7 ms·

When Reed Hasting left and Ted Sarandos took over he had a bit of power shakeup and handed over the content reins to Bela Bajaria - who was brought in to head u

When Reed Hasting left and Ted Sarandos took over he had a bit of power shakeup and handed over the content reins to Bela Bajaria - who was brought in to head up international over Cindy Holland who was in charge of US content. Holland had brought in House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black, Stranger Things, The Crown, Ozark and Narcos. Holland seemed to focus more on developing fewer shows of higher quality content while Bajaria was more focused on "get all the content, throw it all at the wall and see what sticks" (who saw "Squid Games" coming?). It also aligns, however, with a timeframe of the launch of the studios having their own top tier services such as Disney+, Peacock and even the new HBOMax (MAX now) all of whom are more tightly holding the streaming rights to the studios to which they're associated. This for me aligned with when Netflix started going downhill. I have to say some of their newer content seems better but I'm not sure where its going to go. Right now HBOMax and Apple seem to be the most consistent for fewer, higher quality shows which also more closely aligns with my viewing habits. Netflix we keep mostly for my daughter these days and the few random hits that come through on Netflix.

whinenot 3y ago
“I wonder if, say, a bonobo throwing shit at a whiteboard full of titles as a method of deciding what projects to make would have more or less success than all of these other ‘deciders’ who think they know what people want or don’t want.”[0] [0] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/netflixs-big-wake-up-call-the-power-clash-behind-the-crash-1235136004/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/netflixs-...
- passion__desire 3y ago
  Why is Netflix not following short high quality 1-3 min videos model which is popular with young crowd? They already have Fast laughs tab which mimics that. Youtube / Creative studios could pitch 1-3 min video ideas which Netflix could greenlight and provide just bare minimum capital to produce. If the final film is good, Netflix could buy the film and release on their platform. Current Trends which are in favour of above idea: 1] Story generation will get cheaper thanks to ChatGPT. 2] Film generation will get cheaper thanks to Stable Diffusion. 3] Short video formats are already very good, engaging. 4] RunwayML and so on.
  - themitigating 3y ago
    Wasn't this what Quibi tried?
    - passion__desire 3y ago
      Not sure why Quibi failed. Maybe trying to get distribution/tech and content right at the same time didn't work for them. Netflix doesn't have distribution problem, just content and it should try to iterate on what works. Personally, there are so many short stories (e.g. by Greg Egan, Borges, others[0]) which I would like it to reach mass audience. Rights are tricky issue though. https://qntm.org/responsibilit https://qntm.org/responsibilit [0]
      - nerpderp82 3y ago
        Quibi failed because they over capitalized it and then pulled out when it didn't have the xxM DAUs. They basically launched and had an amazing journey in the same month.
        Miraste 3y ago
        To be fair to the backers (such winning personalities as Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, ugh), it wasn't a case of 1M DAUs when they wanted 5M. It was more like 5k DAUs when they wanted 5M. The idea was dead on arrival, no amount of money and effort would've saved it.
      - mikeryan 3y ago
        Quibi was interesting - the more I think about it (I work in this space) the more I think they actually might have had something. The reason they failed is mostly because they went too big too fast. They spent almost a billion dollars in content at launch and expected to get a ton of people subscribed quickly at $8 a pop. Had a bit of a chicken and egg situation there. They needed enough quality content to justify that amount per month. But it was all new, untested content. When they didn't get the subscribers they had pretty much zero runway to ride it out and iterate.
jorvi 3y ago
Netflix it’s power is innovation. Think Bandersnatch. I assume they’re going to be (one of) the first with an AI-assisted or even completely generated show that is completely tuned to your taste. I expect the same to happen with games, with the wildcard of multiplayer. Music probably earlier than movies / series and games even.
- jjulius 3y ago
  >Netflix it's power is innovation. Think Bandersnatch. A one-off thing from 5 years ago that hasn't been replicated since and nobody really cares about now?
  - jorvi 3y ago
    I mean, that is exactly my point. I’m not saying HBO or Apple TV+ (what a name..) couldn’t do it, just that they seem much less poised to. Funny how saying Bandersnatch was innovative gets HN absolutely livid.
    - jjulius 3y ago
      >Funny how saying Bandersnatch was innovative gets HN absolutely livid. ... huh? I didn't say Bandersnatch wasn't innovative and my feathers are far from ruffled. I just don't see how citing one thing from five years ago that no other streamer, nor Netflix themselves, have replicated since (correct me if I'm wrong) is a strong is example of Netflix being "innovative". I'd argue that other streaming providers would've explored this sort of thing already if they felt there was enough interest. Anecdotally, I'm in multiple communities that involve the discussion of film and television and people just aren't asking for that sort of thing.
      - jorvi 3y ago
        Not you, the larger community. My original comment was at -3 when I said that.
- silisili 3y ago
jerf 3y ago
"Holland seemed to focus more on developing fewer shows of higher quality content while Bajaria was more focused on "get all the content, throw it all at the wall and see what sticks" (who saw "Squid Games" coming?)." I think the root problem is that no studio anywhere is large enough to put out enough high-quality content to keep the people engaged continuously. Not even Disney. All the studios were looking over at Netflix making all the money and wanted to disintermediate the middleman, but the combination of all of them doing that turn one fairly decent (not perfect, but decent) streaming service into an array of streaming services each individually not worth the subscription. That worked for a bit but it's wearing out. The solution of just pumping out more is the obvious one to try, but it hasn't been going well. I'm... actually not convinced that's impossible? The bottleneck on these seems to be quality writing. Generally the actors act, the editors edit, the directors direct, the effects crew broadly succeeds at the effects, etc. But Hollywood in 2023 seems to have negative respect for writing. Take any Writing 101 course, and if you want to write for Hollywood, completely throw it out the window because they do not care in the slightest about any of that. I recognize of course that any 101 course is only the intro and the basics, but current Hollywood writing is not taking the rules, deeply understanding them, and then transcending them by virtue of the deep mastery of their craft... they're just plain writing for crap. They've got a ton of other priorities and "good writing" is so far down the list that it might as well not be on there. You can't get the best of the best to write for 100% of every season, but a lot of streaming stuff is several cuts below what middle-of-the-line episodic television shows were managing in the 90s in really, really basic stuff. Surely there's enough competent writers to at least get a solid C on the writing front to let all the other factors carry over to "at least worthwhile", if Hollywood would just raise the priority on that quite a bit more. Tons of high quality content is probably not on the table for anyone, but surely with all these resources we could scrape together some medium quality content more consistently?
- ChuckMcM 3y ago
  A lot of wisdom in that rant. I too have noticed the big gap is writers (who are going on strike it seems). I think we're all going to have to suffer through "stuff written by LLMs" for a while, but I really think that a studio that restructured their revenue sharing to focus more of the proceeds towards writers would find quite a bit of success in today's market.
biztos 3y ago
I'm starting to wonder if Netflix is maybe just trying harder in newer markets. I cancelled my subscription out of frustration at the crappy content I saw all the time in the US app (and the terrible discovery too) -- but now I keep seeing ads for fairly compelling Asian shows and I might resubscribe "in" another country. If you are throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, the stuff you get to throw might not be so good when you're competing with Apple, HBO, and all the rest. In a smaller market maybe the best people are still willing to be thrown at the Netflix Wall, so to speak.
stiltzkin 3y ago
For me it started going downhill with the high quantity of shows molded for ESG, now I download well-reviewed shows to my Plex even if I missed binge watching easily with Netflix.
tmpz22 3y ago
Do any of these executives deserve credit for the hits when Netflix earned a reputation for greenlighting just about anything?

whinenot 3y ago

“I wonder if, say, a bonobo throwing shit at a whiteboard full of titles as a method of deciding what projects to make would have more or less success than all of these other ‘deciders’ who think they know what people want or don’t want.”[0] [0] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/netflixs-big-wake-up-call-the-power-clash-behind-the-crash-1235136004/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/netflixs-...

passion__desire 3y ago
Why is Netflix not following short high quality 1-3 min videos model which is popular with young crowd? They already have Fast laughs tab which mimics that. Youtube / Creative studios could pitch 1-3 min video ideas which Netflix could greenlight and provide just bare minimum capital to produce. If the final film is good, Netflix could buy the film and release on their platform. Current Trends which are in favour of above idea: 1] Story generation will get cheaper thanks to ChatGPT. 2] Film generation will get cheaper thanks to Stable Diffusion. 3] Short video formats are already very good, engaging. 4] RunwayML and so on.
- themitigating 3y ago
  Wasn't this what Quibi tried?
  - passion__desire 3y ago
    Not sure why Quibi failed. Maybe trying to get distribution/tech and content right at the same time didn't work for them. Netflix doesn't have distribution problem, just content and it should try to iterate on what works. Personally, there are so many short stories (e.g. by Greg Egan, Borges, others[0]) which I would like it to reach mass audience. Rights are tricky issue though. https://qntm.org/responsibilit https://qntm.org/responsibilit [0]
    - nerpderp82 3y ago
      Quibi failed because they over capitalized it and then pulled out when it didn't have the xxM DAUs. They basically launched and had an amazing journey in the same month.
      - Miraste 3y ago
        To be fair to the backers (such winning personalities as Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, ugh), it wasn't a case of 1M DAUs when they wanted 5M. It was more like 5k DAUs when they wanted 5M. The idea was dead on arrival, no amount of money and effort would've saved it.
    - mikeryan 3y ago
      Quibi was interesting - the more I think about it (I work in this space) the more I think they actually might have had something. The reason they failed is mostly because they went too big too fast. They spent almost a billion dollars in content at launch and expected to get a ton of people subscribed quickly at $8 a pop. Had a bit of a chicken and egg situation there. They needed enough quality content to justify that amount per month. But it was all new, untested content. When they didn't get the subscribers they had pretty much zero runway to ride it out and iterate.

jorvi 3y ago

Netflix it’s power is innovation. Think Bandersnatch. I assume they’re going to be (one of) the first with an AI-assisted or even completely generated show that is completely tuned to your taste. I expect the same to happen with games, with the wildcard of multiplayer. Music probably earlier than movies / series and games even.

jjulius 3y ago
>Netflix it's power is innovation. Think Bandersnatch. A one-off thing from 5 years ago that hasn't been replicated since and nobody really cares about now?
- jorvi 3y ago
  I mean, that is exactly my point. I’m not saying HBO or Apple TV+ (what a name..) couldn’t do it, just that they seem much less poised to. Funny how saying Bandersnatch was innovative gets HN absolutely livid.
  - jjulius 3y ago
    >Funny how saying Bandersnatch was innovative gets HN absolutely livid. ... huh? I didn't say Bandersnatch wasn't innovative and my feathers are far from ruffled. I just don't see how citing one thing from five years ago that no other streamer, nor Netflix themselves, have replicated since (correct me if I'm wrong) is a strong is example of Netflix being "innovative". I'd argue that other streaming providers would've explored this sort of thing already if they felt there was enough interest. Anecdotally, I'm in multiple communities that involve the discussion of film and television and people just aren't asking for that sort of thing.
    - jorvi 3y ago
      Not you, the larger community. My original comment was at -3 when I said that.
silisili 3y ago

jerf 3y ago

"Holland seemed to focus more on developing fewer shows of higher quality content while Bajaria was more focused on "get all the content, throw it all at the wall and see what sticks" (who saw "Squid Games" coming?)." I think the root problem is that no studio anywhere is large enough to put out enough high-quality content to keep the people engaged continuously. Not even Disney. All the studios were looking over at Netflix making all the money and wanted to disintermediate the middleman, but the combination of all of them doing that turn one fairly decent (not perfect, but decent) streaming service into an array of streaming services each individually not worth the subscription. That worked for a bit but it's wearing out. The solution of just pumping out more is the obvious one to try, but it hasn't been going well. I'm... actually not convinced that's impossible? The bottleneck on these seems to be quality writing. Generally the actors act, the editors edit, the directors direct, the effects crew broadly succeeds at the effects, etc. But Hollywood in 2023 seems to have negative respect for writing. Take any Writing 101 course, and if you want to write for Hollywood, completely throw it out the window because they do not care in the slightest about any of that. I recognize of course that any 101 course is only the intro and the basics, but current Hollywood writing is not taking the rules, deeply understanding them, and then transcending them by virtue of the deep mastery of their craft... they're just plain writing for crap. They've got a ton of other priorities and "good writing" is so far down the list that it might as well not be on there. You can't get the best of the best to write for 100% of every season, but a lot of streaming stuff is several cuts below what middle-of-the-line episodic television shows were managing in the 90s in really, really basic stuff. Surely there's enough competent writers to at least get a solid C on the writing front to let all the other factors carry over to "at least worthwhile", if Hollywood would just raise the priority on that quite a bit more. Tons of high quality content is probably not on the table for anyone, but surely with all these resources we could scrape together some medium quality content more consistently?

ChuckMcM 3y ago
A lot of wisdom in that rant. I too have noticed the big gap is writers (who are going on strike it seems). I think we're all going to have to suffer through "stuff written by LLMs" for a while, but I really think that a studio that restructured their revenue sharing to focus more of the proceeds towards writers would find quite a bit of success in today's market.

biztos 3y ago

I'm starting to wonder if Netflix is maybe just trying harder in newer markets. I cancelled my subscription out of frustration at the crappy content I saw all the time in the US app (and the terrible discovery too) -- but now I keep seeing ads for fairly compelling Asian shows and I might resubscribe "in" another country. If you are throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, the stuff you get to throw might not be so good when you're competing with Apple, HBO, and all the rest. In a smaller market maybe the best people are still willing to be thrown at the Netflix Wall, so to speak.

stiltzkin 3y ago

For me it started going downhill with the high quantity of shows molded for ESG, now I download well-reviewed shows to my Plex even if I missed binge watching easily with Netflix.

tmpz22 3y ago

Do any of these executives deserve credit for the hits when Netflix earned a reputation for greenlighting just about anything?