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Disney really fucked up here. As Netflix has figured out the number one quality a streaming service needs is endless content so that no one opens the app withou

Disney really fucked up here. As Netflix has figured out the number one quality a streaming service needs is endless content so that no one opens the app without at least scrolling for a while. Every single person has some sort of guilty pleasure show that can be produced cheaply, and Netflix figured out they can make everyone’s guilty pleasure show by just green lighting everything they come across

steveBK123 3y ago
My wife watches more than me and I occasionally join. It's all genuinely decent stuff compared to awful NBC/ABC/CBS 12 season x 20 episode x ~20min weekly churned out dreck. But it is also completely mid / forgettable in a totally different way. A lot of the content is longer than a movie but shorter than a series. You get 5-10 episodes of ~40min length, enjoy it, and never ever think about it again. Rinse & repeat. A lot of the actors I jokingly refer to as "poor mans __" because they often cast people that sort of look like someone famous. They have a nack for casting decent early career actors/actresses. Sort of a corporatized studio that realized they didn't need prestige names. Maybe, darkly, they've also identified the fact that a lot of people "give it a shot" in acting and then move on, and they can be had a lot more cheaply than someone with a decade of film&TV under their belt. If you live in LA/NYC you've probably got a few of these types in your friends circle.
- justrealist 3y ago
  > They have a nack for casting decent early career actors/actresses. That's what Marvel used to do (dozens of A+ list actors in Hollywood were no-name when Marvel drafted them, think about Chris Pratt), but they lost the plot and started pulling in big actors.
  - recursivecaveat 3y ago
    Ultimately casting is an ineffable creative skill. Execs find it increasingly harder to trust in the simple skill of artists as the piles of money get bigger. Hence they invest more and more money into 'safe' and more measurable areas like name-recognition, special effects, and marketing. Eventually it ends in disaster though, hundreds of millions of dollars can only go so far to save bad story-telling, and the effort to create a 'guaranteed' blockbuster is revealed as simply putting all your eggs in one basket. There's an excellent memo by Jeffrey Katzenberg about the phenomenon in disney: https://sriramk.com/memos/katzenberg.pdf https://sriramk.com/memos/katzenberg.pdf I think the effect extends beyond artistic domains as well: how many times have we seen large organizations get burned by 'safely' spending billions of dollars on contractors and getting bad software anyway when they might have simply done their best to hire smart people and then pray for a fraction of the cost.
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      Thanks for the link.
fullshark 3y ago
Netflix basically created a better cable TV, endless trash but there's those few shows you enjoy watching or classic sitcoms as comfort food you like to put on and shut your brain off for. The content isn't king, at least not like the media conglomerates believe.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  Even if content IS king, the conglomerates have risk-aversely optimized on churning out bad but expensive content. The proliferation of sequel/prequel/spinoff/reboot/riff content on top of marquee brands has been overkill. It's like the late 90s move to "reality TV" except without the cost controls.

steveBK123 3y ago

My wife watches more than me and I occasionally join. It's all genuinely decent stuff compared to awful NBC/ABC/CBS 12 season x 20 episode x ~20min weekly churned out dreck. But it is also completely mid / forgettable in a totally different way. A lot of the content is longer than a movie but shorter than a series. You get 5-10 episodes of ~40min length, enjoy it, and never ever think about it again. Rinse & repeat. A lot of the actors I jokingly refer to as "poor mans __" because they often cast people that sort of look like someone famous. They have a nack for casting decent early career actors/actresses. Sort of a corporatized studio that realized they didn't need prestige names. Maybe, darkly, they've also identified the fact that a lot of people "give it a shot" in acting and then move on, and they can be had a lot more cheaply than someone with a decade of film&TV under their belt. If you live in LA/NYC you've probably got a few of these types in your friends circle.

justrealist 3y ago
> They have a nack for casting decent early career actors/actresses. That's what Marvel used to do (dozens of A+ list actors in Hollywood were no-name when Marvel drafted them, think about Chris Pratt), but they lost the plot and started pulling in big actors.
- recursivecaveat 3y ago
  Ultimately casting is an ineffable creative skill. Execs find it increasingly harder to trust in the simple skill of artists as the piles of money get bigger. Hence they invest more and more money into 'safe' and more measurable areas like name-recognition, special effects, and marketing. Eventually it ends in disaster though, hundreds of millions of dollars can only go so far to save bad story-telling, and the effort to create a 'guaranteed' blockbuster is revealed as simply putting all your eggs in one basket. There's an excellent memo by Jeffrey Katzenberg about the phenomenon in disney: https://sriramk.com/memos/katzenberg.pdf https://sriramk.com/memos/katzenberg.pdf I think the effect extends beyond artistic domains as well: how many times have we seen large organizations get burned by 'safely' spending billions of dollars on contractors and getting bad software anyway when they might have simply done their best to hire smart people and then pray for a fraction of the cost.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    Thanks for the link.

fullshark 3y ago

Netflix basically created a better cable TV, endless trash but there's those few shows you enjoy watching or classic sitcoms as comfort food you like to put on and shut your brain off for. The content isn't king, at least not like the media conglomerates believe.

steveBK123 3y ago
Even if content IS king, the conglomerates have risk-aversely optimized on churning out bad but expensive content. The proliferation of sequel/prequel/spinoff/reboot/riff content on top of marquee brands has been overkill. It's like the late 90s move to "reality TV" except without the cost controls.