12 ms·

Netflix Is Going to Rule TV After All

81 points by yarapavan 13y ago

leoplct 13y ago
Zapping.io has great potential too
guelo 13y ago
I'm still sceptical. If it costs $100 million to produce a quality show season it doesn't seem like Netflix can produce more than a handful per year. Is that enough content to keep people subscribed if Hollywood keeps taking away more and more of their stuff?
- leobelle 13y ago
  HBO only produces a handful a year, and Netflix has actually got a pretty decent selection of stuff.
- gumby 13y ago
  I agree they can't fill their pipeline alone. Yet the studios have Netflix by the gonads since the studios control who gets to see what when. You can see this from Netflix's crappy selection of streaming videos compared to their selection of DVDs. Not to mention that films mysteriously appear and disappear from the streaming library due to license expirations. No way Netflix would want to do that on their own.
- avenger123 13y ago
  The residual benefits of a hit series that Netflix produces is really where the value is. With a hit series that they own: 1) Subscribers know that the series will never go way. 2) Once a season is the bag, the return on the season is really high going forward as there is no cost to show the episodes (ie. no content fees) All this means that Netflix will continue to fund new series and find ways to bring the cost down. The future returns on a series is just to big to ignore for them to not do it.
protomyth 13y ago
When the cable money collapses, Disney, HBO/TimeWarner, etc. will just create their own streaming service and charge for it while removing all content from other services. Netflix will just be one streaming channel among many. They will have their own content and probably the content from folks not big enough to do their own channel (assuming Amazon doesn't start stealing that). Netflix is still the biggest, but so was Blockbuster and then the game changed. When cable rates go poof, the game will change again.
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  That's why Netflix's goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become Netflix. Do you think it's that easy to set up a reliable online streaming service? Those content companies (Disney, HBO, etc.) will go through a lot of trial and error before they can figure it out. If Netflix capitalizes on that opportunity to get people to watch their shows instead (presuming that they're good shows), then they've definitely got a shot at become an online content company.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    If you haven't noticed, all of the content companies[1] are doing the initial work. Look at how many of them are now on devices such as Apple TV. Time Warner / HBO has quite a lot of content they can stream. I don't have a doubt Netflix will survive, but it will be one of many and probably the Indy / small provider company, if Amazon doesn't run them over. 1) even MLB
    - kodablah 13y ago
      Yup. The competitive advantage is not the streaming technology. Many providers, including the ones you mentioned, have feature parity w/ Netflix. I have Netflix, HBO Go w/ Time Warner (and their TV app), and MLB.TV. Although those 4 all have the technology, Netflix's competitive advantage is in convenience. HBO Go and TWC requires an expensive cable subscription and MLB.TV has a horrid blackout policy. It all comes down to sports for many. If Netflix of Google TV begin to seriously bid for sports contracts things will change very soon. Similarly if traditional sports outlets like ESPN or Fox would cut their cord requirement (even at an egregious per-subscriber cost to start off with) the landscape will really start to shift.
jerf 13y ago
As I recall it, Netflix's Immanent Demise was overblown in the first place. They faced a couple of challenges and stumbled for a couple of quarters, and Wired rushed to declare them Walking Dead. They failed to keel over dead on schedule, and now apparently Wired, which just isn't much for middle ground, declare them the inevitable winners of a battle that has hardly even started yet. This is filler; they are no more inevitable now than they were doomed a year ago. It's still a rapidly changing landscape, they still own a lot of the territory, and it's still very difficult to guess the future. (My only guess is a negative one; the market is not stable with every content company owning their own streaming service, because consumers are not going to pay 15 bills a month for video content, no matter how cheap they are. Someone's going to aggregate, somehow. My guess about the how is something more like an Amazon hybrid model of subscription + optional premium content, but Netflix is putting up a good fight on the subscription-only side, so.... shrug.)
- stcredzero 13y ago
  This is filler It's Wired.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- foobarian 13y ago
  The content licenses are a real pain. Maybe one of the aggregators will just power through and have so much more content available that it will squeeze out everything else until new content only signs up with the winner, without strings attached. The other day I was trying to binge watch a season of a broadcast TV show, so I tried the On Demand thing on the FIOS cable box. Just 5 latest episodes available. Fine, this dinosaur is dead anyway, so I go to Hulu Plus; surely they will have the whole season, that's why you pay the sub, right? 2 latest episodes available! WTF. These incumbents are not competing with Netflix et al, they are actively burning the subscriber base and encouraging them to switch. I think if they put up a huge banner saying "Please don't use this site and go to Netflix instead" I would probably spend more time there than now. Sad panda is sad.
Oculus 13y ago
The real power Netflix has is they're at a point where they'll decide the entire future of an industry. TV-advertising will have to adapt to a world in which most people watch Netflix. In House of Cards they did quite a few product placements, but I don't think that's sufficient to absorb the multi-billion $ industry that advertising is. It'll be interesting to see where Netflix decides to carry the torch.
doug3465 13y ago
Someone please help me understand how HBO, Showtime, and now even Netflix can make so much quality programming and it seems all the networks can do is complete shit. Do they just not give a fuck anymore?
- vinceguidry 13y ago
  The networks have the problem of having everything they make have to have broad appeal. There's censorship rules they have to abide by. Subscription services don't have this problem, they can make anything.
stcredzero 13y ago
What of net neutrality?
kriro 13y ago
I enjoy Netflix quite a bit more than Hulu+...so much so that I don't care about watching recent stuff anymore and gladly wait for a bit. Hulu+ requires you to link with your cable provider to watch a lot of the new stuff anyways which is a no go for me since...the point is not having a cable provider anymore. Also...entire series simply don't stream if you're on Linux. Community and Linux-Flash don't work for example, something about their crappy DRM. Netflix isn't exactly Linux friendly (Silverlight) but the Wine Netflix-Desktop at least works for all their content. Antagonizing HBO isn't smart imo. Pretty juvenile comments.
- notatoad 13y ago
  Antagonizing HBO wouldn't be smart if netflix had anything to lose, but they don't. HBO and Netflix have no relationship, and there is virtually zero chance of any HBO show ever coming to Netflix as their relationship currently stands. They aren't taunting HBO because they want anything from HBO. They're taunting HBO because they want consumers to see them taunting HBO. It's just marketing.
- jansanchez 13y ago
  We also have Hulu+, and have never been required to link with our current cable provider (which we don't have at all). I personally enjoy both Netflix and Hulu+. They are different use cases. Hulu+ for current shows, while Netflix for the rest. The only thing I dislike from Hulu is the ads.
- helper 13y ago
  The Community Linux flash issue is curious. It doesn't play in Chrome with the bundled Flash player, but it does play in Firefox with external Flash. Its also surprising that Community is the only stream that I have found with this issue.
swombat 13y ago
I really want to like Netflix, but in the UK I've now switched most of my movie-viewing to Now TV. Now TV seems to operate on the same model, except they have much fewer of the "movies that hardly anyone wants to see" category, and much more of the "recent movies that you want to see" category. As a result, at the moment I'm paying for both Now TV and Netflix, but when I want to watch a movie I'm much more likely to go to Now TV, so maybe next time I sign up for those things I'll get just Now TV (or an equivalent player that actually has content licences to good things).
- cdash 13y ago
  I am not sure what content has in the UK but I can tell you that Netflix has become much more focused on TV shows than they have on movies in the US and I don't mean Netflix original series only.
georgespencer 13y ago
It just isn't going to happen for Netflix in the medium term. You have to believe that Google cares about TV and video content. They've made so many moves in this direction: YouTube, movies and TV on Google Play, the deal for Girls (or whichever show it is) to premiere on YouTube before anywhere else… The challenges Netflix has are three-fold as I see it: 1. They only have enough cash at hand to do, what, five pieces of amazing original programming each year? Six? The halo isn't big enough to make them huge like YouTube is huge. 2. Google has an insane amount of cash. They could really "unify the division" by creating the first truly undisputed king of content streaming (which would just be YouTube + licensed movies and TV shows with a premium version and a heavily ad-supported version). They could also finance new shows. 3. Content owners can see Netflix's share price. As soon as they start doing well the price will go up on content licenses. Unless Netflix negotiate 5, 10, or 15 year terms they aren't going to be able to avoid arbitrary price hikes.
- riggins 13y ago
  Content owners can see Netflix's share price. As soon as they start doing well the price will go up on content licenses. Unless Netflix negotiate 5, 10, or 15 year terms they aren't going to be able to avoid arbitrary price hikes. this has been claimed for a couple of years now. It hasn't played out that way so far. I haven't looked closely in 6 months but generally their content costs have been flattish rather than a sharp escalation (this is after the ramp up to make their initial content acquisitions). Furthermore, I think there are 2 reasons why content providers won't be in a great bargaining position. 1. Part of what makes a show a success is the built in audience. Think Friends or Seinfeld ... Thursday night prime time slot used to guarantee an audience in the millions. The networks don't have that advantage anymore. It's Netflix that has a guaranteed audience of millions. 2. If content providers push for major price increases, Netflix has the option of producing their own content, which they've shown they are capable of. Netflix has been disciplined in their content spending. I don't think content providers will be in a position to change that.
sergiotapia 13y ago
My biggest fear is other networks going online and removing their content from Netflix. If it comes to that there's no way IN HELL I'm paying for 5+ online services. Fuck that. I absolutely love Netflix, let's hope they manage to keep ahold of their catalog.
zackmorris 13y ago
I love Dish Network but with them and DirecTV charging upwards of $90 a month for a couple of DVR receivers, they are forcing me to consider an internet-only solution (and Dish started out so affordable!). I just got a rate increase of $5 a month in the mail. I get the feeling though that it's not their idea, that the stations call the shots. So I applaud Netflix for keeping their price so low but wonder how long it will last.
jonathansizz 13y ago
I don't understand why Netflix aren't also making their own regular nightly/weekly shows (topical comedy, politics, current events, etc.), such as you find on HBO and Comedy Central. They could make several of those type of shows on a relatively modest budget, and it'd give viewers greater reason to continue subscribing.
- samatman 13y ago
  Topical comedy based on current events from Netflix? With Kevin Spacey? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_(U.S._TV_series) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_(U.S._TV_series) I feel the idea of releasing the whole 'season' at once is perfect for the Netflix model. No need to drag it out: Netflix knows their core base likes to marathon binge on good TV.
jgalt212 13y ago
NFW. b/c the best stuff on Netflix is only available on DVD and not via streaming.

81 points by yarapavan 13y ago

Zapping.io has great potential too

guelo 13y ago

I'm still sceptical. If it costs $100 million to produce a quality show season it doesn't seem like Netflix can produce more than a handful per year. Is that enough content to keep people subscribed if Hollywood keeps taking away more and more of their stuff?

leobelle 13y ago
HBO only produces a handful a year, and Netflix has actually got a pretty decent selection of stuff.
gumby 13y ago
I agree they can't fill their pipeline alone. Yet the studios have Netflix by the gonads since the studios control who gets to see what when. You can see this from Netflix's crappy selection of streaming videos compared to their selection of DVDs. Not to mention that films mysteriously appear and disappear from the streaming library due to license expirations. No way Netflix would want to do that on their own.
avenger123 13y ago
The residual benefits of a hit series that Netflix produces is really where the value is. With a hit series that they own: 1) Subscribers know that the series will never go way. 2) Once a season is the bag, the return on the season is really high going forward as there is no cost to show the episodes (ie. no content fees) All this means that Netflix will continue to fund new series and find ways to bring the cost down. The future returns on a series is just to big to ignore for them to not do it.

protomyth 13y ago

When the cable money collapses, Disney, HBO/TimeWarner, etc. will just create their own streaming service and charge for it while removing all content from other services. Netflix will just be one streaming channel among many. They will have their own content and probably the content from folks not big enough to do their own channel (assuming Amazon doesn't start stealing that). Netflix is still the biggest, but so was Blockbuster and then the game changed. When cable rates go poof, the game will change again.

w1ntermute 13y ago
That's why Netflix's goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become Netflix. Do you think it's that easy to set up a reliable online streaming service? Those content companies (Disney, HBO, etc.) will go through a lot of trial and error before they can figure it out. If Netflix capitalizes on that opportunity to get people to watch their shows instead (presuming that they're good shows), then they've definitely got a shot at become an online content company.
- protomyth 13y ago
  If you haven't noticed, all of the content companies[1] are doing the initial work. Look at how many of them are now on devices such as Apple TV. Time Warner / HBO has quite a lot of content they can stream. I don't have a doubt Netflix will survive, but it will be one of many and probably the Indy / small provider company, if Amazon doesn't run them over. 1) even MLB
  - kodablah 13y ago
    Yup. The competitive advantage is not the streaming technology. Many providers, including the ones you mentioned, have feature parity w/ Netflix. I have Netflix, HBO Go w/ Time Warner (and their TV app), and MLB.TV. Although those 4 all have the technology, Netflix's competitive advantage is in convenience. HBO Go and TWC requires an expensive cable subscription and MLB.TV has a horrid blackout policy. It all comes down to sports for many. If Netflix of Google TV begin to seriously bid for sports contracts things will change very soon. Similarly if traditional sports outlets like ESPN or Fox would cut their cord requirement (even at an egregious per-subscriber cost to start off with) the landscape will really start to shift.

jerf 13y ago

As I recall it, Netflix's Immanent Demise was overblown in the first place. They faced a couple of challenges and stumbled for a couple of quarters, and Wired rushed to declare them Walking Dead. They failed to keel over dead on schedule, and now apparently Wired, which just isn't much for middle ground, declare them the inevitable winners of a battle that has hardly even started yet. This is filler; they are no more inevitable now than they were doomed a year ago. It's still a rapidly changing landscape, they still own a lot of the territory, and it's still very difficult to guess the future. (My only guess is a negative one; the market is not stable with every content company owning their own streaming service, because consumers are not going to pay 15 bills a month for video content, no matter how cheap they are. Someone's going to aggregate, somehow. My guess about the how is something more like an Amazon hybrid model of subscription + optional premium content, but Netflix is putting up a good fight on the subscription-only side, so.... shrug.)

stcredzero 13y ago
This is filler It's Wired.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
foobarian 13y ago
The content licenses are a real pain. Maybe one of the aggregators will just power through and have so much more content available that it will squeeze out everything else until new content only signs up with the winner, without strings attached. The other day I was trying to binge watch a season of a broadcast TV show, so I tried the On Demand thing on the FIOS cable box. Just 5 latest episodes available. Fine, this dinosaur is dead anyway, so I go to Hulu Plus; surely they will have the whole season, that's why you pay the sub, right? 2 latest episodes available! WTF. These incumbents are not competing with Netflix et al, they are actively burning the subscriber base and encouraging them to switch. I think if they put up a huge banner saying "Please don't use this site and go to Netflix instead" I would probably spend more time there than now. Sad panda is sad.

Oculus 13y ago

The real power Netflix has is they're at a point where they'll decide the entire future of an industry. TV-advertising will have to adapt to a world in which most people watch Netflix. In House of Cards they did quite a few product placements, but I don't think that's sufficient to absorb the multi-billion $ industry that advertising is. It'll be interesting to see where Netflix decides to carry the torch.

doug3465 13y ago

Someone please help me understand how HBO, Showtime, and now even Netflix can make so much quality programming and it seems all the networks can do is complete shit. Do they just not give a fuck anymore?

vinceguidry 13y ago
The networks have the problem of having everything they make have to have broad appeal. There's censorship rules they have to abide by. Subscription services don't have this problem, they can make anything.

stcredzero 13y ago

What of net neutrality?

kriro 13y ago

I enjoy Netflix quite a bit more than Hulu+...so much so that I don't care about watching recent stuff anymore and gladly wait for a bit. Hulu+ requires you to link with your cable provider to watch a lot of the new stuff anyways which is a no go for me since...the point is not having a cable provider anymore. Also...entire series simply don't stream if you're on Linux. Community and Linux-Flash don't work for example, something about their crappy DRM. Netflix isn't exactly Linux friendly (Silverlight) but the Wine Netflix-Desktop at least works for all their content. Antagonizing HBO isn't smart imo. Pretty juvenile comments.

notatoad 13y ago
Antagonizing HBO wouldn't be smart if netflix had anything to lose, but they don't. HBO and Netflix have no relationship, and there is virtually zero chance of any HBO show ever coming to Netflix as their relationship currently stands. They aren't taunting HBO because they want anything from HBO. They're taunting HBO because they want consumers to see them taunting HBO. It's just marketing.
jansanchez 13y ago
We also have Hulu+, and have never been required to link with our current cable provider (which we don't have at all). I personally enjoy both Netflix and Hulu+. They are different use cases. Hulu+ for current shows, while Netflix for the rest. The only thing I dislike from Hulu is the ads.
helper 13y ago
The Community Linux flash issue is curious. It doesn't play in Chrome with the bundled Flash player, but it does play in Firefox with external Flash. Its also surprising that Community is the only stream that I have found with this issue.

swombat 13y ago

I really want to like Netflix, but in the UK I've now switched most of my movie-viewing to Now TV. Now TV seems to operate on the same model, except they have much fewer of the "movies that hardly anyone wants to see" category, and much more of the "recent movies that you want to see" category. As a result, at the moment I'm paying for both Now TV and Netflix, but when I want to watch a movie I'm much more likely to go to Now TV, so maybe next time I sign up for those things I'll get just Now TV (or an equivalent player that actually has content licences to good things).

cdash 13y ago
I am not sure what content has in the UK but I can tell you that Netflix has become much more focused on TV shows than they have on movies in the US and I don't mean Netflix original series only.

georgespencer 13y ago

It just isn't going to happen for Netflix in the medium term. You have to believe that Google cares about TV and video content. They've made so many moves in this direction: YouTube, movies and TV on Google Play, the deal for Girls (or whichever show it is) to premiere on YouTube before anywhere else… The challenges Netflix has are three-fold as I see it: 1. They only have enough cash at hand to do, what, five pieces of amazing original programming each year? Six? The halo isn't big enough to make them huge like YouTube is huge. 2. Google has an insane amount of cash. They could really "unify the division" by creating the first truly undisputed king of content streaming (which would just be YouTube + licensed movies and TV shows with a premium version and a heavily ad-supported version). They could also finance new shows. 3. Content owners can see Netflix's share price. As soon as they start doing well the price will go up on content licenses. Unless Netflix negotiate 5, 10, or 15 year terms they aren't going to be able to avoid arbitrary price hikes.

riggins 13y ago
Content owners can see Netflix's share price. As soon as they start doing well the price will go up on content licenses. Unless Netflix negotiate 5, 10, or 15 year terms they aren't going to be able to avoid arbitrary price hikes. this has been claimed for a couple of years now. It hasn't played out that way so far. I haven't looked closely in 6 months but generally their content costs have been flattish rather than a sharp escalation (this is after the ramp up to make their initial content acquisitions). Furthermore, I think there are 2 reasons why content providers won't be in a great bargaining position. 1. Part of what makes a show a success is the built in audience. Think Friends or Seinfeld ... Thursday night prime time slot used to guarantee an audience in the millions. The networks don't have that advantage anymore. It's Netflix that has a guaranteed audience of millions. 2. If content providers push for major price increases, Netflix has the option of producing their own content, which they've shown they are capable of. Netflix has been disciplined in their content spending. I don't think content providers will be in a position to change that.

sergiotapia 13y ago

My biggest fear is other networks going online and removing their content from Netflix. If it comes to that there's no way IN HELL I'm paying for 5+ online services. Fuck that. I absolutely love Netflix, let's hope they manage to keep ahold of their catalog.

zackmorris 13y ago

I love Dish Network but with them and DirecTV charging upwards of $90 a month for a couple of DVR receivers, they are forcing me to consider an internet-only solution (and Dish started out so affordable!). I just got a rate increase of $5 a month in the mail. I get the feeling though that it's not their idea, that the stations call the shots. So I applaud Netflix for keeping their price so low but wonder how long it will last.

jonathansizz 13y ago

I don't understand why Netflix aren't also making their own regular nightly/weekly shows (topical comedy, politics, current events, etc.), such as you find on HBO and Comedy Central. They could make several of those type of shows on a relatively modest budget, and it'd give viewers greater reason to continue subscribing.

samatman 13y ago
Topical comedy based on current events from Netflix? With Kevin Spacey? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_(U.S._TV_series) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_(U.S._TV_series) I feel the idea of releasing the whole 'season' at once is perfect for the Netflix model. No need to drag it out: Netflix knows their core base likes to marathon binge on good TV.

jgalt212 13y ago

NFW. b/c the best stuff on Netflix is only available on DVD and not via streaming.