16 ms·

What AMC’s streaming troubles say about the greater TV industry

99 points by lxm 4y ago

preston4tw 4y ago
https://archive.ph/Z2FKB https://archive.ph/Z2FKB
msoad 4y ago
It’s not a mystery. Attention is moving on from TV to phones. I personally spend more minutes on Instagram Reels than watching actual TV content. Most of TV shows are boring and filled with uneventful minutes. I’m in my mid 30s. Probably much worse for younger folks.
- nickthegreek 4y ago
  I spend alot of time on youtube and tiktok throughout the day and I'm in my early 40s. Its not til after 8 or 9pm that I will flip to streaming. Contrast that with my youth, where TV was playing constantly.
- drewg123 4y ago
  I'm in my early 50s, and I honestly spend about 60% of my video-watching on YouTube, 15% on IG and TikTok, and 25% spread among Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Apple TV+, Prime, etc. I really should start being a serial canceller.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Viewing habits can switch. I don't watch YouTube a lot and don't even have a TikTok account. But a fair bit of my fairly light video watching (maybe 8 hours a week or so) has switched from movies to streaming TV.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    8 hours a week doesn’t even seem that light. We certainly have weeks (well, I. My wife loves YouTube) with fewer hours watched.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      That's assuming I'm at home and aren't going somewhere on evenings or weekends. That's probably more like a max than average.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  There is truth to this, but if it was fully true than Quibi would've taken off.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  I will admit that this is news to me, but I don't have that many friends with Instagram ( and I suppose that means my social circle is pretty narrow ). Aren't those so short you basically just make an animated gif equivalent? Is it just the question of advertisers going where eyeballs are?
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  This is ridiculous. The correct way to handle this is to put the boring TV show on, play Pokemon on your Switch, have your phone there for chat and looking up stuff about your game and doomscrolling-breaks, and only pay full attention to the TV at most 5% of the time.
  - diydsp 4y ago
    ya mean to say TV is going the way of music? that is t say, it's becoming an adjunct source of perceptible data to fill in those small potential gaps where we might unwillingly brush up against the desert of the real?
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Oh, it's been that since at least the 80s. It's just that now the other things we do during it are also on screens.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      A lot of people have always liked to turn the TV on as background. If anything I would think that would be less common today if you don't have live TV. Personally, it drives me crazy. Back when I would sometimes have a shared hotel room on a group trip, something that would drive me crazy was the person who, first thing upon entering the room, would be to head straight for the TV and turn in on.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  I've been slowly making my way through the Walking Dead season 10 on Netflix. I legitimately will skip probably 60-70% of the episodes. They'll seriously skip from one scene of super-slow angsty bullshit to another scene with other characters involved in super-slow angsty bullshit. I watch just enough to get the point and then skip the next 5-10 minutes until the next scene shows up, at which point I'll watch just enough to get the point ... ad nauseum. ---- It doesn't have to be like this, but JFC I'm not interested in someone spending 10 minutes expressing what a normal human being would express in 1 because the producer thinks slowing their speech patterns down to .0001x is somehow more dramatic. I cannot wait for this trend to pass because it's absolutely not just the walking dead.
  - layer8 4y ago
    Right, they now stretch story arcs over a whole season that used to be an episode or two two decades ago.
TylerE 4y ago
They've screwed up and spread to thin, such a pain as a user. Prime Video used to be better but now their're siloing super hard too.
ghaff 4y ago
Very few are going to subscribe to a bunch of niche streaming services like AMC, FX, etc.--even as a fairly cheap Amazon Prime add-on as some of the other smaller services offer. Even most of us who have dropped live TV entirely pick and choose which streaming services we get over time. I know at the moment Netflix is starting to look of questionable value for me. As a broader principle, just because something (e.g. video entertainment) continues on in a different form doesn't mean there's as much money in it as there was.
- rcarr 4y ago
  >I know at the moment Netflix is starting to look of questionable value for me. There’s so much bland shit on Netflix but then every time I think I’ve had enough of it and I’m on the verge of unsubscribing they go and release something like Wednesday that smashes it out of the park.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Wednesday's the best thing I've seen on Netflix for a while. But, yeah, they have just enough good exclusive content to keep around for now. I'm sort of in the same boat with HBO Max.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      Streaming is in an interesting place because a lot of the big hits (at least from my POV) are now such lavish productions that like movies, their sequels do not necessarily arrive year after year. So The White Lotus, House of the Dragon, and Andor (of Disney+) are being filmed in 2023, and will not be returning until 2024. It's an interesting scheduling situation- so they're going to have to put out new content to fill the void in the meantime for the fans of such shows who have nothing to look forward to for an entire year, to keep them from unsubscribing.
      - rcarr 4y ago
        I agree that the production value for TV shows is insanely good now, it must cost them a small fortune. I don’t know how they are keeping the budgets lower than their movie equivalents or perhaps maybe I don’t know how movies justify their budgets given the quality of modern day tv series.
indigodaddy 4y ago
Imv, the only profitable option for dedicated streamers/content companies (Eg those whose only source of income is their streaming/media content) will be to ditch monthly subs and implement a pay per show, even perhaps a rent-the-episode approach (perhaps 99 cents?). This would probably drive up piracy even more but I don’t see what other option streamers such as AMC have.. Another issue though is that AMC should never have tried to handle the infra/app component of the streaming themselves. They should have stuck with just an agreement with Amazon or Hulu (much like FX has) for the infra/tech side, and then they can stick their focus purely on content.
- macintux 4y ago
  iTunes formerly allowed TV shows to be rented per-episode. Would be interesting to find out why they stopped doing so.
maxsilver 4y ago
AMC's streaming troubles don't seem related to the greater TV industry, so much as AMC-specifically is fumbling a bunch. Streaming seems to be working great, if you invest in decent originals that subscribers like, regularly, with realistic-but-modest budgets, and sell that at a cheap predictable subscription. (It's working out great for Paramount+, it was working pretty well for HBO before Discovery decided to kill off all of Warner Brothers) But like, AMC doesn't seem to be doing much of that. If you love the "Walking Dead Universe", yeah, AMC's gotcha covered. For anyone else, there just isn't much here. The last time I heard of an interesting AMC show I personally wanted to watch, was "Dispatches from Elsewhere" back in 2020 (and at that time, you weren't even allowed to pay them money to watch it, you had to buy a whole cable package) --- Streaming isn't struggling, it's just competitive. You can't expect to execute poorly, fumble your way through and still magically make a lot of money.
- TylerE 4y ago
  Plus by far it’s two most desirable properties are locked into Netflix (Breaking Bad and Bwttwr Call Saul)
  - maxsilver 4y ago
    That's hilarious -- I didn't even realize Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul were AMC shows, since AMC+ isn't advertising them on their own streaming site (presumably because they sold the streaming rights away?) But yeah, exhibit A in "don't execute poorly" -- maybe don't give away your most popular show to your biggest streaming competitor.
    - theklr 4y ago
      AMC didn’t own the shows. They were both Lionsgate and Sony Pictures respectively. They overcorrected with TWD and haven’t marketed a single show since effectively.
    - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
      Yeah here in my country Breaking Bad was always a Netflix show. Which also explains why Netflix still has the international market. They have years of mind share.
teeray 4y ago
Nobody cares about the network—they only care about the shows. If Breaking Bad were airing today as an AMC+ exclusive, they would have no problem with subscribers.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  This is exactly it, but executives keep thinking they can make streaming into cable, because cable worked for them: "But that is not enough to solve a bigger problem: The money that the company makes from its streaming business, including AMC+, is not making up for the loss of revenue from its traditional cable channels, as people abandon their cable subscriptions and advertisers pull back on spending." Naturally, the solution is to spread IP even thinner, license more Walking Dead merchandise, new spinoffs, games and whatnot and, clearly, not trying to create a digital library with other IP holders so that customers can have access to everything they want. Gate keeping is that important. << Nobody cares about the network—they only care about the shows. I will add one more thing here, because some executives seem to miss this point. I did enjoy Breaking Bad and their other shows, but I can easily live without them. It is not a necessity. I might care about their shows, but there is a limit to the amount of hoops I will jump through. The cable days are over. I am not going back to ad infested and ad interruptions ( my wife might ). I am an adult.. and I do have other entertainment choices ( and failing that, numerous obligations my entertainment choices prevent me from completing ).
  - subpixel 4y ago
    If you ask the average person under 50 what network produced a list of hit shows from the last decade, you’d get some correct HBO answers and a whole lot of blank stares. In the heyday of the Pirate Bay that was where you got shows. Today I’m a Google search away from illicit streams. This is how it should be when the alternative is 500 subscriptions, to put a twist on the famous 500 channels quote describing the attractive future of cable tv.
    - zerocrates 4y ago
      I'd say you're probably greatly overestimating how many people torrent or even pirate in general (in the US anyway). I'm well under your age-50 cutoff and I'd probably name you most of the networks (while freely admitting I'm somewhat of an outlier there, and also a previous but really not current user of certain illicit services). Stuff going to one of the "big" legal streamers like Netflix is a huge deal for it having broader uptake. HBO is about the only big exclusion from that where they're still able to drive media coverage and social media conversation while having stuff locked to themselves (I've seen so much White Lotus stuff out there lately, as an example).
rcarr 4y ago
I’m thinking of keeping my subscriptions for my family but personally trying to do a whole year of no films and tv, just books. Wouldn’t be able to escape YouTube because I need it to learn things, but I’m interested to see: - If I can achieve more with the extra time - If my memory and concentration improves from less screen time
- CabSauce 4y ago
  Okay. Thanks for keeping us informed of your plans.
at_a_remove 4y ago
The article is pretty light on AMC's mis-steps. Just as an example, The Walking Dead: First they let go of Frank Darabont who probably could have used a chill pill and a secretary between him and Outlook, not firing. Then they started wild deviations from a much-beloved series (I even bought my mother the huge printed tomes, she loved the show), and more and more decisions to milk it and send it off the rails at the same time. Show should have ended some time back, and spinoffs why? They really hamstrung Shudder. About their only smart move with Shudder is having Joe Bob Briggs on. Shudder's horror catalog is only about two or three times the size of what you can get on Netflix. I haven't done a really heavy analysis of overlaps, but Tubi has a shocking amount of stuff Shudder has on. But sure, let's fire a lot of good people at Shudder instead of working on picking up some good stuff to watch. Three months, ten million dollar severance. Nice work if you can get it, I suppose, but budget-wise ... They absolutely need to have one overarching team working on all of their apps, because various apps they own fumble differently on different devices. That's a lot of duplicated effort when it could be shared. Then there's Interview with the Vampire. Everything I have read suggests that it has a bad case of "I Need to Put My Stamp on This" from one or more creatives, starting with the cast. Claudia has been aged-up, again, which more than a little negates the whole purpose behind the character, and Daniel ... I don't even know what to say. I like Bogosian but he isn't the guy for the part by a few decades. AMC needs to get tight and smart.
Apocryphon 4y ago
AMC's current streaming problems are emblematic of its inability to create and popularize content that enough viewers want to watch. But this has been happening for the better part of a decade now, even before streaming hit critical mass. This is an interesting history of how AMC essentially invented prestige TV (outside of HBO) with Mad Men, followed it up with the mega-hit of Breaking Bad, and then the monster that was The Walking Dead, but failed to continue its success afterwards (and also touches on why TWD became a creative disappointment relative to the prior two). Subsequent original series like Halt and Catch Fire were also not marketed successfully, though I heartily disagree with his take that the title was bad. Any machine code reference in the title means your show is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhTJhMYsD60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhTJhMYsD60
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  Mad Men and Breaking Bad are both masterpieces. They made them before the "streaming wars" and proved that non-major networks and studios could make good stuff. They just didn't figure out how to bottle that magic, and let it get away.
  - citilife 4y ago
    Justified and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was also on FX. As another example of small networks making great stuff.
    - craig_s_bell 4y ago
      Also 'The Americans'
      - Apocryphon 4y ago
        FX has always been a low-key prestige series powerhouse. They made The Shield, after all.
      - ghaff 4y ago
eat 4y ago
It doesn't help that AMC+ provides possibly the worst user experience of any of the major streaming apps I've used. Constant crashes, failure to resume where I left off, and just straight up "not working" is a total killer when there are a dozen other apps I could be using to watch other (admittedly non-AMC) content. Feels like they were banking on exclusivity of AMC content and put not enough effort into the technical and UX aspects of their service.
- cragfar 4y ago
  They also removed episodes mid season of Better Call Saul, forcing you to subscribe for multiple months.
  - hedora 4y ago
    Oh; I've been meaning to subscribe to whatever service had Better Call Saul to binge watch it (now that I'm getting bored with HBO Max, and they cancelled / concluded most of the recent shows I watch). Thanks for the heads up. (I can't see the Discovery acquisition going well. The whole premise is that they'll cut 3 billion dollars from the production pipelines of the networks that were involved, but will somehow maintain / grow their revenues. I don't see the difference between this and attempting to improve GM's margins by firing all their factory workers and focusing on collection interest payments from existing car loans.)
    - cragfar 4y ago
      I would assume the whole season is on it now, but as it was airing they removed the episodes. Personally, I just bought it on Amazon for $20 or however much it cost.
perardi 4y ago
I wonder how much the end of syndicated reruns has hit revenues all across the TV industry. If you were a network TV affiliate, you had your Simpson’s hour, your Friends hour, your…ugh I guess King of Queen’s hour…you had all this good content (for some value of good) that was seemingly syndicated at reasonable rates, and then you could lard up with ads. And then not just for conventional TV—how much of Netflix was Office back catalog? But now, the reruns live in their corporate streaming silos. If you are a streaming service, you have to have your own content, and if you’re what remains of a conventional TV channel, you’re seemingly coasting on cheap-as-hell talk shows.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Of course, syndication also provided cheap airtime on TV channels for all the people who turned on the TV as background or who wanted to mindlessly channel surf. There's no reason to assume that will always be a common behavior and, even if it is, it seems more common on YouTube etc. than streaming television. One also wonders about the value of the film back catalogs some services are acquiring. My sense is certainly that a lot of movie watching at home has shifted to TV and other things.
zeruch 4y ago
Is this an AMC problem, or just that every player now wants a streaming service and people accustomed to bundled TV options (and I count Netflix as that for argument) are now exhausted at the prospect of endless streaming services to subscribe to.
citilife 4y ago
I actually was interested recently in getting AMC+; mostly because I wanted to watch older movies with my children. Unfortunately, most of that isn't available on AMC+, so what's the point? I'd pay good money for access to movies pre-2000, plus a decent series or two that are exclusive, which IMO should be cheaper to obtain.
- ghaff 4y ago
  For older movies, you might consider getting a Netflix DVD subscription though they've let their back catalog deteriorate. (Your library is probably also a good source.) You can also just digitally rent a la carte on Amazon or Apple. By and large, the streaming services have never been great for finding a specific film.
  - eggsmediumrare 4y ago
    Seconding the library! Libraries are so great. And if they don't have something you want, odds are they will get it if you ask them!
cooperadymas 4y ago
This is the problem. * Amazon Prime * Disney+ * HBO Max * Netflix * Hulu * Paramount+ * Peacock * AMC+ * Apple TV+ * ESPN+ * Shudder * Sundance Now * Youtube TV * Tubi * Crackle * Roku Channel * Discovery+ Want to watch the old Newhart show? Even with all these options, you're out of luck. Try your library. Streaming is a nightmare. Want to watch every game your favorite NFL team plays this season but you're not in their broadcast area? Try to suss out this mess. https://www.nfl.com/ways-to-watch/ https://www.nfl.com/ways-to-watch/
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Don't forget WhatTimeIsItRightNow.com
  - echelon 4y ago
    > Don't forget WhatTimeIsItRightNow.com That's the problem with Hollywoo. Too much fragmentation as a result of everyone chasing after the power vacuum created by streaming. Every small outfit thinks they can win. Consolidation will happen as clear winners emerge and failures continue to materialize. (I have that sticker on one of my old laptops. Also a "Hollywoo" sticker on one of my current laptops. I love it because my startup is in that space.)
    - mkaic 4y ago
      reminds me of my favorite game show: "Hollywoo Celebrities: What Do They Know? Do They Know Things? Let's Find Out! with J.D. Salinger"
- ghaff 4y ago
  That doesn't even count all the various Amazon Prime add-on services like Starz.
- seanalltogether 4y ago
  The big question is what is the solution to all this that doesn't involve 3 big players buying out all the rest? Is it even possible to get these guys to all play together in some kind of shared space.
smallerfish 4y ago
Netflix could afford to stock-acquire a few of these legacy companies as they decline. It'd help solve their content problem, and shore them up in their fight against Disney and HBO.
fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
AMC’s flagship show (Better Call Saul) isn’t currently available on their streaming service. Personally, I’m happy to sign up for a streaming service to get access to a single show (I do often cancel once I’m done, so I’m not signed up to everything all the time). There’s only one show I’ve pirated recently: Better Call Saul. If it were on AMC+, I’d be a subscriber.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Better Call Saul is available on ~15 different services including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, and AppleTV+. It would never have occurred to me that I should watch it on a separate AMC service.
  - jimbob45 4y ago
    The last season isn't on Netflix or any of the other services you listed though. Personally, I suspect that's because that last season was GoT season 8-tier terrible and they're trying to get as many new fans to watch the older seasons before the masses recognize that the show is dead.
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      That's interesting. It is on Amazon though.
    - dlbucci 4y ago
      > that last season was GoT season 8-tier terrible Uh, were we watching the same show? I thought it was an amazing finish to 11 seasons of Albuquerque and meth-based fun, and so did critics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Call_Saul_(season_6)#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Call_Saul_(season_6)#Re... > before the masses recognize that the show is dead. I mean, that was the final season, so I think most people are aware that the show won't be continuing...
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      > before the masses recognize that the show is dead. It was widely publicized that the most recent season of Better Call Saul was the end of the series. I also disagree it was anywhere near as bad as GoT ending, or bad at all.
gcanyon 4y ago
There's only room for so many streaming services. Sample size of one, but I literally don't know anything that's on Shudder, and AMC+ I can name The Walking Dead, which I gave up on after the first season; and apparently the Ann Rice-iverse? I've read a few of her books, and saw Interview with a Vampire 30(?) years ago? That's not compelling.
wirthjason 4y ago
AMC+, which costs $8.99 a month for a subscription, does not run ads. How many of these are there going to be? I don’t want a $200 cable bill but I also don’t want dozens of subscriptions. I’ll subscribe to a few streaming services (eg Disney+ which my daughter watches) but outside of that I just don’t care. I also don’t have the time for stuff on the fringe.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > How many of these are there going to be? They're really killing their golden goose by trying to launch all these streaming services rather than agreeing to some sort of profit-sharing agreement with Netflix like they were doing when it first came out. These movies have no value to anybody if nobody's paying to watch them and if every studio hides them behind yet another $10/month streaming service that nobody is signing up for, they're going to go bankrupt. Streaming is how we consume entertainment now, and that's not changing - but every movie studio launching their own streaming service would be like every movie studio lanuching their own video rental company in the 90's.
  - bloggie 4y ago
    I don’t know what the future here holds, but I agree completely and this is why I think it was a poor choice long-term for Netflix to become a production company. Their model was wholesaling content, first via mail and later over the Internet. Now that Netflix produces content, other studios wishing to stream content on Netflix are also in competition with Netflix content on Netflix’s own platform. The advantage of a neutral arbiter -over the debate of what to watch - is gone.
AlbertCory 4y ago
They have had some good shows, but I can buy entire seasons on Amazon Prime. I suppose they could shut that channel off or delay it, but that would not make me subscribe to AMC+. Rather, I'd just do without, or wait until the end of the season.
knaik94 4y ago
AMC alone doesn't say much about the greater TV industry since people have loyalty to specific shows and not the channel. Breaking Bad didn't become popular while airing, it became popular because it released on Netflix. Cable channels have outlived their purpose. Emulating cable channels by partitioning shows into streaming services is pushing people back to piracy. The traditional TV industry is continuing to fail to adapt to the different way in which people watch content. Youtube demonstrates really well how people are no longer loyal to a network, they are loyal to a creator or topic. There have been certain groups of channels that sort of remind me of an old school TV channel, like MatPat and his youtube channels Game Theorists, Film Theorists, and Food Theorists could have been a TV channel in combination with some other video game or theory crafting channels but people don't search by a bigger topic. People find content based on recommendations, either algorithmic or popular things watched by friends. Netflix Originals and Amazon Originals seem better, but I can't understand the metrics Netflix uses when deciding what to cancel. As someone who has shifted to online media as the main form of content I watch, I can't tell you what makes a cartoon network show a cartoon network show. I know because of the logos between shows and during ads, but I struggle to find a strong underlying identity. The easier access to international media has also caused an oversaturation of available good media. I no longer need to worry about what part of the world a show is made in, if it's popular enough, you'll be able to find it sailing the seas. HBO Max, the supposed online equivalent to the cable channel HBO will drop Westworld from its online catalog. Some fantastic Disney+ Marvel shows, like the critically acclaimed Loki, have no announced plans of getting a physical release and Loki released back in Jun 2021. When a TV show enthusiast sees those two pieces of news back to back, a normal conclusion is that the only "sure" way to own shows is piracy.
- massysett 4y ago
  YouTube is the network. Most YouTube creators probably wouldn’t survive if they set up a web site and posted videos on it.
  - knaik94 4y ago
    Being on YouTube is the same as being on Television, seeing it as a network is part of the problem. New media doesn't fit into old frameworks. Many YouTube creators have set up successful crowdfunded channels. Certain topics are always demonetized and can't run ads, and creators just use YouTube to help distribute content. Patreon rolled out its own platform after Vimeo became too expensive to host on. Twitch, arguably, is a meaningful competitor to YouTube but exclusively focuses on live streaming. Over the last couple of years, YouTube managed to get top Twitch creators to switch with contracts of above 1 million dollars. Some leaked ad spots, like watching a trailer on stream or playing a game for 30-60 minutes, were between 2k and 10k USD for a streamer with around 8,000 average viewers per stream. There was a leak recently of how much top streamers on twitch made, and there were multiple 500K+ salaries. But the platform unfortunately follows the 1% of creators earn 90%+ of all income rule of thumb.
gigatexal 4y ago
If on iOS the reader mode gets past the paywall at least for me.
barbariangrunge 4y ago
> The number of adult scripted series ordered by TV networks and streaming companies fell this quarter, compared with the same period a year ago — a reflection of the new financial reality. What is happening in peoples heads? Did people really think that the boom in online content would last after people were allowed to leaved their houses to socialize again?
ramesh31 4y ago
Everyone here is talking content, and I don't think that's the issue. We are awash in a glut of unlimited great content available to stream now. The problem is ads. The advertisement model is stuck in the 20th century idea of "heres a block of obnoxious crap for you to mute for the next five minutes". And the monetization drags because of it. Great ads can be great. A differentiating feature for your platform. An integral part of your brand and identity. But instead it's just nonsequitor, non-contextual garbage.
mkl95 4y ago
AMC's output is low, and most if not all their good stuff is available somewhere else. I just learnt they have a streaming service. I wonder if they could make more money by signing some exclusivity deal with a major competitor.

99 points by lxm 4y ago

https://archive.ph/Z2FKB https://archive.ph/Z2FKB

It’s not a mystery. Attention is moving on from TV to phones. I personally spend more minutes on Instagram Reels than watching actual TV content. Most of TV shows are boring and filled with uneventful minutes. I’m in my mid 30s. Probably much worse for younger folks.

nickthegreek 4y ago
I spend alot of time on youtube and tiktok throughout the day and I'm in my early 40s. Its not til after 8 or 9pm that I will flip to streaming. Contrast that with my youth, where TV was playing constantly.
drewg123 4y ago
I'm in my early 50s, and I honestly spend about 60% of my video-watching on YouTube, 15% on IG and TikTok, and 25% spread among Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Apple TV+, Prime, etc. I really should start being a serial canceller.
ghaff 4y ago
Viewing habits can switch. I don't watch YouTube a lot and don't even have a TikTok account. But a fair bit of my fairly light video watching (maybe 8 hours a week or so) has switched from movies to streaming TV.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  8 hours a week doesn’t even seem that light. We certainly have weeks (well, I. My wife loves YouTube) with fewer hours watched.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    That's assuming I'm at home and aren't going somewhere on evenings or weekends. That's probably more like a max than average.
Apocryphon 4y ago
There is truth to this, but if it was fully true than Quibi would've taken off.
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
I will admit that this is news to me, but I don't have that many friends with Instagram ( and I suppose that means my social circle is pretty narrow ). Aren't those so short you basically just make an animated gif equivalent? Is it just the question of advertisers going where eyeballs are?
yamtaddle 4y ago
This is ridiculous. The correct way to handle this is to put the boring TV show on, play Pokemon on your Switch, have your phone there for chat and looking up stuff about your game and doomscrolling-breaks, and only pay full attention to the TV at most 5% of the time.
- diydsp 4y ago
  ya mean to say TV is going the way of music? that is t say, it's becoming an adjunct source of perceptible data to fill in those small potential gaps where we might unwillingly brush up against the desert of the real?
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Oh, it's been that since at least the 80s. It's just that now the other things we do during it are also on screens.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    A lot of people have always liked to turn the TV on as background. If anything I would think that would be less common today if you don't have live TV. Personally, it drives me crazy. Back when I would sometimes have a shared hotel room on a group trip, something that would drive me crazy was the person who, first thing upon entering the room, would be to head straight for the TV and turn in on.
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
I've been slowly making my way through the Walking Dead season 10 on Netflix. I legitimately will skip probably 60-70% of the episodes. They'll seriously skip from one scene of super-slow angsty bullshit to another scene with other characters involved in super-slow angsty bullshit. I watch just enough to get the point and then skip the next 5-10 minutes until the next scene shows up, at which point I'll watch just enough to get the point ... ad nauseum. ---- It doesn't have to be like this, but JFC I'm not interested in someone spending 10 minutes expressing what a normal human being would express in 1 because the producer thinks slowing their speech patterns down to .0001x is somehow more dramatic. I cannot wait for this trend to pass because it's absolutely not just the walking dead.
- layer8 4y ago
  Right, they now stretch story arcs over a whole season that used to be an episode or two two decades ago.

TylerE 4y ago

They've screwed up and spread to thin, such a pain as a user. Prime Video used to be better but now their're siloing super hard too.

ghaff 4y ago

Very few are going to subscribe to a bunch of niche streaming services like AMC, FX, etc.--even as a fairly cheap Amazon Prime add-on as some of the other smaller services offer. Even most of us who have dropped live TV entirely pick and choose which streaming services we get over time. I know at the moment Netflix is starting to look of questionable value for me. As a broader principle, just because something (e.g. video entertainment) continues on in a different form doesn't mean there's as much money in it as there was.

rcarr 4y ago
>I know at the moment Netflix is starting to look of questionable value for me. There’s so much bland shit on Netflix but then every time I think I’ve had enough of it and I’m on the verge of unsubscribing they go and release something like Wednesday that smashes it out of the park.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Wednesday's the best thing I've seen on Netflix for a while. But, yeah, they have just enough good exclusive content to keep around for now. I'm sort of in the same boat with HBO Max.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    Streaming is in an interesting place because a lot of the big hits (at least from my POV) are now such lavish productions that like movies, their sequels do not necessarily arrive year after year. So The White Lotus, House of the Dragon, and Andor (of Disney+) are being filmed in 2023, and will not be returning until 2024. It's an interesting scheduling situation- so they're going to have to put out new content to fill the void in the meantime for the fans of such shows who have nothing to look forward to for an entire year, to keep them from unsubscribing.
    - rcarr 4y ago
      I agree that the production value for TV shows is insanely good now, it must cost them a small fortune. I don’t know how they are keeping the budgets lower than their movie equivalents or perhaps maybe I don’t know how movies justify their budgets given the quality of modern day tv series.

indigodaddy 4y ago

Imv, the only profitable option for dedicated streamers/content companies (Eg those whose only source of income is their streaming/media content) will be to ditch monthly subs and implement a pay per show, even perhaps a rent-the-episode approach (perhaps 99 cents?). This would probably drive up piracy even more but I don’t see what other option streamers such as AMC have.. Another issue though is that AMC should never have tried to handle the infra/app component of the streaming themselves. They should have stuck with just an agreement with Amazon or Hulu (much like FX has) for the infra/tech side, and then they can stick their focus purely on content.

macintux 4y ago
iTunes formerly allowed TV shows to be rented per-episode. Would be interesting to find out why they stopped doing so.

maxsilver 4y ago

AMC's streaming troubles don't seem related to the greater TV industry, so much as AMC-specifically is fumbling a bunch. Streaming seems to be working great, if you invest in decent originals that subscribers like, regularly, with realistic-but-modest budgets, and sell that at a cheap predictable subscription. (It's working out great for Paramount+, it was working pretty well for HBO before Discovery decided to kill off all of Warner Brothers) But like, AMC doesn't seem to be doing much of that. If you love the "Walking Dead Universe", yeah, AMC's gotcha covered. For anyone else, there just isn't much here. The last time I heard of an interesting AMC show I personally wanted to watch, was "Dispatches from Elsewhere" back in 2020 (and at that time, you weren't even allowed to pay them money to watch it, you had to buy a whole cable package) --- Streaming isn't struggling, it's just competitive. You can't expect to execute poorly, fumble your way through and still magically make a lot of money.

TylerE 4y ago
Plus by far it’s two most desirable properties are locked into Netflix (Breaking Bad and Bwttwr Call Saul)
- maxsilver 4y ago
  That's hilarious -- I didn't even realize Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul were AMC shows, since AMC+ isn't advertising them on their own streaming site (presumably because they sold the streaming rights away?) But yeah, exhibit A in "don't execute poorly" -- maybe don't give away your most popular show to your biggest streaming competitor.
  - theklr 4y ago
    AMC didn’t own the shows. They were both Lionsgate and Sony Pictures respectively. They overcorrected with TWD and haven’t marketed a single show since effectively.
  - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
    Yeah here in my country Breaking Bad was always a Netflix show. Which also explains why Netflix still has the international market. They have years of mind share.

teeray 4y ago

Nobody cares about the network—they only care about the shows. If Breaking Bad were airing today as an AMC+ exclusive, they would have no problem with subscribers.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
This is exactly it, but executives keep thinking they can make streaming into cable, because cable worked for them: "But that is not enough to solve a bigger problem: The money that the company makes from its streaming business, including AMC+, is not making up for the loss of revenue from its traditional cable channels, as people abandon their cable subscriptions and advertisers pull back on spending." Naturally, the solution is to spread IP even thinner, license more Walking Dead merchandise, new spinoffs, games and whatnot and, clearly, not trying to create a digital library with other IP holders so that customers can have access to everything they want. Gate keeping is that important. << Nobody cares about the network—they only care about the shows. I will add one more thing here, because some executives seem to miss this point. I did enjoy Breaking Bad and their other shows, but I can easily live without them. It is not a necessity. I might care about their shows, but there is a limit to the amount of hoops I will jump through. The cable days are over. I am not going back to ad infested and ad interruptions ( my wife might ). I am an adult.. and I do have other entertainment choices ( and failing that, numerous obligations my entertainment choices prevent me from completing ).
- subpixel 4y ago
  If you ask the average person under 50 what network produced a list of hit shows from the last decade, you’d get some correct HBO answers and a whole lot of blank stares. In the heyday of the Pirate Bay that was where you got shows. Today I’m a Google search away from illicit streams. This is how it should be when the alternative is 500 subscriptions, to put a twist on the famous 500 channels quote describing the attractive future of cable tv.
  - zerocrates 4y ago
    I'd say you're probably greatly overestimating how many people torrent or even pirate in general (in the US anyway). I'm well under your age-50 cutoff and I'd probably name you most of the networks (while freely admitting I'm somewhat of an outlier there, and also a previous but really not current user of certain illicit services). Stuff going to one of the "big" legal streamers like Netflix is a huge deal for it having broader uptake. HBO is about the only big exclusion from that where they're still able to drive media coverage and social media conversation while having stuff locked to themselves (I've seen so much White Lotus stuff out there lately, as an example).

rcarr 4y ago

I’m thinking of keeping my subscriptions for my family but personally trying to do a whole year of no films and tv, just books. Wouldn’t be able to escape YouTube because I need it to learn things, but I’m interested to see: - If I can achieve more with the extra time - If my memory and concentration improves from less screen time

CabSauce 4y ago
Okay. Thanks for keeping us informed of your plans.

at_a_remove 4y ago

The article is pretty light on AMC's mis-steps. Just as an example, The Walking Dead: First they let go of Frank Darabont who probably could have used a chill pill and a secretary between him and Outlook, not firing. Then they started wild deviations from a much-beloved series (I even bought my mother the huge printed tomes, she loved the show), and more and more decisions to milk it and send it off the rails at the same time. Show should have ended some time back, and spinoffs why? They really hamstrung Shudder. About their only smart move with Shudder is having Joe Bob Briggs on. Shudder's horror catalog is only about two or three times the size of what you can get on Netflix. I haven't done a really heavy analysis of overlaps, but Tubi has a shocking amount of stuff Shudder has on. But sure, let's fire a lot of good people at Shudder instead of working on picking up some good stuff to watch. Three months, ten million dollar severance. Nice work if you can get it, I suppose, but budget-wise ... They absolutely need to have one overarching team working on all of their apps, because various apps they own fumble differently on different devices. That's a lot of duplicated effort when it could be shared. Then there's Interview with the Vampire. Everything I have read suggests that it has a bad case of "I Need to Put My Stamp on This" from one or more creatives, starting with the cast. Claudia has been aged-up, again, which more than a little negates the whole purpose behind the character, and Daniel ... I don't even know what to say. I like Bogosian but he isn't the guy for the part by a few decades. AMC needs to get tight and smart.

Apocryphon 4y ago

AMC's current streaming problems are emblematic of its inability to create and popularize content that enough viewers want to watch. But this has been happening for the better part of a decade now, even before streaming hit critical mass. This is an interesting history of how AMC essentially invented prestige TV (outside of HBO) with Mad Men, followed it up with the mega-hit of Breaking Bad, and then the monster that was The Walking Dead, but failed to continue its success afterwards (and also touches on why TWD became a creative disappointment relative to the prior two). Subsequent original series like Halt and Catch Fire were also not marketed successfully, though I heartily disagree with his take that the title was bad. Any machine code reference in the title means your show is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhTJhMYsD60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhTJhMYsD60

iancmceachern 4y ago
Mad Men and Breaking Bad are both masterpieces. They made them before the "streaming wars" and proved that non-major networks and studios could make good stuff. They just didn't figure out how to bottle that magic, and let it get away.
- citilife 4y ago
  Justified and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was also on FX. As another example of small networks making great stuff.
  - craig_s_bell 4y ago
    Also 'The Americans'
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      FX has always been a low-key prestige series powerhouse. They made The Shield, after all.
    - ghaff 4y ago

eat 4y ago

It doesn't help that AMC+ provides possibly the worst user experience of any of the major streaming apps I've used. Constant crashes, failure to resume where I left off, and just straight up "not working" is a total killer when there are a dozen other apps I could be using to watch other (admittedly non-AMC) content. Feels like they were banking on exclusivity of AMC content and put not enough effort into the technical and UX aspects of their service.

cragfar 4y ago
They also removed episodes mid season of Better Call Saul, forcing you to subscribe for multiple months.
- hedora 4y ago
  Oh; I've been meaning to subscribe to whatever service had Better Call Saul to binge watch it (now that I'm getting bored with HBO Max, and they cancelled / concluded most of the recent shows I watch). Thanks for the heads up. (I can't see the Discovery acquisition going well. The whole premise is that they'll cut 3 billion dollars from the production pipelines of the networks that were involved, but will somehow maintain / grow their revenues. I don't see the difference between this and attempting to improve GM's margins by firing all their factory workers and focusing on collection interest payments from existing car loans.)
  - cragfar 4y ago
    I would assume the whole season is on it now, but as it was airing they removed the episodes. Personally, I just bought it on Amazon for $20 or however much it cost.

perardi 4y ago

I wonder how much the end of syndicated reruns has hit revenues all across the TV industry. If you were a network TV affiliate, you had your Simpson’s hour, your Friends hour, your…ugh I guess King of Queen’s hour…you had all this good content (for some value of good) that was seemingly syndicated at reasonable rates, and then you could lard up with ads. And then not just for conventional TV—how much of Netflix was Office back catalog? But now, the reruns live in their corporate streaming silos. If you are a streaming service, you have to have your own content, and if you’re what remains of a conventional TV channel, you’re seemingly coasting on cheap-as-hell talk shows.

ghaff 4y ago
Of course, syndication also provided cheap airtime on TV channels for all the people who turned on the TV as background or who wanted to mindlessly channel surf. There's no reason to assume that will always be a common behavior and, even if it is, it seems more common on YouTube etc. than streaming television. One also wonders about the value of the film back catalogs some services are acquiring. My sense is certainly that a lot of movie watching at home has shifted to TV and other things.

zeruch 4y ago

Is this an AMC problem, or just that every player now wants a streaming service and people accustomed to bundled TV options (and I count Netflix as that for argument) are now exhausted at the prospect of endless streaming services to subscribe to.

citilife 4y ago

I actually was interested recently in getting AMC+; mostly because I wanted to watch older movies with my children. Unfortunately, most of that isn't available on AMC+, so what's the point? I'd pay good money for access to movies pre-2000, plus a decent series or two that are exclusive, which IMO should be cheaper to obtain.

ghaff 4y ago
For older movies, you might consider getting a Netflix DVD subscription though they've let their back catalog deteriorate. (Your library is probably also a good source.) You can also just digitally rent a la carte on Amazon or Apple. By and large, the streaming services have never been great for finding a specific film.
- eggsmediumrare 4y ago
  Seconding the library! Libraries are so great. And if they don't have something you want, odds are they will get it if you ask them!

cooperadymas 4y ago

This is the problem. * Amazon Prime * Disney+ * HBO Max * Netflix * Hulu * Paramount+ * Peacock * AMC+ * Apple TV+ * ESPN+ * Shudder * Sundance Now * Youtube TV * Tubi * Crackle * Roku Channel * Discovery+ Want to watch the old Newhart show? Even with all these options, you're out of luck. Try your library. Streaming is a nightmare. Want to watch every game your favorite NFL team plays this season but you're not in their broadcast area? Try to suss out this mess. https://www.nfl.com/ways-to-watch/ https://www.nfl.com/ways-to-watch/

Apocryphon 4y ago
Don't forget WhatTimeIsItRightNow.com
- echelon 4y ago
  > Don't forget WhatTimeIsItRightNow.com That's the problem with Hollywoo. Too much fragmentation as a result of everyone chasing after the power vacuum created by streaming. Every small outfit thinks they can win. Consolidation will happen as clear winners emerge and failures continue to materialize. (I have that sticker on one of my old laptops. Also a "Hollywoo" sticker on one of my current laptops. I love it because my startup is in that space.)
  - mkaic 4y ago
    reminds me of my favorite game show: "Hollywoo Celebrities: What Do They Know? Do They Know Things? Let's Find Out! with J.D. Salinger"
ghaff 4y ago
That doesn't even count all the various Amazon Prime add-on services like Starz.
seanalltogether 4y ago
The big question is what is the solution to all this that doesn't involve 3 big players buying out all the rest? Is it even possible to get these guys to all play together in some kind of shared space.

smallerfish 4y ago

Netflix could afford to stock-acquire a few of these legacy companies as they decline. It'd help solve their content problem, and shore them up in their fight against Disney and HBO.

fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago

AMC’s flagship show (Better Call Saul) isn’t currently available on their streaming service. Personally, I’m happy to sign up for a streaming service to get access to a single show (I do often cancel once I’m done, so I’m not signed up to everything all the time). There’s only one show I’ve pirated recently: Better Call Saul. If it were on AMC+, I’d be a subscriber.

jeffbee 4y ago
Better Call Saul is available on ~15 different services including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, and AppleTV+. It would never have occurred to me that I should watch it on a separate AMC service.
- jimbob45 4y ago
  The last season isn't on Netflix or any of the other services you listed though. Personally, I suspect that's because that last season was GoT season 8-tier terrible and they're trying to get as many new fans to watch the older seasons before the masses recognize that the show is dead.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    That's interesting. It is on Amazon though.
  - dlbucci 4y ago
    > that last season was GoT season 8-tier terrible Uh, were we watching the same show? I thought it was an amazing finish to 11 seasons of Albuquerque and meth-based fun, and so did critics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Call_Saul_(season_6)#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Call_Saul_(season_6)#Re... > before the masses recognize that the show is dead. I mean, that was the final season, so I think most people are aware that the show won't be continuing...
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    > before the masses recognize that the show is dead. It was widely publicized that the most recent season of Better Call Saul was the end of the series. I also disagree it was anywhere near as bad as GoT ending, or bad at all.

gcanyon 4y ago

There's only room for so many streaming services. Sample size of one, but I literally don't know anything that's on Shudder, and AMC+ I can name The Walking Dead, which I gave up on after the first season; and apparently the Ann Rice-iverse? I've read a few of her books, and saw Interview with a Vampire 30(?) years ago? That's not compelling.

wirthjason 4y ago

AMC+, which costs $8.99 a month for a subscription, does not run ads. How many of these are there going to be? I don’t want a $200 cable bill but I also don’t want dozens of subscriptions. I’ll subscribe to a few streaming services (eg Disney+ which my daughter watches) but outside of that I just don’t care. I also don’t have the time for stuff on the fringe.

commandlinefan 4y ago
> How many of these are there going to be? They're really killing their golden goose by trying to launch all these streaming services rather than agreeing to some sort of profit-sharing agreement with Netflix like they were doing when it first came out. These movies have no value to anybody if nobody's paying to watch them and if every studio hides them behind yet another $10/month streaming service that nobody is signing up for, they're going to go bankrupt. Streaming is how we consume entertainment now, and that's not changing - but every movie studio launching their own streaming service would be like every movie studio lanuching their own video rental company in the 90's.
- bloggie 4y ago
  I don’t know what the future here holds, but I agree completely and this is why I think it was a poor choice long-term for Netflix to become a production company. Their model was wholesaling content, first via mail and later over the Internet. Now that Netflix produces content, other studios wishing to stream content on Netflix are also in competition with Netflix content on Netflix’s own platform. The advantage of a neutral arbiter -over the debate of what to watch - is gone.

AlbertCory 4y ago

They have had some good shows, but I can buy entire seasons on Amazon Prime. I suppose they could shut that channel off or delay it, but that would not make me subscribe to AMC+. Rather, I'd just do without, or wait until the end of the season.

knaik94 4y ago

AMC alone doesn't say much about the greater TV industry since people have loyalty to specific shows and not the channel. Breaking Bad didn't become popular while airing, it became popular because it released on Netflix. Cable channels have outlived their purpose. Emulating cable channels by partitioning shows into streaming services is pushing people back to piracy. The traditional TV industry is continuing to fail to adapt to the different way in which people watch content. Youtube demonstrates really well how people are no longer loyal to a network, they are loyal to a creator or topic. There have been certain groups of channels that sort of remind me of an old school TV channel, like MatPat and his youtube channels Game Theorists, Film Theorists, and Food Theorists could have been a TV channel in combination with some other video game or theory crafting channels but people don't search by a bigger topic. People find content based on recommendations, either algorithmic or popular things watched by friends. Netflix Originals and Amazon Originals seem better, but I can't understand the metrics Netflix uses when deciding what to cancel. As someone who has shifted to online media as the main form of content I watch, I can't tell you what makes a cartoon network show a cartoon network show. I know because of the logos between shows and during ads, but I struggle to find a strong underlying identity. The easier access to international media has also caused an oversaturation of available good media. I no longer need to worry about what part of the world a show is made in, if it's popular enough, you'll be able to find it sailing the seas. HBO Max, the supposed online equivalent to the cable channel HBO will drop Westworld from its online catalog. Some fantastic Disney+ Marvel shows, like the critically acclaimed Loki, have no announced plans of getting a physical release and Loki released back in Jun 2021. When a TV show enthusiast sees those two pieces of news back to back, a normal conclusion is that the only "sure" way to own shows is piracy.

massysett 4y ago
YouTube is the network. Most YouTube creators probably wouldn’t survive if they set up a web site and posted videos on it.
- knaik94 4y ago
  Being on YouTube is the same as being on Television, seeing it as a network is part of the problem. New media doesn't fit into old frameworks. Many YouTube creators have set up successful crowdfunded channels. Certain topics are always demonetized and can't run ads, and creators just use YouTube to help distribute content. Patreon rolled out its own platform after Vimeo became too expensive to host on. Twitch, arguably, is a meaningful competitor to YouTube but exclusively focuses on live streaming. Over the last couple of years, YouTube managed to get top Twitch creators to switch with contracts of above 1 million dollars. Some leaked ad spots, like watching a trailer on stream or playing a game for 30-60 minutes, were between 2k and 10k USD for a streamer with around 8,000 average viewers per stream. There was a leak recently of how much top streamers on twitch made, and there were multiple 500K+ salaries. But the platform unfortunately follows the 1% of creators earn 90%+ of all income rule of thumb.

gigatexal 4y ago

If on iOS the reader mode gets past the paywall at least for me.

barbariangrunge 4y ago

> The number of adult scripted series ordered by TV networks and streaming companies fell this quarter, compared with the same period a year ago — a reflection of the new financial reality. What is happening in peoples heads? Did people really think that the boom in online content would last after people were allowed to leaved their houses to socialize again?

ramesh31 4y ago

Everyone here is talking content, and I don't think that's the issue. We are awash in a glut of unlimited great content available to stream now. The problem is ads. The advertisement model is stuck in the 20th century idea of "heres a block of obnoxious crap for you to mute for the next five minutes". And the monetization drags because of it. Great ads can be great. A differentiating feature for your platform. An integral part of your brand and identity. But instead it's just nonsequitor, non-contextual garbage.

mkl95 4y ago

AMC's output is low, and most if not all their good stuff is available somewhere else. I just learnt they have a streaming service. I wonder if they could make more money by signing some exclusivity deal with a major competitor.