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Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros
- phildini 10mo agoIt's time for Netflix' greedy acqs Taking value to the max So just sit back and relax and give us all your cash We're now a Netflix acq!
- amelius 10mo agoSmart move to sell before GenAI takes over the entire industry.
- cyanydeez 10mo agoE N S H I T T I F I C A T I O N Hey America, you're the problem.
- GaryBluto 10mo agoI wonder if an antitrust suit will be filed, this seems like a pretty significant acquisition.
- embedding-shape 10mo agoConsidering the words they're using across the announcement, it seems they're well aware what this will trigger, everything seems carefully chosen so someone can later point at this announcement and say "See, we think this will add MORE user choice, not less, which is good for competition!".
- tehwebguy 10mo agoEvery major merger announcement includes this obvious lie.
- utucuro 10mo agoIt is not a lie though. WB content is not globally available, Netflix content is. I for one, welcome access to stuff that WB has been sitting on without letting me pay them for it.
- izacus 10mo agoYou keep posting this without any idea whether Netflix will relicense anything at all or if you're going to get the movies you want. It's just copium fueled corporate bootlicking at this point.
- gabrielgio 10mo agoIt is a lie. You are holding on a possible short time gain while ignoring history proven long-term harm of reduced competition, which will lead to higher prices, less innovation, and fewer choices for consumers. USA anti-trust process is a joke, it is shame that so many company with global footprint relies on that.
- embedding-shape 10mo ago> WB content is not globally available, Netflix content is. Neither are "globally available" as "globally" includes countries that are currently under US embargo, and both those companies are US companies who (supposedly) follow US law. What you're welcoming isn't "I didn't have access before, now I do!" but rather "I could give Company A money to see this, now I can give company B money to see the same!" which I guess you're happy about, but other's obviously see it for what it is, no practical change except for shareholders.
- venturecruelty 10mo agoIt's like there's an entire continent of rakes and people are the Louis and Clark of stepping on all of them.
- vintermann 10mo agoIt will lead to more choice ... in videos to watch. It will reduce choice in where to watch them or who to pay for the pleasure.
- embedding-shape 10mo agoGreat re-iteration of my point :) Written for anti-trust regulators, intentionally misusing the words they'd use, but with very different meaning. Hopefully professionals will see through their thin veil.
- this_user 10mo agoWith the current administration, anything can be legal. Besides, they still have plans to spin off the cable networks, so this would mostly concern the streaming assets, movie studio, and the IP.
- cromka 10mo agoThe merger needs to be accepted by other markets, too. No offense but I find it quite amusing how Americans keep forgetting about that.
- tiborsaas 10mo agoHow does this work? I assume there would be one parent company at the end and if that's an American company what does any other country can say about it? Sure if they incorporated a child company there they might interfere, but they could also just close the company to deal with the situation and go forward with the merger.
- hrimfaxi 10mo agoEither they comply or exit the country. Remember how the UK blocked the Microsoft/Activision merger for a time?
- JetSpiegel 10mo agoYeah, "blocked" is a misleading word, if they merged anyway.
- hrimfaxi 10mo agoThe merge was only allowed after changes.
- nayroclade 10mo agoIf a US company operates in a different country as well, it has to abide by the laws of that country, or leave it. For example, Adobe's acquisition of Figma was blocked by the UK and EU regulators, despite them both being US companies headquartered in San Francisco. They could have chosen to leave the UK and EU markets entirely, in which case their merger would have been able to proceed, but they wouldn't have been able to sell anything to UK/EU citizens.
- mattbrewsbytes 10mo agoHow is this any bigger than Disney and all the media channels they own?
- ceejayoz 10mo agoIt isn’t. They should have been stopped, too.
- fatata123 10mo ago[dead]
- haritha-j 10mo agoWhere's Brendan Carr when you need him?
- auggierose 10mo agoDidn't they just buy HBO? Nice shopping spree!
- embedding-shape 10mo ago> Combination Will Offer More Choice and Greater Value for Consumers, Create More Opportunities for the Creative Community and Generate Shareholder Value No doubt about the last part, but how does merging two giants create "More Choice"? I know corporate double-speak is already out of control and I know they're writing whatever they can do avoid regulators who surely are looking into the acquisition, but surely these executives cannot believe acquisitions lead to more choice, right?
- Shaanie 10mo agoMore choice as in more content available to choose from on Netflix?
- marcusb 10mo agoMore choice as in “more revenue streams from which to create shareholder value.”
- embedding-shape 10mo agoSo when they say "Consumers", it should really have been "Netflix Customers", as for everyone else there is less choice, only already paying Netflix users get more content.
- nottorp 10mo agoAlready paying Netflix users will get to either agree with a price increase or leave :) After all, there is more "content" now.
- weird-eye-issue 10mo agoI'd really prefer better quality over quantity. Everything just feels like slop now and I find myself mostly only enjoying older movies. I find it's incredibly rare when I can actually find something half decent that's new on Netflix. Edit: Btw I find Max is like a better quality version of Netflix. But after a while I have the same problem there too. I find myself just watching something on YouTube instead most times
- rohankhameshra 10mo agoInteresting, that will bring a big production house capabilities within Netflix itself
- ThatMedicIsASpy 10mo agoSo they can raise the prices again in a few months?
- jamesbelchamber 10mo agoBuy those blu-rays while you still can (:
- Ateoto 10mo agoYeah, as a physical media collector, this is pretty devastating.
- sph 10mo agoPlenty of blu-rays thrive in the high seas.
- mapontosevenths 10mo agoIf they stop making them its gonna be hard to rip them.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo agoAt least so far, some private groups have access to Widevine decryptors.
- SSLy 10mo agoWidevine L3 are galore. Ahem
- mapontosevenths 10mo agoThe problem is the quality. Those streams are only like 6-10mbps bitrate. A regular blu-ray is closer to 30, and UHD can be well over 100mbps.
- SSLy 10mo agoDepends, high quality UHD bitstreams from quality streaming providers are around 25 MB/s. That's ~50 AVC-equivalent. UHD BluRays indeed go higher, usually 70-ish. But the former are already very watchable, and plenty of groups can get them.
- lurk2 10mo agoThis wasn’t on my radar at all. Was this kept quiet or did I just not hear about it?
- Macha 10mo agoIt's been talked about for like a month now
- protocolture 10mo agoIts been going around in cicles between "WB is fine, just rejected 2 other offers, whats the worst that could happen" and "Netflix buy out any day now WB is in the toilet"
- doublet00th 10mo agoDoes anyone who's participated in M&A know how they come up with a breakup fee? I believe this one is $5 Billion (per Bloomberg), and Adobe <-> Figma was $1 Billion. Interested to understand the modeling that goes into it.
- brk 10mo agoBased on some experience, it's like a bond to appear in court. The number is mostly an arbitrary calculation designed to discourage you from not following through.
- nutjob2 10mo agoLike everything else it's just a negotiated figure. Arguments to and fro would include the likelihood of breakup (such as regulatory risk, unforeseen events), how disruptive the whole process is and also simply how desperate the buyer or seller is. There's no modeling, it's a punishment or incentive. The intention is to inflict financial pain.
- bombcar 10mo agoThere’s a rough baseline of “cost to be acquired” and you start there, and do some doubling or other increases. Basically, being acquired is a pain in the assets and you want it to be worth your while to pursue it, even if it falls through, otherwise the board is looking at getting replaced.
- wigster 10mo ago$82.7BILLION no wonder my subscription keeps going up
- thebruce87m 10mo agoI wonder when the ads will come. There probably already is a enshittification roadmap that they’re working against.
- pcurve 10mo agoNot sure how many of you have WBD shares with its rather tumultuous past (spin off from ATT, the Bill Hwang mess), but if you've picked up shares on the cheap in the past few years sub $10, congratulations. "Under the terms of the agreement, each WBD shareholder will receive $23.25 in cash and $4.501 in shares of Netflix common stock for each share of WBD common stock outstanding at the closing of the transaction. "
- dizhn 10mo agoThat's $4.50 superscript 1
- saretup 10mo agoWBD price at this moment is just $25.28. I think there are some complicated conditions associated with the terms.
- IgorPartola 10mo agoThe exchanges are also closed.
- CamelCaseName 10mo agoPremarket open
- 10mo ago
- udev4096 10mo agoCouldn't care less, sailing the high sea is peaceful!
- jayveeone 10mo agoWhat a weird thing to say
- wiseowise 10mo agoYou'll care when there will be no physical media and you're left with compressed shit shown down your throat.
- dspillett 10mo ago> You'll care when there will be no physical media Physical media is on the way out for the most part, where it isn't already gone, and Netflix & co are the reason, not piracy. > and you're left with compressed shit shown down your throat. WRT “compressed shit”: the quality of ahem copies is often no worse than you'd get from an official streamed source. For those that have 4K-capable eyes it is often better as it JustWorks™ without quality dipping out due to bandwidth issues at the streamer, your ISP, or somewhere between, or for local playback needing a long fight to convince your Sony TV to accept that Sony media player connected via a Sony brand cable is legit. I actually pay for a couple of streaming services (though Prime largely begrudgingly as it got rolled into the delivery service I use), but still get media from ahem other sources because the playback UX is often preferable. Or if by “compressed shit” you are referring to the intellectual quality of the content not the technical merits of the medium, if it all turns to mush I'll just watch even less than I already do the same way I practically never game these days (though that is due to both content quality and technical matters). I've got other hobbies competing for my attention, I can just live without TV if TV quality falls further.
- jtuple 10mo agoI believe the GP was referring to most quality rips originating from physical media (ie. 4K UHDs). In a world without physical media, the best piracy can deliver is no better than the best encoding streamers have available (and that assumes DRM circumvention remains forever possible, otherwise we're gonna get worst quality from re-encoding decoded playbacks) > the quality of ahem copies is often no worse than you'd get from an official streamed source "No worse than streamed" is a far cry from a quality high-bitrate 4k UHD physical release.
- luc_ 10mo agoToo big to fail?
- pfdietz 10mo agoPlacidly uncaring since long ago I stopped consuming media from either party.
- glup 10mo agoPlacidly uncaring since long ago as I stopped consuming media full stop.
- Larrikin 10mo agoExclusively consuming social media like HN for your media sounds way worse than Game of Thrones, The Other Two, Emily in Paris or even Love is Blind
- venturecruelty 10mo agoYeah, I'm not sure if the best response from society is to simply stop appreciating an entire genre of human art. I mean, I get it, but like... we can't just keep giving up more and more lovely things forever, right? We shouldn't have to. We shouldn't have to put up with this nonsense, and snarkily clocking out doesn't seem like the answer. Some of us want to continue to have a rich variety of movies and TV shows, and we shouldn't let a very wealthy few control that.
- Ericson2314 10mo agoWe can read books
- pfdietz 10mo agoOr maybe we shouldn't put art as a concept on a pedestal. Why is it threatening that someone like me just walks away from it, or even (gasp) criticizes it? To me, media feels like something almost parasitic, exploiting FOMO and social status seeking (and yes, social media included).
- JKCalhoun 10mo agoIf someone wants "film school" you can do a lot worse than ticking off the film from the "1001 Movies to See Before You Die" [1]. It may take you the next decade to complete. There are some real oddballs in there that lean toward "art film" (but what do you expect from Andy Warhol). A lot of "foreign" films (foreign for this U.S. viewer). In short a lot of surprises. Definitely feel like a student of film now (for whatever that's worth). [1] https://1001films.fandom.com/wiki/The_List https://1001films.fandom.com/wiki/The_List
- mdotmertens 10mo agoAs someone who has recently begun exploring physical media, I find this quite disappointing. The volume on 4K Blu-Rays is often low, prices are high, and Netflix isn't doing much to support physical media. When you're just unwinding in front of a 65-inch screen, you might not notice the quality loss from compression. However, if you're actively watching on a 110-inch projector with an excellent sound system, every little detail becomes clear. And that doesn't even address the most frustrating part: owning less and less. I mean, no one needs to become a physical distributor, but it's disheartening that we lack consumer-friendly ownership of entertainment media when it comes to movies. I would love to see something like Bandcamp, but specifically for studios to release their movies to.
- mrits 10mo agoI can hardly blame a company for not supporting a product almost nobody wants to go back to.
- mathgeek 10mo agoThere are a whole bunch of choice quotes from 1984 that apply to this situation, but my favorite is still this one: “The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”
- wiseowise 10mo ago> I can hardly blame a company for not supporting a product almost nobody wants to go back to. But that logic we should keep only insta, tiktok and youtube shorts.
- ostacke 10mo agoI wonder what the US administration will demand from Netflix for approving this.
- gorfian_robot 10mo agoequity stake obviously
- venturecruelty 10mo agoGotta kiss at least two rings.
- alberth 10mo agoIt’s interesting that the stock market has no reaction to this news, after hours. As of writing this, Netflix is -0.6%
- komali2 10mo ago"Priced in" I guess. I mean look at Warner Bros stock, steadily climbing the last couple months until it hit basically exactly the price shareholders will get in exchange for their shares as part of this deal. Whenever one of my friends says they're thinking about getting into daytrading, all I can think is good luck beating the funds... they either can predict the future or just write it themselves.
- ChrisMarshallNY 10mo agoI hope that this means that the Netflix app on AppleTV will finally become a “first class citizen.” The Netflix app has always been treated badly by Apple. No idea why, but it means that I can’t have Netflix content in the “What’s Next” queue (among other things, like Netflix actors’ work not showing up in show information).
- ezfe 10mo agoOh you think Apple is treating Netflix bad? No no no. Netflix refuses to play game, because they want to keep their data to themselves. Apple would LOVE Netflix to integrate into the app.
- ChrisMarshallNY 10mo agoAh. That makes sense. Thanks for the elucidation. If that's the case, then we'll probably lose another app or two. :'(
- alt227 10mo agoAnd quite rightly so. Why would Netflix let Apple list all their content in an Apple branded interface as if it were their own?
- lotsofpulp 10mo agoBecause it makes a potential customer's life more inconvenient, so the customer has incentive to not buy Netflix. For example, me. The only reason I have for not buying Netflix is this little thing. Also, > Why would Netflix let Apple list all their content in an Apple branded interface as if it were their own That's not how it works. It literally says "Open in Netflix" or whatever app. All it does is make it easy to search for stuff, add it to your watchlist, and start playing it. What Netflix doesn't like is that it makes it easier for its customers to watch non Netflix content...which is obviously anti customer.
- trunnell 10mo ago
- srameshc 10mo agoI never imagined that a service that ships DVD via mail would one day buy Warner Brothers. It is amazing how innovation and focus can change the game. Someday a new startup will piggy bank on Netflix and probably buy it later.
- djtango 10mo agoMore like how did these companies drop the ball so bad. Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers. They owned a movie studio and record label. They also have in house expertise with cloud content distribution via PlayStation. Unfortunately for them around the time of Netflix's ascent they were embroiled with all kinds of financial issues but still the mind boggles
- wiseowise 10mo ago> how did these companies drop the ball so bad Companies didn't, leadership did. For a big, fat check. And they're happily retired now, sitting in their expensive villas with millions on their balance. They couldn't care less about your happy childhood memories that the content produced by their predecessors engraved in your mind.
- djtango 10mo agoI am not attached to any memories, I am remarking that a company that is currently 170~B market cap allowed a tiny upstart become a 460~B company when they had all the means and distribution to have stop them or outcompete them at many stages of the ascent. Really, it is probably an inevitable and somewhat healthy feature of life and the business cycle, but it is also baffling to witness. When I was at Amazon, I came away feeling that the gap between retail and Amazon was too large and the disruption was warranted. But in the case of Sony, it feels they were so much closer to the space that it feels like a much bigger own goal...
- maeln 10mo ago> Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers. They owned a movie studio and record label. They also have in house expertise with cloud content distribution via PlayStation. I feel like some of those very diversified company tend to be the one who struggle to evolve and adapt because some part of their business are worried about being cannibalized by the new business opportunity (like how streaming “killed” physical media). I.e, if you are the director of the “DVD player division” you have an active interest in killing any potential streaming division. Reality is of course more complex than this, but this is the kind of story we sometimes hear off when "too big to fail" companies end up missing a major shift.
- pluc 10mo agoAaah the race to the bottom accelerates. I haven't been a Netflix user for years, the quality of their stuff went past a level I was no longer comfortable supporting. It became a platform that is designed to keep you watching (literally anything) as opposed to a platform to find interesting/relevant entertainment. So much low quality, low effort content. Wonder which of AI wrong-but-instant answers or Netflix' empty entertainment will contribute more to genpop enshitification.
- winstonwinston 10mo agoExactly. Netflix is doing a total opposite of HBO content. Also HBO has been great at localization for european regions (subs, local content) unlike Netflix which cannot be bothered to even make subtitles for markets they sell to. IMO,Netflix wants to acquire their main competitor in europe.
- kotaKat 10mo agoOh cool, knock-on price hikes across not just the streaming industry, but all the other industries that decided they needed to bundle streaming subscriptions with their products. Can't wait to pay even more for my cell bill because they give me "free" Netflix!
- razodactyl 10mo ago"Who acquires Warner Bros. Wtf" - comments heard over my shoulder as I mention the title of this post.
- phartenfeller 10mo agoI don't like this. Netflix rarely creates excellent content; instead, it frequently produces mediocre or worse content. Will the same happen for Warner? Are cinemas now second behind streaming? Edit: I agree Netflix has good Originals. But most are from the early days when they favored quality over quantity. It is sad to see that they reversed that. They have much funding power and should give it to great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time instead of mediocrity.
- unglaublich 10mo agoNetflix is `while profitable(): make_sequel()` which _always_ ends with shitty content and incomplete stories.
- user2722 10mo agoAll TV series on Netflix end in S01. Even if they don't, it's a new show with same characters but lousy writing. Looking at * The CIA laywer who doesn't know about green passport * FUBAR * The Diplomat
- mrbluecoat 10mo agoMostly agree but their original k-dramas for the US market are pretty good.
- Cthulhu_ 10mo agoIs it still a K-drama if it's for the US market?
- Oras 10mo agoThey are agile
- bmacho 10mo agoHow are Netflix created contents profitable? I guess Netflix pays shows based on user time spent, and a Netflix show is profitable if users spend time on it, and not on other shows?
- I-M-S 10mo ago“The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.” - Ted Sarandos in 2013 Seems Netflix won that race.
- raverbashing 10mo agoAfter that complete fumble of HBO becoming "Max" they were at their last legs
- justin66 10mo agoThe "Max" fiasco was pretty much the strangest branding mistake ever. Not just an obvious mistake but it was honestly kind of a mystery that anyone would even be tempted to do that.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo ago"HBO or Cinemax... um, I wonder which name I should keep."
- tempoponet 10mo agoRemember when Netflix almost split its brand with "Quickster"? It was the dying DVD by mail service, but the whole debacle did nothing but confuse people.
- xp84 10mo agoTrue, although Netflix knew the DVD business had no permanent future anyway, so they really didn't care. If they'd picked a less silly name like "DVDflix" or something, it wouldn't have become a viral story, but either way it wouldn't have changed NFLX's fortunes.
- theandrewbailey 10mo agoAs I was reading the announcement, that quote popped into my head. I came here to say exactly that.
- 10mo ago
- smudgy 10mo agoTeen shows with 30 year olds by the fourth season... so that Steve Buscemi bit in 30 Rock will now be the norm.
- chauhankiran 10mo agoI was in one seminar, and someone asked a question about future to Harish Mehta (one of the founder of NASSCOM), and he said that big companies will become bigger for at least next 10 years.
- jmkd 10mo agoThis deal is an indicator of huge changes in global film & TV production. Hollywood's struggles amplified after the writer's strike with a perfect storm of issues around unionisation, technology, fragmenting audiences, new formats, asset liabilities and enormous competition to the east. Now LA soundstages are empty while production centres in Europe, UK, India, China, Nigeria are booming and vast new studios cropping up in the Middle East. Proposed tariffs will do little to stem this tide as the money has moved on already. In addition, traditional production methods are unsustainable and decision-making is opaque in an era where sustainability, transparency and democratisation are taking over. The main benefit to Netflix is of course the IP, but the traditional studio assets of WB have their days numbered.
- jillesvangurp 10mo agoThe value of the back catalog is still substantial for years to come. But you are right about the landscape changing dramatically for new productions. Hollywood was premised on economies of scale. Concentrate a lot of talent in one place and then put infrastructure in place for block buster productions to happen (studios, tech, money). That's being disrupted by several things: - LA and the US are no longer cheap places to be. A lot of blockbuster content is filmed outside the US at this point. Canada, Europe, and elsewhere. LA and Hollywood are still important but mainly because that's where the money is. It's not necessarily where the money is being spent. - Independent content producers self publishing content on platforms like Youtube and growing audiences rivaling those of popular TV shows. - AI is starting to drive down the cost of special effects, digital processing, etc. And it's probably also going to erode the value of needing actors at all for especially a lot of the less glamorous roles (think all the extras in big movie productions). This is a sensitive topic in particularly Hollywood. But not enough to delay the inevitable by very long. All this is driving down the cost of creating decent quality things that people still want to pay for. That's a critical distinction. There's a lot of ad sponsored stuff that people don't really pay for as well. To make money, you need quality. AI is working its way up the chain here, with increasingly better stuff. But most of it is still pretty low value. But things like soap operas, third rate series that Netflix bulk purchases from places like South Korea, etc. are all fair game for AI. Netflix adding the WB back catalog is a great move for them. Their own back catalog isn't strong enough to keep people and expanding with newly created production it is a very slow and expensive process. And they've had some flops and cost control issues. There just isn't enough there to keep me permanently. I tend to sign up for just a few months and then cancel. I'm probably going to cancel soon again. HBO did not actually offer their streaming services in Germany until recently. And I was considering trying that for a while. Now I might not have to.
- casenmgreen 10mo agoHow the mighty have fallen.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- nabla9 10mo agoWith this buy Netflix becomes as big as Disney (Disney+Hulu) by market share. Unwelcome consolidation in the long term.
- moogly 10mo agoDefinitely not great, but at least that means Ellison won't amass even more media control (for now). That is maybe the silver lining.
- Maken 10mo agoThe Ellison trying to buy WB was the younger one.
- moogly 10mo agoI didn't actually specify which Ellison. But we could say the Ellison clan to be inclusive.
- skinnymuch 10mo agoIt’s all based on elder Ellison’s power and money.
- thatgerhard 10mo agoI'm excited about getting access to the whole WB catalogue?
- octocop 10mo agoWell, for sure the price will go up too.
- legitster 10mo agoWB was another legacy media empire being run by a megalomaniac hell-bent on destroying their legacy. I wouldn't normally support this kind of move, but unlike the Skydance deal, Netflix is actually a real company that, like, makes use of IPs and publishes back catalogues. Things like Looney Tunes will now be in the hands of someone who doesn't hate Looney Tunes.
- dtf 10mo agoParamount being the spurned suitor. David Ellison doesn't sound happy. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/paramount-calls-warner-bros-sale-process-unfair-in-blistering-letter-1236442302/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/par...
- drexlspivey 10mo agoConsolidations like this were bound to happen. In the mid 2010s we had a good thing, only one streaming platform with pretty much every movie and tv show. Then every studio got greedy and spawned their own platform, forcing netflix to produce their own shows. Now you have 20 tv networks all with their own subscription and all losing money.
- chii 10mo agoIt's a repeat of how cable networks were. This is the issue with content production being owned by the distributors too. It's too profitable to own the vertical because each piece of content is an effective monopoly, because to participate in culture requires watching it (piracy notwithstanding). Therefore, the "fix" is to regulate this monopoly - by making sure that monopoly cannot exist without cost. One "simple" way is, imho, to make content production and ownership of distribution strictly prohibited in the same entity, and to also enforce mechanical licensing of content (such that you cannot have content exclusives in the distribution platforms). Movie theatres have similar restrictions with film studios in the past - to prevent this very monopoly. It's high time we brought it back.
- abvdasker 10mo agoYeah the best way to fix this would be to enforce the separation of distribution and production via the Paramount Decree. Separate content production from the streaming service itself. Get rid of the vertical integration plaguing the industry and we'll get better content since quality will be the territory on which studios have to compete with each other again.
- oatmealcookie 10mo ago[dead]
- yard2010 10mo agoJust download it as you would download a car if you could.
- gherkinnn 10mo ago
- kmfrk 10mo agoDefinitely the least bad outcome, but how much of this catalogue is going to completely drown in the horrid UI of Netflix's apps. Sometimes it feels like Netflix has too much in its catalogue without any good tools to sort through and filter it.
- gdulli 10mo agoI doubt that's an accident. They don't want you discover content you like, they want you to watch what they've put on your home screen.
- RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 10mo agoNot as absurd as back when AOL bought them, but just barely so. I think I'll have an extra frothy latte for breakfast today.
- danso 10mo ago> Netflix expects to maintain Warner Bros.’ current operations and build on its strengths, including theatrical releases for films. If Netflix is committing to releasing WB films in theaters, I wonder if they’ll also release shows under the WB/HBO label in the traditional weekly format. With the staggering amount of content that just exists and continues to grow, the “release everything at once and make people binge” model has had zero appeal to me. And seems quite detrimental to how the shows are paced — they seem heavily incentivized to end each episode with a cheap cliffhanger
- FuturisticLover 10mo agoSo, the big news has arrived finally
- lunias 10mo agoJust buy, buy, buy up the competition. Hope someone stops the big fish before it's the only one left.
- rcarmo 10mo agoThat was... kind of expected. But the web of cross-interests in the content industry just got another trans-dimensional knot in its topology...
- gttalbot 10mo agoWhere's the antitrust enforcement? This seems blatantly illegal.
- mihaic 10mo agoIt's always great to read about how the people the own the means of distribution aquire also the means of production, trying to create a meta-monopoly. /sarcasm I'm rooting for someone on the regulary side disliking all the crap that Netflix produces, and just shuts the whole thing down. Those 5 billion they'd have to pay for a breakup fee in that case would have me feeling better that I couldn't cancel their service, since my family pesters me to keep it.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- raw_anon_1111 10mo agoThere is no “monopoly” on either content distribution or creation. Amazon and Apple are both trillion dollar companies that have streaming services. Then there is Disney, Comcast (Peacock), Paramount, STARZ (standalone company), and AMC
- mihaic 10mo agoTechnically, you're right. I feel like there needs to be new terms to describe though the staleness of the industry. "Oligopoly" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
- raw_anon_1111 10mo agoHow many competitors do you need? Apple, Disney, Netflix, Comcast, and Paramount are five major competitors. If you as a hypothetical video content creator want to get your content distributed to a wide audience, you have five companies to go to, you can publish it to any of the video on demand services, try to monetize it through ads on YouTube, etc. We aren’t in the 30s anymore where the only way you could see content was by going to the movie theater. Before HBO Max was a thing, they were already selling distribution rights of content to Netflix. No one said that was a monopoly.
- mihaic 10mo ago
- eightman 10mo agoI wonder what this means for DC Comics and the current crop of DC films. Will Netflix prefer to start with a clean slate?
- jlengrand 10mo agoThose acquisition numbers will just keep becoming larger and larger until one day, when I'm old enough, someone will just acquire the only other player left in the field and Earth will be one single megacorporation.
- PyWoody 10mo agoAOL-Time-Warner-Pepsico-Viacom-Halliburton-Skynet-Toyota-Trader-Joe's but I guess it's AOL-Time-Netflix-Pepsico-Viacom-Halliburton-Skynet-Toyota-Trader-Joe's now.
- venturecruelty 10mo agoCan't wait to hear how it's "good, actually" while I'm shoved into the PepsiCo-Monsanto-ExxonMobil-Fox-Unilever-Northrop mulcher.
- ecshafer 10mo agoI was always wondering why Netflix didn't do some acquisitions for backlogs with how much they spend making mediocre to terrible movies and tv shows.
- yahoozoo2 10mo agoNetflix thwarting David Ellison and his push to pro-Israel-ify everything.
- johnhamlin 10mo agoParamount can’t be happy
- throwthrow0987 10mo agoIs this as big as I think it is?
- bilekas 10mo agoThis may be a hot take but maybe some consolidation in this streaming industry is beneficial, might save some people searching for content they want to see only to find they have to pay for another streaming service because right holders decided to launch their own streaming app. Netflix prices will probably increase though, and they will probably ruin a lot of golden IP like always, so there's that to complain about.
- utf_8x 10mo agoSurely the FTC will take issue with Netflix acquiring HBO Max?
- petcat 10mo agoAlmost definitely not this FTC. And I'm not sure the FTC would in general considering there is a plethora of mainstream streaming providers outside of just Netflix and HBO Max. Apple, Amazon, Google, Disney all have their hands in that bag. Not to mention all the old cable providers are practically streaming services now too. I don't even use my spectrum cable box, I use the Roku app to watch live TV and access all their on demand library
- raw_anon_1111 10mo agoUntil Netflix pays Trump personally $15M like Paramount did
- roguecoder 10mo agoA functioning FTC sure would. Too bad business hated Lina Khan's basic anti-trust enforcement so much they decided to throw in with fascism.
- MisterTea 10mo agoWhole deal sounds Looney Tunes to me. Though Warner does have a substantial catalog, I dumped Netflix because I wasn't impressed with their offerings. After Paramount took all its toys home with them leaving the platform without Star Trek, I had little reason to stay. I'm not a big TV or film buff anyway.
- konfusinomicon 10mo agoits wabbit season I guess
- zui 10mo agoSeems like: - Netflix gets the movies and contents (HBO, WB) for its streaming service - The rest (news, reality TV) will be spun off (Discovery Global)
- ngd 10mo agoThe cycling fans among us were quite bashed around over the past few years getting access to cycling coverage in Europe. The were the glory years where GCN Plus was extremely cheap (it was too cheap) and the coverage was ad-free and excellent. Then we got bashed around to Eurosport which was fine, more expensive but still ad-free. Then we got moved to Discovery+. They weaseled out of their ad-free coverage for a bunch of races and jacked up the price because they bundled the cycling in with football and we suffered a price hike from $3-5 per month to $30+ a month, yes a 1000% hike, over the past 5 years.
- eisfresser 10mo agoTotally. It's miserable. We are watching cycling through HBO max at the moment, where it is still affordable. We get on TNT for the TdF because Rob Hatch. Surely it will go down the drain even further when the Ellisons get it.
- Hilift 10mo ago2023: "A Party in Cannes Announces a New Hollywood Power Player". Something like ~300 attendees, probably $10 million. Zaslav and Graydon Carter co-hosted. There were rumored to be thousands of bottles of Dom champagne, which is probably inexpensive in bulk. https://archive.is/ITc2a https://archive.is/ITc2a
- moolcool 10mo agohttps://theonion.com/just-six-corporations-remain-1819564741/ https://theonion.com/just-six-corporations-remain-1819564741...
- giraffe_lady 10mo agoLockheed-Northrop-Boeing-Pepsico is an excellent joke all on its own damn.
- tgv 10mo agoRemember, that's just a subsidiairy of the Sheinhardt Wig Company.
- venturecruelty 10mo ago"Not poisoning rivers since 1997"
- mortos 10mo agoAlso a pretty subtle one, this article was written after Boeing and McConnell Douglas merged a year prior.
- scruple 10mo ago> Taco Bell was the only restaurant to survive the Franchise Wars. Now all restaurants are Taco Bell.
- skeeter2020 10mo agoWhat's funny is that Onion article uses "a blockbuster $112 billion deal" because in 1998 a figure that high was so preposterous it helped with the parody. They'd need to add a few zeros today.
- teeray 10mo ago“Dr. Evil, this is 1969, that kind of money doesn’t even exist! It’s like saying you want a gajillion bajillion dollars!”
- beached_whale 10mo agoNice of them to start the conversations with a probably lie, that it will be less expensive for consumes because they can now bundle HBO/Netflix. Except this has never been true for more than enough time that for people to forget and past the time to change it, if at all. It will be less selection and cost more, like the usual. They made the comment and CBC reported on it https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/us-netflix-warner-bros-acquisition-9.7004170 https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/us-netflix-warner-bros...
- dr_ 10mo agoBring back Silicon Valley?
- magicmicah85 10mo agoOh sweet, two of my subscriptions now reduced to one. Right?
- mrweasel 10mo agoThat's my thinking. I get the argument for "reduced competition" but Netflix and HBO aren't competitors. They are just two companies in the same line of business, but with different production lines. I do wonder what it will do for their sports deals. HBO have had the rights to a lot of sports, including Tour de France and the olympics and is the only way to get EuroSport, as well as a number of TV channels, including some country specific ones.
- Rastonbury 10mo agoYou don't see reduced competiton? HBO Max and Netflix are director competitors, post acqusition Netflix no longer had to compete hard with shows like Succession. The expanded catalog makes it even harder for smaller streamers to compete. On sports rights Netflix no longer has to bid and compete with HBO, and same story having a bigger live sport inventory. This is not unlike consolidation of food distributors where the end up wielding strong pricing power, farmers have fewer options to sell to and restaurants have few options to buy from. The middleman profits. But yeah Netflix will probably spin off Cable
- mrweasel 10mo ago> HBO Max and Netflix are director competitors I disagree. Spotify and YouTube Music are competitors, because I can switch freely between them, and expect more or less the same catalog. HBO and Netflix are supplementary and many will just get both, because switching from one to the other makes no sense. For example I can't watch Star Trek on HBO and the rights deals made with the studios ensure that I'll never be able to watch it one both. Assuming that Netflix, Disney, Paramount and HBO where competing, then why aren't pricing at rock bottom? There's zero competition and removing HBO won't change a damn thing, other than removing one subscription for a large number of people (potentially).
- 10mo ago
- papa0101 10mo ago[flagged]
- FrustratedMonky 10mo agoand Warner Brothers owns HBO? So potentially, could we get all HBO shows on Netflix?
- afavour 10mo agoAny consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers. But at least it wasn’t bought by Larry Ellison, as was considered very likely (assuming this merger gets approved, in the current administration you never know). From a Hacker News perspective, I wonder what this means for engineers working on HBO Max. Netflix says they’re keeping the company separate but surely you’d be looking to move them to Netflix backend infrastructure at the very least.
- didip 10mo agoHm… I don’t know, I can at least cancel my separate HBO Max subscription on Prime Video now (since I already paid for Netflix).
- Mindwipe 10mo agoI think it's extremely unlikely that they combine the two services in the next five to ten years. They will probably do a Disney+/Hulu bundle at some point.
- sethops1 10mo agoSurely the move now would be to rename the app to Netlfix Max
- quasarsunnix 10mo agoWe’re witnessing the globalization of television. When all is said and done there’s going to be a few players left and they’re all going to be American by the current looks of things. You could argue movies were already like this, but for television that’s quite the change as most countries had many television production companies and stations. Now it seems like they’ll be a few global media companies and maybe some local production houses that have to sell their stuff to these guys or setup their own services like the BBC does with iPlayer in the UK, with somewhat limited success compared to these giants.
- jmkd 10mo agoThey won't be American. The balance of power has already shifted east. There are now more productions, more money and more facilities east of Madrid than west of it.
- tolerance 10mo agoSo the companies in charge of distributing the content are American-based multinationals; production leaks out of the US toward prettier places and more amicable laborers; if you’re American and want to tag along—in or behind the scenes—you’re going to need a passport or a visa. Or something like that?
- irl_zebra 10mo agoI haven't heard of any of them, which I am open to being because of my own ignorance. Can you give some examples?
- nebula8804 10mo agoNe Zha 2 comes to mind. One of the largest box offices ever and it came out this year. In my opinion: Good attempt but I dont see them supplanting Western media yet. Here is some history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2J0pRJSToU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2J0pRJSToU
- petcat 10mo ago
- parrellel 10mo agoWell, at least it wasn't Larry Ellison.
- danieltk76 10mo agoand here begins the downfall of Warner Bros.
- awongh 10mo agoIn terms of people who actually like movies and music it’s not a great time. Unfortunately it’s pretty clear that the true business model of music and content streamers is about “putting something on in the background” and not actually about the quality level of the content. Thus you get inoffensive cheap netflix series and AI generated chill beats to study to, and no one really notices as long as it’s above a certain quality threshold. And this isn’t exactly Netflix’s problem- they know what their users want. When you’re cooking dinner it doesn’t make much difference to you if it’s a Judd Apatow romantic comedy and one that’s some Hallmark knockoff romcom bullshit. I’m not really sure how to solve the problem of this very siloed video content landscape. No one wants to subscribe to 4 streaming services. I would think the original netflix model of being mailed bluray discs might be viable, but without independent studios like Warner around, why would anyone produce physical media?
- the_real_cher 10mo agoIt would just get ripped and put on pirate streaming sites. This seems like a chicken and egg downward spiral with consumers pirating and studios producing slop.
- shufflerofrocks 10mo agoMy blood always boils a little whenever I read about Netflix's "Not second-screen enough" business model. What shitty point we've enshittified to, where we prioritise passive slop consumption over active enriching one. All of this is a result of the algorithmic media addiction people have been engineered into, in my opinion. Every moment you're not consuming something is a moment you're wasting, and a moment you have to spend alone with your thoughts (which is too terrfying for people now apparently). A proper solution to current video content landscape used to be piracy - Netflix literally succeded early on in streaming because they were more convenient than pirating stuff. But with these Media Moguls lobbying hard to crack down on piracy (at the risk of privacy), it does look pretty bleak.
- awongh 10mo agoTo be fair people used to have their tv (or even radio) on all the time. I’m not sure this is that much different. If anything the quality has gone up in the sense that maybe you have a bit more choice about what you put on in the background
- dwa3592 10mo agoWhat happens to my hbo max susbcription?
- goga-piven 10mo agoWhat is going to happen to all WB/HBO tech? Netflix is obviously not interested in their apps or infra, and that probably means a big layoff soon.
- SSLy 10mo agoA merger like this takes 1+ year to get approved, and only then the companies can start acting together. So, layoffs not soonest than in 18 months.
- paxys 10mo agoNetflix was the worst option, except for all the others who were bidding.
- ryanmcbride 10mo agowelp, at least we got 2 or 3 good DC movies before now. It was great while it lasted. I'm so tired of living in hell
- JLO64 10mo agoSupergirl and The Batman 2 are releasing relatively soon so I don’t think that will be affected much by all this. Same with Clayface since that just entered post production. It’s the movies coming after (Superman 2, Batman movie thats not tied to “The Batman”) that will be affected by all this. My opinion of James Gunn has changed recently (especially after the ending of Peacemaker S2) but I still think he’s the best person possible to be in charge of live action DC. I really hope he keeps some form of control but I doubt it…
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- yalogin 10mo agoThis should never have been allowed to happen by the regulators, but in this administration there are no checks, it’s a free for all and Netflix knows it. It saw the opportunity and went for it
- sevkih 10mo agoBetter netflix than than Ellison
- dzink 10mo agoIn 2009 a Turner Broadcasting executive stood in front of employees and said they are not worried about Online streaming because it only covered 15 minutes of watching time among consumers. TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, HBO, Time Inc were all under the same ownership umbrella along with the entire MGM catalog Ted Turner had acquired at the cost of losing control of his company. There were executives who knew what they were doing but some were performative - using buzz words and bravado to hide that they had no idea. Many were trying to extract as much as possible from both ends - 50% of revenue from consumers and 50% from advertisers. Even when those two were in direct conflict with each-other’s interests. They believed content was king and so they invested in content, instead of distribution. They hoarded their back catalog for years. In the mean time Netflix started with 3 CDs per month plans and when they began streaming on 2007 we didn’t use it at start because we assumed that it would cut out of the 3 movies allotment. So we were scared to use it for a while. Yet we used it regularly - because unlike the cable service, streaming didn’t have ads. And ads were massive massive abuse and waste of time for consumers. You can benchmark the level of abuse by the types of ads in the super bowl: Alcohol, crypto, gambling, cars… The reality is that cable was a paid premium service, unlike broadcast TV, which was free and littered with ads. Mix the two and you lose the golden goose. That said, the bravado of that executive stuck with me since then.
- ayaros 10mo agoEverything is now re-consolidated under different media companies now. Instead of Ted Turner we have Larry Ellison, and Netflix, and Disney. So I think the biggest question is, what form of entertainment will eventually supplant streaming services? Whatever it is (or will be) will almost certainly be disregarded by most people.
- softwaredoug 10mo agoYoutube, TikTok, Sora...
- theragra 10mo agoAI generated by demand, most likely. Or AI generated by indie creators who have a vision but not a budget, and are provided with a platform to create content easily.
- Barathkanna 10mo agoAt this rate Netflix isn’t building a streaming service, it’s building a monopoly starter pack. Give it a few more acquisitions and the “Are you still watching?” prompt will legally qualify as a government notice.
- OG_BME 10mo ago[flagged]
- jeffwask 10mo agoPretty soon all media will be owned by 4 tech billionaires. They have done so well with preserving a free and open internet I cannot see why people are concerned they are gobbling up all the alternative legacy communications platforms.
- alams 10mo agoNetflix’s content selection has always felt weaker than traditional studios. Sometimes it even looks like filmmakers take Netflix’s massive budgets but don’t give them the same level of serious, polished work they deliver elsewhere. So, if Netflix ends up managing Warner Bros or HBO, it’s hard not to worry. HBO and Warner Bros are known for premium, high-caliber content, and Netflix’s track record suggests the overall quality could easily take a hit.
- cramcgrab 10mo agoAnother dying industry acquiring another dying industry. Reminds me of Oracle buying Sun Microsystems.
- sergiotapia 10mo agoThis is terrible news. Expect enslopification of some of your favorite IPs. Christ.
- ReptileMan 10mo agoThree wishes - looney tunes and animatics full and uncensored. Don't update them for modern sensibilities. No new looney tunes content unless made by very talented people that love the old ones.
- softwaredoug 10mo agoThe sad thing is the WB Studio had a successful year and is healthy. It's all the other idiotic stuff that's been attached to WB over the years that has broken the business. Time Warner AoL Discovery... is a poster child for what goes wrong when merger after merger happens. A restructured WB Studio + HBO might be a good business.
- autoexec 10mo agoI look forward to all my favorite shows on HBO max ending a season with a cliffhanger and then getting canceled regardless of their popularity
- bookofjoe 10mo agoMemories of AOL-TimeWarner... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarnerMedia#AOL-Time_Warner_merger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarnerMedia#AOL-Time_Warner_me...
- keithwbacon 10mo agoI think the way they’ll justify it is by framing it as Disney’s empire versus a combined Netflix + Warner Bros empire.
- thedangler 10mo agoYou subscription is about to go up. I'm going to start looking into alternative solutions ;) Anyone have a solid alternative solution for local streaming?
- jasonvorhe 10mo agoI cancelled all my content subscriptions and I'm back to torrenting. I barely watch anything made my Netflix regardless. I think either Dark or the 3rd season of Stranger Things was the last time. Snyder's SciFi movie wasn't much good either. By now the streaming services are en route to become as terrible as whatever they were set out to replace. Once one of them started heavily advertising their own productions everywhere inside their apps I would've cancelled any remaining subscription at the latest.
- kwar13 10mo ago> back to torrenting lots of people have, and we've come now full circle. I wonder if it was inevitable.
- an0malous 10mo agoIn a society that’s built on the foundations of perpetual profit growth it is. Sometimes you just can’t innovate, so instead of improving the product you cut the costs and enshittify. We’re in an enshittification regime right now. Why are there alternating cycles of innovation and enshittification? I think it’s because investors are always trying to pull forward profit, but because they only have a 10 year horizon on investment strategy they tend to create cycles that are around that same period. If there was less investment, the innovation would be slower but the reactionary enshittification would be lessened too.
- NegativeLatency 10mo agoIt’s better than ever with stuff like jellyfin/plex and all the sonarr/radarr… apps. I’ve been running bitmagnet too which has been great for actually finding torrents.
- wombat-man 10mo agoI torrent too, but I think it makes sense to buy/rent or sub to a service in many cases. Companies look at views and revenue to decide what content to actually make. So, especially for ongoing series that I'm enjoying I want them to keep renewing it. I subscribe to ad-free versions of services so I don't really run into ads a lot unless I'm trying to watch something live on TV.
- Spacemolte 10mo agoAds. This is how you get ads in streaming services.
- bradyd 10mo agoBoth Netflix and HBO already have ads.
- dugmartin 10mo agoThey got it for cheap. AOL paid $165 billion for Time Warner in 2000. Is Netflix the next AOL?
- jmyeet 10mo agoWhether or not this deal gets regulatory approval depends entirely on whether or not Reed Hastings sufficiently kisses the ring when it comes to Donald Trump. I'm personally against this. We've had too much consolidation. It's subscribers who will pay for this with hiked subscription fees. Any pretense of government regulation is basically gone. Everything is for sale. What determines outcomes is corruption and loyalty. This is really no different to the Russian oligarchs under Putin. The SEC, FTC and DOJ are a joke, just tools to punish ideological foes and people who don't pay up. All these companies are a consequence will become more ideologically conservative and that's a real problem for media companies because conservatives can't produce good content. Good content challenges the status quo and asks questions, two things conservatives simply don't tolerate. This will do nothing good for HBO.
- joshyg 10mo agotech company buying warner bros, what could go wrong?
- newhotelowner 10mo agoNetflix is buying WB for "friends". That show will be on air for another 50 years.
- tracerbulletx 10mo agoI didn't really understand why they'd want this, but I think now its strategic protection from someone else consolidating with them. One company with that huge of a library could put a lot of pressure on them by withholding content and with their competing unified streaming service.
- yearolinuxdsktp 10mo agoThis sucks, now HBO content will disappear from being searchable in Apple TV.
- loloquwowndueo 10mo ago> from timeless classics like Casablanca and Citizen Kane to modern favorites like Harry Potter and Friends Holy crap did they actually put Citizen Kane and Friends in the same sentence?
- Funes- 10mo ago...and the global oligopoly grows ever smaller.
- jandrusk 10mo agoThis is going to be an off the wall statement given this audience, but WWE signed an exclusive deal with NetFlix for 10 years I think in an effort to counter their main competitor AEW, which signed a deal with HBO Max shortly before that. Now they'll both potentially be on the same platform, which WWE will hate as it will be interesting in having two competitive pro wrestling promotions on the same platform.
- devrundown 10mo agoI'm pretty sure WWE would have an exclusivity clause that would prevent another pro-wrestling program on Netflix. But who knows!
- alt227 10mo agoWWE dont have the clout they used to. I remember when they were the number 1 viewed website on the internet. Nowadays the MMA & UFC is much more valuable.
- devrundown 10mo agoWell UFC and WWE are both part of the TKO group.
- alt227 10mo agoIm not sure how that is a response to my comment about one being more valuable than the other.
- seatac76 10mo agoThe gov will block this for the wrong reasons(they want Ellison to win this) but here’s hoping this and Paramount both get blocked, this level of concentration is not good.
- UltraSane 10mo agoThe US government made it illegal for movie studios to own movie theaters to prevent studios from only showing movies in theaters they own. Similar laws need to be passed to force streaming content to be shown on all services.
- Glyptodon 10mo agoSo WB buys/merges w/ discovery to break it back off as part of a merger. Seems sort of silly. Curious if this means pretty much all WB/Disc/HBO content will end up on Netflix.
- wetpaws 10mo ago[dead]
- trentnix 10mo agoNetflix acquires Warner Bros and uncensored Looney Tunes and uncensored Tom & Jerry were never seen again.
- jeremy_k 10mo agoPlease Netflix, green light Westworld season 5
- stevenwoo 10mo agoThat's the exact opposite of Netflix most recent history, Westworld was an expensive production and viewing numbers on HBO were declining as seasons went on. Even relatively inexpensive looking Netflix shows got cancelled, i.e. GLOW, I Am Not Okay with This, Santa Clarita Diet, never mind shows that were less expensive than Westworld that had poor Netflix viewer metrics like The Residence, The OA, probably lots more I am leaving out. Early years maybe, like when they kept Orange is the New Black and House of Cards going to completion or resurrected Arrested Development.
- gcanyon 10mo agoI was working at HBO when Ted Sarandos said, "The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.” I knew then how that would play out, although I didn’t have this exact outcome on my bingo card.
- okokwhatever 10mo agoF...k , more forced inclusion on theaters now...
- arthurfirst 10mo agoI am still shocked not to see the opposite order -- but those days are long gone.
- dboreham 10mo ago...If they pay a large enough bribe.
- smallerfish 10mo agoI'm a fan. Injecting a huge catalog into Netflix is a win for consumers who want just one subscription. And injecting studio talent into Netflix (assuming the merge gives WB creatives influence) can only help. HBO's tech sucks. Apple is (in my experience) hard to get running in the Android ecosystem. Most of the other options are too narrow in catalog, or ad ridden. Consolidating streaming services down to a handful of offerings will make price competition more fierce because they'll have richer catalogs to do battle with.
- alt227 10mo agoNetflix have never been a streaming service to put loads of good content on their service and keep it there. I would imagine they will use this injection of content to drip feed and slowly rotate movie franchises in order to keep users interested.
- hnben 10mo ago> Consolidating streaming services down to a handful of offerings will make price competition more fierce because they'll have richer catalogs to do battle with. this is not how markets usually work.
- smallerfish 10mo agoCorrect, but the current market is not working. 15+ streaming services is terrible for consumers. Catalogs are compromised. Bigger services can push prices up because they have more stuff. Clearly if there are too few players then there's less competition and no price pressure, but there's a sweet spot between what exists today and that.
- dangus 10mo agoThis makes zero sense. Can you name another scenario where consolidation helped the consumer? Where a sweet spot involved more consolidation? Did Breyer’s ice cream get better when it was purchased by Unilever? Did your local grocery store chain get better after it was acquired by Kroger or Albertsons? Did the smartphone market get better when Microsoft acquired Nokia and HP acquired Palm? What about Hashicorp? Sun Microsystems? Dark Sky? Red Hat? Slack? Nest? Any of these product markets get better post-consolidation? I struggle to think of a single example of a product category that got better with industry consolidation.
- Flatcircle 10mo agoNearly every media journalist in Hollywood considers this to be the worst outcome for Hollywood.
- geeksworld 10mo ago[dead]
- sega_sai 10mo agoOn one hand it is good that the maybe the streaming will be split into less subscriptions, but on other hand, I think the only way forward is to simply prohibit exclusive streaming rights. I.e. any movie streaming rights should be sold to anyone who wants to buy them for the same price. That is only way to enable competition in streaming.
- nielsbot 10mo agoI… actually like this idea. Similar to the Robinson Patman Act. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson%E2%80%93Patman_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson%E2%80%93Patman_Act
- purplejacket 10mo agoDoes this mean that now I can watch Bugs Bunny on Netflix?
- benatkin 10mo agoSeems like it. I guess it also means Bugs Bunny t-shirts will be licensed by Netflix. They could also do crossover merch, putting Bugs Bunny on a Squid Game jacket: https://www.netflix.shop/en-pe/collections/squid-game/products/squid-game-player-456-jacket https://www.netflix.shop/en-pe/collections/squid-game/produc... They'll have to step up their game in plush, this to me looks like it's from CafePress: https://www.netflix.shop/en-pe/collections/squid-game/products/squid-game-young-hee-doll-plush https://www.netflix.shop/en-pe/collections/squid-game/produc...
- almosthere 10mo agoThis should be an illegal aquisition
- mistyvales 10mo agoNetflix seems to hate theatrical releases, so I hope this doesn't affect any small cinemas that want to screen older WB titles. I know when Disney bought Fox, it got a bit harder to book films.
- sfifs 10mo agoHopefully I'll finally get to see Chernobyl and Game of Thrones. It's virtually impossible outside of US or Europe to legally stream so many movies and series.
- alt227 10mo agoWhen you literally cant do something legally, theres always somewhere greyer/blacker to move to!
- trepaura 10mo agoThis was a very foolish choice on Netflix's part. Most if the iconic IP from WB/HBO has gone down hill in a dramatic fashion over the last decade. Game of Thrones was good for a few seasons, but half way through the fans started dropping almost as quickly as main characters. DC movies have had very few genuine successes, even if they've technically turned a profit. Putting all that content up on Netflix would be unlikely to pull in that many more subscriptions, and would require dropping the existing streaming service(s) and agreements to allow for exclusivity. This doesn't bring significant talent or IP to Netflix, it's just an attempt to grab market share. I doubt they'll try to move anything out of WB/HBO's existing streaming platforms or agreements. This just looks like an attempt to increase profits by simply buying a profitable company and letting them mostly continue to function with minimal changes. In other word, this probably isn't the worst acquisition possible for consumers, but it certainly won't improve life for anyone to let it happen, and it does consolidate market share and control when it comes to media. This probably won't be hugely evil, but it won't be good either.
- LMYahooTFY 10mo agoDon't forget that WB also managed to burn Christopher Nolan after over a decade and lost one of the best (and most profitable) directors to have ever lived. Personally I just hope Netflix takes interest in the UCI mountain bike racing and does a better job with it.
- eisfresser 10mo agoYes, they really killed MTB. If only Re Bull TV would buy the Discovery/Eurosport part. Or GCN!
- anthomtb 10mo agoNone of the live sports programming, including MTB, will be part of the acquisition. https://www.pinkbike.com/news/netflix-in-exclusive-talks-for-wbd-acquisition-sports-broadcasting-reportedly-not-included-in-deal.html https://www.pinkbike.com/news/netflix-in-exclusive-talks-for... (yes Pinkbike is my source)
- badmonster 10mo ago[dead]
- WhyOhWhyQ 10mo agoFor cinema, I guess that's all folks.
- rdiddly 10mo agoI realize this is about money, and it's 2025 right now, and I'm probably just old, but what will happen to quality? I actually laughed, twice, because they did this, twice: > Beloved franchises, shows and movies such as [list of some of the greatest classics of all time] will join Netflix’s extensive portfolio including [list of laughable junk], creating an extraordinary entertainment offering for audiences worldwide. And then just a few lines later (and I won't snarkily shorten this one): > By combining Warner Bros.’ incredible library of shows and movies—from timeless classics like Casablanca and Citizen Kane to modern favorites like Harry Potter and Friends—with our culture-defining titles like Stranger Things, KPop Demon Hunters and Squid Game, we'll be able to do that even better. Like did I really just see Citizen Kane in the same sentence as KPop Demon Hunters? Might as well add Ow, My Balls to the list, that's how jarring the contrast was for me.
- armandososa 10mo agoRemember when the saying was that Netflix was trying to become HBO before HBO could become Netflix? That turned out weird
- chirau 10mo agoJohn Oliver is a really happy man today
- newbish 10mo agoCan't wait for him to talk shit about "new business daddy".
- quitit 10mo agoIt’s not my business: could someone shed light on how this would better serve their respective customers, versus keeping them separate. Or in other words “what will be possible by this merger that isn’t possible now?”
- prirun 10mo agoI loved Netflix when they had the DVD service and the recommendation competition because it actually suggested shows I would enjoy. Once they started producing their own stuff, recommendations no longer worked: they just promoted whatever crap they produced themselves. And with that, trying to find a show I wanted to watch became so much effort that I canceled altogether. Same goes for all the other streaming services.
- dominikposmyk 10mo agohttps://www.theinformation.com/articles/netflixs-warner-purchase-82-7-billion-blunder https://www.theinformation.com/articles/netflixs-warner-purc...
- NoGravitas 10mo agoFortunately, the Warner sister, Dot, will remain independent.
- pinkmuffinere 10mo agoIs it strange that NFLX is down on this news? I would have thought this is a big win for them, as they are consolidating power?
- trunnell 10mo agoCommenters here seem to be missing the larger David vs. Goliath story... Netflix was a silicon valley start-up with a tech founder (Reed) who teamed up with an LA movie buff (Ted). They tried to solve a problem: it was too hard to watch movies at home, and Hollywood seemed to hate new tech. The movie industry titans alternated between fighting Netflix and making deals. They fought Netflix's ability to bulk purchase and rent out DVDs. Later, they lobbed insults even while taking Netflix's money for content licensing. Here's Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner, in 2010: "It’s a little bit like, is the Albanian army going to take over the world? I don’t think so." [1] Remember: this was the same movie industry that gave us the MPAA and the DMCA. They were trying to ensure the internet, and new tech in general, had zero impact on them. Streaming movies and TV probably wouldn't exist if Netflix had not forced the issue. Netflix buying HBO is significant, but also just another chapter in this story of Netflix's internet distribution model out-competing the Hollywood incumbents. Even now in 2025, at least 12 years after it was perfectly clear that streaming direct to the consumer would be the future, the industry is still struggling to turn the corner. Instead, they're selling themselves to Netflix. I was at Netflix 2009-2019. It was shocking how easily our little "Albanian army" overthrew the empire. Our opponents barely fought back, and when they did, they were often incompetent with tech. To me, this is a story about how competent tech carried the day. Netflix has been rapidly buying and building studio capacity for a decade now. Adding the WB studio production capacity is a huge win for Netflix. It makes those studios more productive: each day of content production is now worth more when distributed via Netflix's global platform. Same with WB and HBO catalog and IP: it's worth more when its available to Netflix's approx 300 million members. Netflix can make new TV and films based on that IP, and it will be worth more than if it was only on HBO's platforms. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/business/media/13bewkes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/business/media/13bewkes.h...
- lotsofpulp 10mo agoIt’s nice to see business that rewarded customers with convenience win in the end. Well, except for Netflix refusing their catalogue to be indexed in the TV app on macOS and iOS. I won’t pay for Netflix until they drop that anti customer practice. If you want me to buy the video content you’re selling, it better be searchable in the TV app. And if not, there should be a better reason than you want to keep people trapped in the Netflix app.
- ethin 10mo agoThis entire Warner Bros saga has just been insanely pathetically sad to watch, because it demonstrates that WB has completely lost touch with reality and that the C-suites at the top have zero innovation or anything else to give at this point. The company has gone through so many megamergers and acquisitions which just added more and more debt to the company that at this point it wouldn't surprise me if Netflix just declares bankruptcy with it or something, because it's a completely lost cause. Of course, the people responsible for this won't learn a thing (even though they're making the exact mistakes of the Cable industry they replaced), and will continue doing the same thing over and over again, because, clearly, learning from mistakes is just not possible for these people.
- ConanRus 10mo ago[dead]
- jodrellblank 10mo agoOff topic, but I am boggled that Larry Ellison came back to “richest man in the world” this year. For all the enormous Reach of Facebook adverts, Apple, Microsoft breadth of products, Tesla and SpaceX and Twitter, Amazon’s massive cloud dominance, the AI boom for nVidia… Oracle?! “On September 10, 2025, Ellison was briefly the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$393 billion. In June 2020, Ellison was reported to be the seventh-wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of $66.8 billion” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Ellison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Ellison
- immibis 10mo agoThe richest person must be a natural person, not a company. These are large companies but their shareholding is spread out. The lawnmower owns 40% of Oracle.
- MikeCapone 10mo agoHe still owns over 40% of Oracle, that's a much bigger equity stake than most founders, and most of these other trillion-dollar companies don't have founders in charge anymore.
- hinkley 10mo agoBack when he was in competition with Gates for #1, I recall him changing his contract so he was getting paid in stock options instead of salary so he could get rich faster.
- TeMPOraL 10mo agoEveryone else is too busy spending everything they have on GPUs, DRAM and power plants? Joking. Honestly, the only thing that surprises me more than seeing Larry Ellison at the top of the list, is seeing Netflix buying Warner Bros, and not the other way around. Maybe I'm too old, but the very notion somehow does not compute.
- jibal 10mo agoYeah, that headline struck me as backwards too, but I acknowledge it's based on an old framework that doesn't match the modern facts. P.S. punished for what, honest self-deprecation? By "it" I meant my expectation, not the headline ... is that really not clear?
- thevillagechief 10mo agoThe reaction here is interesting. I thought this is what people wanted, a consolidation of all the streaming services into one so you did not have to subscribe to 10 different ones. I personally think it's a bad idea, but people need to figure out exactly what they want.
- emsign 10mo agoYou're almost making it sound like billionaires are fulfilling the people's wishes instead of their own.
- ikkun 10mo agoI don't think many people want one monolith to own all content, what they want is an easy way to watch content from multiple different content owners without having to juggle subscriptions. music does this far better, there's multiple different platforms that all have the vast majority of music people care about, you can easily opt to rent with streaming or purchase outright and download without DRM. spotify would probably love to have tons of exclusive content, and they're trying this with podcasts etc, but the music industry hasn't been able to enshittify as much as the movie industry, yet.
- lotsofpulp 10mo agoPeople want stuff for cheaper has and will always be true.
- Kapura 10mo agoI feel like when I was growing up, I learned about how monopolization was bad for society when it came to industries like steel and rail. but for some reason in the 21st century we've decided that maybe corporations are somehow... better citizens or something? despite the evidence? Obviously, the reason it's gotten this bad is that lobbying is legal and private campaign funding is mandatory. Thanks again, citizens united!
- cced 10mo agoWe didn't decided that–they did.
- lotsofpulp 10mo ago1) steel and rail are important for survival, and actual monopolies that result you being only able to get a necessary good or service from 1 seller 2) there are a billion different ways to entertain yourself, including spending time on HN. It matters very little to real life that there are 5 different places to stream expensive media compared to 6. If they get too expensive, you can watch youtube or tiktok or come back to HN or whatever else.
- venturecruelty 10mo agoThe pro-monopoly stance never ceases to amaze me. Competition is good, apparently, but multi-hundred-billion-dollar mergers are... also good? Make it make sense.
- lotsofpulp 10mo agoIf you comprehend #2, you can see that it is not a pro monopoly stance. Additionally, an anti monopoly stance for the purposes of buying a specific piece of content would be reducing copyright to 10 years.
- venturecruelty 10mo agoWe haven't decided that, the people who run these companies and sponsor your friendly, local congresscritter did.
- tehjoker 10mo agoWow the up and comer swallows an extremely established brand
- andrewla 10mo agoIf I had a nickel for every time a company that sends out optical disks bought Warner Brothers, I'd have $0.10, which is not a lot, but strange that it happened twice.
- VanshPatel99 10mo agoR.I.P to the quality of HBO shows and looking forward to slow burn shows getting cancelled more now. HBO has been going through a really bad phase recently ha. With Discovery, WB and now this. Is it too much to hope that the quality of content won't drop to Netflix level? I just hope the "give writers the time and resources" mindset of HBO doesn't change
- unit149 10mo agoCriterion licenses Turner Classic Movies (TCM) after launching their streaming service in 2019. According to the Wall Street Journal, the offer was $27.75 per Warner Discovery, which owns TCM accounting for a $82.7 bn value. Paramount's bid was $30 for Warner Brothers's cable network M&A, seeking lateralise the monopoly. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20251205081209/https://www.wsj.com/business/media/warner-bros-discovery-and-netflix-enter-exclusive-deal-negotiations-9ea30a85?mod=hp_lead_pos1 https://web.archive.org/web/20251205081209/https://www.wsj.c...
- chaseadam17 10mo agoMeta playbook. Netflix was a great product innovator for a long time but now that they're running out of ideas they're pivoting to acquisitions. I guess one big difference is that their direct competitors aren't startups - they're Amazon, Apple, etc. - so perhaps this plays out more as a race to acquire studios, IP, and creative talent. Then if/when they have a monopoly they'll charge $20 a month and still play ads every 5 min and we'll be back to cable.
- trusche 10mo agoReally conflicted on this one. On the one hand, having to pay for N+1 streaming services because none of my N favourite shows are on any one of them sucks. On the other hand, monopoly.
- bsimpson 10mo agoNetflix stopped being the good(/least bad) guys a while ago. They've been raising prices relentlessly, banning casting, criminalizing account sharing (which THEY started by introducing profiles)… They're just as selfish and consumer-hostile as most other big companies.
- chistev 10mo agoWe will never have another The Wire under Netflix
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- flenserboy 10mo agook. it isn't as if there's been more than a handful of movies worth watching which have been made in the last 10 years. consolidating catalogs of at-best-mediocre platforms isn't going to make things any better or worse.
- 627467 10mo agoThe current US admin will probably thumbs up this deal, but they will like face challenges elsewhere. The huge breakup fees seems to hint a high risk of non-approval
- roguecoder 10mo agoAs long as David Zaslav is kicked to the curb instead of given power inside Netflix, this could still be a win for the world. I don't know how else we were going to get him out of there. Heck, Netflix might actually promote Our Flag Means Death! (HBO being so terrible at modern promotion is what ultimately got them to this place. I found multiple series I really enjoyed there, but always by total accident scrolling alphabetically. The first time I ever saw a promotion for Warrior was when it came to Netflix.)
- bsimpson 10mo agoFrom what I've read, Ellison was ready to make him co-CEO of Warner Paramount, and then threatened a lawsuit alleging that WBD management has its thumbs on the scales because it's prioritizing bids that give their executives sweetheart deals after the merger (in this case, with Netflix).
- arkis22 10mo agoI think theres a possibility that Zaslav prefers Netflix because if the government denies the merger he walks away with the breakup fee and can keep running WB as his own fiefdom
- daedrdev 10mo agoNope apparently part of the appeal of the netflix offer was that he is given a seat at WB netflix.
- m3kw9 10mo agoHow is Apple gonna respond
- markaroo 10mo agoYouTube and Tiktok are the real winners here. The enshitification of traditional media will accelerate.
- LarsDu88 10mo agoReminder that Superman enters public domain in 2034, Batman in 2035, and Wonder Woman on 2037.
- twirlip 10mo ago1938 Superman didn't fly; he jumped. And he was named Kal-L. But he was also a lot more of a social justice warrior. His chest emblem was different, too. But yeah, I expect good things.
- LarsDu88 10mo agoPeople do not yet fully appreciate what AI videogen + public domain rights mean yet. We will see a flood of ai generated full length 1930s superman movies once we hit the 2030s
- whycome 10mo agoNetflix will adapt AI-driven Streaming on demand content. But, critically, it will now be backed up by the entire IP catalogue of WB. Wanna watch a new Superman movie where he meets Harry Pitter? Ok. Wanna see the Matrix as an animated version that includes the Flintstones? Ok.
- LarsDu88 10mo agoBreathe a sigh of relief WB wasn't bought by David Ellison. Cry softly the next Superman movie will barely be in theaters... Surely there will be a kpop-demon hunters X DC universe X mortal kombat game that comes out of this...
- mrandish 10mo agoThe most realistic acquirers were Paramount/Skydance or Netflix. Paramount/Skydance is a relatively new-ish entity with David Ellison (Larry's son) as CEO. The general sense in Hollywood is Paramount/Skydance will do little high-brow, art house or awards-fodder films but they will at least distribute films primarily to theaters (they promised to release at least 14 Warner films per year to theaters if their bid was accepted). Netflix is mostly uninterested in theatrical distribution so the main practical impact of this most of us see day to day may be less theatrical release movies and probably fewer higher budget films being made at all. Caveats include that the deal has to actually get regulatory approval in the U.S. and EU and survive potential (inevitable?) shareholder lawsuits. Netflix's offer reportedly involved less cash and more debt. Paramount/Skydance argued regulatory approval and the heavy debt made Netflix's offer less attractive than their own despite Netflix's higher top-line price.
- neves 10mo agoWhere are American anti-trust instituitions?
- j45 10mo agoI guess this will mean WB content will also start to become hyper addictive for kids.
- xp84 10mo agoWorked out great for AOL and AT&T, so IDK what could go wrong here.
- ksherlock 10mo ago"The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us." -- Ted Sarandos, Netflix co-CEO, circa 2012. (Actually, he walked it back slightly in 2024 - https://archive.ph/V5Kt1 https://archive.ph/V5Kt1).
- daseiner1 10mo agotrue inflection point of the already prolonged withering away and inevitable death of one of America’s great art forms. yes i’m aware of the proud film traditions of france, italy, england, & japan (among others). nevertheless the paradigms of popular film are uniquely homegrown. netflix is not in the film business. they are in the streaming business. yet another example of the rape aka “enshittification” of culture. why share an experience together as a public in front of the silver screen? much easier to sit alone on our fucking couches while we doomscroll and dick around. shameful.
- daft_pink 10mo agoI’m really disappointed, because Netflix doesn’t sell any of their content. You have to subscribe. I own Soprano’s, White Lotus, Batman Movies, etc on regular media, but I can’t get shows like Black Mirror outside of a subscription for the rest of my life. I really hope they continue to offer physical and digital sales of their media for those who perfer to buy instead of renting. Paramount, Disney, NBC Universal, etc all still sell their content even though they operate subscription services and I wish Netflix would do the same.
- LogicFailsMe 10mo agoSo no more whining about licensing. disallowing user-friendly features like casting content they will now own I guess?
- jolt42 10mo agoMan I wish they'd continue The Looney Tunes Show.
- atbpaca 10mo agoI just hope they won't destroy sagas like they did to the Witcher. In other words, I don't think this is good for future content as there is a risk movies/series will follow the same scripts, underlying story plots, cultural norms, same cinematography, etc. Quality going down. Moreover, this also means more time for ads to pay for this merger.
- intexpress 10mo agoA few recent Warner Bros films / coproductions Imagine if these had not had theatrical releases, or, had only had 1 week limited releases just to qualify for awards.. Tenet Dune The Batman Barbie Furiosa Twisters Minecraft Sinners Superman Weapons One Battle After Another
- harmmonica 10mo agoCouple of unrelated thoughts on this very long thread... 1. I'm sure multiple people have pointed it out, but for all the talk of a bubble, the AOL Time Warner merger was likely the biggest canary in the coal mine for what was to come. History repeats itself with literally the same brand and a lot of the same assets? Sort of depressing if the bubble does now burst because it's like we never learn our lesson 2. Trump wanted the Ellisons because they support him. There's almost no question in my mind the government will fight this. Will they win in court? Hard to say, but my quick thoughts: If market cap was the basis for antitrust then the answer would be maybe, but that's not the basis for it. Is revenue the basis? No, but Disney generates more than Netflix, so does Comcast, so as a proxy for market share, which I think is somewhat the basis for antitrust (iamaal) it seems like there's no chance this creates some anticompetitive media juggernaut. But then the question is whether streaming is different than more general media. And if it is, how do you define the market when a company like Apple is involved in streaming but not fully a media company? Does that balance things out a bit? I don't think it does because I don't think anyone could claim that Apple counterbalances Netflix in streaming market share. If anything it would be a further argument against Netflix having Netflix and HBOMax. Now having written all of that, I think the government would win because Paramount streaming with HBO would at least stand a chance in the streaming market against Netflix. And then also increase general media competition because you'd have Disney/ABC, Comcast/NBC, Paramount/CBS with the WBD addition improving Paramount's competitive position relative to the other two.
- garrickvanburen 10mo agoOn the news of Netflix acquiring Warner Bros, I’m reminded of how good Netflix has been at innovating their business model. Over the past 27 years, their business model has changed multiple times and each evolution appears to be in direct response to the bottleneck of growth, from maintaining inventory of DVD to acquiring global streaming rights. Year / Business Model / Bottleneck to Growth 1998 / Sell DVDs over the internet / Need to continually replenish DVD inventory, 1999-2006 / Rent DVDs over the internet / USPS delivery & return times 2007 / Stream movies over the internet / Acquiring US streaming rights to a massive library of movies 2009 / Start producing movies (Netflix Originals) / Number of subscribers watching Netflix Originals 2010-2012 / Global expansion; Canada, South America, Europe / Maintaining rights globally 2025 / Acquire Warner Bros Discovery
- metalman 10mo agooh good!, it's easier to avoid one thing rather than two!
- imagetic 10mo agoUgh.
- user3939382 10mo agoBeyond sad.
- testbjjl 10mo agoI once worked for a tech company that bought Warner Brothers, well time Warner. Did not end well for the tech company (AOL). In my opinion at the time, the cultures between the two were so different. Fly by night tech guys making a decent amount of money mixing with people who worked long to get where they were in the content space, plus the commercial internet was “newer” e.g. less established then. As they used to say, content is king. Good luck.
- sneak 10mo agoI know the guideline about complaining about site display and rendering, but there’s more to this one, I promise. This gives a CloudFront 403 error when loaded from a Mullvad VPN endpoint in the US. How can I vote with my wallet for privacy support from a vendor when there are only a few vendors and they all block VPNs? This is bigger than Netflix, bigger even than streaming media. I fear that we are very rapidly advancing to a point where you can’t use any of the “normal internet” and the mass-appeal normie services without doing full identification with some unique identifier. For most apps, it’s your phone number (which is 1:1 with a person and these days never changes). For websites, it’s going to be your residential home (IP) address. I’m glad I downloaded all the movies I’ve ever cared about and have local copies of 100% of them. I doubt I’ll be permitted to use any of these services that stream them now, even if I wanted to.
- ddtaylor 10mo agoThe streaming platforms suffer from fragmentation right now: People don't like hopping between a dozen different streaming platforms to consume entertainment - regardless of price or ads. If you give them an option for a single place where all their media is, they will use it, regardless of what is happening behind the scenes. They will never all merge into one because of regulatory pressure and because they are competitors. It seems nice to have one less streaming platform in some ways, but it's not a pathway forward. I'll continue to use Jellyfin with a few hard drives.
- venturecruelty 10mo agoEnshittification marches on. Oh well. At least we have 80-odd years of stuff to watch. There are enough good old movies to easily keep one occupied for a lifetime or two.
- rishabhaiover 10mo agoIt seems like the demise of the possibility of great art in the next 50 years. Maybe my bias I find everything made by Apple or Netflix almost perfect but not it. Every moment is curated for maximum something, but not the feeling I get I used to get, even with filler episodes in between.
- howToTestFE 10mo agoWow, imagine this 10 years ago. It would never have been an option. (Maybe WB acquiring Netflix...)
- zombiwoof 10mo ago[dead]
- derrida 10mo agoDoes this mean Netflix is acquiring AOL? Can they bring back the internet cd on a magazine cover ? /s anyone remember AOL Time Warner ? Like the biggest company in the world when it merged … is that what Netflix are buying? The former largest company in the world just decade before last?
- triketazone 10mo agoAI TL;DR of 500 Hacker News Comments Mostly complainers. A few useful nuggets. Useful: Music streaming has universal catalogs; video doesn't. That's why one works and the other feels broken. Blu-rays keep working. Streaming licenses don't. WB has been cursed—AOL, AT&T, Discovery all saddled it with debt. Pattern worth noting. HBO is nearly impossible to access legally outside the US. Real issue. Noise: "Enshittification" with no specifics Piracy boasting Subjective quality debates Anti-trust speculation from non-lawyers Cable nostalgia
- Frannky 10mo agoI had to stop watching Netflix. Every few minutes, I felt I was taken out of the story by some agenda-pushing content. It's so sad because they are very good at storytelling. I hope they won't enshittify Warner Bros. content too
- sensanaty 10mo agoDamn, 2 months ago I got a job offer from them but turned it down for another, seems I made the right choice!
- allenrb 10mo agoTo my eye, there are exactly two effective ways of dealing with the state of media distribution today: 1. Piracy 2. Just say no, recognizing that none of this stuff is necessary to live. The alternative of jumping through the ever-changing set of hoops necessary to watch particular content is entirely unappealing.
- diogenescynic 10mo agoNetflix should buy a theme park and make a rival to Disneyland. Call it Westworld... put a Westworld area, Harry Potter area (make the Hogwarts train like the monorail), Dune area, Lord of the Rings areas (Shire, Rivendell, Gondor, Mordor), DC comics area (Gotham, Metropolis), Game of Thrones areas, etc. So many other properties from Cartoon Network to add for kids. So many other areas to expand on with the IP from WB if Netflix wants to.
- LE_BAGEL_DOGUE 10mo agoThis is the strategy for all companies that have lots of risk in their business. The media industry has a lot of risk. Too many failed projects can sink a studio. The only way to guard is to increase in scale across different types of media and channels so your environment is diversified It’s no different from vail buying up all the ski resorts because they have such global reach they can diversify income streams across a wider set of mountains that have variable quality in winter and there for one bad winter doesn’t sink the whole business because they own so many - the ones that have a good year offset the ones that have a bad one Same thing with media. A wider range of projects from a wider range of talent increases the chances of discovering the next hit show or gold mine movie property and offsetting all the projects that fail. The other thing to remember is bigger companies turn slower and adapt to disruption slower. So it also opens up an opportunity in 5-10 to disrupt.
- lucasyvas 10mo agoThis was just about the worst case scenario.
- yugioh3 10mo agomoviegoing has always been evolving. from kinetoscopes to grand movie palaces to suburban multiplexes. nothing has ever stayed the same for long in cinema. heck, most theaters used to be continuous program viewing, meaning you’d show up not knowing what was playing, halfway through a movie, cartoon, or newsreel. scheduled viewing was pretty rare until the early 60s, only reserved for tentpole movies like Gone With The Wind or Ben-Hur. in some ways, where we are heading is back to where we were: tentpole cultural moments like Barbie or Avatar thrive, but the bread and butter of entertainment happens informally, but now at home.
- EtienneK 10mo agoInteresting. I always thought Apple would be the ones to acquire Warner Bros. Seemed like a good fit.
- vrighter 10mo agoLet's all prepare to say goodbye to any season 3s then!
- staticelf 10mo agoDamn. This is not nice. Netflix really only produces crap for the most part. Their shows are just woke filled with political propaganda. Sad news.
- dev1ycan 10mo agoGive it to HN to have a bunch of comments defending the creation of a monopoly.
- godzillafarts 10mo agoMy wife and I have been so fed up with the streaming landscape that we’ve been amassing a library of physical Blu-rays on the cheap from places like McKay’s, etc. It takes a little work, but it’s been really good for our family and encourages us to be thoughtful about what we consume. Honestly I don’t see us going back to streaming. The content isn’t that compelling; most of what we watch is older (we have kids, so lots of Disney movies), and we’re not really interested in most of the newer shows that would warrant us paying a subscription in order to watch new episodes as they drop. Before we cancelled, I remember looking at the carousel on my Netflix Home Screen and being completely uninterested in any of the content they were pushing. I’m also not worried about some licensing deal nuking one of my kids’ favorite movies from the catalog now. No ads is just the cherry on top.
- cs702 10mo agoNetflix now owns that right to many major media franchises, including: * The DC Universe (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.) * Game of Thrones * Hanna-Barbera (The Flinstones, The Smurfs, etc.) * Harry Potter * Looney Tunes ( Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc.) * Scooby-Doo * Tom and Jerry * The Big Bang Theory * The Sopranos * The Wizard of Oz
- johnnienaked 10mo agoInstead of investigating companies for antitrust like 10 years from now I might have an idea....
- walterbell 10mo agohttps://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-slow-death-of-hollywood https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-slow-death-of-hollywo... > [Netflix] now routinely ends shows after their second season, even when they’re still popular. Netflix has learned that the first two seasons of a show are key to bringing in subscribers—but the third and later seasons don’t do much to retain or win new subscribers.. Ending a show after the second season saves money, because showrunners who oversee production tend to negotiate a boost in pay after two years.. Netflix’s strategy is straightforward market power exploitation.. cancelling shows that subscribers like, so it won’t have to pay creators the amount they would otherwise be able to get for making good commercially successful art. > [Pre 1990s] The Paramount Consent Decrees and the Fin-syn rules were designed to break creative industries into a three-tiered structure: production, distribution, and retailing. Producers were prohibited from vertically integrating into the traditional distribution business. That way, there are fewer conflicts of interest in the content business; producers had to create high quality work, and if they didn’t, distributors could choose to sell someone else’s art. Policy removed power as the mechanism of competition, and emphasized art.. > We should aim to restore open markets for content again. This means separating out the industry into production, distribution, and retailing. We should probably ban predatory pricing so Netflix isn’t dumping into the market. And we should probably begin a radical decentralization of chains and studios. This is all possible. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again.
- softwaredoug 10mo agoA lot of shows go on too long. Andor, the best show of the year, had 2 perfect seasons.
- walterbell 10mo agoCompetitive markets provide natural death of weak content, without premature euthanasia of strong content. With on-demand streaming, viewers can stop watching if/when a show deteriorates in quality. Some shows have maintained relatively high quality over multiple seasons. The Americans (6 seasons, 75 episodes) Battlestar Galactica (4 seasons, 88 episodes) Borgen (3 seasons, 30 episodes) Burn Notice (7 seasons, 111 episodes) The Shield (7 seasons, 88 episodes) Slow Horses (5 seasons, 30 episodes) WestWorld (4 seasons, 36 episodes) The Wire (5 seasons, 60 episodes)
- FreeQueso 10mo agoThe offer makes sense if you don’t treat as a straightforward attempt to buy WBD. The proposal itself creates advantages long before the deal closes. What matters: - Strategic signaling: Submitting a bid instantly places Netflix in the same acquisition arena as Amazon and Apple. In other words, it’s good PR. - Access to real diligence: A signed agreement gives Netflix a look inside WBD’s business. Even if everything falls apart, the information has value. - Pressure on competitors: The bid forces others to act or sit still. Netflix gets to watch how serious each player is. - Reverse fee as escape valve: A large break fee functions like insurance. If regulators turn the deal into a grind, Netflix can pay the fee and walk away without carrying the wreckage. - Positioning for the aftermath: If the process damages WBD’s stock and the deal collapses, Netflix has a cleaner path to revisit individual assets later. - Regulatory posturing: Even if the deal never closes, the offer forces agencies to treat Netflix as a potential consolidator. By proposing to buy all of WBD, Netflix shifts the Overton window by anchoring the conversation at “full acquisition.” Whatever pushback Netflix gets now becomes the map for every deal it tries later. All of this happens before a single regulator approves anything. The reverse fee is the cost of the offer, which is roughly 1 percent of Netflix’s market cap. In practice, that’s the price of buying information at scale, along with the PR and regulatory positioning that come bundled with the offer.
- jakubmazanec 10mo agoAnother related stories here on HN about why Netflix content is getting worse and worse: Netflix CEO Says Movie Theaters Are Dead - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43542633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43542633 Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42529756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42529756
- a_state_full 10mo ago[dead]
- averageRoyalty 10mo ago> Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros. Following the Separation of Discovery Global for a Total Enterprise Value of $82.7 Billion (Equity Value of $72.0 Billion) I know this isn't the main point, but does anyone else find this sentence a nightmare to read? "Bros." makes me think we're in a new sentence; This would be fine if the next word wasn't arbitrarily capitalised. Why do people write like this? Why not just capitalise the proper nouns?
- hexo 10mo agoWe're cooked.
- bitwize 10mo agoCould be worse. Could be AOL.