40 ms·

Netflix is turning into cable TV

71 points by mfiguiere 3y ago

pleasantpeasant 3y ago
It's becoming TV. All it needs is a live news & sports section and you'd never need to leave the Netflix app.
- stcredzero 3y ago
  Then we're back to bundling. Exactly what is keeping us from having a system where viewers just directly pay content creators? (And the likes of Game of Thrones is distributed therein?)
  - woofcat 3y ago
    Distributed risk. Publisher's lose money on lots of content under the context of earning it on others. If somehow you could mega selectively pick it would be very expensive.
  - cheriot 3y ago
    There's a lot of movies available to "rent" or buy for a couple dollars, but more people pay for bundles than a la cart.
Almondsetat 3y ago
Perhaps enshittification is like the capitalistic version of carcinization [0]. Stuff like TV or the music labels or the movie industry became the way they are because it has been proven to generate the most revenue. When a new service comes out after some time it naturally tends to gravitate to the proven strategies of money making which in turn makes it seem we are going "back to the cable days". [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation
- autokad 3y ago
  Netflix's situation was unsustainable. We were getting content very cheaply because they were skirting a lot of agreements that made sure all the people in the process got paid. Most of big tech's innovation was just doing this: skirting laws and agreements and cutting people out of the gains. Also, companies initially allowed netflix to stream their assets because it was at first thought of as free money. Example: "We are not going to loose viewers by letting them stream our Breaking Bad, why not?" however, cannibalizations did occur, and netflix inevitably became a competitor.
  - readthenotes1 3y ago
    "Most of big tech's innovation was just doing this: skirting laws and agreements and cutting people out of the gains." Interesting cuz the vast majority of any tech innovation is cutting people out and using fast and reliable machines to do work instead...
    - edgyquant 3y ago
      Ah yes, because Uber and Airbnb definitely cut people out of the mix
      - readthenotes1 3y ago
        You think taxis and room renting are innovations of uber and Airbnb??
  - Almondsetat 3y ago
    Once upon a time streaming required the highest end hardware and software you could get your hands on. This meant that only a company (i.e. Netflix) that specialized in streamimg services could offer such expertise, thus if you wanted your content streamed you would sign an agreement with them. Nowadays "streaming engineers" are a lot more available for building a company's streamimg platform and costs have gone down significantly so everyone is just ending the deals and getting back their stuff
- 3y ago
cwales95 3y ago
This has been happening for years with the spawning of all these streaming services. At one point a lot of content was on Netflix but now it’s been bundled into the owners own streaming platform. So we’ve effectively went from cable tv to digital streaming freedom and almost back to square one.
- gumby 3y ago
  Most of those owners are bleeding out, so to stanch the flow they are licensing their content to other companies like...netflix. It'll end up with a little oligarchy of a small number of streamers and then quality will plummet and ads will be unavoidable.
  - midasuni 3y ago
    And pirate bay will once again be the place to go
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      You both are using future tense for something that's already happening for at least a year now.
    - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
      It still is, for me. And 1337x.
- geertj 3y ago
  While I agree that there is ongoing enshittification, I do not think it's fair to say we're back at square one yet or any time soon. With Cable I am forced to buy a single ~$70+ plan with 100s of channels I don't need. With the streamers, at least I can get their ~$20 options independently.
  - jeromegv 3y ago
    Yep! And you can alternate from month to month, you don't need to get ALL STREAMING SERVICES every single month. Unsubscribing is extremely easy. Now try to disconnect your cable and reconnect it months after months. We are nowhere near the cost and the pain of cable
imgabe 3y ago
It's not even doing a good job of that, though. The other day someone mentioned the 1990 movie "Taking Care of Business" with Jim Belushi and Charles Grodin. It's a pretty unremarkable movie, but I remembered liking it as a kid for whatever reason and wanted to see it again. Of course, it's not on any of the four streaming services I pay for (I'm outside the US so ymmv). And why? Why is the studio hoarding access to this film that probably stopped making them money decades ago when they could just lease out the streaming rights and make something of it? I would kind of love it if there were a modern day TNT / TBS / USA that had all the movies you half-remembered from long ago, but Hollywood can't get their heads out of their asses long enough in the scramble for each individual property to have its own streaming service to pick up literal free money that is just sitting there.
- jimt1234 3y ago
  This is exactly why I miss the old, neighborhood, mom-and-pop DVD-rental store. The place near my apartment back in the early-2000s pretty much never removed anything from the shelves, so you could find almost any movie ever made. You just had to wipe the dust off some of them.
  - cromka 3y ago
    Any movie ever made in the US, that is…
    - jfoutz 3y ago
      It depended. I mean, nobody's going to have everything. It wasn't too hard to come by _man bites dog_ or _run lola run_. European art house stuff. A different place had a deep Spanish selection. In my part of the u.s. southwest, Bollywood, Japan and Korea were under-represented. I'd imagine different proprietors had different tastes. See something they liked, if it rented, look for more of that flavor.
  - killjoywashere 3y ago
    If you can erase the past, you can control the population by influencing their collective memory.
BLKNSLVR 3y ago
I'll always have some sympathy for Netflix because they were effectively first. I remember waiting patiently for Netflix to arrive in Australia, and then as soon as it did arrive, a flood of competitors decided to "me too" into the party. They were too afraid to be first, so I've stuck with Netflix out of respect for their blazing the trail. The competitors such as Disney and Paramount have caused the enshittification by fracturing the offerings; walling off their IP into their own individual gardens rather than licensing it out. Ideally there would be multiple Netflix equivalents, with slightly differing value propositions, but with significant overlap in content licensed from the likes of Disney and Paramount. That's not the present we've found ourselves in though. It's an interesting outcome of how "the market" works. I feel like I'm an apologist for Netflix, and so I must be to some extent, but Netflix are reacting to the market it finds itself in, in order to remain viable.
- iwontberude 3y ago
  They pivoted over ten years ago to literally “become HBO” and while that was a pretty weak vision, I think they succeeded.
  - airstrike 3y ago
    If by "become HBO" you mean become as bad as the current state of HBO, sure, in which 99% of the content is trash but there's a show or two that are still decent. Tragically most Netflix originals are hot garbage. I'm repeatedly amazed at how BAD television is today. I guess I pay for Netflix because every so often there's a show like The Crown which is actually commendable, even if I don't strictly love it.
  - jeromegv 3y ago
    They didn't really have a choice. They knew everyone else would eventually create their own streaming service for their own content, so they needed content of their own.
    - iwontberude 3y ago
      They did have a choice to create a platform to commoditize other streaming services by creating a hardware platform for the living room, but instead they figured they had a better chance at playing in the smaller content creation market. Netflix could have kept and built Roku and at this point been in a better long term position with more categories of entertainment.
coder543 3y ago
I just want a 4K Originals Plan with 1 screen. Features: - Only Netflix Original content (in 4K) - 1 screen, since password sharing isn’t allowed anyways - No ads - No WWE - No smartphone games - No licensed content (which seems to be mostly 1080p anyways), since I can watch that elsewhere I will offer $14/mo, at most. Why should I be forced to pay for a bunch of stuff I don’t want or can’t use? This is why I don’t have a Netflix subscription. I subscribed for one month back in December to see how good/bad it was, and I was not impressed at all for $23/mo. The licensed content almost exclusively being 1080p just added insult to injury.
- tehwebguy 3y ago
  We're experiencing a re-bundling, you'll have to wait for the next unbundling.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - coder543 3y ago
    I literally paid for a month of Netflix in December, as I mentioned in the comment you replied to. I subscribed to Netflix for many years continuously before they massively inflated their prices. Yes, I would pay for it if their prices weren’t so offensive. Netflix thinks they deserve to charge far more than anyone else, while offering content that is on average less valuable to me than the competitors that I am subscribed to. My comment was a clear statement of what I want and what I would be willing to pay for. Netflix doesn't have to offer me what I want, and I don't have to pay them money. Your comment did not contribute anything helpful to this discussion. A dismissive generalization about an entire population segment (without any actual data) is not a good basis for anything.
    - ipaddr 3y ago
      Why not go for the 14/15 price option? Do you really need the best quality video for shows you judge to be average at best? Why do you need the best most expensive package? Stay within your budget.
whalesalad 3y ago
Ever since HBO merged with Discovery, the content library has become garbage. It’s all reality shows, real housewives, tons of low effort content. HBO used to be the spot for edgy/racy content, great movies and really great shows.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  You have to think big. The market for trash TV is enormous. HBO had saturated the quality market for a long time. If it wanted to grow, it needed trash.
  - airstrike 3y ago
    Probably one of the reasons it rebranded as "Max"
  - what_ever 3y ago
    AND you can anyway watch the HBO shows. It's not like they are removed..
    - mikestew 3y ago
      Unless you’re being sarcastic, go try and watch West World on Max. As a bonus, you will discover one of the reasons we cancelled Max.
      - what_ever 3y ago
        Eh, a couple of originals out of 100s HBO has produced. I am okay with that.
bxparks 3y ago
Netflix produced some interesting original shows. Most of them got canceled after a single season, on a cliff-hanger. That got frustrating, so we stopped watching Netflix original shows. Then we stopped watching Netflix. Then we canceled Netflix.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  You know it. I won't watch a Netflix series until the series finale. I don't need any more rugs pulled out from under me.
  - ensignavenger 3y ago
    I feel the same way, but at this point, I have extended the same policy to Disney and Amazon to at least some degree. If I can't verify that the show has a decent conclusion at the end of what is already released, I avoid it.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      If it’s not available in a box set at the library, I won’t get it. If it is, well I got it from the library and saved a subscription.
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      Fair point, and I'm with you on that. If a season is truly a self-contained plot, like "Fargo" or "Reacher" or "True Detective", fine. I'll start watching once the whole season's available. If each season is an act of a larger story, no way.
- tomrod 3y ago
  Right? We just canceled Netflix after 15 years or so of subscription. Their content discovery is garbage, their licensing decisions questionable, and their original content typically B- or C- grade. Sure, I liked Sandman. But a light bulb flipped when I watched prime and saw maybe 60% of the content looked interested. Netflix was maybe 2%. Hulu near 25% without add-ons. You want customer loyalty? Add a new season to recently canceled things, with extraordinarily high quality. That's what kept me engaged for several years!
mvdtnz 3y ago
> it's got old movies An incredibly small catalogue of old movies > it's got WWE Not in my region
jurassic 3y ago
> a graveyard of prematurely canceled originals This is the crux of the issue for me. I lost interest in even trying new Netflix shows because they developed a reputation for cancelling lots of good, not great, shows with loyal followings because they weren't pulling in blockbuster viewership numbers on the level of Stranger Things. This spray and pray strategy is fundamentally disrespectful to the audience.
- lathiat 3y ago
  I feel like mainstream TV wasn't much better at that. The vast majority of TV shows I got into seemed to get cancelled after 1-2 seasons. While they seem to have a bad track record by public opinion, it's unclear how much worse Netflix was at this. I did a quick google to see if I could find any statistics, I got bored looking for some better data but did find this article claiming that from 2009-2012 "on average, 65% of new network television series will be canceled within their first season.": https://screenrant.com/tv-success-rate-canceled-shows/ https://screenrant.com/tv-success-rate-canceled-shows/
  - jurassic 3y ago
    Could be, I'm not really old enough to remember how linear TV dealt with new television series. Perhaps it is mainly a problem of perception. When you turn on the hotel TV and see a Law & Order rerun playing for the umpeenth time you aren't really thinking about all the other shows that never got beyond a pilot because they couldn't outperform a juggernaut like Law & Order and earn a slot in the schedule. The way Netflix seems to drive every season into a cliffhanger ending and then cancel seems pretty short-sighted though. If they just let stories be a little more self-contained, then these one-season shows (dare I say "miniseries"?) would accumulate into a catalog of stories that are actually worth a damn for the audiences that find them later. Every piece of content in the library that they don't have to pay to license can earn back an ROI from a niche audience over a much longer period of time since they don't have to optimize the limited number of hours in the schedule like linear TV. I think there is an emotional difference also that plays a role here. With traditional TV, people I think were maybe more accustomed to the idea of "you get what you get". Don't like what's on? You can change the channel, but you can't pick out exactly what you want, so you have to get used to settling for "good enough". So you leave Law & Order playing in the background even if, really, police procedurals aren't something that inspire passion in you. But with streaming, there is the illusion of infinite choice. The magic of it is getting exactly what you want exactly when you want it, and the magic fizzles the moment the thing you like and very much want to continue watching gets unceremoniously cancelled. It feels like having a choice taken away.
paxys 3y ago
"Netflix is shit". "No one watches Netflix anymore". "They cancel all the good shows". "There's nothing worth watching anyways". "Banning account sharing was a boneheaded move and everyone is going to cancel because of it". "Netflix is worse than cable now". Also: > Netflix tops Wall Street revenue estimates and adds a record 13.1 million subscribers in the last quarter. At some point all the terminally online people on places like Reddit and HN have to realize that they don't represent the general population.
- passwordoops 3y ago
  You have to be nuanced about those numbers. My parents, who are definitely not Redditors and were concerned that I frequent news page for Hackers, have gotten into the habit of cycling through the streamers every few months. How many of those 13.1 M are genuinely new versus returning subs who will cancel in 3-6 months and contribute to Disney+/Prime/Paramount/etc "growth" (again)?
  - cudgy 3y ago
    25% of Netflix subscribers churn every year, so they have to reacquire all their customers every 4 years. Other streaming services like Starz have 100% customer churn per year! Tough business.
MostlyStable 3y ago
Sometimes I wonder what our media landscape would look like if exclusive licensing deals were prohibited. You still own your IP, you can sell it, but whatever price you set, it's the price that anyone who is interested in your product is allowed to buy. I'm not sure how this would interact with companies that both create and distribute content. They'd either be forced to come up with a price, or else maybe that combination of services would be disallowed under an extension of market consolidation/monopoly rules? I dunno, all I know is that the current regime sucks in everything from streaming to sports broadcasts.
- michael1999 3y ago
  Radio has compulsory licensing. It seems to work ok. And the dvd era Netflix owed their existence to 1st sale doctrine. But the studios would fight it to the bitter end.
- TMWNN 3y ago
  What about the opposite? Any content, once published/distributed/broadcast in the US, that is not made readily available to the public going forward loses copyright protection. This includes revisions. * A film, TV show, sound recording, book, or any other copyrighted content must, once made available for public purchase, always remain available. If the only streaming service willing to pay to stream your movie has the smallest market share, too bad; the market has spoken on the value of your content. An ebook can fulfill this purpose for a print book; streaming can fulfill this purpose for a theatrical or physical-media film. But it must be available to maintain copyright. * As michael1999 suggested, compulsory licensing should apply; if Netflix wants to pay the same amount of money as the above-mentioned small market-share streaming service for the film, Netflix must be allowed to do so. The film's rights owner can demand more, raising the price for all, but if every outlet refuses, the film immediately goes into public domain. This process is reversible, but it would set a ceiling to prevent the owner from setting a ridiculously high price to prevent its availability. * If a Blu-ray of a film or TV show has excised or modified scenes for whatever reason, and the original isn't also made available (whether on a different "theatrical cut" release, or as a different cut on the same disc), the entire original version immediately goes into public domain. * If NBC posts Saturday Night Live skits on YouTube that have removed "problematic" scenes[1] without explaining the differences—a diff file, basically—the entire original skit loses copyright protection. Separate issue, but also very worthwhile: * Streaming services must make all data regarding their content available in some standardized format. Consumers should be able to use one application to access all content they have access to. The creator of SmartTube (a very nice YouTube-compatible player) should be able to add the appropriate API support to search for and play Netflix/Prime Video/Disney+/Paramount+ content. EDIT: The above applies to software, too. Legalize abandonware! [1] Something I understand already happens
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
costanzaDynasty 3y ago
Now that it’s about eyeballs and ad buys, streaming will shed the narrowcasting and will run back to broadcasting and a more modern monoculture.
tennisflyi 3y ago
“Live long enough to become the villain.” I guess we should all be more cynical
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Related today: Netflix adds 13.1M subscribers, tops revenue estimates https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39111287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39111287

71 points by mfiguiere 3y ago

pleasantpeasant 3y ago

It's becoming TV. All it needs is a live news & sports section and you'd never need to leave the Netflix app.

stcredzero 3y ago
Then we're back to bundling. Exactly what is keeping us from having a system where viewers just directly pay content creators? (And the likes of Game of Thrones is distributed therein?)
- woofcat 3y ago
  Distributed risk. Publisher's lose money on lots of content under the context of earning it on others. If somehow you could mega selectively pick it would be very expensive.
- cheriot 3y ago
  There's a lot of movies available to "rent" or buy for a couple dollars, but more people pay for bundles than a la cart.

Almondsetat 3y ago

Perhaps enshittification is like the capitalistic version of carcinization [0]. Stuff like TV or the music labels or the movie industry became the way they are because it has been proven to generate the most revenue. When a new service comes out after some time it naturally tends to gravitate to the proven strategies of money making which in turn makes it seem we are going "back to the cable days". [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation

autokad 3y ago
Netflix's situation was unsustainable. We were getting content very cheaply because they were skirting a lot of agreements that made sure all the people in the process got paid. Most of big tech's innovation was just doing this: skirting laws and agreements and cutting people out of the gains. Also, companies initially allowed netflix to stream their assets because it was at first thought of as free money. Example: "We are not going to loose viewers by letting them stream our Breaking Bad, why not?" however, cannibalizations did occur, and netflix inevitably became a competitor.
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  "Most of big tech's innovation was just doing this: skirting laws and agreements and cutting people out of the gains." Interesting cuz the vast majority of any tech innovation is cutting people out and using fast and reliable machines to do work instead...
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    Ah yes, because Uber and Airbnb definitely cut people out of the mix
    - readthenotes1 3y ago
      You think taxis and room renting are innovations of uber and Airbnb??
- Almondsetat 3y ago
  Once upon a time streaming required the highest end hardware and software you could get your hands on. This meant that only a company (i.e. Netflix) that specialized in streamimg services could offer such expertise, thus if you wanted your content streamed you would sign an agreement with them. Nowadays "streaming engineers" are a lot more available for building a company's streamimg platform and costs have gone down significantly so everyone is just ending the deals and getting back their stuff
3y ago

cwales95 3y ago

This has been happening for years with the spawning of all these streaming services. At one point a lot of content was on Netflix but now it’s been bundled into the owners own streaming platform. So we’ve effectively went from cable tv to digital streaming freedom and almost back to square one.

gumby 3y ago
Most of those owners are bleeding out, so to stanch the flow they are licensing their content to other companies like...netflix. It'll end up with a little oligarchy of a small number of streamers and then quality will plummet and ads will be unavoidable.
- midasuni 3y ago
  And pirate bay will once again be the place to go
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    You both are using future tense for something that's already happening for at least a year now.
  - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
    It still is, for me. And 1337x.
geertj 3y ago
While I agree that there is ongoing enshittification, I do not think it's fair to say we're back at square one yet or any time soon. With Cable I am forced to buy a single ~$70+ plan with 100s of channels I don't need. With the streamers, at least I can get their ~$20 options independently.
- jeromegv 3y ago
  Yep! And you can alternate from month to month, you don't need to get ALL STREAMING SERVICES every single month. Unsubscribing is extremely easy. Now try to disconnect your cable and reconnect it months after months. We are nowhere near the cost and the pain of cable

imgabe 3y ago

It's not even doing a good job of that, though. The other day someone mentioned the 1990 movie "Taking Care of Business" with Jim Belushi and Charles Grodin. It's a pretty unremarkable movie, but I remembered liking it as a kid for whatever reason and wanted to see it again. Of course, it's not on any of the four streaming services I pay for (I'm outside the US so ymmv). And why? Why is the studio hoarding access to this film that probably stopped making them money decades ago when they could just lease out the streaming rights and make something of it? I would kind of love it if there were a modern day TNT / TBS / USA that had all the movies you half-remembered from long ago, but Hollywood can't get their heads out of their asses long enough in the scramble for each individual property to have its own streaming service to pick up literal free money that is just sitting there.

jimt1234 3y ago
This is exactly why I miss the old, neighborhood, mom-and-pop DVD-rental store. The place near my apartment back in the early-2000s pretty much never removed anything from the shelves, so you could find almost any movie ever made. You just had to wipe the dust off some of them.
- cromka 3y ago
  Any movie ever made in the US, that is…
  - jfoutz 3y ago
    It depended. I mean, nobody's going to have everything. It wasn't too hard to come by _man bites dog_ or _run lola run_. European art house stuff. A different place had a deep Spanish selection. In my part of the u.s. southwest, Bollywood, Japan and Korea were under-represented. I'd imagine different proprietors had different tastes. See something they liked, if it rented, look for more of that flavor.
- killjoywashere 3y ago
  If you can erase the past, you can control the population by influencing their collective memory.

BLKNSLVR 3y ago

I'll always have some sympathy for Netflix because they were effectively first. I remember waiting patiently for Netflix to arrive in Australia, and then as soon as it did arrive, a flood of competitors decided to "me too" into the party. They were too afraid to be first, so I've stuck with Netflix out of respect for their blazing the trail. The competitors such as Disney and Paramount have caused the enshittification by fracturing the offerings; walling off their IP into their own individual gardens rather than licensing it out. Ideally there would be multiple Netflix equivalents, with slightly differing value propositions, but with significant overlap in content licensed from the likes of Disney and Paramount. That's not the present we've found ourselves in though. It's an interesting outcome of how "the market" works. I feel like I'm an apologist for Netflix, and so I must be to some extent, but Netflix are reacting to the market it finds itself in, in order to remain viable.

iwontberude 3y ago
They pivoted over ten years ago to literally “become HBO” and while that was a pretty weak vision, I think they succeeded.
- airstrike 3y ago
  If by "become HBO" you mean become as bad as the current state of HBO, sure, in which 99% of the content is trash but there's a show or two that are still decent. Tragically most Netflix originals are hot garbage. I'm repeatedly amazed at how BAD television is today. I guess I pay for Netflix because every so often there's a show like The Crown which is actually commendable, even if I don't strictly love it.
- jeromegv 3y ago
  They didn't really have a choice. They knew everyone else would eventually create their own streaming service for their own content, so they needed content of their own.
  - iwontberude 3y ago
    They did have a choice to create a platform to commoditize other streaming services by creating a hardware platform for the living room, but instead they figured they had a better chance at playing in the smaller content creation market. Netflix could have kept and built Roku and at this point been in a better long term position with more categories of entertainment.

coder543 3y ago

I just want a 4K Originals Plan with 1 screen. Features: - Only Netflix Original content (in 4K) - 1 screen, since password sharing isn’t allowed anyways - No ads - No WWE - No smartphone games - No licensed content (which seems to be mostly 1080p anyways), since I can watch that elsewhere I will offer $14/mo, at most. Why should I be forced to pay for a bunch of stuff I don’t want or can’t use? This is why I don’t have a Netflix subscription. I subscribed for one month back in December to see how good/bad it was, and I was not impressed at all for $23/mo. The licensed content almost exclusively being 1080p just added insult to injury.

tehwebguy 3y ago
We're experiencing a re-bundling, you'll have to wait for the next unbundling.
mvdtnz 3y ago
[flagged]
- coder543 3y ago
  I literally paid for a month of Netflix in December, as I mentioned in the comment you replied to. I subscribed to Netflix for many years continuously before they massively inflated their prices. Yes, I would pay for it if their prices weren’t so offensive. Netflix thinks they deserve to charge far more than anyone else, while offering content that is on average less valuable to me than the competitors that I am subscribed to. My comment was a clear statement of what I want and what I would be willing to pay for. Netflix doesn't have to offer me what I want, and I don't have to pay them money. Your comment did not contribute anything helpful to this discussion. A dismissive generalization about an entire population segment (without any actual data) is not a good basis for anything.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    Why not go for the 14/15 price option? Do you really need the best quality video for shows you judge to be average at best? Why do you need the best most expensive package? Stay within your budget.

whalesalad 3y ago

Ever since HBO merged with Discovery, the content library has become garbage. It’s all reality shows, real housewives, tons of low effort content. HBO used to be the spot for edgy/racy content, great movies and really great shows.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
You have to think big. The market for trash TV is enormous. HBO had saturated the quality market for a long time. If it wanted to grow, it needed trash.
- airstrike 3y ago
  Probably one of the reasons it rebranded as "Max"
- what_ever 3y ago
  AND you can anyway watch the HBO shows. It's not like they are removed..
  - mikestew 3y ago
    Unless you’re being sarcastic, go try and watch West World on Max. As a bonus, you will discover one of the reasons we cancelled Max.
    - what_ever 3y ago
      Eh, a couple of originals out of 100s HBO has produced. I am okay with that.

bxparks 3y ago

Netflix produced some interesting original shows. Most of them got canceled after a single season, on a cliff-hanger. That got frustrating, so we stopped watching Netflix original shows. Then we stopped watching Netflix. Then we canceled Netflix.

kstrauser 3y ago
You know it. I won't watch a Netflix series until the series finale. I don't need any more rugs pulled out from under me.
- ensignavenger 3y ago
  I feel the same way, but at this point, I have extended the same policy to Disney and Amazon to at least some degree. If I can't verify that the show has a decent conclusion at the end of what is already released, I avoid it.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    If it’s not available in a box set at the library, I won’t get it. If it is, well I got it from the library and saved a subscription.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    Fair point, and I'm with you on that. If a season is truly a self-contained plot, like "Fargo" or "Reacher" or "True Detective", fine. I'll start watching once the whole season's available. If each season is an act of a larger story, no way.
tomrod 3y ago
Right? We just canceled Netflix after 15 years or so of subscription. Their content discovery is garbage, their licensing decisions questionable, and their original content typically B- or C- grade. Sure, I liked Sandman. But a light bulb flipped when I watched prime and saw maybe 60% of the content looked interested. Netflix was maybe 2%. Hulu near 25% without add-ons. You want customer loyalty? Add a new season to recently canceled things, with extraordinarily high quality. That's what kept me engaged for several years!

mvdtnz 3y ago

> it's got old movies An incredibly small catalogue of old movies > it's got WWE Not in my region

jurassic 3y ago

> a graveyard of prematurely canceled originals This is the crux of the issue for me. I lost interest in even trying new Netflix shows because they developed a reputation for cancelling lots of good, not great, shows with loyal followings because they weren't pulling in blockbuster viewership numbers on the level of Stranger Things. This spray and pray strategy is fundamentally disrespectful to the audience.

lathiat 3y ago
I feel like mainstream TV wasn't much better at that. The vast majority of TV shows I got into seemed to get cancelled after 1-2 seasons. While they seem to have a bad track record by public opinion, it's unclear how much worse Netflix was at this. I did a quick google to see if I could find any statistics, I got bored looking for some better data but did find this article claiming that from 2009-2012 "on average, 65% of new network television series will be canceled within their first season.": https://screenrant.com/tv-success-rate-canceled-shows/ https://screenrant.com/tv-success-rate-canceled-shows/
- jurassic 3y ago
  Could be, I'm not really old enough to remember how linear TV dealt with new television series. Perhaps it is mainly a problem of perception. When you turn on the hotel TV and see a Law & Order rerun playing for the umpeenth time you aren't really thinking about all the other shows that never got beyond a pilot because they couldn't outperform a juggernaut like Law & Order and earn a slot in the schedule. The way Netflix seems to drive every season into a cliffhanger ending and then cancel seems pretty short-sighted though. If they just let stories be a little more self-contained, then these one-season shows (dare I say "miniseries"?) would accumulate into a catalog of stories that are actually worth a damn for the audiences that find them later. Every piece of content in the library that they don't have to pay to license can earn back an ROI from a niche audience over a much longer period of time since they don't have to optimize the limited number of hours in the schedule like linear TV. I think there is an emotional difference also that plays a role here. With traditional TV, people I think were maybe more accustomed to the idea of "you get what you get". Don't like what's on? You can change the channel, but you can't pick out exactly what you want, so you have to get used to settling for "good enough". So you leave Law & Order playing in the background even if, really, police procedurals aren't something that inspire passion in you. But with streaming, there is the illusion of infinite choice. The magic of it is getting exactly what you want exactly when you want it, and the magic fizzles the moment the thing you like and very much want to continue watching gets unceremoniously cancelled. It feels like having a choice taken away.

paxys 3y ago

"Netflix is shit". "No one watches Netflix anymore". "They cancel all the good shows". "There's nothing worth watching anyways". "Banning account sharing was a boneheaded move and everyone is going to cancel because of it". "Netflix is worse than cable now". Also: > Netflix tops Wall Street revenue estimates and adds a record 13.1 million subscribers in the last quarter. At some point all the terminally online people on places like Reddit and HN have to realize that they don't represent the general population.

passwordoops 3y ago
You have to be nuanced about those numbers. My parents, who are definitely not Redditors and were concerned that I frequent news page for Hackers, have gotten into the habit of cycling through the streamers every few months. How many of those 13.1 M are genuinely new versus returning subs who will cancel in 3-6 months and contribute to Disney+/Prime/Paramount/etc "growth" (again)?
- cudgy 3y ago
  25% of Netflix subscribers churn every year, so they have to reacquire all their customers every 4 years. Other streaming services like Starz have 100% customer churn per year! Tough business.

MostlyStable 3y ago

Sometimes I wonder what our media landscape would look like if exclusive licensing deals were prohibited. You still own your IP, you can sell it, but whatever price you set, it's the price that anyone who is interested in your product is allowed to buy. I'm not sure how this would interact with companies that both create and distribute content. They'd either be forced to come up with a price, or else maybe that combination of services would be disallowed under an extension of market consolidation/monopoly rules? I dunno, all I know is that the current regime sucks in everything from streaming to sports broadcasts.

michael1999 3y ago
Radio has compulsory licensing. It seems to work ok. And the dvd era Netflix owed their existence to 1st sale doctrine. But the studios would fight it to the bitter end.
TMWNN 3y ago
What about the opposite? Any content, once published/distributed/broadcast in the US, that is not made readily available to the public going forward loses copyright protection. This includes revisions. * A film, TV show, sound recording, book, or any other copyrighted content must, once made available for public purchase, always remain available. If the only streaming service willing to pay to stream your movie has the smallest market share, too bad; the market has spoken on the value of your content. An ebook can fulfill this purpose for a print book; streaming can fulfill this purpose for a theatrical or physical-media film. But it must be available to maintain copyright. * As michael1999 suggested, compulsory licensing should apply; if Netflix wants to pay the same amount of money as the above-mentioned small market-share streaming service for the film, Netflix must be allowed to do so. The film's rights owner can demand more, raising the price for all, but if every outlet refuses, the film immediately goes into public domain. This process is reversible, but it would set a ceiling to prevent the owner from setting a ridiculously high price to prevent its availability. * If a Blu-ray of a film or TV show has excised or modified scenes for whatever reason, and the original isn't also made available (whether on a different "theatrical cut" release, or as a different cut on the same disc), the entire original version immediately goes into public domain. * If NBC posts Saturday Night Live skits on YouTube that have removed "problematic" scenes[1] without explaining the differences—a diff file, basically—the entire original skit loses copyright protection. Separate issue, but also very worthwhile: * Streaming services must make all data regarding their content available in some standardized format. Consumers should be able to use one application to access all content they have access to. The creator of SmartTube (a very nice YouTube-compatible player) should be able to add the appropriate API support to search for and play Netflix/Prime Video/Disney+/Paramount+ content. EDIT: The above applies to software, too. Legalize abandonware! [1] Something I understand already happens

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costanzaDynasty 3y ago

Now that it’s about eyeballs and ad buys, streaming will shed the narrowcasting and will run back to broadcasting and a more modern monoculture.

tennisflyi 3y ago

“Live long enough to become the villain.” I guess we should all be more cynical

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

Related today: Netflix adds 13.1M subscribers, tops revenue estimates https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39111287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39111287