple seasons of the shows they cancel or a good quality new shows). I watch some Netflix shows (eg Another Life/The I-Land) and wonder how they ever get made, it's like no one is paying attention. They also need to give shows some kind of ending even if they are not part of their long term plans. Having a library of shows without ending is not attractive to customers. AppleTV has been running circles around Netflix (and other streaming services when it comes to quality), what is the last critically acclaimed series on Netflix? I am not saying that your shows need to be critically acclaimed but you can't be in a state where your shows are getting panned criticlaly and on top of that not giving endings to your semi popular shows.

skinnymuch 4y ago
I didn’t know Apple TV was watched a lot. Anecdotally two tv addicted friends mention it. Besides Ted Lasso I don’t see it mentioned. And whatever Oscar bait they have. I watch Mythic Quest. No one else I know does. Apple TV otherwise feels superficial and fake in a way to me. Shows like For all Mankind and another one. They feel sterile. OTOH, overall. Netflix is still huge. Just when I’m on HN of Reddit this never appears to be the case.
- akvadrako 4y ago
  Most of the people I know are watching Apple's new show Severence. Probably their biggest hit yet.
- rntksi 4y ago
  I registered for Apple TV just for Foundation. I did the same for Amazon Prime Video because of The Expanse. Once I saw those two ended for the season, I also ended my subscription.
- embik 4y ago
  > Apple TV otherwise feels superficial and fake in a way to me. Shows like For all Mankind and another one. They feel sterile. I never found For All Mankind or any other Apple TV+ show to be sterile (well, maybe apart from Severance, but that is deliberately done) - to me, they have an unparalleled production value. Nothing comes even close in the streaming landscape. I wonder if that is creating that feeling for you.

UberFly 4y ago

It's a smattering of different things, but ultimately too much of their content sucks and in the face of streaming competition, subscribers are going elsewhere. I think most households might subscribe to a couple things max. Disney for instance is growing while Netflix is contracting.

teeray 4y ago
I remember reading once (maybe it was Freakonomics?) how using public funds to build stadiums didn’t stimulate the local economy like the arguments for using those funds said they would. The reason boiled down to the fact that each family has so many entertainment dollars they’re willing to spend. All they do is shift those dollars around rather than spending a larger share of their disposable income overall on entertainment.

ProfessorLayton 4y ago

Beyond the issues netflix is facing and already being discussed, I question the multiple smaller layoffs they’re doing. Based on their hiring practices and their self-proclaimed comparison to sports leagues, this is sending exactly the wrong signals to their top talent. Companies forget that this is a two way street, and employees may be doing their own “keeper test” now that $nflx isn’t a wallstreet darling and needing to downsize.

photochemsyn 4y ago

I really think the streaming services have collectively re-created pre-Internet cable television in many respects. If you add up the cost of subscribing to the top six or so streaming services, I believe it's similar to a single cable TV subscription in the old era. Similarly, each service has a handful of quality shows scattered amidst a vast sea of low-quality B-movie type material. What's really odd is that they don't have what anyone would consider a normal searchable database of movies, they're very much into pushing recommendations using their biased AI learning models. Compared to IMDB their interfaces are all incredibly non-user-friendly.

achow 4y ago

Netflix has a passing resemblance to Yahoo. At one point in time Yahoo could not decide whether it was a media company or a technology one. Netflix for all intent and purpose is a tech company (they have engg' blog but no 'content' one), but is that the path to success?

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
No. They also spend so much money with all that micro services nonsense. People will watch game of thrones on a potato. They should have had the content blog.
nix23 4y ago
>Netflix for all intent and purpose is a tech company Pretty good comparison, i see it the same way, Netflix is a CDN, specialized on delivering Movies, but pretty bad a searching ;)

jmyeet 4y ago

You cannot spend your way into scaling an original content business. Period. Every MBA wants to create predictable success with a recipe or a formula but it doesn't work that way. And if you do stumble into an an Ozark, it doesn't mean you can just create 100 Ozarks. Quibi tried to spend their way into original content. It failed spectacularly then. Many shows were cut short. Without the direct feedback loop of ratings it can be extremely difficult to know what to renew and what not to renew. The wrong metrics can lead you astray. Some shows had too much money. Others not enough. And the real big lesson in doing all this is that the economics of big budget movies completely fail without theatrical releases. You just cannot recoup production costs otherwise. There's a reason Top Gun: Maverick delayed release 2-3 years. And if you overspend the only way to recover that is by raising prices. Do that too much and it becomes a vicious cycle just like cable TV of ever-increasing price hikes to balance out the inevitable subscriber losses.

somenameforme 4y ago
Uncommonly known fact: the exact same issue is facing Hollywood. Ticket sales reached their peak 20 years ago [1] and have been in a steady decline since. "Record breaking [domestic] sales" refers to gross revenue and it's being driven exclusively by inflation and higher ticket prices. Ticket sales themselves are down 23% as of 2019 (to avoid the huge biases since COVID). And that's happened as the US population in the past 20 years has increased by nearly 50 million. Kind of encouraging in one way, because the natural response to the observation that movies suck today is to claim that Hollywood is just making what the "masses" want. Nope! [1] - https://www.the-numbers.com/market/ https://www.the-numbers.com/market/
- ghaff 4y ago
  Or there's just increased competition for screen time--including from the likes of TikTok and YouTube. And screen time is, if not zero sum, at least zeroish sum; there are only so many recreational hours in the day. To be honest, I'm a bit surprised theaters seem to have actually bounced back reasonably well from COVID. I guess that a lot of people find them, among other things, a relatively low cost/low friction option to get together with friends, go on a date, get out of the house, etc.

rvz 4y ago

Netflix is now a feature compared with the likes of Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ etc and now you can see them struggling as their stock has crashed, increased prices, cancelled shows and films and are doing more layoffs. Not only they are losing subscribers and money, their competitors are still gaining users and can afford to lose them; Netflix cannot. At this point Netflix is a feature just like Dropbox, Box, DocuSign etc and cannot afford to lose a significant amount of customers for their services. It is a different story for Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+.

pyuser583 4y ago

Netflix has always been clear they are vicious about layoffs.

fileeditview 4y ago

I just cancelled Netflix a few weeks ago. The only show left that I watched was Better call Saul. I was already annoyed when they changed their shows from releasing all at once to a weekly cycle but since I don't have that much time to watch TV it still worked for me. However they also create artificial breaks now. When I realized that BCS is interrupted for many weeks before the show resumes I finally quit. I am not paying for watching nothing.

Mindwipe 4y ago
Better Call Saul isn't a Netflix show. It's an AMC commission made by Sony Pictures. It releases weekly because Netflix get it outside the US at the same time AMC air it on television. I think Netflix should move to a weekly model for their content but they haven't done this.
- fileeditview 4y ago
  Ha thanks for telling me. Now that you say it I even remember that it was AMC. So I was blaming Netflix for the wrong thing.. my bad! But then there is even less left that I really want from Netflix. This also explains why this show is so much better than the other stuff on Netflix. BTW if you don't mind me asking.. why would you prefer a weekly model as a consumer? The only reason I can come up with is that people fear to read/hear spoilers from other who are "faster". Is there something else?

whydid 4y ago

Does anyone remember the horribly received Cowboy Bebop live action Netflix original? There have been so many other high budget flops on Netflix that are promoted, and then derided by critics (and customers).